The Progressive Conservative Party under John Diefenbaker won a crushing majority in 1958, and his platform hadn’t contained anything with respect to education or universities.  Though he was known for his “Vision for Canada”, universities weren’t really a part of that vision.  He retained the Saint Laurent policy of paying money directly (via the AUCC) to individual universities on a more-or-less per capita basis.  The only change he made was to agree to a deal with the Duplessis government (which had forced its institutions to refuse the federal money) to use Quebec’s allotment to increase the provincial corporate tax abatement instead.  But student aid simply wasn’t on his radar.

But of course, not all Tories had the same view.  The younger ones in particular felt that they had to have some kind of policy to counter the “national scholarship” proposal the Liberals had swiped from the National Federation of Canadian University Students.  Ted Rogers (yes, that one) was the PC Youth Chair in the late 1950s, having played a major role in getting Diefenbaker elected in the first place.  And it was he who came up with a Tory policy on higher education: namely, tax deductions for tuition, usable either by the student or his/her parents.

This wasn’t a completely out-of-the-blue suggestion.  During passage of the National Defense Education Act in the US in 1958, Eisenhower had suggested using tax credits instead of loans on the grounds that it would provide greater benefits to the middle class, and required less government intervention (I should note that there’s no evidence this is where Rogers got the idea, but it’s a plausible scenario).

In any case, Rogers sold the Chief on the idea.  But, mindful of the views of his Quebec caucus and the deal he had struck with Duplessis on grants to universities, Diefenbaker wanted to make sure the new Lesage government would be onside with the proposal.  And so, he sent the one man he trusted in Quebec City to negotiate the deal with Lesage: a gregarious PC Youth Vice-President who was finishing his legal studies at Laval.  A young fellow by the name of Brian Mulroney.  By December 1960, the deal was done, and the tax deductions became law in 1961.

(The tax deductions stayed almost unaltered in form or value for 30 years, despite the 1971 Carter Commission having made the point that such deductions were regressive because they were worth more to high-income individuals than lower-income ones.  It wasn’t until the 1991 budget that Michael Wilson turned this – and a number of other deductions – into tax credits, which are fairer because they are worth an equal amount regardless of family income.)

This was a partisan move by the Tories – and an attempt to head-off Liberal demands for scholarships.  Since then, of course, tax measures have been adopted by both parties (Paul Martin was a noted enthusiast), such that the government of Canada now spends significantly more on education tax credits than on need-based student aid.  But in the shorter-run it was a failure: student groups weren’t impressed, and within two years, the Liberals were back in power, with plans to implement precisely the aid program the Tories had tried to forestall.

More tomorrow.