If you’re just joining us, we’re exploring the history of post-secondary education in Canada as seen through election manifestos. 1949 to 1962 was yesterday. 

The party manifestos for the five federal elections from 1963 to 1974 represent a kind of a highpoint in dealing with post-secondary education, research, and skills. It’s a fascinating period because you can see the pendulum swing from activist federal ambitions in education and skills to total avoidance.

The Socreds were the most consistent party through this period. In 1963, they retreated from their 1950s stance of “more scholarships” to a simple claim for “a financial system to allow the provinces to make available to all Canadians acceptable standards of education, health, and welfare services”—i.e., more unconditional federal transfers to provinces. By 1972, they couldn’t even be bothered to mention education; it was just “help for provinces” (the 1974 manifesto, hilariously, was identical to the 1972 manifesto, but printed in slightly different colours).

Most parties ran the same platforms during the 1963 election as in 1962, with some minor changes in emphasis. The Liberals re-upped their 1962 offering, but, with a nod to the NDP’s rhetoric about safeguarding against job losses from automation, added a plank on investment in vocational skills (though this would only be “at the request of the provinces”). The NDP promised to establish a federal Department of Science and Technology tasked with: enhancing scientific-technological research; spending money on research centres, in co-operation with universities and industry, to stimulate developments in fields of social concern or economic importance; and creating a new Canadian Research and Development Corporation to invest in, or develop, promising new inventions and industrial processes. In short, the NDP was trying to meet the Liberals on research and the Liberals were trying to meet the NDP on skills.

The Conservatives made no new promises, but as in the previous election attempted tried to run on their record on PSE (i.e., making tuition tax deductible, increasing grants to universities, and using the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to double the number of student residence spaces at Canadian universities). What was new in the Conservative manifesto was the devotion of quite a bit of space to explaining how much Diefenbaker encouraged research, “into the sky, the seas, and previously untapped mineral lodes, in search of new wealth and scientific advancement”. None of this was a promise of anything new, but it evidently was the first time the Conservatives saw some electoral advantage in touting research in a manifesto.

The 1965 election was maybe the busiest ever in terms of policy. The Liberals had created the Canada Student Loans Program in 1964 and continued to promise a “Canada Scholarships” program, which they never implemented despite staying in power for another 14 years. Several ministers, including Walter Gordon, went on record claiming they thought free tuition was a “long term goal” but were careful not to actually promise any such thing.

The NDP made it clear for the first time that it wanted to bring in legislation to enable every Canadian to receive a university education free of charge, “as long as he or she possessed the talent to do so”; despite previous fastidiousness about respecting constitutional responsibilities in education, this did not appear to be contingent on provincial approval. The party also promised greater investment in vocational education, higher grants to universities, more bursaries for students, support for study abroad, and making donations to universities tax-deductible. The party also vastly increased its offer on their skills-training promises, talking about a national manpower (sic) service and a nationwide network of adult training centres that would be established to retrain all displaced adult workers, without cost to the individual.

1965 was the first time the Progressive Conservatives decided to seriously compete on this turf. They outbid both the Liberals and NDP on grants to universities, matched the NDP on expanding funding to vocational schools, offered to increase research grants to the Medical Research Council, Canada Council, and National Research Council for scientific research (which in pre-Tri-council days meant a boost to university research, too), increase capital expenditures on medical facilities, and to “give consideration to meeting the problem of tuition fees” (whatever that meant).

By the time the next election came around, the Liberals were under the leadership of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who—contrary to the way he is remembered today—was very respectful of provincial jurisdiction in education. The ’68 Liberal platform therefore said almost nothing about education, apart from some pretty weird stuff about federal investment in educational broadcasting technology to help provinces, as well as the now-ritual platitudes about helping with changes from automation. Intriguingly, both the Conservatives and NDP followed suit in refraining from any engagement on post-secondary issues, with the latter stating quite clearly that education was a provincial jurisdiction. This was an enormous and sudden change from 1965; the cause almost certainly was the rise of Quebec nationalism.

But if PSE was fading as an issue, interest in research was intensifying. The Liberals, perhaps imitating the UK Labour Party under Harold Wilson, were in full “white heat of technology” mode, promising to set up research centres on damn near everything: urban problems, technology for mass housing and mass transit, labour relations, etc., as well as more dollars for agricultural and industrial research (whatever their current orientation, old-style “Grits” were pretty clear on maintaining a link between research and applied export outcomes). The Conservatives made almost identical promises: more research in agriculture, construction, environmental sciences, and above all medicine. Also, intriguingly, they also promised a First Nations’ college and more support for First Nations at mainstream universities, making themselves the first federal party to make this an issue.

The 1972 and 1974 elections saw post-secondary issues almost disappear from the landscape entirely. The Liberals made a weak promise about Labour Market Information Systems (yes, really, that’s been an issue for over 45 years) in ’72 and also claimed to be “working with the provinces to control the cost of post-secondary education”, which was a hilarious way to describe cutbacks to transfer programs. The ’74 Liberal and NDP platforms managed to avoid mentioning education entirely. The Stanfield Conservatives, whose ’72 and ’74 platforms were maybe the wonkiest things ever produced for a Canadian federal election, were a little bit better, but not much. There were commitments to greater expenditures on research (albeit with the proviso that a greater percentage needed to serve “national economic and social goals”) to be managed by a National Scientific Program Administration, more focus on getting jobless graduates into work and student summer jobs (graduate employability was as big a deal in the mid-70s as it is today), and a pledge to improve the Canada Student Loans Program by having a student advisory board and bringing the entire program under a single ministry (at the time it was split between Finance and the Secretary of State). As for actual funding, that was to be left to the provinces, although the Tories pledged to maintain a large role in funding students.

In sum, 1963 and 1965 were the only two elections where the three main parties were all legitimately bidding for leadership on the post-secondary file. Not only were they offering new money and new program ideas, but they were actively scanning each others’ programs and altering their own proposals in response to one another’s moves. But as Quebec nationalism came to the fore in the late 60s, all parties became significantly less ambitious in post-secondary field to the point that, by 1974, the NDP—once the most aggressive bidder in this space—could not even bring itself to mention the subject. After 1968, research remained a legitimate subject for federal policy, but PSE per se did not.