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 for this blog). I had two big take-aways from the book. The first is when it comes to economic growth and technological change, the idea of government-supported research as a supporting pillar is simply not on his radar. Instead, his focus is on people getting left behind economically because of skills obsolescence. For him, continual skills upgrading (or, in his deeply unfortunate straight-from-Davos phrase, “quaternary education” – yes, really) is the most important contribution to be sought from the education sector. 

The second is that whatever else Mark Carney is, he is not really all that driven by “values.” Oh sure, the whole thesis of his book is full of talk about the importance of values, and in particular the need for leaders to be consistent in a crisis. However, simultaneously, the book makes clear a) that Carney’s main concern is the survival of the planet and b) the Trudeau government’s carbon tax (RIP) was among the most awesome things any government in the world had done to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And yet, literally the first thing Carney did upon becoming PM was to axe the carbon tax while urging his MPs to take nauseating selfies at gas pumps congratulating themselves for lowering the price of fuel. And while the Liberals do still have policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the books, in no world do they match the carbon tax for effectiveness. 

Which is to say, Carney has values right up to the point where they interfere with electability. At one level there’s nothing wrong with that: politics is about power, and you can’t do any of the right things if you’re not in power. Fair enough. But if expediency really is über alles, then what youhave are preferences, not values. And you sure as hell don’t get to lecture others about values.

I bring this up mainly because the Liberals’ largest commitment in the skills and education field is a four-year $1.3 billion pledge to cover up to $8,000 in training costs, ostensibly in the name of “connecting workers to higher-paying jobs” (the funds are heavily front-loaded for reasons that are not explained). Which sounds good, except there’s basically no reason to think that the costs of formal training are in any way a significant barrier to apprentices starting or continuing their training. Much bigger barriers are (take your pick): a lack of employers offering apprentice spots (which is in part an outcome of provincial rules with respect to journeyperson supervision ratios), employers not allowing apprentices time off for training in good times, employers laying off apprentices in bad times, the lack of spots in training centres (mainly but not exclusively in community colleges)…the list goes on. 

And the Liberals know this. Heck, they just finished putting the kibosh on a pair of Harper-era grants to apprentices, the Canada Apprenticeship Grant ($1,000 per year for all apprentices) and the Apprenticeship Completion Grant ($2,000 grant when training completed), both of which were sunsetted on March 31. They did so mainly on the strength of this program evaluation, which found that actually all this money represented windfall gains to recipients: that is, pretty much everyone who received the money would have become an apprentice or finished their apprenticeship even without the money. In an era where we need to spend money wisely, government can’t spend money like this. Yet, there Carney was on April 5^th, just five days after the earlier grants ended, announcing this new massive payment to apprentices. Why? Because the Conservatives were promising something similar (more on that tomorrow), and the Liberals felt the need to compete for the votes of young-ish tradespeople. That’s it. That’s all.

(Interestingly, the Liberals felt no need to make a similar offer to students enrolled in universities and colleges. Was it because they think they have done enough for that constituency in the past? Or was it because the NDP’s decision to stop caring about student aid meant they weren’t bidding against anyone in this field? Either way, for the first time in several elections, the Liberals offered nothing on student assistance.)

To institutions? Not very much there, either. There is a commitment to “modernize science and research” by…get this…giving a new capstone agency for the tri-councils (the one we were promised in Budget 2024, the one modelled on the report of the Bouchard Commission) all of $40 million over four years. Compared to the $1.6 billion or so it is committed to handing out to existing councils (but on that see more below), this is laughable. Then there is $100 million over four years for “attracting leading researchers to Canadian institutions,” which is not a terrible idea but the critique that Canada can’t actually attract the best when its overall research funding efforts will inevitably and probably rightly emerge. 

To be fair, the Liberals are looking to spend $20 million a year on community colleges to improve training infrastructure. But at the same time, they are spending $25 million/year on the UTIP program, which is exclusively for training infrastructure at union-run facilities (despite the fact that these facilities educate significantly fewer apprentices than community colleges do). This is simply taking a page out of the Ford government’s playbook and bribing unions by funneling money into their training enterprises. There is zero evidence that trades training is done better by unions than community colleges (and, I think, a variety of reasons to think that it is not); parceling money out in this manner is simply pork-barreling, albeit of a type that seems to be becoming normalized.

This is not to say the Liberals are ignoring various forms of skills and research—they just seem to want to make sure that it doesn’t go through institutions. For instance, the Liberals have committed to “a new training and upskilling benefit worth up to $15,000 for workers in the middle of their careers. …targeted to workers in priority sectors including manufacturing, health care, construction, AI, and technology. In the face of the economic uncertainty and volatility many Canadian businesses are facing, we will collaborate with employers to support retention and upskilling within their companies.” What this means in practice is anyone’s guess. To me it sounds like a reprise of the Harper-era Canada Jobs Grant (which the Liberals kiboshed back in 2016) but restricted to a specific few sectors and (possibly) cutting the provinces out of program administration. At $15K per head an annual funding of $150 million a year starting in mid-2026, this might not affect more than 10,000 people a year. Will institutions benefit from this money? You would think so, but without more details on the training it is hard to know for sure.

And then there are the various forms of money for research commercialization. There’s $46 million over four years direct to the AI-focused Vector Institute (U of T), Amii (U of A) and Mila (U de M) for commercialization, which, you know, good, I suppose. But that’s dwarfed by the $1 billion recapitalization of the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (VCCI) by $1 billion which might have some indirect effects on university spin-offs but it’s a bit of a stretch.

And finally, there is a set of promises around indigenous education. One is a $100 million commitment to launch a new Indigenous Pathways to Prosperity Skills and Training Fund which will “support partnerships between First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities and organizations, schools, training centres, and colleges to advance access to skills training and education opportunities.” The platform provides no other details, and it kind of sounds like it overlaps with a lot of other initiatives the Liberals have offered in this space over the years, but heart in the right place, etc. There is also a heavily frontloaded $108 million two-year commitment to “accelerate funding for access to post-secondary education so more First Nations, Inuit, and Métis students can go to school and invest in associated infrastructure,” which also includes an investment in Indigenous-led post-secondary education institutions such as the Inuit Nunangat University (for which Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami is lobbying for $150 million) and the First Nations University.

(As an aside here, I would really love it if someone from Nunavut could write an explainer about the politics of the national Inuit organization trying to start a post-secondary institution that will almost certainly overlap with and duplicate programming at the already mind-bogglingly expensive, territorially-controlled Nunavut Arctic College. Please and thank you.)

Now, the one other thing the Liberals will want credit for is that plan of theirs to spend an additional $1.6 billion on research over the next four years. This isn’t an election commitment, but rather the result of a very backloaded budget announcement in 2024. At the time I suggested that universities were unlikely to see much of this money as it would likely fall prey to a Conservative budget-cutting axe (of which, more tomorrow). If the Liberals win the election, this money looks safer, but I still wouldn’t bet the farm on the whole amount coming available. And that is because their whole financial plan rests on a planned “savings from increased government productivity of $28 billion” in fiscal years ‘27, ‘28 and ‘29. This is of course code for cuts. But the Liberals have ruled out making cuts either in transfers to individuals or transfers to provinces, which together make up a little over half of the federal budget (excluding debt payments). As a result, cuts will have to fall entirely on direct program expenses. By my calculation, the expected reduction for 2028-29 ($13 billion) will be equal to about 5% of all program spending. Research might be spared, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Anyway, that’s it. There are lots of commitments in the Liberal platform, as one would expect given the Liberals’ perennial need to look wonkier than the other parties, and some of them might even be good. But there are some real stinkers in here, too. I make the total price tag out to be roughly $2.35 billion over four years, with 59% of it going to this cynical apprenticeship pledge, which eschews real, meaningful improvements to the system in favour of a straight bribe. The Liberals used to be able to play both sides of the make education better/make education cheaper divide, but with this platform they have very seriously gone over to Team Cheap. 

Buyer beware.