Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs,
Science and Technology
Subcommittee on Post-Secondary education
Issue 6 - Evidence - Morning sitting
VANCOUVER, Tuesday, February 11, 1997
The Subcommittee on Post-Secondary education of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 9:00 a.m. to continue its inquiry into the state of Post-Secondary education in Canada.
Senator M. Lorne Bonnell (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable Senators, we are in beautiful Capilano College to continue our study on Post-Secondary education in Canada. Earlier this morning we had a tour of this beautiful campus.
Our first witness this morning is Dr. William Saywell, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. I hope your presentation will leave some time for questions.
Dr. William Saywell, President, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada: Mr. Chairman, I have come here at your request, so I do not have a great intervention to make in terms of my own wish list, and we will get to the questions very quickly.
My own background is in the post-secondary world largely, latterly as President of Simon Fraser University for 10 years. If you want to go back to my rusty memory on that side of my life, I am happy to try to retrieve views from that world. However, I believe that the reason I was invited to come here today is that in a presentation to the Senate Foreign Affairs committee in November as well as in Vancouver last week, I mentioned an initiative which the Asia Pacific Foundation has taken on, which is to market internationally Canadian EDUCATION and training, not exclusively post-secondary but with a significant emphasis on the post-secondary world. Some honourable senators felt there would be some value in my talking about that initiative further, and that is the only intervention I will make. Then I will answer any questions you may have.
When I came from the university world to the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, which is a creature created by the Parliament of Canada to promote relations between Canada and Asia, I wanted to see if the foundation with its mandate could assist the EDUCATIONal community in Canada in marketing their programs in the Asia Pacific world.
After a considerably lengthy negotiation with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, CIDA and Citizenship and Immigration Canada we worked out a unique partnership with those departments and the private sector of which we are a part. Although we are an independent organization, we are largely dependent on government funding and on the Government of Canada to provide the vehicle for any legitimate Canadian EDUCATION or training institution in the country to market in the fastest growing part of the world economy, the Asia Pacific region. Approximately 55 per cent of Canada's foreign students come from that area.
We set up a network of what we call CECs, Canadian EDUCATION Centres. There was a prototype in existence in Seoul and something somewhat similar in Taiwan, but we created others and now have had for the past year seven such centres fully operational. In the next six weeks we will be opening two more, one in New Delhi and one in Mexico City. The original seven of which I speak are in Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.
Essentially what they do, wherever possible, be it at or near the embassy or High Commission, is set up an office that begins with a modest budget and a modest number of staff, namely three people. A Canadian institution can pay us an annual subscription, and we will take their materials to the centre. Our counsellors will then assist in bringing to the attention of local students the opportunities of studying in that subscriber's institutions.
They do outreach programs -- that is, they will go to the schools and local colleges and conduct seminars, again talking about the opportunities to study in Canada.
On an annual basis they organize EDUCATIONal fairs which are similar to trade fairs for the sale of products. Those subscribers who wish to attend pay an additional fee, bring two or three people, and have a booth displaying their materials. A few thousand students will come through in the course of a couple of days, look at the opportunities and be given advice on studying in Canada.
They do a number of other things as well -- and remember that we have only been up and running for a couple of years. We are just at the point of marketing a CD-ROM with full information on our subscribers in Canada, as well as hard print "study-in-Canada" directories printed for each of those centres, both in English and in the local language.
At the end of our first two years of operation, we have gone from ground zero to almost 200 subscribing institutions across Canada. Every province is represented. There is relatively weak representation of subscribers from our francophone colleagues; there are two major francophone universities now involved. The issue there -- and they realize it -- is that, to a large extent, Asian students want instruction in the English language. There are niche markets for our francophone institutions, and we are developing strategies with them to try to penetrate those markets.
For example, there are many thousands of Korean students at the college and university level who take French literature and language as their major study, a large number of whom go on to France. There is absolutely no reason that Quebec could not be marketed as an attractive place to get some of their EDUCATION and training.
In the last six to nine months -- and only in some of the centres because, again, remember how new this initiative is -- we have begun to seek contracts for our subscribers to deliver special training programs either in Canada or in Asia or in a combination thereof. My memory may be at fault here, I believe we have bid on approximately 35 contracts. I think we have won 22 of those contracts, which are worth a couple of million dollars to our subscribers. We act as the broker and we take a fee for the cost of doing that business. Let me give an example.
The first contract we won was as a result of our people in the centres talking to private sector industries, to government agencies in Singapore and Seoul, asking what contracts they currently give and why groups are sent to the United States or to Australia or Great Britain and asking that they think of Canada as a destination. Our first contract was with the Hong Kong government. They wanted to send a couple of people to Canada to study how we managed abattoirs. The contract was worth only $10,000, but we went through our subscriber list and suggested eight institutions that could probably put together such a program.
We put the proposal on our network, tell them how to bid on it, how to write into the budget our fee, which is about 5 per cent to 7 per cent, and then we take the proposals to the Asian client and they decide what institution they want to award the contract to, which could be Capilano College, Université de Montreal, or whatever.
Our largest contract was worth about $400,000, which was a combination of executive training for mid-career people in a major Korean private company along with some ESL. The University of British Columbia won that contract. As I said, it was worth close to $400,000.
Training and EDUCATION is a vast market, especially in Asia but also emerging in Latin America and other parts of the world for one simple reason. These economies have shot through the roof in terms of their economic development. These countries in Asia have had double-digit growth for the last decade. Their human resource development is lagging drastically behind, and they desperately need to close that gap, to produce everything from engineers and computer scientists to management people and medical people.
There is an emerging middle class in all of these economies, hundreds of thousands of people who have the financial means to send their daughters and sons abroad to study, be it for ESL, FSL, technical training, university undergraduate or post-graduate training or whatever.
I have been as guilty as anyone else, having spent a lifetime in the Post-Secondary education community, of being self-critical of ourselves. Perhaps we are more critical of ourselves than is any other society.
The truth of the matter is that we have a great EDUCATION and training structure in this country. It is comprehensive, it is unique in some ways, such as the university/college program that we have in this province, and it is high quality at internationally competitive prices. Our system is relatively inexpensive compared to that of our main competitors in United States, Great Britain and Australia, and it is delivered to those international students who come to Canada in a friendly and hospitable multicultural environment -- again, relatively speaking. The only thing we have not done is market. Like any other product or service in the world, however good it may be, if you do not tell people about it, they do not buy it.
Before we set up this network of Canadian EDUCATION Centres, the number of international students coming to Canada was decreasing. We believe we are reversing that trend.
There are three or four advantages to us as a country and to our institutions that wish to be involved and, of course, it is voluntary.
First is the financial advantage. In an immediate sense, the average Asian student puts into the Canadian economy $27,000 a year. Think of the multiplier effect of that. Because of our marketing we have changed the number of Korean students coming to Canada from 400 four years ago to 8,000 this year. You can do the math; that is a $250 million infusion into the Canadian economy that would not otherwise be there.
The second advantage is the multiplier effect. Those of you who have backgrounds in economics can extrapolate the figures. These students are coming not only to the larger cities, such as Vancouver and Toronto; they are going into secondary schools, to ESL schools, across the country in small communities such as Medicine Hat and Brandon.
We know, although the evidence is only anecdotal, that in a global economy where competition is so fierce, particularly in Asia, you do business with those whom you know and trust. By far, our best allies in the international community of business and government are those people who know and like us because they have lived here and studied here; they know our products and our name brands by name. Other things being roughly equal, as they are in a fiercely competitive international economy, they do business with us.
The best example of that was given by Premier Frank McKenna in Jakarta a year ago with Team Canada at which time Prime Minister Chrétien opened our CEC in Jakarta. In front of 300 Canadian business people who were talking about what they were doing and what they were trying to sell, Premier McKenna told his fellow premiers and business colleagues in the audience that the most important business we are doing in this country is EDUCATION. He stated that they were in the process of negotiating, if my memory serves me correctly, a $350 million deal in the agri-food business which would bring jobs not only to New Brunswick but also to some of other provinces. I do not know whether the deal was consummated at that time. He told the group that this potential Indonesian partner had approached Canada rather than Australia, Britain, France or United States, all of whom had the product, because he was a graduate of the University of New Brunswick.
Nothing we do in this country is strategically more valuable in terms of our long-term economic well-being in the international trade community than building those alliances of personal relationships which are critical in Asia and important in any other part of the world.
Third -- and I do not give this a low priority; indeed, I give it an important priority -- it is most important for our own Canadian citizens and landed immigrants who go through our EDUCATIONal structure to be as sensitized as possible to the international community, the borderless world in which we are moving very rapidly to other cultures and to other languages.
I must say parenthetically that this college has been a leader in terms of the Asia Pacific college programs with interns and co-op students going to Asia. In addition to the academic programs that colleges and universities offer, there is no more important way for our own people to gain first-hand knowledge of other cultures than through exposure to a large number of international students on their campus.
Let me close with two or three footnotes.
The only statistics we have are for those students who are here for more than three months and therefore require visas. There are tens of thousands of other students who come to this country for short summer programs, especially language programs such as ESL. We hope we will be able to develop the FSL market as well. We will try to gather those statistics through our own network with subscribers. Those students come back often. They may come for an ESL program in the summer and, because they will like us, they return to take their last year of high school or to go to college. Their parents come to visit them and put money into our economy. Their parents may come back as investors or immigrants.
The synergies between EDUCATIONal services and trade in EDUCATIONal services -- and that is what we are marketing -- and between the remainder of our whole culture -- our intellectual development; our social sensitization to the world through students; the strategic economic value; the infusion into the local economy immediately -- and other areas such as tourism, immigration and investment have convinced me that we are doing nothing which is more important.
Of course, we wish to expand that network and to take it to other parts of the world, particularly areas like Latin America which are now emerging very rapidly.
The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Saywell, for an excellent address.
I will ask Senator Andreychuk to begin the questioning.
Senator Andreychuk: I wish to thank Dr. Saywell for appearing here today. I was enthusiastic when I heard him speak about EDUCATION in the context of trade, and I was impressed again today to hear that neither field has been compromised.
Your program is a unique one and you have implemented it in a unique way. We must project our culture abroad so that people can understand who we are and what we have if we want to be successful in trade. Historically, our competitors have promoted their culture through the Goethe Institute in Germany, the British Council, and French centres. It is a way of identifying a country, its attitudes and values, on which trade can then be built.
Many of our cultural aspects seem to have been cut back in our foreign policy, or brought back in some other form. Do you think what you are doing is a more valuable alternative which embraces culture and so many other concepts and capacities and that, therefore, it would be advantageous for us to recommend to the government that this tool be expanded and that your examples of success in Asia Pacific are what we need in Latin America and elsewhere?
Mr. Saywell: That is a very thoughtful question and a very good question. The quick answer is: Yes, it would be valuable to make such a recommendation. I say that for two or three reasons.
I do believe that the jury is still out because this is initiative is novel and new, especially to our university community. The colleges have been more active in marketing for more years than have our universities. As a former university president, I can say that sometimes universities tend to be slow in moving into the new world.
Enough time has now passed and we have had enough success to say that we believe this system is working and can be usefully expanded.
If this committee does make such a recommendation, it would be terribly important -- and I admit to being selfish here -- to say that we have one system working now, that it should not be fiddled with in other parts of the world and than someone else brought in to carry out the program. The real challenge for us is on this side of the ocean, and that is to keep in touch with the colleges, universities and schools, to tell them what we are doing, and to convince them to come on board, so that we have one contact there, one contact in our organization and one contact in our Asian CECs.
If we do the good old Canadian thing of saying, "The Asia Pacific Foundation is looking after Asia; lets get institute X to look after Latin America and another one for the Middle East," we will destroy the effectiveness of one clean organization and the economies of scale that that brings.
This year we added New Delhi and Mexico City to our marketing brochures. I would urge you to think about that. You do not have to believe what I say, but it is common sense to recommend that our organization should be the one to continue to expand this program in partnership with government.
The broader question you asked is very thoughtful. Had I had been asked it 15 years ago, I would have said, "Why do you not recommend to the government the creation of something like a British Council? It has been effective and valuable, and there has been no Canadian counterpart abroad." However, the reality today is that the funds are not there. I think we can build on the Canadian EDUCATION Centre network with many of the same advantages that those other creatures in days of greater resources offered.
EDUCATION and training, because we are targeting a young, impressionable and formative age group, can be our best vehicle for introducing them to all the other great values of this fabulous country.
Senator Perrault: Last week in Vancouver Dr. Saywell testified before our Foreign Affairs Committee, and did so brilliantly. I want to thank him for all he has done to advance higher EDUCATION in our province and for the leadership he is showing in Asia Pacific.
Dr. Saywell, you suggested that our main competition comes from the United States, Great Britain and Australia. What is the form of that competition today? Do they have active teams soliciting abroad?
Mr. Saywell: It varies, Senator Perrault. The Americans and the British have the advantage of many decades of direct involvement in one way or another in those economies, either as the colonial master in some or as a major ally of the United States in others. There have that inherent advantage.
Frankly, I have had the honour of representing Canada around the table in many Pacific Rim organizations, and I am tired of hearing that minister X, minister Y, or corporate CEO A, B and C are graduates of these American universities or these British universities. One hears that time and time again. They have had generations of competitive advantage.
The Australians are similar to us. In terms of the Asian market, at least Southeast Asia, they have the advantage of being closer geographically. They have gone out over the past 10 or 15 years and marketed, marketed, marketed. They have an organization called the IDP, which is partly university-based and partly government-based, in 65 countries. They are light years ahead of us.
They have also have a few other competitive advantages in the perception of Asians, such as better weather. However, Winnipeg in January can be marketed if it is done correctly.
Senator Andreychuk: Even Regina.
Mr. Saywell: My birthplace. Absolutely.
Senator Andreychuk: That is why I said it.
Mr. Saywell: The manager of our CEC in Kuala Lumpur is a young Moslem woman who graduated from the University of Manitoba, and she speaks about her years in Winnipeg as I would speak about my years, if I had had them, on the beaches of Tahiti. It is incredible; it is all in how you package it.
They have had those advantages, and it is simply catch up time for us.
Senator Perrault: Do we have any inherent advantages that we are promoting?
Mr. Saywell: Absolutely. We have one first-class, quality post-secondary EDUCATION structure in Canada, unlike the United States or Great Britain which have tiers: first-class universities and second-class. Universities and colleges in this country essentially offer the same value of EDUCATION. There is a differentiation by programs, whether they are residential, whether they are small or large. The graduates of those programs are as competitive in getting into the Ivy League schools in the U.S. or into Oxford or Cambridge in terms of scholarships as those from the largest and best known universities. We have a one-class system in this country, and I believe in that passionately.
We have an integrated system amongst our colleges, technical schools and universities. It is easy to move around. It is easy to move from one part of the country to another and from one facet of EDUCATION to another.
As I said earlier, we are very competitive in terms of price, not only because of the value of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar but just in terms of our prices. Tuition levels are still extremely competitive.
I am sure everyone around this tables agrees with me that we have a fantastic country with a hospitable social and cultural environment in which Asians feel comfortable; whereas, they do not feel as comfortable with some of our competitors.
Senator Perrault: That is a reassuring statement. Are there any initiatives required of the federal government? Are there things we could be doing to assist your program? What about follow-through support? I assume that our trade representatives throughout the region are active and cooperative. Are there any other things we should be doing?
Mr. Saywell: It is terribly important that you do three things. One is to say that you have heard of this and that you think it is a super initiative. Do as much homework as you can. You do not have to take my word, although I am speaking as honestly as I can. We believe that this is an initiative which is cost-effective and effective in other ways and which ought to be expanded slowly, not overnight, to other parts of the world and that it ought to be a single organization in Canada with a tried and true record in partnership with government.
Despite the financial difficulties facing us all, it is important in the start-up phase of these centres to recognize that there has to be some up-front government subsidy. We have a commitment to make it fully cost-recoverable over a period of time, but there simply has to be an initiative. When you consider the cost/benefit analysis, where else for a couple of million bucks a year, which will go down to zero over a few years, can so much new money be infused into the Canadian economy?
Our embassies are hard-pressed financially; the resources are not available to increase their personnel. In any event, it costs $500,000 a year to post a diplomat abroad. This program is cost-effective.
Continue to encourage the government to support this organization in every way possible.
Senator Carney: I should like to thank Dr. Saywell for spending so much time with Senate committees.
Mr. Saywell: My pleasure.
Senator Carney: The work you are doing in postating senators is a way to postate parliamentarians and the Canadian public generally. You have given us a different perspective.
My first question is on the financial aspect. We are aware of the benefits that you have outlined, tangible and intangible, such as the need to sensitize Canadian students to the realities of whom they are competing with for jobs in the world. We are also aware of the fact that there is a great fear among taxpayers that we are somehow subsidizing foreign students at a time when there is not enough money to change the light bulbs or to replace the paint on an institution I am associated with. There is also a real fear that the costs of federal promotion of these initiatives ends up on provincial shoulders. That is a real concern because neither foreign nor domestic students pay the full costs of the services they receive.
In other hearings we have been told that we have to pay attention to the consumer. EDUCATION is now a consumer service; all consumers in Canada are entitled to the EDUCATION they wish, whether or not they are qualified. We have to provide these services to the consumer, as was stated in yesterday's presentation to the committee.
Within that philosophy I am attempting to position the foreign student. How can you ask the Canadian taxpayer, who is apparently going to be asked to pay the costs for anyone who wishes to consume EDUCATIONal services on a no-fail model, to pony up real cash and seats in classrooms and professors' time for foreign students?
Mr. Saywell: Those are two very good questions, and I should have raised them myself.
We have been very careful in developing this network to say that we are doing only one thing at the end of the day, just one thing, and that is offering a vehicle, a window, a means to market Canadian EDUCATION and training for those institutions, wherever they may be in Canada, that wish to use it. We are not involved in curriculum; we are not involved in admissions; we are simply a marketing vehicle for those who wish to use our services.
We do not get into issues of jurisdiction or anything of that type. This is strictly a service for those who wish to come on board and use us for trade. We have ensured throughout all our negotiations that CMEC, the Council of Ministers of EDUCATION of Canada, has been made aware of what we have been doing. We have briefed them, and I have met with them on the issue of provincial versus federal jurisdiction.
With regard to costs, I will try to answer briefly although it is a very complex question.
Again let me remind you that this program is voluntary. If the University of British Columbia, for example, has full enrolment and does not wish to take on any additional foreign students, it will not become a subscriber and, therefore, will not market its services abroad. Most universities and colleges see a distinct social and intellectual advantage to having a good portion of students from other cultures -- an inherent social, cultural and intellectual advantage apart from the economic advantages.
Enrolment is changing in this country. Last year, unexpected to some, there was a considerable decrease in enrolment at the university level. I am sure this committee will look at that type of demographic projection. Enrolment is changing, and there are various opportunities to bring in foreign students when enrolment among Canadian students declines.
One must not think of Vancouver as typical of the rest of the country in terms of colleges and universities being relatively full and having less opportunity for additional students than those in Southern Manitoba or Newfoundland or wherever. The situation varies across the country.
International students, depending on jurisdiction and level of study, do pay close to -- and in some cases perhaps even above for all I know -- the full cost of their EDUCATION. A college might take in 500 international students who are not being subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer, but who provide through their tuition the revenue to add an additional computer laboratory or a part-time staff member. Certainly, that will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from institution to institution.
There was an article in the Vancouver Sun about the University College of the Cariboo on that very point, on the value to Canadian students of added resources paid for by international students.
At the private school/ESL level, we do not run into that problem at all. Many of our secondary schools are not full. They can bring in additional students, with a direct cash advantage to themselves with which they can enhance the library or whatever for the entire student body.
This is a complex answer, Senator Carney, in the sense that the situation varies by level, by institution, by geographic region, and it is changing as the demography changes in the country.
Let me give one final example. Medical schools, generally speaking, in this country are no longer being paid to train as many MDs as they once were because of our own demography and resource crunch. A medical school has a huge infrastructure, physical and human, of laboratories and teachers and clinical relationships with teaching hospitals. If suddenly the government decides to train only 220 doctors this year rather than 250, why not sell those additional spaces for $56,000 or $60,000 a year, which is the going rate, to Saudi Arabia or wherever and keep that infrastructure healthy for Canadian students?
Senator Carney: That is very comprehensive answer. It links with yesterday's testimony not only about the consumer aspect but about the need for national standards and a role for the federal government in setting standards. Is there any relevance between that quite consistent testimony and the foreign student?
Mr. Saywell: You have me at a disadvantage because I did not hear the testimony yesterday. Let me pick up the issue in at least two contexts with which I am concerned.
I ask this committee to recommend that everything possible be done to keep mobility within the country as free as possible. National standards and communications and information-sharing and all those sorts of thing ought to be encouraged.
Accreditation is the issue I should like to pick up from your comment. Generally speaking, I believe the Province of British Columbia is farther ahead than any other province -- and I am not familiar with the situations in all provinces -- in accrediting private schools. Let me give you the example -- and, if I am in error, please correct me.
I believe I am correct in saying that in the province of Ontario, which has the largest number of private schools -- and I am speaking of secondary schools--there is a lot of private schools known as visa schools, which vary significantly in terms of excellence.
A couple of years ago I spoke with a former deputy minister of the Ontario government, who was an old buddy of mine from the University of Toronto where I taught and administered for many years. I said to him that I wished the Province would accredit secondary private schools so that we could ensure quality. He said that they did. I said they did not, and we had a bit of an argument. He then phoned his person in charge and told him that this crazy guy Saywell said that we did not accredit our private schools. Then I heard the then deputy minister say, "Oh, is that right?"
At that time at least -- and I do not think it has changed, although I may be wrong -- if a private entrepreneur set up a school with five students and some physical space that met the fire regulations and said that they would use the Ontario curriculum, they could get a licence from the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and they would be in business. Then the Ministry of EDUCATION would come along and list them in its directory of schools, which of course to the external observer symbolized accreditation. There had been no check on quality. There did not have to be a book or a computer in this school, or anything else for that matter.
Again, I ask you to talk to others, because I do not pretend to be an expert on this. The issue of accreditation for private secondary schools and perhaps some post-secondary institutions ought to be tackled. At the post-secondary level there is government protection and membership in AUCC, but the private secondary school level ought to be examined in respect of accreditation.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Has there been any evaluation of the impact on the development of universities and other EDUCATIONal facilities in those countries that wish to send their people here to be trained? That money is coming into our country, but it is leaving their countries. We have an economic preoccupation, but we should also have a social preoccupation in the broad sense of the word.
Mr. Saywell: I am not sure I fully understand the question. Are you asking whether I am concerned that this is potentially an economic drain, perhaps even a brain drain, from those countries?
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Yes.
Mr. Saywell: No. They are at a stage of development where they are doing the best they can to develop their own EDUCATIONal infrastructures, but in that transitional period, which will last different lengths of the time in different countries, they have no alternative but to send their people to other places to obtain the training they need. They simply do not have the EDUCATIONal infrastructures in their own economies.
The largest number of foreign students by far, I would say approximately 90 per cent, are coming as individual free citizens whose families have the resources to buy whatever product in their own country or to travel or to study abroad as they wish. They come from free societies with free enterprise. If they wish to go to Stanford or Capilano College or Sydney, it is their choice. They return with a great EDUCATION which has been purchased at relatively inexpensive rates, and they recognize that the advantages to them and to their country downstream are enormous.
I do wish that, in addition to this marketing of EDUCATION and training, we had the resources to add a new scholarship type of program, similar to the Colombo Plan, through which we could reach out to students in those countries who do not have the personal resources to come to Canada other than through a scholarship program. I realize that our resources are limited right now , but it would be nice if we could do that.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: I still think we are marketing our EDUCATIONal system to less developed countries in terms of EDUCATIONal resources, and we must be careful not to depreciate their resources.
Mr. Saywell: Of course.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Many people dream about studying at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser or McGill University, but this marketing operation could have dire consequences for these countries. When you sell turkeys or wood or whatever, you are supplying a need in those countries, but in terms of EDUCATION they have to develop their own EDUCATIONal resources and not depend on the west.
I apologize if my English is not good.
Mr. Saywell: My second language is Chinese, not French, so I apologize for that.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: Have any approaches been made to French universities? On the last tour of Team Canada, which was a supposedly great trip, the French universities were not represented at all. I was wondering if your organization has made approaches to the French universities.
Mr. Saywell: Yes.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: What was their response?
Mr. Saywell: I met with all the rectors of Quebec universities, anglophone and francophone, about a year and a half ago when we were getting this organization up and running. I had been one of their peers and had known most of them personally when I was a university president, so we had a good frank conversation. I told them what we were doing. I said that it was terribly important that the francophone institutions be involved. Their answer at that stage was that it was a problem because they understood that Asians wanted instruction in English. Because there was a cost involved, they wondered why they should subscribe when they did not think the market was there. Their major concern has been that most international students, except those from French-speaking countries, want instruction in English.
Since then we have been working with them and with the Government of Quebec. We have sent a delegation from CREPUQ, the organization of universities in Quebec, the provincial government and our organization to look at the markets. We suggested that the francophone institutions market in two or three of these countries, specifically to university level students who are studying French, and encourage those students to come to Quebec rather than going to France.
Since then two francophone universities have subscribed, L'École haute des commerciale and the Université de Montreal, and others are considering it. I met with one of the ministers in the Quebec government a few days ago and assured him that we were beefing up our resources in Montreal and that we will do everything we can.
It is, however, a voluntary program. Whether an institution pays us an annual fee to be part of it is their choice at the end of the day. The fairs that we recently held in Bangkok during the Team Canada tour and then later in Singapore, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, were very successful. Approximately 6,000 students attended these fairs. Only a small portion of our subscribers decided to bear the cost of travelling and the fee to be in those fairs. Unfortunately, no francophone institution made that choice, but it was not because of any lack of effort on our part in trying to get them to come on board.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: I am asking you that question because I suppose it involved money from the federal government?
Mr. Saywell: Yes.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: So if it is found out one day that it is done only for English universities you can see -- I am not going to get into that. I think the francophone institutions should be involved.
One advantage that could be pointed out to foreign students is that, if they come to Canada, they could easily go back home with two more languages, French and English.
Mr. Saywell: Absolutely.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: French is still the other official language of the United Nations and perhaps other places. Perhaps that fact should be pointed out.
Now you are talking about going to South America. South America has more cultural ties with Quebec, in terms of the Latin background, than with English Canada, so I would not want Canada to promote only English universities in those countries.
You are quite correct about students from the Asia Pacific. They come from places like Hong Kong and the Philippines where English is the dominant language in the business world.
I am not telling you to do this or that, but perhaps that should be taken into consideration.
I was not aware of this program and its work; it is very interesting.
Mr. Saywell: Thank you. Let me assure you, senator, that we are doing everything possible to bring the francophone institutions into the program -- everything possible. However, at the end of the day, it is their choice. If this committee can think of some special incentives for the francophone institutions, we would welcome them. We are doing everything we can.
We acknowledge your point about other markets. One of the strongest reasons for opening in Mexico City on April 1 is that we know it will be quite attractive to our francophone colleagues. We are quite encouraged by that.
Senator Forest: Dr. Saywell, I am also very pleased to hear about your program, and I should like to emphasize the value of these types of program.
The first Asian student to graduate from the University of Alberta was from Japan and later became the president of the University of Kyoto. There has since been a wonderful relationship between the two universities. To show their appreciation, the Japanese people from the University of Kyoto have given to the people of Edmonton, Alberta a Japanese garden. That is one example of the benefits, and the program of Asian studies has gone on from there.
My son is currently in Thailand for a month with a group of high school students, and then a group of students from Thailand will come to Edmonton for a month. I asked him what the future of such a program might be, and he said that it could be implemented everywhere. I believe Team Canada was in Thailand, but he is at the Chiang Mai school. There is a wonderful relationship there that we can build on, and I agree with you that at the secondary level it is important as well. Those are my comments.
I have had a long background in human rights, and Canada has been criticized a great deal for trading with countries whose records of human rights are certainly not what we would expect. My contention is that the more people who come to Canada and the more Canadians who go to those countries, the better, so that each can learn the other's culture. I think that is the way to go, rather than isolating these countries. I gather your organization would agree with that premise.
Mr. Saywell: The University of Alberta is one of the most aggressive -- and I use that term positively -- in international marketing now, and I am pleased that they are one of our strongest supporters. On the issue of human rights, you could not have put it better; I could not have put it better; no one could.
The Asians do not want to be lectured. They have rich, long-standing civilizations. We do not a monopoly on righteousness or on methods of good governance or anything else. We cherish our values and want to protect them. Certainly I believe that the best way for other societies which are not as free and democratic as we are to see the value of the rule of law as we know it is to live in our country and to see the police forces as friends, not as people in uniform to be feared.
If the people in societies less free than ours become better postated and have greater exposure to other values, that will go a long way toward the improvement of human rights in those countries.
Senator Andreychuk: Dr. Saywell, you have done an excellent job of promoting the foundation and its work, as well as the values of our one-tier EDUCATIONal system in Canada.
We know the cutbacks have caused a readjustment. We know we are entering a changing global world where there is uncertainty. Do you see any difficulties in the Post-Secondary education system now, any signs of something going wrong? We still have a good, affordable, accessible system, but are there cracks being created by technological changes and the cutbacks? Are there trends in the Post-Secondary education system that we should flag for the Canadian government and the Canadian public? Do you have recommendations on how to improve our system, other than in the areas I have pointed out?
Mr. Saywell: Again, that is a very thoughtful question which, given my current position, I have not been forced to think about. You will not get a thoughtful answer from me, I am afraid. I am sure others who live and breathe that issue every day will make presentations to you and may be able to give you a thoughtful answer. I will offer a fairly generic and general comment.
Throughout my career in the university world, I often found myself in a position vis-à-vis governments, individual politicians, and parts of the community-at-large trying to persuade them that EDUCATION and training was not a cost but an investment; that it was not part of our economic problems but part of the solution, and that it had to be seen in that manner.
I am a realist. There are those in this room who saw me work at SFU who did not agree with many of the things I did, but the reality is that changes have to be made.
There is another public misconception about EDUCATION, and that is that our EDUCATIONal community never changes, that our universities have been the same forever. That is not true. They are dynamic and changing all the time. They are changing as much as anything else through student demand. As students want more of this and more of that, the institutions have to accommodate those demands.
I still believe passionately in lifelong learning. The old idea that EDUCATION starts at age five and ends at age 22 when you have a Bachelors degree is no longer true. I have forgotten the statistics, but the body of knowledge in the world doubles every seven or eight years. The average person will change his or her career five or six times in a lifetime. The issue of lifelong learning, of which Simon Fraser University was one of the leading proponents in this country, is critical to our social, economic and cultural well-being.
I also passionately believe in co-op EDUCATION. Capilano College is one of the very best at it. The best EDUCATION, as far as I am concerned, comes when a student is studying in the classroom and learning in the workplace at the same time. I was so proud during my 10 years as president of SFU that we became, along with the University of Victoria, the second or third largest co-op school in English-speaking Canada, second only to the University of Waterloo. It is an expensive form of EDUCATION but, to the extent that governments can help drive it and subsidize it, it is valuable.
I give full marks to Capilano College because it has taken co-op EDUCATION in a unique and creative manner overseas. To the extent that we in Canada can get more of our students into co-op EDUCATION where they can obtain some international experience, it is an asset that will pay us many dividends.
Those are general thoughts which do not answer your question which, fortunately or unfortunately, I do not have to live and breathe 24 hours a day any longer.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: What is the budget of Asia Pacific Foundation? How much of your budget is geared toward EDUCATIONal marketing?
Mr. Saywell: I cannot give you a precise answer because we are funded in a complex manner. About 80 per cent of our funding comes from the federal government and about half of the provinces. We get some corporate support, both in kind and in cash.
As government funding decreased and it came dangerously close to the point where we might have to close the doors, we moved in a businesslike, entrepreneurial fashion to carry out not only our established programs but also new initiatives on a cost recovery basis. We now charge fees, and our fee revenue is increasing.
We receive approximately $1.5 million from the federal government, which is discretionary, and the rest comes from one ministry or another and from one provincial government for a service that we provide for a particular program. If you add our revenues and our subsidies, our total budget is approximately $6 million to $7 million per year.
The Chairman: Dr. Saywell, if you were a member of this committee, what would be the foremost recommendation you would make to the Government of Canada?
Mr. Saywell: That the Asia Pacific Foundation deserves long-time survival and support.
Senator Andreychuk: What should we be saying about Post-Secondary education?
Mr. Saywell: Since I no longer involved in Post-Secondary education directly, it would both to me and to you to attempt to answer that question.
I am delighted to see that you have a committee on this subject. It is critically important for the country, and I wish you well in your deliberations.
The Chairman: Thank you for an excellent presentation.
Our next witness is from the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia.
Robert Clift, Executive Director, Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia: Mr. Chairman, I will attempt to be brief. Dr. Saywell alluded to those people in the room who might have disagreed with him the past. I was a student politician when he was President of Simon Fraser University. This is not the first time that he has gone over his allotted time on a presentation that he has shared with me.
The Chairman: We will give you a little overtime as well.
Mr. Clift: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I thank the Senate for launching this committee and the committee for taking its hearings across the country.
I also bring the regrets our producer president, Dr. Bruce Moore, who is a faculty member at the University of Victoria. Unfortunately, his teaching schedule was such that he could not attend here today and get back to Victoria to fulfil his teaching responsibilities.
I will keep my initial comments brief because much of what we want to bring to your attention we have put in our written brief.
I correctly anticipated that many of our colleagues would bring forward yesterday at the hearings in Ottawa, and will bring forward at subsequent hearings, many of the issues that we intended to bring forward in terms of funding and support for research and development and student assistance.
What can I say to this group, which is not an ongoing committee that we present to every year? What can I say to this group that is different, that will provoke it, that will give it information or give it ideas to stimulate an interesting national debate about Post-Secondary education and training in the country?
As you see, in the main brief entitled "Strength through Diversity" I focused on some observations about a Post-Secondary education and training system in Canada in the future. I did it in this manner because, despite our wish that there be more funding in the future, that will not necessarily be the case. It will not stop me from asking for it, just so that is on the record, but it will not necessarily be so.
I have highlighted a number of issues that talk about what the system will look like in the future. How do we construct it, taking into account both financial constraints and, as Dr. Saywell said, the growth of knowledge?
What has been missing at the national level to this point is a vision for EDUCATION and training in the country. By "vision," I do not mean the prognostications of futurists -- and I had the opportunity to listen to that presentation yesterday -- but more a vision in terms of those very real issues that we are dealing with now with all our national institutions and in our discussions with Quebec. What does it mean to be a country? What does it mean to be Canadian? What are the values we hold dear?
I discuss national standards in the brief. I do not mean standards in the sense that EDUCATION ministers have discussed recently, which is that our children should score certain grades on international tests. That is important but, when I speak of national standards, I am talking about some core values.
I think we are still a country that believes that anyone who can benefit from Post-Secondary education or training should have the opportunity to get that EDUCATION and training. We also are a country that believes that lack of financial means should not be a barrier to that. We are a country that believes that there should be mobility across the country. It should be easy, or at least not difficult, to travel across this country to engage in a variety of cultural, economic and EDUCATIONal experiences. Much of what I discuss in the brief flows from these premises.
It also flows from a very real fear in the universities that EDUCATION and training at the post-secondary level tends to be viewed by some in a very homogenous way, that simply you will get a degree and with that degree you will automatically become marketable, that you will automatically have work no matter what the degree is in -- unless you get that degree in philosophy and then you will only end up driving cabs.
That loses sight of a couple of things, as I pointed out in the brief, one being that the Post-Secondary education and training system is not designed to fulfil one need. Capilano College does not fulfil the same need that the University of British Columbia fulfils, or, for that matter, that Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design fulfils or l'École polytechnique. These all play different roles.
The problem with the federal government's withdrawal of support for research and development and of transfer payments is that the provinces have viewed this as a licence to close doors, to shut themselves down, to create internal barriers, not only internal trade barriers but also internal academic barriers, and a lack of commitment to a national system, particularly in the research and development aspect of the university community.
In the brief I mention the Roblin report in Manitoba a few years ago, which suggested that universities in Manitoba should deal only with those things that are directly applicable to the economic and social development of Manitoba. I understand that and cannot fault them. They are in dire financial circumstances, as are most provinces. But what does that say for us as a country? What does it say for us when, for instance, one of the nuclear research facilities at Chalk River has been destroyed because it has to be shut down and, when it shuts down, the components will effectively become junk? What does that mean?
Many difficult questions are raised, money questions certainly, but for our organization it also raises questions about how we make all this work together. How do we cooperate with one another in a way that shows some leadership and some vision? There has been some movement in that respect among organizations like my own, as referred to in our brief. Others have referred to the recent national accord among seven national post-secondary organizations to bring forward a package of amendments to student financial assistance programs. Members of the committee may not realize it, but this is an incredible development. A little over a year ago was the first time in well over a decade, perhaps two decades, that the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, representing the university presidents, and the Canadian Association of University Teachers jointly presented to the Liberal caucus a position on funding. Two competing national student organizations have come together on the same bill and said, "This is important enough that we have to come together on this. We have to put aside our differences and indicate to government the importance of these matters."
We in the advocate sector are finally starting to get our house in order. We are trying to work toward compromise and to present something to the public and the politicians. When writing this brief, I was thinking about what role government, particularly the Senate, could play in going forward with this consensus that we are starting to build on our side and take political leadership on some of these difficult questions -- difficult not only in terms of the money we have available but also in terms of the values we embody as a country.
I meant to outline at the outset my own academic credentials. I graduated from Simon Fraser University with an undergraduate degree, where I studied computing science, mathematics and liberal arts. Currently I am a master's candidate at the University of British Columbia. I also wear a student's hat, and I was intrigued by the student forum yesterday; it was quite lively, I thought.
My field of study is higher EDUCATION policy, so I offer what expertise I have. However, I should like to hear what committee members have to say.
Senator Perrault: This is an excellent paper we have before us. It will take some reading to extract all the significant information.
The computer and communications revolution is immersing society. With your background in computers, do you believe that will radically change the role of some of the members of your association? Will there be lay-offs as electronics and communication techniques make it easier to share learning and to market it around the world?
I mentioned earlier that this morning I heard on the radio a commercial for Queen's University, in which it was stated that they were establishing classrooms in Vancouver where modern communication techniques could be used to work on an MBA.
Do they discuss their marketing programs with the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia? Were they consulted before they came into the B.C. market?
Mr. Clift: No, nor did Athabasca University in Alberta. They simply put themselves into the market.
Senator Perrault: Would you like to see more consultation? Surely this could be counterproductive.
Mr. Clift: Indeed. There is discussion that goes on with the business schools, although I know that Queen's has ruffled some feathers in the business schools in British Columbia.
Senator Perrault: They have a campaign on CKNW, and I have heard about them on at least two stations.
Mr. Clift: They have also had a print campaign going on for a number of years. As a regular reader of The Vancouver Sun, every few weeks when flipping through the newspaper I see another Queen's advertisement.
It is an interesting issue for a couple of reasons. One is cooperation. Should we be, for lack of a better term, poaching upon the territory of other institutions? The Queen's example is particularly interesting in another way in that the program they are advertising, I believe, is a completely cost-recoverable program. Effectively, it is a private program with no government funding going into it at all.
That raises some interesting questions following from Dr. Saywell's presentation. It is generally recognized that, if we have an EDUCATION product, we should market it overseas. That makes sense, but what does it mean within the country when we say that a program should be completely driven by private funding? Obviously no one is going to plead that those who are pursuing executive MBAs are the financially poor in our society, but it goes to the issue which arose yesterday during the students forum.
One of the students, I believe from BCIT, asked why a physics program requires the same tuition fee as does an English literature program. The answer to that question is that we in Canada have agreed that we want a public post-secondary system of uniform quality. We have also agreed that it is important to us to have English literature specialists, to have French literature specialists, to have sociologists and physicists and that, if we are going to charge fees, the same fee should be charged to all so that students are not directed to a particular outcome. In other words, if someone is gifted in physics or in business administration, why should they be turned away from those fields simply because of a higher price? It would lead to a distortion in the market. However, we may get a lot of English literature graduates because they are inexpensive to teach, which is not necessarily good economically or socially.
Senator Perrault: That is a good point. I attended a computer show where one chap said, "Just imagine, we can train the very best teachers and instructors. Some are more talented than others at communicating through the computer medium. We could put them in a studio, or even put the information on CD-ROM. Rather than having 100 mediocre teachers, we could have one teacher with excellent communication skills transmitting lectures to willing and eager students throughout the world."
Do you foresee that scenario?
Mr. Clift: It is interesting, but it raises an issue which is seldom discussed. Teaching is not only about transmitting knowledge. If that were true, schools would have been displaced by books; by radio or television or by new electronic communication media. That has not happened. Certainly there are students who do very well by using a medium like the Internet or CD-ROM or by picking up a book and reading a well-constructed argument or description and learning from that. From the research I have seen on teaching methods and on curriculum design, that is a fairly small proportion of learners. Most learners need an instructor there to assess their own knowledge and determine how to best contextualize this knowledge with their previous knowledge and their previous experience.
Senator Perrault: An interactive relationship with instructors.
Mr. Clift: Indeed. My professional life depends on e-mail. The two-way communications medium has been effective in this province with the return to open learning, but in that case they did not need e-mail; they needed telephones.
Senator Perrault: You do not see this creating widespread unemployment among members of the profession?
Mr. Clift: No. However, as was pointed out yesterday and on a couple of occasions today, we in the post-secondary sector need to discuss our differences and discuss the fact that what you get from the Internet or from television is not the same as you get in a classroom. We have to think about what we need and what we want.
Senator Perrault: It is a supplementary means of assisting the traditional approaches.
Mr. Clift: I would hesitate to call it "supplementary" because that marginalizes it. It is one of many tools of instruction. Just as not in every university classroom is there a lecture going on, not in every university course should there be e-mail going on. It is one of many ways to learn.
Senator Perrault: A few months ago we had a meeting at Simon Fraser, where we were invited to unveil a virtual university. Can you give us an update on that program, or do you know what they intend to do?
Mr. Clift: I am not very close to that program. I have watched developments by looking at their web site. My understanding is that they have been dealing primarily with the technical aspects of how one creates an interactive medium and that people from the EDUCATION faculty have been working on the curriculum and instructional aspects. It is a project that is developing, and it has also been announced several times.
Senator Perrault: At least, it is theoretically possible for degrees to be earned by people who live at the South Pole or any other place in the world.
Mr. Clift: Indeed. In fact, we met recently with our B.C. Minister of EDUCATION who noted that Harvard University is offering an economics course over the Internet. How do we convince somebody in Prince George that UNBC is better for them than Harvard? First of all, we have to assess whether it is, in fact, better for them. Perhaps the Harvard economics course over the Internet works best for them. If not, the University of Northern British Columbia is there for them. We have to inform people on how to make good EDUCATIONal choices.
Senator Carney: In terms of distance EDUCATION or distributed EDUCATION, there are two things to keep in mind. One is that every technology is limited. Math can be taught in a classroom, but it is difficult to teach it over a telephone. Philosophy can be taught over a telephone. You may need television for medical diagnoses, but you do not need television to tell people that arthritis is painful. Every technology has its place, and it is never used if something else will work better, because it is expensive. Many people are enchanted with distance EDUCATION, but the fact is that, if there is something that works better and is cheaper, we should use it.
The question I wish to ask is about the faculty itself. As a master's candidate what demands are being made on faculty that were not being made 10 years ago? One problem still seems to be a basic stock of older members who are tenured and are not moving out of the system. What do you see changing in this respect and in the qualifications or the demands made on faculty in the future?
Mr. Clift: The past 10 years can be characterized by a couple of things. First, faculty members are spending incredibly larger amounts of time on tasks within their careers. We refer to the three-legged stool when taking about faculty: teaching, research and service. The teaching demands have not become less. If anything, they have become greater, particularly as this government has asked us to increase the number of students we serve.
As research funds have become tighter and the need to work with the private sector has become greater, many researchers are spending a lot more time sitting in meetings and in writing research grant applications. I am dealing right now with an outstanding, world-class researcher who has been denied federal funding in a situation where he thought that funding was guaranteed. He has spent the better part of two weeks fighting with the bureaucrats in Ottawa to find out what happened. Two weeks of this instructor/researcher's life that has now been spent dealing with a bureaucratic foul-up.
There is simply the volume of research grant applications that have to be written now in order to secure funding. You do not send off an application to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council or the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and expect to be funded. You prepared that application, you rework it and find a private sector partner or you rework it and find some sort of social service agency.
Senator Carney: You find a university in another region of Canada.
Mr. Clift: Indeed. In fact, British Columbia has benefited in that respect. A few years ago, when Premier Klein imposed severe cuts on the post-secondary system, university presidents lined up to poach faculty members from Alberta who did not have the advantages there that they once did.
People tend to think of "service" as community service, working with non-profit groups or with the public or commenting in the media, but "service" also applies to support staff in the universities, which has decreased dramatically.
One of the disagreements I had with Dr. Saywell in the past occurred when Simon Fraser University introduced a program to assist university faculty members in purchasing desk-top computers for their offices. It was a great idea, but the trade off for that was that the support staff continued to decrease in number so that it was left to the researchers and the instructors to do their own typing, filing, et cetera. I am not saying that it is beneath these people by any means to do their own typing; probably for some of them it was a necessary humbling experience. I know some ministers in this province who are also going through this humbling experience these days.
Senator Carney: It is not cost effective to be standing at the Xerox machine when you could be in the lab. That is your point.
Mr. Clift: Precisely. At the same time students are putting incredible demands on faculty members. Many faculty members are stuck in old paradigms or old ways of thinking about subject matter and about their students. There has been a number of unfortunate circumstances -- and certainly we have heard about them in the national media -- at universities in this province where, for lack of a better term, the boorishness of some university faculty member has not been tolerated by some students. It is a fair reaction; it is problematic and we do not condone it. We support those faculty members, because we have a responsibility to do so, but it is a situation that need not exist.
At the same time, tenure is abused by some. I will not deny that.
Two years ago our organization instituted the "Academic of the Year Award." Our first recipient was Dr. Peter Hochachka from the Zoology Department of the University of British Columbia. For no particular reason he was interested in how amphibians dealt with a period in their life cycle where effectively they survived with very little oxygen, during hibernation and other situation, and what that did to their metabolism. There was no particular academic benefit to that, other than that it was interesting.
Dr. Hochachka then went on to study the Sherpas in the Himalayas and how their human physiology has adapted to low-oxygen environments. Subsequently, his work started lo those many years ago has resulted in breakthrough procedures for dealing with injuries and disease that have to do with how the body deals with oxygen, how it absorbs oxygen or does not absorb oxygen in the case of dysfunction.
One wonders whether he would have been funded, particularly when some MPs are fond of pointing out the apparent ludicrous nature of research projects at our universities. Would he have been funded to study low oxygen in frogs? One can imagine this across the front page of the paper: "$40,000 NSERC grant given to study low oxygen in frogs" -- just like the hummingbird story.
Senator Carney: Randy White, the MP for Fraser Valley, would love that.
Senator Forest: I certainly agree with the premise of diversity in Post-Secondary education. You have, however, stated that you feel that there should be some form of national standards and that you do not advocate a constitutional amendment.
Mr. Clift: By no means.
Senator Forest: However, you do advocate the establishment of minimal standards. Have you thought through how that could be done, bearing in mind that the provincial governments have responsibility for EDUCATION? Have you any ideas on that? I certainly agree we do not want to go through a constitutional amendment. Do you have any other ideas about how that could be achieved?
Mr. Clift: First, I make the observation that it is useful to compare with other jurisdictions. In Australia, where EDUCATION is a state responsibility, the university system is in fact a national university system. It is run by the national government, and there is a national minister responsible. The Australian government made massive infusions of cash and effectively took responsibility because it had the spending power.
We do not have that ability; we never did. Because of our unique situation with the province of Quebec, it is not practical. Actually, last week I read in the paper what some viewed as a landmark agreement between the provinces and the federal government relating to, I believe, a child tax credit. It is a program that has been announced many times and has gone down in flames many times, but apparently it has now come about as a result of leadership from the federal government.
Senator Lavoie-Roux: It has not been done yet.
Mr. Clift: Indeed. It may fall down yet again,
Senator Forest: It has been done in some provinces. It has been done in Alberta, and that has been one of the most difficult provinces to deal with.
Mr. Clift: When we talk about establishing national standards, we are not talking about imposing things on the provinces. We are talking about certain agreements, as I stated at the outset, whereby anyone who stands to benefit from Post-Secondary education should be able to have it, and that has funding implications. People should be able to move their credits freely across the country; they should have access to student assistance and should not necessarily have to depend on their province of origin for that assistance.
Some provinces have cooperated to provide greater portability of student assistance; others have barriers. Although I would like to see legislation in this regard, the political reality is that it is not likely to come about. We need to establish a national consensus; that is what I mean by "standards." Others refer to constitutional amendments.
The test for our federation is in our ability to get back to some fundamental values and understanding of what it means to be Canadian. We believe there is opportunity in our EDUCATION system. We have disparate provincial systems, but there is a lot of commonality among them. If we want to prove our federation, there is a great opportunity here to do so.
Senator Forest: The local press in Alberta, after the child benefit tax was instituted, reported a much more positive climate as between federal and provincial jurisdictions. Perhaps we are talking about persuasive powers to get these guidelines in place.
Mr. Clift: I would like to think that our national organizations coming together on the student assistance issue is an example of how disparate systems can work together; this is colleges and universities, competing national student groups, faculty and university presidents coming together for a common purpose -- something which two years ago would have spun me out of my chair.
Senator Forest: Necessity brings about many changes.
Mr. Clift: Indeed.
Senator Andreychuk: You seem to be supporting cooperation and some consensus-building, but you don't seem to be as concerned about the legality. I happen to agree with you, but I find it rather curious that you do not seem to be in favour of Queen's University advertising in British Columbia.
Mr. Clift: I do not like it, and I know my members do not like it.
Senator Andreychuk: What does it matter that Queen's chooses to advertise in British Columbia or that Ontario students come to British Columbia to study here or vice versa? What matters is that we reach some consensus on excellence, mobility and certification. In other words, false advertising would bother me, but advertising per se does not bother me.
Mr. Clift: What is interesting in this discussion about cooperation is that the Queen's situation flows very much from the financial difficulties the post-secondary system finds itself in. Queen's has taken the position that the way to deal with that is to market its privately funded programs aggressively throughout the country.
Certainly I have been in departmental meetings where these ideas have been discussed and where there have been discussions about the Open Learning Agency beaming itself into Northern Alberta, simply to spite Athabasca. I agree that, if we are all offering common products in a differentiated system, those animosities should not exist.
The problem is that, while there is not the view that we are working toward some national pan, some Canadian perspective, Athabasca and Queen's are viewed as opportunistic and as not operating in a collegial and cooperative sense.
The earlier comments about marketing of programs in other countries also caused me some concern. Obviously we have good products that we should offer abroad, but I would prefer those countries develop their own national university systems and training systems. Self-sufficiency for everyone should be the answer. I do not think poaching upon one another's weaknesses is the way to go.
Senator Andreychuk: Perhaps the term "poaching" is not appropriate in a global economic market in which we are all participating. When most countries are advocating sharing in the benefits and in the survival of this planet, how can you talk about something only being offered here or in Singapore by Singaporeans? Surely our strengths will come when we exchange ideas, and I see so much of that exchange going on.
The University of Mexico has a branch in Hull. We have lauded that as the correct way to go. They are delivering EDUCATION in Canada. We in turn are going to be offering EDUCATION somewhere else. In the end, we want well-postated, responsible, productive Canadians and world citizens. How do we know the way we are delivering EDUCATION is necessarily the right way to do it?
Mr. Clift: This whole idea of marketing of EDUCATION internationally is rather curious to the academic world for a couple of reasons. The academic world is an international world. When a biochemist at UBC talks to other biochemists, he or she is talking to biochemists around the world. The communications technologies have made that possible. They do not have to communicate through a journal; they are able to communicate directly and instantaneously. The concept of marketing product internationally is difficult for academics to understand.
There is no doubt about the need to create a good citizenry in Canada and a world citizenry to share our expectations, our desires, for this planet. In economic terms or in citizenship terms the real issue is the amount of mobility. Mobility within the country and internationally is much smaller that we are led to believe by the media and by business. There is no doubt that the business world and the academic world work internationally, but a recent survey of university graduates indicated that 85 per cent to 90 per cent of graduates from British Columbia universities in 1991 were still in British Columbia five years later. That says something about who we are serving and how we serve them.
Senator Andreychuk: That may be the case currently. If we are bombarded with the idea that we have to be traders with the world, we will have to change.
Senator Carney: Earlier this morning we discussed the influx of foreign students into the Canadian EDUCATION post-secondary system, some of whom do not speak English. Does an increasing mix of non-English or non-French-speaking students present a problem to the university faculties?
Mr. Clift: It is problematic in a transient type of way.
Senator Carney: I do not understand that answer. Does this push to bring in foreign students present a problem to the faculty members?
Mr. Clift: By and large, I would say it is not a problem.
The Chairman: I should like to thank Mr. Clift for appearing before the committee today.
The committee adjourned.