Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a good weekend. The New Brunswick election is a mere week away, so let’s get to our platform analysis. I’m restricting the analysis to the three parties with an outside shot of actually winning a seat—the Greens, the Conservatives and the Liberals—and yes, I know there are the New Democrats and the People’s Alliance, but c’mon.

New Brunswick politics holds a special place in my heart. Mainly because of the frequency of moments of lunacy. Who could forget the Liberal government in 2018 running in part of a platform of “Blueberry Innovation Superclusters”? Or the Conservative Government of Blaine Higgs lying its goddamn ass off, falsely claiming to have done a rigorous study of the (lack of) benefits of the previous government’s targeted free-tuition policy, which it then proceeded to eviscerate in favour of a set of programs which were more complicated, less targeted and less effective? Good times.

Spoiler alert, though: there isn’t really anything Blueberry-level exciting this time. In fact, there really isn’t anything very interesting at all. Very blah. Anyways, here we go:

The manifesto (if you can call it that) of the Progressive Conservative Party, led by Blaine Higgs, contains…nothing about post-secondary education. Nada. Jack diddly. I guess if you’re really intent on staying a resource province, starving education is a good way to do it. The Higgs government of course does have a record to run on. Since becoming Premier in 2018, provincial transfers to institutions have risen by 0.4% after inflation and spending on student aid has risen by 8%. Make of that what you will.

Now to the Green Party, whose incredibly detailed set of election commitments contains…next to nothing about postsecondary education. Apparently, the province is going to go through a massive de-carbonization process and it’s all completely going to happen with no input/assistance from colleges or universities. The one thing they do promise is $90 million/year, mostly to UNB, in order to make Nursing and Medical education free. Not to make it better, you understand. Just to make it cheaper and give students in this field even higher private rates of return. Like we need to boost demand for medical school by making doctors more affluent. 

And finally, there is the Liberal Party. Led by Susan Holt. And is therefore known as “Team Holt.” I have no idea how the entire province doesn’t have an Arrested Development mindworm (IYKYK) by now, but maybe that’s just me.

Anyways, the Liberal Manifesto has an even 100 commitments (which is at least 70 too many if you ask me, 100 probably indicates a certain….scatteredness). Essentially, the party makes four commitments on postsecondary education, two of them to make education cheaper, one to make it a tiny bit larger and one, maybe, indirectly, eventually, about making it better. The cheaper is simple to describe. One initiative is to “continue to make provincial student loans free,” which is easy and cheap enough because they are already interest-free. The other is to “provide grants to students studying to work in high-priority fields,” which seems to mean Education, ECE, Nursing, and skilled trades. The costing document suggests that these are non-need-based grants, just a flat $2500 cheque every year to everyone enrolled in these programs in the province of New Brunswick (students who leave the province to study in one of these programs will be, AFAICT, SOL). 

The “bigger” is also simple to describe: the party wants to pay little under half a million per year to the out-of-province medical schools which run satellite campuses in the province (Dalhousie in Saint John, a clutch of Quebec universities operating jointly in Moncton) to open up ten (10) new spaces a year. And finally, there is the amazing promise of “working with colleges to expand student housing”, which has exactly zero dollars budgeted because there is no interest in actually doing anything, with institutions just “working with them.”

I am not sure I have read a set of manifestos that have been so lacking in ambition, or a lack of understanding of how post-secondary education contributes to community prosperity and flourishing. We can certainly blame politicians for this. But holy mother, this is also an indictment of the sector and the sell job it is doing. Clearly, nothing institutions are doing is landing with the public to the extent necessary to bring their issues to the fore. Clearly, a huge change is needed. Because a few more years of this are going to be disastrous.