Morning all.  Hope you are having a good summer.  Just returning briefly to the blog because Nova Scotia goes to the polls today, and in the ancient, decade-long tradition of this blog (ten years ago last week, the blog debuted with this piece to a beta audience of about 100) I gotta do a manifesto analysis.  So, here goes.

The NDP manifesto commitments on PSE are disappointingly thin.  The entirety of their platform is i) “(work) towards eliminating tuition fees, beginning with tuition fees at the Nova Scotia Community College”, ii) (convert) government loans to grants so students are not graduating with massive debts, iii) (expand) access to trades, with specific focus on communities facing discrimination and underemployment, and iv) (implement) hard caps on university executives’ compensation.  Nothing particularly new or surprising here.

What is surprising, though, is that having made this commitment in the manifesto, supporting financial commitments are absolutely nowhere to be found in the party’s fiscal framework document.  Literally, nothing.  I have no idea what to make of this, other than that, for a party which was in power as recently as a decade ago, these folks look about as far from government-ready as it is possible to look.

The Conservative manifesto, meanwhile, reads like the pinnacle of small-ball politics.  As someone (Paul Wells, maybe?) noted about the Harper Conservatives approach to politics many years ago, you can get as many headlines with a 7-figure budget promise as you can with an 8- or 9-figure one.  So why not go nuts and offer a whole bunch of eensy weensy promises, which make you look expansive in ambition while not actually spending so much money?  How eensy weensy?  Well, Nova Scotia Community College might get as much as $42,000 out of these commitments (if and only if they do more outreach work on trades with high school students).  The province’s universities get effectively no mention of all, which is pretty amazing since there’s a full six pages on population which drones on at length about Manitoba’s Provincial Nominee program which is pretty much entirely about using education as a lure for immigrants.  Kind of amazing.  I think the closest the document gets to concluding that post-secondary is an asset to the province is the promise that a Conservative government would “partner with universities and our community college to offer help to commercialize green start-ups”.  Seriously, that’s it.

And so, finally, to the Liberals, who were cruising a few weeks ago but have stumbled in the closing stages of the campaign.  Their manifesto is the one that is most focussed – by a country mile – on skills as a tool to achieve growth – at least, provided these skills come from a college.  There isn’t a lot in here on universities at all – more Nursing seats at Dal and CBU, $200K for a centre for the Study of Canadian Slavery at NSCAD, a half million for a specifically African Nova Scotian cohort for the Dal BSW cohort of 2022 (there is a distinction between “Black” and “African Nova Scotian” which can seem a bit abstract if you are not from Nova Scotia, but which matters quite a bit if you live there).  At the same time, this document is probably the longest love-letter to the community college sector ever to be included in a Canadian election manifesto.  There is literally a seven-page section which is just about the Nova Scotia Community College and the $110 million the Liberals plan to shower on the institution for everything from physical upgrades, to a change to the funding formula, to training ECE workers, etc etc.  I recommend that everyone whose job includes some government relations work read it, because you couldn’t possibly design a better manifesto for a single institution.  Every institution should aspire to receive this kind of treatment from elected officials.  Whoever is doing NSCC’s GR work deserves a freaking medal.

Anyways, if you’re voting solely on post-secondary issues, your choices are basically:

Conservatives: zilch.

New Democrats: the moon, but with no financial commitment.

Liberals: $110 m for NSCC, plus a generally more clueful approach to skills-based growth.

I think the choice is clear.  But then PSE isn’t the only thing on the agenda.

In any case, get out and vote.  And see you again on August 30.