I was thinking the other day that next Thursday (27/02/25) is not only going to be the Ontario election—about which, more tomorrow—but also because it will be the 30^th anniversary of the legendary 1995 federal budget. If you’re under 45, a lot of what I am about to tell you is going to sound very odd. But it is all true, and it all matters.

This country was a hot mess in the early 1990s. The summer 1990 unemployment rate of 7% jumped to nearly 12% by February 1991. It would stay above 9% for the next five and half years, and above 10% for most of it. If you’ve ever wondered why Gen X shrugs when unemployment gets to 7%, this is why. The federal budget had not been in balance for over 25 years. The combination of high debt—much higher than today, in proportionate terms—plus high Interest rates to keep inflation down and the dollar up meant that debt payments were consuming over 30% of all expenditures. Or, to put it another way, every dollar of taxes paid bought less than 70 cents worth of services. Few provincial budgets were much better; both Newfoundland and Saskatchewan flirted with bankruptcy in a way no province had done since the Great Depression.

But then the federal government took the bull by the horns. It recognized that the fundamental problem was the budget deficit: as long as interest expenditures remained high, government would never be able to achieve anything again. So, regardless of the short-term pain, it cut direct spending massively; granting council budgets were reduced by 16%, IIRC. But it also instituted a multi-billion dollar cut in transfers to provinces for health and postsecondary education, which hit institutions across the country hard, although some provinces (like BC) chose to cushion the blow more than others.

It was austerity but it worked, albeit with some windfall assistance from a booming US stock market. The budget went into balance after three years instead of the anticipated five. We did it. It was hard, but we bounced back. And the first thing the government invested in was knowledge. Research infrastructure in 1997, student financial aid in 1999, and then granting councils and Canada research chairs in 2000.

The question now, 30 years on from that, in the face of an American government that wants to treat Canada as Russia treats Ukraine or China treats Taiwan: are we ready for that level of change and sacrifice once again?

I am not suggesting that postsecondary institutions are about to take it in the neck from government cutbacks, though one could certainly choose to read Conservative commitments on reducing deficits that way if one wanted to. I think we are unlikely to see an overall reduction in government spending because there are going to be a lot of demands on government for things like border security, and an army that is actually equipped properly, and a crap load of subsidies designed to help Canadian businesses pivot away from the US market. But I think it is highly likely that exactly none of that spending is heading in the direction of higher education. In that sense, we can think of the next few years as an exaggerated continuation of what we have been seeing since about 2016.

Or maybe—just maybe—the postsecondary sector could rearrange itself, as it did with moderate if limited success during COVID, to take into account the fact that Canadian society now has to be on something like a semi-war footing for the foreseeable future. It could take seriously higher education’s historic role as a tool for improving the capacities of the state (and boy does our state need capacities now).

The first and most important way that could happen? By putting the collective brainpower of Canadian academia to work on very specific problems that our governments—with their brutally short-term focus—cannot hope to answer quickly. Imagine if all Canadian universities got together right now and said: we are putting our best minds together for the next 12 weeks (which is about how long it will take for an election to occur, assuming the Liberals lose a confidence vote in late March) and we’re going to answer the following questions about the future of Canada.

• What does a post-NATO foreign policy look like. Who are our allies now?
• What does an independent defense policy look like now? What can we learn from, say, Finland’s posture with the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s? Is universal national service an option?
• How can Canada improve the status of its domestic knowledge-based industries? How do we make “smart” pay?
• What would it take for Canadian businesses to genuinely pivot to new markets? What are the barriers and how can they be overcome?
• More generally, how do we once again generate economic growth?
• How can we best balance the protection of our democracy with the maintenance of norms of free speech?

It’s obvious the country needs answers to all of these hard questions. It’s equally obvious that the country’s universities are collectively the largest source of expertise to answer them. So let’s do it, now. Get a couple of hundred of the best minds in the country, relieve them of whatever other duties they have for the next few weeks and put together a lightning Royal Commission the likes of which we’ve never seen. It would be tough to organize, but who knows? It might remind people that universities are worth funding (Lord knows nothing else seems to be working on that score).

But I think universities will also need to go further. They will also need to look critically at whether what universities currently do is aligned with the new priorities. So maybe a second group of top minds could answer questions such as:

• What would be the impact on national productivity if we re-shaped the bachelor’s degree to be default three years instead of four?
• Would we be more growth-oriented if we had more bachelor’s graduates, or fewer? What about graduate degrees?
• How would postsecondary education change if we introduced a form of national service?
• What role could business faculties play in promoting trade diversity? Would requiring students to take more foreign language courses help?
• How might more specialist outfits like Citizen Lab contribute to Canadian domestic and foreign policy?

I suspect many will recoil from even posing such questions. Sacred cows, etc. But we have to. We can either, as a sector, act to protect and improve the state we have, or we can leave it easier prey to the bullies, liars, and thieves that are currently assaulting democracies around the globe. Those are the choices.

Canada made difficult choices and took bold action thirty years ago. I am certain we can do it again. But the country—and the higher education sector—first has to take the threat seriously. Will we?