Thank you, Chair.

I almost feel like I need to start by saying, “And now for something completely different.”

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Val Walker and I am the CEO of the Business and Higher Education Roundtable, or BHER. I am joined today by my colleague Matthew McKean, who is our chief R and D officer. We are a national, member-based non-profit. We are the only organization in the country that brings together leaders from our country's top post-secondary institutions and companies to tackle the most pressing challenges facing Canada's economy and workforce.

Since 2019, we've played a critical role in helping post-secondary institutions and businesses, especially small and medium-sized companies, create work experiences for young people before they graduate. What we do is incredibly important, because we know that businesses need people and young people need jobs. We also know that connecting students to employers through what we call “work-integrated learning”—or WIL for short—remains the most effective way to build the skilled talent pipelines that enable Canada's businesses to be productive and innovative and to grow.

Developing the talent we need to work in growing and in-demand sectors like the skilled trades, health care, AI and clean energy doesn't happen organically. It requires curated programs, partnerships and capacity building. BHER is at the forefront of delivering solutions. We are uniquely positioned to deliver on the Government of Canada's commitment to get every student some work experience before they graduate.

We do this by developing partnerships between post-secondary institutions and companies, and we often involve other intermediary organizations like local chambers of commerce and regional economic development groups. We work with those partners to create or scale work-integrated learning programs where they didn't exist before and where they are needed most.

We're not limited to one sector of the economy. We can respond to Canada's evolving labour market priorities by working across industries and sectors in every region of the country. This flexibility allows us to ensure our programs are aligned directly with the current and future needs of this economy.

Our work has big impacts and big outcomes. To date, we have created nearly 65,000 work-integrated learning opportunities for young people. We've partnered with more than 200 post-secondary institutions and we have a pan-Canadian network of nearly 10,000 employers. We've helped a diverse range of students, 50% of whom are women and 45% of whom are visible minorities.

We talked with SME owners across Canada before we started out on this journey—hundreds of them. What they told us was that the biggest barrier to hiring students or entry-level talent wasn't paying wages; rather, it was finding and hiring them, mentoring capacity, covering project costs associated with creating quality experiences or making the post-secondary connections in the first place. That's what we do. That's what we use the funds currently provided by the Government of Canada to pay for: capacity building and partnership development. We get the employers to pay the salaries. Our exit surveys show that more than two-thirds of our employer partners hire or plan to hire their BHER students, and they're also saving big on recruitment and retention costs.

Here is the thing that might really resonate with this committee in particular: Our model is not only highly effective but also very cost-effective. In 2022-23, BHER provided 20% of Canada's federally funded work-integrated learning programming for about 2% of the federal WIL funding envelope. We had a recent evaluation by ISED that confirmed the effectiveness of our programs and our differentiated value and role in the WIL ecosystem.

We would very much like to continue to do this important work. We are requesting $32.5 million in federal reinvestment over five years to expand our impact. With this reinvestment, we will continue to leverage our relationships with industry members and large companies to support small and medium-sized companies to do more WIL. We'll get more companies to pay more students. We'll work with the provinces and territories to ensure shared responsibility and buy-in. We'll build a program worth more than $250 million. In other words, we ensure an 8:1 return on the Government of Canada's investment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.