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Category: Politics

New Brunswick Brings the Stupid

Before we were rudely interrupted by the Ontario government doing something both interesting and mysterious on performance outcomes, I promised you all news out of New Brunswick. This matters to maybe fifteen of you, but you know, this blog is nothing if not faithful to geographically micro-targeting higher education nerds. So here we go. Recall that back under the Conservative government of Bernard Lord, the New Brunswick government introduced a titanically wasteful graduate tax rebate, which was a massive windfall

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April 16, 2019 No Comments

Alberta Election Platform Analysis

Alberta’s provincial election is April 16th, just a little less than two weeks away.  New Democratic Party leader and Premier Rachel Notley is squaring off against former federal Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney, who leads the United Conservative Party (UCP). The UCP has (almost) ended the split on the right between the Conservatives and the Wildrose Party that was partially responsible for ending over forty years of Conservative rule following the 2015 election.  Notley has been given a hard task

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April 4, 2019 1 Comment

What to Look for in Tonight’s Budget

At 4 PM EST, Finance Minister Bill Morneau will rise in the House of Commons to deliver his fourth budget, and the last one before a federal election in the fall.  What can we expect from the budget on the big PSE-files?  Here’s a quick rundown. Transfer Payments: Status quo. Research: My guess is that there are small goodies in this budget, if only to give them an excuse to reprint everything they did last year in this year’s budget

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March 19, 2019 No Comments

Michael Wilson and Education Tax Credits

This past weekend, Michael Wilson died.  Here in Toronto he was well known for his multiple roles on Bay Street, his work as a mental health advocate and his six years as chancellor of the University of Toronto; elsewhere in Canada he is remembered as our ambassador to the United States (2006-2009) and, more dimly, as a senior cabinet minister in the Mulroney Government, most importantly holding the Finance portfolio from 1984 to 1991.  However, one thing he doesn’t often

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February 12, 2019 No Comments

Speak of the Devil

Yesterday was one of those days when I completely lucked out.  There I was, having just published a piece on possible scenarios on what the Ontario government might do in post-secondary education, when suddenly various news outlets began reporting that a new tuition framework was due to be announced later this week.  And it was a doozy: according to the report, the Conservative government was planning on reducing tuition in all regulated programs (ie. excluding international students and the graduate and

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January 16, 2019 3 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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