You may have heard that there is an election on in Ontario.  I tried my best to leave the province for the duration but I’m back now, and holy Moses I wish I weren’t.  It is truly godawful.  A dumpster fire, as the kids say.  But duty calls, and so, forthwith, the traditional HESA platform analysis.

Let’s start with the Liberals, whose platform on higher education is essentially that from the last budget: a commitment to a student aid program of targeted free tuition whose costs continue to escalate faster than initial projections (presumably because it is actually successful in its goals), a freeze in base operating grants in nominal dollars (i.e. a reduction in real dollars) through to 2021, a one-year, one-time increase of $157M for the current fiscal year for “supporting quality programs and student outcomes” and presumably a continuation of the 3% cap on tuition increases.  No surprises there, and if you’re running an institution, not much comfort either.

Let’s now move over to the Green Party, which has the distinction this election of being the only provincial party which is an improvement on its federal counterpart and – so say the pundits – actually has a chance of electing a member in a university riding (Guelph).  Their post-secondary platform is simple: they say nothing about it whatsoever.  Whatever is in the current budget framework is what they will do.  So implicitly the Green Party platform on post-secondary education is the Liberal Party platform on post-secondary education.

Joining the Greens in the “not saying anything about post-secondary” category is, of course, the Progressive Conservative Party, who have not released a platform at all (though apparently the “petitions” page on their website functions as the equivalent), let alone a costed one.  So in theory, one might assume that like the Greens, the default option for post-secondary is effectively the 2018 Liberal Budget.  The problem is that most analysts (the best of which is Mike Moffatt’s, available here) are of the opinion that various Conservative promises are so expensive that the province will have a $13 Billion deficit (compared to roughly $11 B for the Liberals and NDP) and money to close that gap has to come from somewhere, so some may expect some offsetting cuts.  Unfortunately, we can do little more than speculate.

(The party’s previous platform, the “People’s Guarantee” launched by erstwhile leader Patrick Brown, made two commitments with respect to post-secondary education, one of which was to back the new French language university and the other was to increase loans for apprentices.  Obviously, since the platform was tossed, there is no reason to think these promises will in fact be followed, but it does give you a sense that some people at least in the Tory brain trust had some PSE priorities).

Last, but definitely not least, is the New Democratic Party, which (if you believe the polls) may now be the frontrunners in the election.  Like the others, the NDP platform accepts the Liberal’s 2018 Budget, but in addition promise to i) replace all remaining provincial loans with grants (the federal portion of student assistance will remain mostly loan-based) at a cost of roughly half a billion dollars per year, ii) eliminate interest on all outstanding student loans (which, for some reason, is considered a one-time cost of $112 million rather than a recurring one), iii) create 27,000 new paid co-op placements (which curiously appears to carry no cost, and – here’s the big one – add roughly $180 million per year every year to college and university budgets, roughly half of which is earmarked “for a faculty renewal strategy to allow contract educators to become full-time professors and instructors”.  This works out to an annual increase of a little over 2% in real terms in the first couple of years, declining to about 1.5% at the end of the period.

This doesn’t sound terrible, particularly since the NDP has not made any foolish commitments around tuition freezes, so the likelihood of a Horwath government leading to actual funding increases are pretty good.  However, two drawbacks.  The first is the massive string attached to half of that money, which is that it can only be used for turning contract staff into full-time staff.  I think it is safe to say this is not most institutions’ current money priority (though I suppose if someone else is paying, why look a gift horse in the mouth).  The second, and frankly much bigger deal, is the NDP’s campaign pledge never to use back-to-work legislation in the case of public-sector strikes, the net result of which will almost certainly be to raise costs at institutions and thus lead to the transfer of nearly all this new money into the staff salaries rather than expanding staff complements or other potential improvements.

(In principle, it’s always better to let parties reach a negotiated settlement; in practice, a hands-off approach can lead to some very difficult situations.  Take the current situation at York University, where a recent conciliator’s report – which garnered strikingly little media attention – basically said that the union local, CUPE 3903, lacks either the intention or the ability (or both) to come to a negotiated settlement with the institution.  Bargaining sometimes fails, and in the absence of back-to-work legislation it’s quite possible the strike at York could drag on until Christmas or longer, causing irreparable damage to the institution.  It’s hard to believe this is something an NDP government would want, but so long as its post-secondary policies involve taking dictation from CUPE, we now have to consider this as one possible outcome of next week’s election).

Whichever of the three major parties wins, Ontario is facing very large deficits for the next few years, deficits which will need to be paid for.  In the medium-term, I think the strong likelihood is that there will be public sector cuts, no matter who is in power.  In the shorter term, it’s pretty clearly the NDP is offering higher education the best deal, though the extra funds will come with some conditions which could lessen the value of that money significantly.

Take your pick.  It ain’t pretty.