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Category: Canada

The “Skills for Jobs Blueprint”

I don’t pay as much attention as I should on this blog to matters British Columbian, mostly because I don’t get out there often enough.  But the province’s “Skills for Jobs  Blueprint” cries out for some critical treatment, because frankly it’s not all that smart. Turn back the clock a bit: in April 2014, the BC government rolled-out a series of policies that were collectively branded as the “Skills for Jobs Blueprint”.  Much of it consisted of relatively sensible changes

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February 4, 2015 No Comments

Still No Skills Shortages

With predictably little fanfare, the Government of Canada recently released its Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS) results for the years 2013-2022.  You may remember the last time they released their 10-year projections back here, which basically showed that, to the extent there were persistent labour shortages in the economy, they were by and large not in the skilled-trades areas the government claimed were in such desperate straits. The 2013-2022 report has unfortunately been written in such a manner as to

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February 3, 2015 1 Comment

Why is CAUT Cheapening Academic Freedom?

Academic freedom is precious; it’s not something you want to mess with  – which is why it is such a mystery that the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) permitted the Report of the Ad-hoc Investigatory Committee into the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba to be published. The back story, near as I can tell, is: for decades, the UManitoba Economics Department contained a fairly large squad of what are known as “heterodox” economists (i.e. political economy types who

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February 2, 2015 1 Comment

Some Interesting New Models of Student Representation

Historically, the development of student movements has been heavily linked with nationalism, anti-colonialism, modernity, and the development of the welfare state (i.e. they were pro all four of those).  However, as higher education has become massified around the world, students have by and large become less concerned with larger social issues, and more concerned with narrower, student-based concerns.  That hasn’t always led to a loss of radicalism (viz. the carré rouge), but it’s broadly true that over time student leadership

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January 16, 2015 1 Comment

The Canada Apprentice Loan: Adventures in Federalism

As I noted a few months back when writing about the 50th anniversary of the Canada Student Loans Program, CSLP was at the heart of one of the federation’s key moments in fiscal federalism.  In 1964, Lester Pearson was running into opposition in Quebec on two of his major policy initiatives: the Canada Pension Plan and the Canada Student Loans Program.  A deal on both was eventually struck: any province could “opt-out” of a federal program and receive a compensating “alternative payment”, so

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January 9, 2015 No Comments

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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