Citizenship and Immigration committee Just to clarify, we're not building the campus. I've already made that point. We're not putting one cent of capital into that campus.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee I'm not going to respond on behalf of other institutions, but I'd be happy to sit down with you, Mr. Davies—
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee I'd be happy to sit down with you, Mr. Davies. I'm responsible for my institution, not everybody else's. I'd be happy to sit down with you and explain our business model and our strategic plan. It's not a cash grab. It's trying to make sure that our domestic students have great programs and great careers.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee We have a huge.... Well, it's not huge, but we have many people on our domestic recruitment team. We have a large marketing budget. We work very closely with all the regional high schools that would feed into our campuses. We go to adult learning centres. We do everything we possibly can.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee I think it was Mr. Asselin who talked about the competition out there in international education land. What's interesting is that it's no longer just the U.K. and Australia. There are countries throughout the world that are positioning themselves as international education hubs.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee No. One of the things I've noticed as I've travelled around the world is that many countries actually encourage their institutions to export their excellent, quality education. You see many—
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee Why would you question that?
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee I don't think the financial challenges of the post-secondary system, particularly in Ontario, are a mystery to anybody. Obviously, one of the responses was to try to ensure our survival, frankly. That coincided with a very aggressive set of immigration targets that were set by the federal government.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee I'm not sure I understand about institutional capacity. I don't quite understand what you mean by that. I'm not in government. I don't have the policy levers. I don't have the analytics, statistics and data to understand how early those things could be felt. I know that people were talking about a housing price increase that was out of control in Toronto, for instance, and in some other cities.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee It would be the same answer. The federal government tends to deal with the provincial government—
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee —as opposed to directly with institutions. I would think that would be the answer.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee That's correct.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee I would have to ask the federation. I certainly will provide you with that information.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee Honestly, I don't know whether the registration system would ask students to identify themselves by their country of origin, but I can certainly ask the SSF for that information.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew
Citizenship and Immigration committee We're not investing in those campuses. They're being built for us by somebody else. Not one cent of our capital is going into those campuses. We're operating them. Why? As I think is apparent to everybody in Canada, we need revenue, and this is a way of raising additional revenue that we can then bring home to invest in our campuses for the benefit of our students in Canada.
September 25th, 2025Committee meeting
David Agnew