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 facilities. 

In any event, let’s divide the Conservative platform into three buckets: things that would make education better, things that would make education cheaper, and things that would make education worse.

There is very little in that first bucket. There is a commitment to train 350,000 apprentices over five years, but they aren’t necessarily additional to the number we already have. Instead, this is an $860 million promise to make sure that private sector unions will have the money to make the capital investments required so that they, rather than community colleges, can deliver apprenticeship training (the Liberal equivalent promise was only for $100 million, and they at least had a similar amount for public colleges as well). There is also an intriguing promise to ensure that “veterans get postsecondary course credits for skills and knowledge they gained while serving in the CAF, such as credit for courses on leadership if they already have a background in leadership positions.” I think this is a pretty good idea in theory. Possibly quite difficult to execute in practice (will this be negotiated with all institutions individually? With ten sets of provinces?) but given the amount of training that goes on in the Forces and the degree of documentation and quality control that goes into them, some kind of crosswalk should be possible. Of course, no funding is allocated for this.

So, on to the “making higher education cheaper” bucket. Here, the Conservatives seem to have two initiatives, both focused on apprentices. The first is to reinstate the two grants for apprentices which the Liberals terminated earlier this year on the not unreasonable grounds that a program review found that neither program had only a tiny effect on either attracting or retaining people in the trades (see yesterday’s blog for more details on this). But the effectiveness of the grants in terms of increasing the number of qualified skilled tradespeople isn’t the point. The point is to make sure apprentices—who the Tories see as a crucial part of their coalition and to whom it now turns out the Liberals are equally keen to bribe—continue receiving windfalls. That said, at least it is cheaper than what the Liberals U-turn offering to the same group (again, see yesterday’s blog for more).

The Conservatives also want to change the rules of Registered Education Savings Plans (and the Canada Education Savings Grants that go with them) in such a way that they can be used to fund apprenticeships as well. It’s not clear to me exactly how you would do this—if simply enrolling as an apprentice would trigger the ability to receive an Educational Assistance Payment, or if it could only be used while the apprentice was in formal in-class training. Not that it matters much: it’s a decent enough idea, if you accept the premise that apprentices need financial help of this kind (I for one am old enough to remember when apprentices were promoted on the grounds that they earned so much while they learned that financial aid was unnecessary, but apparently times change).

But in most respects what was truly fascinating about this announcement was the way it was framed: not “we will change the rules” but rather “Conservatives would require banks(i.e. the folks who manage RESPs) to recognize the skilled trades.” Why banks might oppose this idea was never made clear, but apparently, no policy can be announced except in ways which reinforce the idea that a dominant Conservative Party is using raw power to force nasty, conspiring “elites” to submit to their will.

And Conservatives wonder why some people think they are a bit Trump-y. 

But now let’s move on to what everyone really wants to talk about, which is the threats they have been making about “DEI” and “wokeness” in relation to universities. Is it full Trump or something different?

So, look, the platform does not contain the word “woke” or anything specifically about federal research. This is a bit of a surprise, because when Poilievre announced the party’s “Quebec platform” (not actually a platform but rather just a speech, which you can find here), Poilievre said “Mon gouvernement va mettre fin au wokisme dans la fonction publique fédérale…on va aussi mettre fin à l’influence woke dans le soutien fédéral pour la recherche universitaire.” (my translation: my government will end wokeism in the federal public service…we will also end woke influences in federal support for university research). 

What this might have meant in practice was anyone’s guess. Read narrowly, I think it suggests that i) certain topics in humanities and social sciences would not be funded, and ii) the Tories would do their best to get rid of support programs like Athena Swan, the Action Plan for Black Researchers, the use of Indigenous-specific merit criteria in research evaluation, etc. But read more expansively, it heralded a full-on DOGE-MAGA attack on institutional autonomy, academic freedom, etc. Cue the usual protests from the usual suspects.

Cautiously, my guess would have been that the narrow interpretation is the correct one. The tactical heart of the DOGE-MAGA attacks on universities is taking aggressive actions that are clearly illegal, but which they keep doing until a court makes them stop (and maybe not even then). I don’t get the sense that Canadian Conservatives have that kind of lawlessness in them. In fact, I suspect on the contrary that they are sufficiently law-abiding that they will not actually be able to get rid of a lot of these “woke” programs precisely because they are court-ordered following charter challenges. 

But I wouldn’t have bet the farm on this interpretation. After all, a few months before the vote, he gave an interview to the Winnipeg Jewish Review which used much harsher language. The money quote from the article is: Pierre Poilievre told the Winnipeg Jewish Review in an exclusive telephone interview Dec 18, 2024 that he will not tolerate and will “defund” “all of those with a woke anti-Semitic agenda” including at universities who receive federal funding, as well as all federally funded museums. He reiterated that he plans to “defund” all “those who are imposing a radical, terrifying, toxic ideology” and this will apply to “everything that the federal government controls.”

Now, this is much closer to what you hear out of Washington. It implies that if an institution is deemed to be “woke” (“woke”? antisemitic? Woke and antisemitic? So hard to tell, so difficult to define), then they will be defunded—that is, have all of their federal funding withheld. 

But it became clear over the course of the campaign that those kinds of remarks weren’t lighting up crowds the way they did when Justin was the enemy. For reasons I outlined back here there was always good reason to think that anti-EDI stands would soften the longer Trump was in office. And so it went with this promise. What was a full-on MAGA approach in December had been toned down in March and by late April eliminated almost entirely, to be replaced by this simple statement in the Conservative platform:

Free speech is a cornerstone of Canadian democracy. We will ensure campuses remain places of debate, not censorship by requiring universities to enforce the standards of section 2 of the Charter’s freedom of expression as a condition for federal funding.

This formulation (roughly) was first mooted in Andrew Scheer’s leadership campaign back in 2016-17, and it is either meaningless (Conservative governments in Alberta and Ontario have both foisted “free speech” policies on their institutions and in practice it has not changed a thing) or absolutely crazy pants (would the feds really cut off student aid to students at a university deemed to have committed a minor infraction? Of course they wouldn’t). And of course they don’t really mean it literally, since Conservatives are completely fine with infringing freedom of expression rights when it comes to Palestine. This is the kind of thing you do and say when you’re incapable of thinking in terms other than the Culture War. But crucially, they have retreated from the “woke” front and fallen back to the “free speech” trench line. Regardless of the result Monday, keep an eye on where they go from there.

A final note here is on what’s not in the platform, and that is cuts to tri-council budgets. Many—including me—thought that the $1.6 billion in back-ended research increases announced in the 2024 budget might be under threat under a Poilievre government. The good news is, the Conservative plan is quite detailed about what kinds of federal expenditures it would cut to pay for its various promises, and research isn’t on the hit list. The bad news? Most of the savings the document does list are utterly illusory, dependent either on wild economic growth (tax cuts leading to higher revenues kind of thing) or on ludicrously unrealistic cuts to the government’s IT outsourcing budget (it’s possible to cut that kind of expenditures, but if you don’t simultaneously increase your spend on internal IT capacity, you’re asking for another Phoenix scandal pretty please with a cherry on top). And what happens if those targets are missed? Will the Conservatives accept higher deficits or start wielding the axe? My guess would be the latter, which would certainly raise at least the possibility that the research funds still wouldn’t be safe.

Anyways, that’s the lot. Back on Monday with some thoughts on what all these party political promises collectively imply for Canada’s higher education sector.