There is no aspect of university autonomy that is more fundamental – in the British Commonwealth at least — than the right of each institution to select which students it chooses to admit. Along with financial autonomy, staffing autonomy, and financial autonomy (that last one being under increasing pressure these days), the right of institutions to choose which students to teach is fundamental to the Canadian higher education system. At no time in Canadian history has a government ever tried to infringe on this autonomy.

That is, until the geniuses in the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario decided they wanted to change all that (you may remember the PCPO from such previous policy triumphs as Indiscriminate Slaughter in Long-term Care Facilities and Housing? What’s That?)Last Thursday, their Minister of Education, Paul Calandra, introduced Bill 33, An Act to amend various Acts in relation to child, youth and family services, education, and colleges and universities in the Legislature.

At first my attention was drawn to the bit on student fees, which give the cabinet the right to specify to each University and College which fees it may or may not charge on a compulsory basis. This is clean-up from 2019 when the government tried to make student union fees (among others) voluntary rather than mandatory: first it ordered institutions not to collect this fees, then the order was overturned by the courts in 2019. The Government then appealed, and lost, with the judge stating:

“The Minister has no authority to fetter the exercise of the universities’ discretion concerning student associations in any event – again, not because universities are immune from regulation, but because the Legislature has chosen not to regulate them. Instead, the Legislature has chosen to establish the universities as autonomous entities, free from government interference in matters of internal governance. The Minister cannot exercise executive action in a manner that conflicts with the University Acts,”

Anyways, this Act amends the University Act, so now the Ford government can pummel student unions any way it wants.

But upon further inspection, I realized that this little piece of two-bit gangsterism against the puniest of political opponents was actually only the tip of the iceberg. Get a load of this:

Every college or university…shall

(a) ensure that when assessing applicants for the purposes of admission into a program of study, assessment is based on the merit of the individual applicant; and

(b) publish, in a manner accessible to the public, the criteria and process to be used by the college or university in assessing applicants for admission into each program of study.

Your spidey senses should be tingling as you read this. I mean, maybe someone in government trying to weigh on cases like Waterloo having a “secret” list of high schools which it uses to create a curve by which judge high school transcripts (which of course every institution does), but it’s been a long time since that subject made any noise. And by now we should all expect that once someone starts using the word “merit” with respect to universities it almost always has something to do with EDI.

It continues:

“The Lieutenant Governor in Council [i.e. cabinet] may make regulations governing the criteria and process to be used by every college or university…in assessing applicants for the purposes of admission into a program of study, and without limiting the generality of this power, may make regulations specifying criteria that must be or that may not be considered in assessing the merit of an applicant…”

Got that? Doug Ford and his cabinet think they know better than colleges and universities what merit is. Doug Ford and his cabinet think the way colleges and universities are measuring merit is wrong. Doug Ford and his cabinet are going to disallow assessments of merits they disagree with.

Likely, they will claim this is about making universities transparent, about “holistic admissions” and drag up stories like this one about how unfair it is that universities sometimes choose not to admit a student with a 99% average to their chosen program because they use criteria other than marks to make a decision. But c’mon. You know this is absolutely going to be about EDI, right? It’s absolutely going to get used against TMU’s new medical school, which has an anti-testing policy and no science requirement, because God forbid anyone reduce the benefits of being rich and white in the admissions system. It could also be used against the separate Black and Indigenous Admissions processes at the University of Toronto (or McMaster or York or wherever).

Now, I have a feeling that this, too, is going to be struck down by the courts if it is ever used. It’s written into every university act that the power to set the standards of admission lies with the university itself. Nevertheless, this is a matter of principle. Whatever you think of EDI, Ontario universities have to stand up for their right to autonomy, loudly and publicly, or risk never being taken seriously again. Lie down on this, and there is no basis to resist any other form of government interference. 

Code red.