You may have seen some reporting recently – say, here, here and here – to the effect that I’ve authored a report saying that the intellectual centre of gravity in Canada is moving westward at a rapid rate. You may also have seen me quoted saying things to the effect that it’s a result of sustained funding increases over the past decade in the west, while in Ontario even the major increases seen in McGuinty’s first term were barely able to cope with increased demand, let alone reverse the effects of decades of underfunding.

I do believe all of this (and can argue this point at length, if any of you want to start me off with a beer), but I do feel that I should make it clear that no such report exists.

Here’s what happened: an Ottawa Citizen reporter asked me what the major issues of the Ontario election were in post-secondary education and I pointed to the fact that none of the three parties had promised any increase in PSE funding during the next five years. When asked to describe the possible effects of this, I pointed to the general relative decline of Ontario universities compared to those in the three Western provinces. This last bit, somehow, became the focus of the article.

“Toronto consultant says west is best” is one of those headlines that are hard to resist on the Prairies, so the Calgary Herald and others picked up the story. Then one student newspaper got the wrong end of the stick and assumed that since stories were being published around comments from a think-tank president on a subject, said comments must have originated in a report of some kind. This led to a somewhat surreal CUP podcast in which two journalists discussed a non-existent report.

I thought this was pretty harmless until this new version started getting picked up by places like Globe Campus, at which point I thought “enough is enough.”

So, to be clear: there are a number of Western Canadian universities that rock pretty hard; most eastern universities are struggling to keep up and will continue to do so as they get smacked with the effects of deficit-cutting measures; the difference between east and west is partly money, partly demographics (strong universities are a lagging indicator of economic success, as any academic from China or India could tell you) and in a couple of specific instances it’s about exceptional leadership; and for all these reasons it’s quite fair to call this a shifting of the country’s intellectual centre of gravity.

Just don’t go looking for the report because there isn’t one. Sorry.