Finance committee  What I drew attention to were the demographic challenges that Canada has and the reality that employers will not find the skills they need to carry on their businesses. There are a number of solutions to that problem. One is immigration—that can do something for us, not a lot, bu

Finance committee  I'm sorry. I misunderstood your question. I thought you were talking simply about the success of the graduates, but in high schools there is a difference.

Finance committee  By the way, we represent primarily--but not only--community colleges. However, we have many universities that are members. Foreign students pay very significantly higher tuitions--four or five times more--which more than covers their cost at the institution and leaves an additi

Finance committee  No. These numbers are broadly comparable across Canada, absolutely.

Finance committee  Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is James Knight and I am president of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. With me today is Paul Brennan, our vice-president of International Partnerships. I commend the committee on its broad-based consultation with Canadians on

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. It's already happening. In our search this year we found almost 3,500 college and private sector partnerships on applied research themes of the nature you just described. This receives almost no support from the Government of Canada. We think it's an

Finance committee  The reality is that many aboriginal graduates from high school are not getting the financial support they need to take those programs. There is a program that's intended to do that for these learners, but it was capped in 1996 at a 2% growth rate, which is less than inflation. So

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and honourable committee members. I am joined by our vice-president of public affairs, Terry Anne Boyles, this afternoon. First, I want to congratulate the committee on the extraordinary work it has undertaken across Canada over the past few weeks. You

Finance committee  Given the demands of the economy, we view it as a bad economic decision. Half of the college applicants are university grads who didn't get jobs and who come to college to be trained up so that they can be employed. Why in a time of economic stress would you make such a massive i

Finance committee  Thanks for that support. As you know, there's a vast amount of discovery research in universities, which is really where we spend our money. A lot of it is pretty esoteric. It's unrelated to the short-term economy, at any rate. We see a real opportunity to reinforce these relat

Finance committee  There is funding for the bricks and mortar. For colleges it's $600 million. What we're going to do with that is try to spend it wisely and quickly. We're really going to work at it and show that we can add value to the economy and demonstrate our capacities and efficiencies and o

Finance committee  Thank you, Chair, and thank you, members of the committee, for this opportunity. Last August we prepared a brief for you called “Canada's Crisis in Advanced Skills”. It's attached to your documents. It's a powerful statement about what, only a few months ago, was Canada's princi

Industry committee  For our institutions, I would say, within a broad framework, let them manage themselves. They do it extremely well.

Industry committee  Thank you. I think the university president got it right. If the students are lining up and the professors are engaged, that's marvellous. But in the institutions I've visited in my sector, there's a sense of excitement, a sense of progress and self-fulfilment. I think that's a

Industry committee  Thank you for that question. I really appreciate it, because just a few weeks ago I was at Red River College. I was touring with the president, and I asked him what all these semi-trailers were doing parked in their yard. He told me they were not semi-trailers, they were in fact