This is part IV of a series.  Catch up with Part I, Part II and Part III. 

We have arrived at the modern, post-Redbook manifesto period, where promises get costed, fiscal frameworks are explicit, and parties hew more closely to their promises.  At least in theory.

During the Chretien-Martin years, the Liberals were, well, inconsistent.  In 1997 they talked small (their only real promise was the introduction of a small set of grants for students with dependents) but in office they went on to double tax credits for education, create the Canada Millennium Scholarships, the Canada Education Savings Program, and the Canada Research Chairs.  In 2000 they talked big – doubling federal expenditures on R&D, creating Registered Individual Learning Accounts, and improving part-time student loans – but passed literally none of these after re-election.  In 2004, post-secondary education initiatives and research initiatives were almost exclusively described in the past tense, apart from yet another promise on research commercialization. In 2006 they went big again:  money for more scholarships and apprenticeships, $150 million for study abroad, $1 billion for university/college infrastructure, an increase to the Canada Study Grants, and a bizarrely complicated promise to pay 50% of tuition for every first-year and graduating-year student.  It’s probably for the best that last one never got enacted.

The NDP were more consistent in this period: more of everything.  More transfer payments – usually tied to some provincial promise to reduce tuition fees but the language varied a bit in specificity, more money for research (vehicles not specified), more student grants.  In 2000 and 2004, the NDP was anti-Millennium Scholarship Foundation, but that opposition had disappeared by 2006 as the party realised the Foundation was achieving most of the party’s affordability goals. The 2006 platform also had an idea about supporting lifelong learning through the Employment Insurance system, which has passing similarity to the Canada Training Benefit the Liberals enacted in Budget 2019.

The right was divided in 1997 and 2000, with Progressive Conservatives on one side and the Reform/Canadian Alliance on the other.  They agreed on a few things – income-contingent loans and more money for research (as usual, provided there was industry involvement/application).  The Tories outbid the Alliance in 2000 with a more generous pitch on transfer payments and money for national e-learning initiatives, including the creation of a Canadian Institute for Learning and Technology (this would still be a good idea, IMHO).  In 2000, the Alliance advocated for a Chief Scientist, a position Paul Martin would create in 2004 and Stephen Harper would abolish in 2008.  In 2004, a newly united Conservative Party basically forgot about the PSE policy field (the entirety of their pledge was to “work with provinces to reduce barriers to access”), but in 2006 they came back with a more ambitious plan, including funding for $100 million in new student grants, $500 million in new research funding and a promise to split PSE funding out of the Canada Social Transfer so as to make a “dedicated” stream of funding for PSE.  They also, hilariously, talked about how great the Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Credit was and how there should be more of it.

The 2008 election a watershed in the sense that it more or less marked the point at which the Liberals decided to go permanently big on post-secondary education and the Conservatives permanently small.  In 2008, the sum total of Conservative promises in the area involved a completion bonus for apprentices plus a small change in CSLP rules.  By 2011, the Conservatives had settled on a technique of announcing a ton of really tiny measures (on the theory that a $2 million initiative gets as big a headline as a $2 billion one).  And so, we got nine micro-pledges, few of which were worth more than $10 million (e.g. “expand the work exemption under the Canada Student Loans Program”, “establish 30 Industrial Research Chairs”, “establish 10 additional Canada Excellence Research Chairs”, etc.).

The Liberals, meanwhile, were shooting for the moon.  In 2008 – and I confess to having completely forgotten this one – Stéphane Dion promised to “create a 20-year education endowment fund worth $25 billion” (effectively taking the Millennium Scholarship Foundation and multiplying it by five), offering a minimum $5000 loan to every learner, including apprentices (an idea Harper would steal during his third term), lowering interest on student loans, increasing all granting council budgets by a third, adding an interdisciplinary research fund (now currently under development post-Naylor), and expanding the SRED tax credits.  In 2011, they scaled back a bit: the research commitment was phrased in very general terms and the only specific funding was a $100 million commitment to “Brain Health Research”.  They also proposed a “Learning Passport,” which was some kind of universal Canada Education Savings Grant in which every secondary student would accumulate either $1000 or $1500 (if low-income) for every year passed, a huge whack of money for First Nations and Métis students, dedicated funding for First Nations University in Regina, plus more money for study abroad.

Whew.

The NDP actually became somewhat more cautious on PSE during this period.  Both the 2008 and 2011 platforms promised more student grants (though nothing on the scale of the Dion pledge), but only in 2011 was this accompanied by a firm “we’ll reduce tuition fees” pledge tied to an increase in transfers (this was and still is a deeply goofy idea, but it’s an NDP mainstay, so).  The 2008 platform also promised lower interest on student loans, more graduate scholarships, an expansion in the number of apprenticeable trades and some very general stuff on support for research with no money attached.  In neither year did the NDP promise anything for the granting councils, though the 2011 platform did talk a lot in general terms about research and green technologies.

Finally, there was the Green Party.  In 1997 and 2000, the party was run mostly by peace activists and health food enthusiasts, and so the only PSE-related promises were to stop researching anything related to big agriculture and re-focus the research effort on growing more natural foods like quinoa (yes, really).  In 2004, under Jim Harris, they kept its anti-agribusiness line and added one about having citizen input on science research priorities.  It also adopted a free tuition platform, to which it returned in 2015.  In the interim, it adopted a vague, “we’ll work with provinces and institutions to lower costs” stance in 2016 and promised a lot on new bursary expenditures in 2008 and 2011 (the 2008 platform also copied the NDP’s “new-transfers-in-exchange-for-tuition-reductions” stance).  The party has variously endorsed more co-op positions, more apprenticeship spaces, and more money for applied Green technology research (though not basic research as far as I can tell), as well as some deeply confusing ideas like increasing direct grants to institutions inversely with student-teacher ratios.

What’s perhaps most interesting about this period is the extent to which – compared to previous ones we’ve looked at – we start to see some stability in policy approaches.  The NDP has a very consistent line on access policy which barely moves from one election to another; it is also pretty consistent in not talking very much about research.  The Conservatives can be relied on to give a nod (usually small) to PSE and to research as well if it can be framed as helping business and/or competitiveness.  The Liberals are all over the damn place on PSE and science – you can count on nothing from one election to the next except that there will be at least one big idea/promise because that’s how they signal to the electorate that they are the most modern and forward-thinking of parties (even if, as in 2000, they implement literally none of their platform).

Tomorrow, a wrap-up.