Category: Politics

Newfoundland 2021 Election Manifestos

There is an election in Newfoundland on Saturday.  It’s not because the government’s term was up or it lost a confidence vote, or indeed that anyone at all actually wanted a vote.  No, it’s because Newfoundland, a province where party leadership literally changes with the season, has a rule whereby a new Premier, if brought to power by becoming leader of a party which already controls the legislature, must seek an independent mandate within 12 months.  And since Premier Andrew Furey did

Read More »

Jump-Starting a Moribund Ottawa Policy Process

Note: I know you’re all probably expecting me to have a write-up on the Laurentian University omnishambles, but contrary to popular belief I both have a day job and require sleep, so you’re all going to have to wait another 24 hours for me to put that one together.  In the meantime… A few months ago, I made the point that Canadian policymakers at both the federal and provincial levels have more or less given up on the idea of economic

Read More »

Memo to Minister Nicolaides

To: Demetrios Nicolaides, Minister of Advanced Education, Alberta From: That guy from HESA Towers Dear Minister, So, you have finally got to the end of the Alberta 2030 Process.  Congratulations!  The question now is: where do you go from here? When the UCP came to power, it had two fundamental aims with respect to higher education: reduce government expenditures to fit the province’s new post-oil-bust financial circumstances and make institutions more active partners in the province’s economic development.  Both were entirely

Read More »

46

At noon eastern today, Joe Biden will take the Oath of Office and become the 46th President of the United States.  The Pumpkin Fascist may be out of our hair, at least for awhile, what with the pending bankruptcy, sexual assault charges, tax, bank and real estate fraud charges, the emoluments case, plus whatever charges he will face for his role in the Cosplay March on Rome earlier this month.  But the country still faces the task of getting out of

Read More »

The Term Ahead

Welcome back.  Refreshed?  Me neither.  But the show must go on. I want to start the year by sketching out the key landmarks and themes of the next year, and by extension, what smart universities and colleges need to prepare for. Let’s start with vaccine rollout, because pretty much everything depends on that.  Things are mostly a mess at the moment: we have doses and they are not getting into arms as quickly as they should.  This makes little sense

Read More »