Category: Politics

Election 2025: The Conservative Party Manifesto

Ok, the Conservatives finally released their platform yesterday. It’s…thin…so far as postsecondary education goes. It’s absolutely nothing like the extremely detailed and nerdy platform in 2021 which, let us recall, was released on Day 1 of the campaign (I remain firm in my belief that an Erin O’Toole-led Conservative Party would be walking away with this election). And there are definitely no signs of a reversion to the Harper era and it’s too often unremarked interest in Big Science and investments in major research

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Election 2025: The Liberal Party Manifesto

Today, I’m doing the Liberals, mainly because at the time of writing on Easter Sunday they have issued an actual full platform and costing document while the Conservatives have not. Spoiler: this is not your average Liberal platform. That a new leader might bring a change in Liberal priorities should have been clear enough to anyone who had the misfortune of slogging through Mark Carney’s book Values: Building a Better World for All, which I did a couple of weeks ago (the things I do

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Election 2025: The Minor Party Manifestos

Election 2025: The Minor Party Manifestos Morning all. As usual during federal elections, I devote some time to each of the party platforms before election day. Today, I am going to focus on the five parties that have absolutely no hope of forming government. Liberal and Conservative platforms will follow. In increasing order of likely seat totals: The new-and-centrist-and-made-some-kind-of- sense-when-Justin-was-running-but-harder-to-understand-now Canadian Future Party platform has a paragraph on postsecondary education. They’d like you to know they are in favour of more research.

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The Free World Higher Education Area

The world is changing.  The goal of the Trump Administration, fairly clearly, is to create a world where “rules” are set by the Three Bullies (itself, Russia and China) with all other countries basically left at the mercy of these three major nuclear powers.  It is a terrifying prospect, with more than a little of echo of Orwell’s Oceania/Eurasia/Eastasia trio with their boots “stamping on the face of humanity, forever” But the thing about all those other countries?  They have

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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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