Citizenship and Immigration committee  First of all, I hope your daughters will come and do their graduate programs at the University of Waterloo.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I don't have any concerns. I think it's a very practical and smart way to do it. To have a list of countries—we will have very little concern about that. I will support that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is important, yes. If a student has two offers, one from the University of Waterloo and one from Stanford University, and they are of equal value to this student, if he or she gets a visa from the U.S. first, before Canada, I can tell you with 99% certainty that they will c

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We put the student's application through our regular admission process, and if the student is qualified and meets all the entry requirements, an official letter is sent to the student that he or she has been admitted to the university, after which the student will then apply for

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It depends on the unit they're applying to, but it could vary from one month to two or three months, given the volume of applications. We have application deadlines and they have to meet those deadlines.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our job, of course, is to make sure that we are introducing our universities to the whole world as an excellence centre. It's excellence in whatever we are offering, both in education and research, and in other areas where they can be entrepreneurial, so that they can further thi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is not true in our case at all, and I don't know of any other universities that are doing that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I mentioned, Canada right now is way behind Australia and the U.K. for visa processing. You mentioned a number. I think it's very important for us to be able to attract a larger number of international students. The quality is also a very important aspect. With regard to qual

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's okay, Mr. "Tolson".

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's a good proposal. It should work. It should expedite.... Once a visa is given, the student has satisfied all the requirements, so there should not be any bureaucratic obstacles in front of them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It used to be the case, but I don't think it any longer is the case. They do not have to reapply to come back to Canada after every year. We were behind in this, and for that reason students were preferring to go to the United States or other places, because those places only ne

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It has, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are two elements to it. I believe at the University of Waterloo those students who come into our co-op programs can work anywhere. They have that work permit granted to them as they are admitted to the university. I don't see that part of our competitiveness as a big issue.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to start by thanking the members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration for inviting me to appear before you today. It's a pleasure to be here. As vice-chair of the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, I would like t