Status of Women Committee on May 25th, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Actually, it's 30 seconds. The 30-second sign was up.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Well, with the intervention....

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I stopped the clock at the intervention, Mr. Angus.

I:ll give 30 seconds for Mr. Haché to respond to your question.

[Robert Haché]

I'm not sure exactly what the question was, because I had some audio issues as well.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

The question was this. You told the students last spring that you were just a couple of hundred thousand dollars away from having a balanced budget. Then in October you said your debt was about $7 million, with an impact of $5 million to $10 million from the pandemic. Then on April 2 you dropped this bombshell that you had only two choices: You were either going to shut the university, which had had 60 years of public investment, and walk away on it, or you had to do these massive cuts.

You're not telling us something here. Were you not aware that the debt was there, or were you using this process for other reasons—to cut your staff with your collective bargaining agreements? Why did you go from telling people that you were almost at a balanced budget to telling us that you had to shut the doors, and that took place in less than a year?

[Robert Haché]

Simply, it was required that we have a balanced budget. At that point, Laurentian had no additional capacity to take on additional debt.

We did work very hard prior to the pandemic to meet the projected budget of the year, but then with the overall.... We just simply had no more room at the end of that.

On February 1, we had to take the decision, as Laurentian was insolvent. We had no alternative but to close the doors or to initiate this process. We initiated this process to provide a future for the students.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry. That's the end of your time, and I would point out that I certainly was more than generous with the time.

Now we're going to Ms. Wong for five minutes.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Thank you, Madame Chair; and thank you to all the witnesses.

I'm really sorry to hear of the closure of this very important program. As a former faculty member as well, and then later on becoming the administrator, I know the challenges on both sides of the table whenever you talk about funding.

However, I have several questions.

First of all, regarding the impact of COVID-19, I understand that because of COVID-19, many programs are not fully attended by students. Therefore, fees as revenue and other programs that are generating revenues might have been impacted.

As Laurentian administrator, can you comment on that to explain your decision?

[Robert Haché]

Indeed, the campus has been functioning virtually since the middle of March of last year, when COVID fully arrived. At that point, Laurentian was actually the first university to transition from face-to-face to virtual programming. We did it virtually overnight. All students completed their term. We ran a spring term.

Enrolments have not been significantly impacted by COVID per se, but students are not on campus. We are actually looking forward to a return to campus this September, but for the past year, students have been working virtually. They have been advancing in their studies and the programming continues to be offered.

A significant portion of revenue at the university happens through activities that occur on campus. The loss of so-called ancillary revenue and residences that are not being used and so on do provide financial challenges to the university. Also, a number of additional expenses were incurred because some activity needs to continue on campus, such as research, so there were increased safety protocols and cleaning and all the rest of it.

COVID has had an impact, but it was not the only impact on Laurentian. There were a number of issues that Laurentian has faced over the past decade that ultimately led us to where we were at the end of January.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Do you have a special program for international students at your campus?

[Robert Haché]

We do have international students at Laurentian, studying in a variety of areas. I would say the greatest concentration is in the faculty of management.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Have they been affected by COVID, therefore affecting the revenue? Everybody knows that international education brings a lot of revenue to universities and colleges.

[Robert Haché]

Yes, there's no question that students have been impacted, but I really want to applaud the efforts of the Government of Canada to provide the additional flexibility that they provided last year to allow international students to continue to study virtually. That has been really important. By and large, international students at Laurentian have continued in their programming.

It is particularly challenging when classes are at three o'clock in the afternoon at Laurentian and that means it's three o'clock in the morning where the international student is actually studying from. However, we've done our best to provide opportunities to view lectures at convenient times, rather than specific times, and do whatever we can to accommodate international student learning. That has continued.

The international student enrolment at Laurentian has actually not dropped as significantly as at many other institutions, but has been maintained. It is something, of course, that will be important as we look towards the fall, and hopefully the penetration of the vaccine and the reopening of travel and so forth, to be able to welcome international students back on campus. They are important to the university. They are important to the whole community. Having that international flavour on campus is important to all students.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Yes. Thank you very much, President.

My next question is directed to our first nations—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, Ms. Wong. You're out of time.

Ms. Sidhu, you have five minutes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today.

Ms. Blais, you spoke of how you would like to see more resources put towards indigenous midwifery training. What are some of the ways you've been able to incorporate indigenous medical practices with western ones?

[Ellen Blais]

That's a really, really important question.

I think one of the things to point out is that a lot of the time, that kind of programming within the midwifery programs that exist in the three university programs has not necessarily integrated indigenous knowledge, whether it be cultural from elders or from within communities. This is why we feel that directing some funding and some strategies towards including culturally based education coming from within communities would be relevant and appropriate for indigenous people in their communities to identify that they wanted to be midwifery students and to learn more. Then it would be well tailored so that communities could begin to self-define what that means.

I hope that helps answer your question.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Blais.

Madam Chair, I want to give my time to my colleague Marc Serré.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good. Go ahead, Monsieur Serré.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Ms. Sidhu.

Mr. Haché, you understand that for the students, the faculty, the staff and the community there's a big issue with the process that's been followed—the transparency and also the image—to rebuild Laurentian University. The concern moving forward now is will Laurentian, through the CCAA process, be selling assets? This is one of the most beautiful campuses in Canada. I've lived it. I've been on it and I am continuing to do that. We do not want to have any of these assets sold off.

As you know from budget 2021, Paul Lefebvre and I and many of the Liberal francophones met directly with several ministers, including Minister Joly, Minister Freeland and Minister Champagne, and we were successful in having $120 million in the federal budget in 2021. We have to find solutions. What have you done to work with the Province of Ontario to make sure that we look at support immediately? What can the federal government do to support the province? Right now we haven't seen any proposals from the province. Moving forward, what can we do to support the province? What are you doing to get the province to work on a plan to move forward?

[Robert Haché]

First, let me agree with you that Laurentian truly does have a picturesque campus. That is a really important feature of the university.

We have been in conversation with the province continuously for many, many months about the situation that Laurentian is in, how we're progressing now through the CCAA process, and what will be needed, as we come out of the process, to have a university that will be sustainable into the future. Those conversations are happening with great regularity with the province, more than once a week at the present time. We are working with them to develop the package of supports that will help the university be sustainable going forward as it transitions out of the CCAA process.

At the same time, we are doing an audit of space at the university. It is important that we be able to ensure that we have the infrastructure we need to support the students going forward and to support the university going forward. That's the other aspect of it. We must ensure on the one hand that we have the campus and we have the buildings and facilities that will support the educational mandate of the university going forward. At the same time, should we identify some infrastructure that is truly surplus to the university, that is costing money to have at the university and that is not needed, there is a duty to look at how we can realize something from those assets that otherwise would be a cost to the university.

Note that I'm not talking about the lands of the university, necessarily; I'm really focused on physical infrastructure in terms of buildings and structures that might have other purposes that could benefit the university going forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Once again, I thank the witnesses for participating in this committee meeting. In the first round of questions, I had the opportunity to address Mr. Haché. This time, I would like to speak to Ms. Blais as well.

Ms. Blais, you kind of answered my question, but could you tell us more about the impact of the closure of Laurentian University on women's health and the availability of culturally appropriate services for Indigenous families?

[Ellen Blais]

Thank you for the opportunity to address your question.

I think it's very important right now.... To think that indigenous people will feel okay, with what I've heard, it's not okay to have them necessarily go down south for the remainder of their education.

The accessibility of a northern program is absolutely important for all indigenous communities in the north. The north of Ontario is the size of France. We have 160 first nations in Ontario, many in the north, and we've heard that many communities are very interested in developing midwifery programming in their communities. For indigenous people to have to go down south is not acceptable. They need programming in the north, and this is something that's very important to them. We need indigenous content in our programming, which northern Ontario can certainly deliver, instead of adding in any indigenous content as an afterthought. Relocating to communities like Toronto or Hamilton for university-level midwifery programming is out of the reach of many indigenous students. Gaining tuition funding is not always easy, and some of the timelines that are required, according to some of the loan institutions, to finish our degrees do not work for our communities.

There are many things to think about in terms of the closure in the north. I've heard from many indigenous students that the north is where they want to remain.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

Now we'll go to Ms. Mathyssen for two and a half minutes.