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As you may have possibly heard, we had an election in Ontario the week before last. The Progressive Conservative Party led by Doug Ford won and will be sworn in on June 29^th (i.e. after this blog goes dark for the summer). It will be another few weeks, or more likely months, before we get a clear picture of what this new government intends to do on post-secondary education.  Nevertheless, here is a brief thumbnail of what we can likely expect from it.

First, and most importantly, this is a new government.  We haven’t had one of those in 15 years.  There is almost no one in the Conservative caucus who remembers the discipline of power.  There is almost no one in the public service who has an instinctive feel for how a conservative government thinks.  Similarly, there are almost no senior university or college officials who remember Tory rule and precious few who have strong connections in the party.  It’s going to take awhile for working relationships to develop. Don’t expect a lot of big decisions quickly.

Some of the direction is going to depend on the identity of the Minister and that is a total mystery for the moment, probably even to the Premier-to-be.  One possible disaster scenario: the new government merges the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development with the K-12 Education Ministry, an arrangement which never works well for the PSE sector.  But perhaps the most important factor will be the marching orders emanating from the Ministry of Finance.  Ford made a lot of expensive promises with vague costing/implementation plans and in addition to which we can expect the usual new-government-takes-a-look-at-the-books-and-oh-my-God-we-had-no-idea-it-was-this-bad song and dance.  We’re probably going to find out that paying for the promises and bringing the budget into balance is going to cost in the neighbourhood of $20-25 billion, or about 20% of total government spending.  What we don’t know is the extent how fast they will choose to implement everything, or indeed if deficit reduction will be a major priority.  If it’s 2 years, things could get pretty hairy; if it’s 5 or more they will probably be able to get by with hiring/spending freezes and letting growth take care of the rest, as indeed the Liberals did in the period 2011-2016 before they decided to let public spending rip again.  Neither outcome is particularly good for universities and colleges – it’s really a choice between long, slow cuts and short, quick ones.

Ah, you say: but won’t the Tories just let institutions make it up by allowing tuition to rise?  That was certainly the spectre raised by Liberals in the last election, who urged voters to come out and defend their targeted free tuition plan.  My guess would be “probably not”.  Modern Conservatives, having seemingly won the argument about preventing rises in income tax, now tend to focus on prices of goods and services as a means to increasing individuals’ buying power.  Hence the opposition to carbon taxes, even when (as under current federal legislation) the entire amount could be used for tax cuts.  Hence the focus on hydro rates.  Hence the lunatic populist ravings about curbing gas prices rises on holiday weekends.  It’s hard to see a government with those kind of priorities making exceptions for tuition fees.  And as for student aid: I think we’ve probably seen an end to the kinds of sharp increases in spending we’ve been seeing, but to my knowledge the Tories have never put up more than pro-forma opposition to the targeted free tuition program.  My guess is that it may be trimmed, but will survive.

As I noted during the election, there isn’t much to go on in terms of clues for potential Tory policy directions.  If they are like their federal cousins, my guess is we can see more enthusiasm for initiatives related to trades and community colleges than for ones involving universities.  One interesting decision that may be taken early is with respect to opening a French-language university in the province.  Patrick Brown made that one of his very few solid commitments in PSE; Doug Ford largely seems unaware that Ontario has any francophones (when asked during his leadership campaign if he thought his lack of French was a problem, he replied “I’m running to be Premier of Ontario, not Quebec”).

That said, if anyone at Queen’s Park is looking to develop a Progressive Conservative policy agenda, they could look to the party’s 2013 White Paper on the subject, written by erstwhile MPP Rob Leone (available here, with permission of Mr. Leone).  Though it is now five years old, the white paper still provides some useful and reasonably well-thought-out policy direction a new government could adopt.

But the main thing is this: it’s going to take some time for this government to find its feet.  It probably doesn’t have a lot of pre-conceived notions about the sector; it certainly has a fair number of new MPPs representing ridings with post-secondary institutions who can be brought onside.  The main thing for the sector, while this government is finding its feet, is to not (repeat NOT) start whining about funding.  New governments look for friends who can help make their jobs easier.  If universities and colleges can successfully portray themselves as such friends, they will get a hearing.  If they appear too entitled to their current privileges, they will not.