Official Languages committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to be speaking to you today from Laurentian University, which is located in Sudbury, in northeastern Ontario, on the land governed by the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850 and the traditional lands of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and Wahnapitae first nations.

Status of Women committee  I was almost done. I was saying it's about resources and if you work with the provincial governments and with the federal government to generate resources, we could continue to offer a midwifery program, even at Laurentian University. It's about having the resources to make the program sustainable over the long term.

Status of Women committee  I could repeat it in English, if that would help.

Status of Women committee  Thank you again for the question. In the months leading up to the decision to file, we indeed had extensive conversations with the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and with the minister's office—i.e., with the province. We also had conversations at the federal level about what could potentially be done.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for the question. As we've seen today, it's a resource issue. If it had sufficient resources, Laurentian University could continue to offer its midwifery program. It's just a matter of starting conversations with the federal government and provincial governments to generate the necessary resources.

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much for the questions. First to provide some context, Laurentian has had the poorest financial health of any university in the province. With respect to the decision, the decision was made by the board of governors of the university at the very end of January.

Status of Women committee  First, let me agree with you that Laurentian truly does have a picturesque campus. That is a really important feature of the university. We have been in conversation with the province continuously for many, many months about the situation that Laurentian is in, how we're progressing now through the CCAA process, and what will be needed, as we come out of the process, to have a university that will be sustainable into the future.

Status of Women committee  Indeed, the campus has been functioning virtually since the middle of March of last year, when COVID fully arrived. At that point, Laurentian was actually the first university to transition from face-to-face to virtual programming. We did it virtually overnight. All students completed their term.

Status of Women committee  We do have international students at Laurentian, studying in a variety of areas. I would say the greatest concentration is in the faculty of management.

Status of Women committee  Yes, there's no question that students have been impacted, but I really want to applaud the efforts of the Government of Canada to provide the additional flexibility that they provided last year to allow international students to continue to study virtually. That has been really important.

Status of Women committee  All students got to complete their year. The course information you're referring to is course information for next year. As I attempted to explain, we were required to do so because of the timeline of the court-imposed stay of proceedings. I will point out that all of the changes that occurred were negotiated, changes either with the academic senate of the university on the programming side or with the labour unions on the staff and faculty side.

Status of Women committee  The process for evaluating the courses that would be terminated started after February 1. It was a process that included representatives of the academic senate of the university, which met many, many times. The university provided data—financial data, enrolment data—on the programs, and then a series of negotiations were held to land on the programs that were sustainable and could continue for the university and the programs that unfortunately needed to be closed in order for the university to have the chance to continue.

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure exactly what the question was, because I had some audio issues as well.

Status of Women committee  Simply, it was required that we have a balanced budget. At that point, Laurentian had no additional capacity to take on additional debt. We did work very hard prior to the pandemic to meet the projected budget of the year, but then with the overall.... We just simply had no more room at the end of that.

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much for the question. In effect, all students had a chance to finish their year. Let me start by saying that. Under the CCAA process, we had an initial stay of proceedings from February 1 to April 30. That was the length the court gave us to initiate the negotiations and conversations that needed to be had for the changes that needed to be implemented before the 30th of April so that the court could consider providing an extension of that stay—