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Category: Politics

What Does a Poilievre Government Science Policy Look Like?

I did a tour of Ottawa the week before last, chatting with folks about what the future looks like. Here are some of the things I kept hearing. Treat absolutely nothing in here as a prediction, this is all just gossip. Now that last one I found very interesting, and I think it’s worth going back to the Harper record on Science and Universities. A lot of you got quite angry with me a few years ago when I compared

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April 1, 2024 5 Comments

A Deeply Unhelpful Federal Court Ruling

Just before Christmas, the federal court released a judgement with respect to the case of a Chinese student applying to a Mechanical Engineering PhD program at the University of Waterloo and whether or not an immigration official was justified in denying a visa on national security grounds.  The decision has some enormous and (I think) deleterious ramifications for graduate student recruitment in Canada.  The background to this issue, obviously, is the rising concern about espionage in universities, in particular by

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January 10, 2024 1 Comment

Global McGill

Welcome back, everyone.  Let’s jump in. You will recall that last fall the Legault government, reeling from a by-election loss to a suddenly resurgent Parti Québécois, decided to parade its nationalist bona fides by giving an unprovoked kicking to some major anglophone institutions: to wit, McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s.  This kicking – which was imposed on all universities but clearly had a disproportionate impact on the three anglo schools – consisted of two separate policies. Imposing a minimum $17,000/year tuition

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January 8, 2024 3 Comments

What’s in Ontario’s Blue Ribbon Panel Report?

The province decided to release the report of its Blue Ribbon Panel on Post-Secondary Education Financial Sustainability last Wednesday.  Remember, this was a report commissioned by the provincial government in response to a pair of reports from the Auditor-General, one on Laurentian University and another on other smaller institutions in November 2022.  It’s not what I would call an ambitious document; the panel’s terms of reference instructed that any recommendations “be considered through the lens of fiscally responsible and affordable

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November 20, 2023 1 Comment

The Math at McGill

I’ve been asked a few times for more details on the funding effects of the CAQ’s policies on Quebec Anglo institutions.  Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult to do because neither Bishop’s nor Concordia publish quite enough data to make it possible to do most of the relevant calculations.  As a result, what I will be doing today is to flesh out how I see all this playing out for McGill.  Some of it will apply at a high level to

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November 15, 2023 2 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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