Category: Policy

HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (March 16, 2025)

Spotlight Wow. It’s already been a week since AI-CADEMY, and I’m still hung up on all the vibrant discussions that happened in Calgary, the insights shared by all, and the palpable eagerness to learn and collaborate. If you haven’t already, make sure to read Alex’s Wednesday blog for a quick summary (and if you attended, there are more post-event follow-ups coming your way soon) – but on a more personal note, I want to express how much of a privilege

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Liberal Leadership Platforms

As you may have noticed, there’s a Liberal leadership vote on, with results to be announced this weekend. The conceit of today’s blog is that anyone might want to vote for a leader based on actual policy platforms rather than “electability,” so buckle up and see what it is that an improbably fourth Liberal victory might mean. So, let’s start by looking at how the leadership candidates’ platforms shape up at the broad level. All of them want to talk

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Nova Scotia’s Bill 12

Just before I went on break last week, the government of Nova Scotia introduced a new bill into the legislature, Bill 12, An Act Respecting Advanced Education and Research. It quickly became apparent that this bill had not been discussed with any way shape or form with anyone in the postsecondary community, which generally spells bad news. It also appeared to have come not from the Minister’s office, but from the Premier’s which again generally suggests if not bad news then

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What People Get Wrong about the New CCAA Law

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Justin Trudeau’s record. A couple of people wrote in to chide me that I had not included the passage last year of Bill 59, a piece of omnibus legislation which among other things prevents postsecondary education institutions from using the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). I know a lot of professors—and perhaps more importantly, faculty unions and their provincial/national associations—think that this was a “Good Thing” because “Look What Happened at Laurentian.” To

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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (January 31, 2025)

Spotlight Due to technical issues, the Friday blog remained in the cue and was not sent out. Here it is! Happy Friday! There were a few notable AI-related releases since my last blog, but the main one was most probably the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI that was released earlier this week (you might recall that I had previously shared here the interim report, which was published in May 2024). Chaired by UdeM’s professor Yoshua Bengio,

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