Thank you for having me here this evening and for doing such an important study for the francophone postsecondary sector in Canada.
I have represented Université Sainte-Anne as president and vice-chancellor for 12 years. As Mr. Deveau said, Université Sainte-Anne is the only French-language postsecondary institution out of the ten universities in Nova Scotia. We offer university and community college programs, along with immersion programs and customized French as a second language programs. We are firmly rooted in our community and we are a preferred partner for enhancing the vitality of our small Acadian and francophone communities in Nova Scotia.
In my last 12 years at Sainte-Anne, our roots in the community have been a focus of our strategic plan. In other words, the question is how better to support our communities. We are a small establishment with about 600 full-time and part-time students. We offer our instruction and services via five campuses from one end of the province to the other, including one in Halifax. Of the other four campuses, two are in the southwest, in Pointe‑de‑l'Église and Tusket. The two other campuses are on Cape Breton Island, in Saint-Joseph‑du‑Moine and Petit‑de‑Grat. The Acadian and francophone regions of Nova Scotia are coastal, rural and remote regions, at least three hours' drive from Halifax airport. They are also official language minority communities.
We have distinguished ourselves over the years by our willingness to be actively involved in our communities and to promote their development, both in terms of language and culture and in other fields, to support our industries. We have centres, laboratories and observatories that serve to connect researchers among themselves and to create bridges with the other institutions, including anglophone institutions, and with enterprises and social actors as a whole.
I would now like to talk a little about research. I am certain there will be questions after that. We support what was said by the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne and by Acfas before this committee.
These are some of the facts of life at Université Sainte-Anne. First, because of our small size, we have a lot fewer master's and doctorate level programs than the bigger institutions. There are therefore fewer students available to support professors in their research projects. However, supervision of students is one of the criteria used by the granting councils in reviewing grant applications. In addition, the more prestigious grant programs are less suited to small institutions like ours.
I would like to say a little about the Canada Research Chairs Program, since we have two of these chairs. As you probably know, if the average total funding of the granting agencies falls below $100,000, institutions like ours are no longer eligible and may no longer host a research chair. As well, all of the active chairs have to be deactivated. We found ourselves in that situation in 2019, and that is very regrettable for our communities and our institution.
People often think that we, francophone educational institutions, do research only in relation to the French language or to Acadian or francophone culture. However, in our case, since we are located in a coastal region and we are the only postsecondary institution in the southwest, we also support our communities and industries in relation to economic development, for example. So we have played a key role for several years in—