Good (very early morning) all. Please find attached HESA’s Review of the 2024 Federal Budget. It’s a complicated budget with a lot of moving pieces, but the HESA Towers team did an amazing job last night in putting it all together for your enjoyment/edification.
My take on this budget? Well, it is a difficult one to parse.
There’s an effective cut to international student mobility. There’s an increase in funding to apprenticeships and First Nations’ students. This seems like a good trade. And some of the stuff around housing seems reasonable, too.
On student aid, the clear win is on the Canada Learning Bond. This is a long overdue change, and one which is unequivocally to the good. There are some modest improvements to Canada Student Financial Assistance Program (CSFAP) which trade increased allowances to pay for rent in the short term for higher student debt in the long term.
On graduate scholarships, I think the sector has a win with a sting in the tail. The increase in and standardisation of federally-funded scholarships for graduate students and postdocs is both welcome and long overdue. But all those grad students who don’t get federal funding? Any increase in funding for them is going to have to come from already-stretched institutional budgets, because boy howdy it isn’t going to come from council-funded research grants, which are barely going to keep up with inflation for the next couple of years (see below).
Research…well, this is a hard one. There are some good investments in some institutionally- based science infrastructure ($400M for the TRIUMF particle-accelerator at UBC, $85M for the Lightsource at the University of Saskatchewan, $45 million for the MacDonald Centre at Queen’s. However funding for more broad-based infrastructure through CFI was cut by over $100 million just prior to the budget.
But as for funding through granting councils: how do you evaluate a promise which is long-term good, but short-term inadequate when you know the long-term part probably isn’t going to come to pass? Does anyone believe that this government will be in power beyond fall 2025? Does anyone believe a Conservative government would respect this financial commitment? No? Well, then about 87 % of this “historic” announcement on research funding is meaningless. And without that extra $1.5 billion or so, it turns out that total tri-council plus CFI dollars, in real terms, will be 10% smaller in 2025-26 than they were in 2017-18 – that is, before the Naylor report.
This is not good. In fact, it seems like a continuation of a pattern under the Liberals: lots of good little one-and-done policies, but extreme difficulty in maintaining a sustained effort on the files that matter.
Over the next few months, all the attention will be focused on the tri-council unification process, which has very much been punted into the grass here. There are a lot of unanswered questions about how this is going to work, the most important one being how CIHR can “stay linked” to the Ministry of Health if it is under a single umbrella which presumably answers to the Ministry of Industry, all of which in theory are supposed to be answered by the Fall (though we’ve heard that one before – anyone remember the Canada Innovation Corporation?). Stay tuned.
But as for the longer-term picture? The Liberals will get one more kick at the can next spring. All we can do is hope.
Final programming note: there will be a podcast tomorrow with the great Phil Hill, and our usual round-up on AI on Friday, but next week everything is off. Normal service will resume on April 29. See you then.
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Well, I mean, if “the Liberals are done” (as quoted in an earlier blog), I would say that at least they put up a really good fight with this budget. From a strictly non-partisan perspective, I do not see a lot right now that the Conservatives have to counter this. “Axe the tax” is really getting worn out, and with (heaven forbid) likely another two record-breaking wildfire seasons before the next election, many more people will start to wonder whether the costs of mitigating measures for climate change are much (MUCH) higher for everybody than the carbon tax (which is only a net cost for those with a bigger carbon footprint). Of course, everything you do in life exacts a toll, stimulus versus inflationary pressures, spending to address societal needs versus fiscal responsibility, and ultimately it all boils down to a matter of prudent balance. I’m not competent enough nor sufficiently well-informed to make an authoritative call in the matter, but if the Liberals don’t score 10/10 here, I would say that at least they are darn close to 9/10.
Running off on the carbon-tax-versus-climate-change tangent just a little longer: CEOs of hydrocarbon companies are smart people. Reducing carbon emissions will cut into their profit margins, but it will not erase their business or their livelihoods as long as there is oil in the ground. They know that, and I would submit that they also know a few other things:
– You always have to pick your battles. Picking a fight with the federal government over a rather benign carbon pricing scheme is pathetic if it is your global market that you need to pay attention to.
– They also know that they have to be a part of the solution.
– They also know that we can make little local dents into humanities’ carbon footprint here and there, but overall, it is unfortunately still bound to grow (and I think that even most executives of hydrocarbon companies are not happy about that).
Anyway, back to the core business: federal budget and the universities. As you point out on page 2 of the HESA report, Tri-Council plus CFI funding levels are not yet back to where they have been in real dollars, and one could always hope for more, but I’m glad it’s going in the right direction. I am also glad that there seems to be a back-to-basics approach in terms of support for scholarly work and research: Supporting university-level research groups in terms of HQP and operational funding, combined with maintenance and access to world-class facilities, is the best way to optimize ROI on public research funding. This is the first budget in as many years that follows that advice.
To say something positive about the Conservatives, too (sorry, can’t help it): Poilievre is a smart person, too. I think it will dawn on him that populism will not win the next election unless the Liberals are starting to make mistakes again. It should be interesting to see what he can come up with over the next few months.