Good morning all. We at HESA Towers have our 2018 Budget Commentary ready for your review.

So, last night was interesting, what with the Budget, the response to the Naylor report and the criminal scheduling of all this on the same evening as Toronto FC’s home-opener (yes, I am still bitter).  It was particularly interesting because the budget’s direction was difficult to guess in advance.  Sure, we knew the middle class was going to be mentioned, and some focus on gender and Indigenous issues was clear in the lead up, but with continued deficits and a need to keep some powder dry for a pre-election budget next year, it was not clear how much would be left over to deal with what was clearly the higher education sector’s #1 priority – research

As it turned out, though, this was for the most part a decent budget for higher education.  It provided a 14% real increase over five years to the granting council budgets, concentrated (for the most part) in areas researchers wanted, and done in ways that don’t compound current inequities in funding across the research lifecycle.  That is good, not great, though the main sound you will hear on campuses for the next few days is Presidents falling over themselves to say thank you to Bill Morneau.

It is notable that the man behind the Fundamental Science Review, David Naylor, fairly pointedly did not endorse the budget.  It’s a good start, and repairs some of the damage done through neglect over the last few years.  But there is no paradigm shift.  Indeed, in some respects it replicates some of the same old problems we have seen for many years, choosing to put more money than requested into areas like infrastructure and the new “tri-council fund” for ad-hoc directed research projects.

Move away from funding though, and there is a lot of work to be done in the science realm.  NSERC in particular seems to have its work cut out for it, transitioning Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research and the Business-led Networks of Centres for Excellence out of the organization (to be lost in the larger bureaucracy of the Innovation Ministry), and having to fold five fairly different programs (Engage Grants, Industrial Research Chairs, Connect Grants, Strategic Partnership Grants for Networks and Projects, and Experience Awards Grants) into one single funding program.  No one seems to have any idea how this is going to work, and there may be considerable disruption to certain types of private-sector partnership arrangements as this shakes out.  Despite having had the Naylor Report for over a year, reviews of scholarships and arrangements with third-party research organizations have not been done and have been put off to some time in the future – maybe this year, maybe next.  There may be many devils in the details.

The Government seems to have mostly taken a year off on skills and student aid – no surprise, perhaps, after the hyperactivity in these two fields over the last two budgets.  The grants for women in apprenticeships seems in some ways to be a throwback to Harper-era incentives in this field.  They weren’t a particularly great idea then and they probably aren’t a great idea now (curiously, this Government’s desire for more of an evidence-based for policy does not seem to have extended to conducting even cursory examinations of recent policy initiatives’ success or failures.)  Of perhaps greater interest are some of the investments in skills for Indigenous Peoples; the $10 million to the Métis Nation of Canada for post-secondary education is perhaps the most intriguing development here.

There is further evidence of the Government kicking the can down the road. Despite having had the Report of the Expert Panel on Youth Employment in Canada for nearly eleven months, there is almost no engagement with its recommendations to be seen here – just more money in the same old programs, and maybe modernization in the future.

Weirdly, this budget may also be remembered for two very small items.  The first is the change to the Canada Learning Bond and the new efforts to enrol more children at birth.  And the second is the commitment on preventing sexual assaults on campus, which seems not to have been widely discussed before-hand.  Not only does it appear to duplicate provincial efforts, but it inserts the federal government into institutional policies in a way which is arguably unprecedented.  The cause in which this effort is being deployed is vitally important, but if similar tools are used in future, say against institutions which are deemed insufficiently zealous in promoting certain concepts of “free speech”, this particular policy innovation may not be seen so favourably.

In sum, then, the budget shows some solid but not exemplary achievement in fundamental and applied research, skills training for Indigenous peoples, and a nice if overdue measure on the Canada Learning Bond.  But there is also a lot of unfinished work here.  It’s most obvious in the areas of youth employment, third-party research organization, and graduate scholarships.  Future Skills Lab remains an unholy mess due to the government’s fundamental unwillingness to work with provinces in an appropriate way.  The implied threat on withholding funding on sexual assault policies may become an unwelcome precedent.  And we’re all going to need to say some prayers for NSERC President Mario Pinto because those program mergers he’s been ordered to effectuate look pretty daunting.

Overall?  I’d give it a B.