This is the fourth and final election manifesto analysis of this godforsaken election.  You can find previous analyses of the Conservative Party platform here, the New Democratic Party platform here and the absolute flaming garbage fire of a Green Party platform here.  I am not doing the Bloc because their platform is “Ottawa should go pound sand” (for which I have some sympathy, but it doesn’t make for a good blog post), and I don’t do the PPC because their PSE-platform consists solely of repeating the conservative platform on free speech.

So that leaves the governing Liberals.  And the thing about governing party platforms is that you usually have to read them differently than other platforms.  Normally, they run on their record and thus spend at least as much time talking about what they have done as what they intend to do.  This is partly the case in this platform: a lot of space is taken up by boutique research initiatives – the kind the Naylor report condemned unambiguously – that were announced some time ago: for instance, the promise to move forward with the PanCanadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, the National Quantum Strategy and investing in the National Research Council’s Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre.  All re-announcements. 

So, what’s new?  Well to start, the Liberal manifesto is, like the New Democrats and the Conservatives, silent on the issue of transfers.  On research – a field which the Liberals more or less ignored in their previous manifesto (see the 2019 platform review here) – there are a number of commitments, such as a fund for COVID research ($100M/5 years), a new $100 million a year fund to pursue “moonshot” research with a focus on high-impact illnesses where a vaccine may be possible (yes, they actually used the awful word moonshot). There is an uncosted commitment to strengthen equity targets for federally funded scientific research delivered through the granting councils to include a specific target for the representation of Black Canadians and a costed ($30M/5 years) pledge to help promising graduate students, support the mentorship and development of younger researchers, and increase opportunities for Black Canadians in Canadian post-secondary institutions.

But, we’re not finished yet!  There is a vague, uncosted and frankly nebulous pledge to reform the Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program to make the “program more generous for those companies who take the biggest risks, promoting productivity, new inventions, and the creation of good jobs”.  Which, ok, whatever.  There is an additional promise to create another 1,000 Canada Research Chairs to “help attract and retain top talent at Canadian universities,” which seems to have some sort of vague steer towards life-sciences and bio-medical research because reasons.  And finally, there is a pledge for $75 million a year fund for colleges and universities to help commercialize leading research, “including identifying and securing patent rights for research done within their institutions and connecting researchers with people and businesses to help put these innovations into action and grow our economy”.

The Liberal manifesto claims that their party “know(s) that the spirit of innovation requires more than just tax cuts. It requires a belief in science, ambitious partnerships between government, academia and the private sector, and a plan to invest in the freshest, most innovative ideas out there”.  And yet, this is a plan which few actual scientists would think correct.  More research chairs with no increase in funding for basic research?  More money for niche research subjects?  More money for commercialization?  This isn’t hugely different from the Harper research agenda.  We’re back to a world where PMO and Finance know better than scientists what should be funded, and what should be funded is anything except basic research.  It’s less focussed on finding private-sector cost-sharing models than the Harper model, and it’s somewhat less focussed on “big science”, but other than that, the similarities in approach should be obvious.

And speaking of similarities with the Conservatives, the Liberals have matched the Tory promise of a Canadian DARPA with one of their own.  The Liberals have promised to “establish a Canada Advanced Research Projects Agency (CARPA) as a public-private bridge for research that helps develop and maintain Canadian led technology and capabilities in high-impact areas”.  So, this policy that is a solution to absolutely no real-world problem, but sounds so gee-whizzy and progressive, is now apparently the heart of Canadian bipartisanship. 

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Anyways, on to student assistance, which is a bit of a tricky one.  In 2021, the Liberals put up a pretty good platform on student aid, one I praised quite highly.  It included

·       Increasing the Canada Student Grants by 40%.  No changes to eligibility, but the amounts available increase by 40%, so current $3000 grants go up to $4200 and current $1600 grants go up to $2240.  

·       Raising the Repayment Threshold from $25,000 to $35,000.

·       Extending the grace period from 6 months to 2 years. 

·       Allowing parents of children under 5 years of age to automatically enter into a grace period. 

Now, the Liberals did none of this before COVID hit.  Instead, they doubled the Canada Student Grants to $6,000 through to 2023, but made no permanent commitment on raising them, and, in the 2021 budget, announced a cap on repayments at 10% of income (rather than the previous 20%) and a rise in the threshold to not $35,000 but $40,000. 

The new manifesto re-commits to the bit about grace period for parents.  It also commits to an even bigger rise in the repayment threshold, this time to $50,000.  It does not commit to extending the grace period to two years but instead commits to removing all interest from student loans, past and present.   It also says nothing about grants.

What to make of all this?  Well, the parent thing is good/will be good if they follow through on it.  The rise in repayment threshold to $50,000 is going to make the long-term cost of loan forgiveness soar, but since the PBO analysis only covers five years, no one is going to work that out for awhile.   As I noted when reviewing the NDP platform, the removal of loan interest is a terrible idea (best explained by Saul Schwartz and Christine Neill here): the Liberals’ 2019 promise of a longer grace period was a much better idea.

The big question is how to evaluate the lack of a promise on grants.  Clearly, the 2021 budget exceeds the 2019 promise.  But what happens in 2023?  Should we assume the grants go back to $3000?  Or stay at $6000?  Or do we assume the Liberals revert to their earlier promise of $4,200?  Without knowing, this is a very difficult manifesto to evaluate.

Long story short: on research, this manifesto is better than the ones presented by the Conservatives and the NDP, but is still a betrayal of the principles of the Naylor report (which called for an end to boutique research funding) and largely a return to Harper-era principles of PMO-knows-best.  On student aid, it’s a mixed bag, but not as good as the 2019 manifesto. 

Overall, while one gets the impression that the Liberals have a better sense of the links between knowledge and economic growth than other parties, one also gets the sense that this particular manifesto is the product of clutching at straws.  It’s a manifesto which wishes to appear to enable cool science things that might promote growth, rather than one that has thought through how investments in knowledge can best improve the lives of Canadians, or (god forbid) talking to people who actually do research to work out how best to spend scarce dollars.

It’s a bit sad, frankly.