I'd like to thank you, Mr. Chair, the co‑chairs and other members of the committee for having invited us today to contribute to your work on federal support for minority French-language post-secondary educational institutions.

As the time allowed for the opening address is five minutes, I will go straight to the crux of the matter. You won't be surprised to hear that I'll be focusing on funding. It will no doubt resemble what you may have heard already from some of my colleagues at other universities. I can assure you, however, that we did not consult one another.

To begin with, I'd like to underscore the key and essential role played by the federal government over the past few years, through the Minister of Official Languages, in the establishment of the first autonomous French-language university in Ontario. The joint funding agreement between Ontario and the federal government to get the project off the ground is what really got things moving for the Université de l'Ontario français, the UOF. The federal government will provide its share of the funding for the first four years and the province will contribute an equivalent amount for the four subsequent years.

The UOF Is not the first minority language post-secondary institution in Ontario or elsewhere in Canada to receive significant one-time support from the federal government. This also occurred when the French-language colleges and boards were established in Ontario. This kind of financial support, while significant, is based on a strategy of providing ad hoc project funding. In fact, under the federal official languages program, most of the contribution agreements between the provincial and federal governments for the post-secondary sector, call for investments by both for a limited period of time.

Over the longer term, however, in order to make sure that francophone minority community universities or colleges are sustainable, this kind of funding is limited or even inadequate. The federal government needs to broaden its field of action and commit itself to providing stable and recurring operational funding to such institutions.

Of course, minority community post-secondary educational institutions are, in each of their respective provinces, part of a larger ecosystem whose financial base is established as a function of the majority language population. Overall, it is a funding logic based essentially on numbers: number of students, number of programs and size of the institution. Economies of scale in the large institutions of the majority help to maintain acceptable levels of stability and funding for these universities and colleges in Canada. However, for francophone minority communities, the undifferentiated application of this kind of funding formula for their institutions condemns them to instability and financial vulnerability.

We mustn't forget that these institutions, which serve a small population base, nevertheless must offer a sufficiently broad range of programs to meet the various workforce needs of their community and society. By diversifying its programs, these universities will have to offer programs in which fewer students generate less revenue. In such situations, core funding cannot be calculated in the same manner as it is for English-language universities. Separate support funds are required to allow them to fulfil their specific and unique mandates.

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