Finance committee  In our pre-budget submission we used all of the work that's been done over the last several years by the Canadian Association of University Business Officers to put the case forward that there is $5.1 billion worth of accumulated deferred maintenance required by our universities.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I have to believe that everybody wants that money out the door so that employment can start as soon as the snow disappears. One of the pieces of advice that we've given to Industry Canada is that there's been an incredible amount of work done at the provincial level be

Finance committee  Thank you. In fact that is why we constantly refer to the four foundational elements of the research enterprise. Infrastructure is a very big piece of it. The talent is an absolutely huge piece of it--getting the right people there. The direct funding, the research funding availa

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to present AUCC's views regarding the budget implementation bill. The acknowledged challenge for this 2009 federal budget was how to most effectively provide a stimulus to the Canadian economy during the most significant gl

Finance committee  Yes. We've always argued that if an international student chooses to stay in Canada, that is a benefit to Canada, but if they choose to return home, they take with them all those Canadian connections they made while they were here, and that's equally an advantage to Canada. We'

Finance committee  Thank you. That's a really good question. One of our challenges has been that when we talk about attracting the best and the brightest international students, we've always argued that three things have to work together simultaneously: first, there has to be a good understanding

Finance committee  Thank you. If you were to look at the press release we issued the night of the budget announcements, and many utterances after that, you would see that we did recognize the investments that were made and deeply appreciated them. In coming to the committee today, we were asked t

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. It is a fundamental part of supporting the research enterprise. We've long argued, and it's in our brief that you would have received late this summer, that this is one of the key components. We have good support to attract talent and we have the infr

Finance committee  What would happen is that researchers looking at where they're going to be able to do their work would begin to look elsewhere very seriously because they would be operating in an environment that didn't support them. The reality is that when the universities don't get fully supp

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin by thanking you for inviting us to appear before the Committee today. Canada is a wealthy, highly developed country with enormous promise. However, over the next decade, Canada faces important labour market competitiveness and demographic chal

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That was a very deliberate choice. Several years ago, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada decided to support a dedicated transfer for post-secondary education. We know full well that there can't be only one priority on the table and if

Finance committee  Next week.

Finance committee  Yes, certainly.

Finance committee  We're talking about increased support to cover 40 per cent of direct costs -- in other words, the grants provided by the different granting councils. Forty per cent of research cost support should be dedicated to indirect costs.

Finance committee  This is a calculation we made several years ago where we tried, to the greatest extent possible, to identify the costs incurred by universities to support the research performed there.