Thank you for your question, Mr. Beaulieu.

I hope things are getting better. I hope we didn't draft the final report of the États généraux sur le postsecondaire en contexte francophone minoritaire for nothing. At the very least, it's making people and the government aware of the importance of post-secondary institutions in our minority regions and of the weakening of our regions.

Underfunding is nothing new. As I mentioned in my opening statement, many institutions in our regions are located in old religious buildings and so on. There are also a lot of infrastructure costs, to ensure that they're up to modern standards.

Underfunding comes from several places, such as provincial and territorial authorities, as you know. The federal government often invests in official languages in the provinces and territories. It's the same thing with regard to post-secondary and early childhood education. The needs aren't always well known, and as a result, meeting them can be difficult.

The goal of the national dialogue was to identify all those needs and figure out which areas of our institutions had the greatest funding shortfalls. The funding issue is complex, which is why we recommended developing a tool that would allow us to track all those investments. That way, we could ensure that post-secondary institutions in our communities can access these funds directly.

I mentioned research, another area where francophone institutions and researchers have a really hard time getting their hands on funding. This is some of the collateral damage that is also affecting post-secondary education. University president Mr. Surette is probably in a much better position than me to speak in greater detail to the issue of institutional funding.

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