Prince Edward Island goes to the polls tomorrow, and while it is Canada’s littlest province with an electorate 10% smaller than the University of Toronto’s student body (unbelievably, the provincial budget is actually 25% smaller), but this is a pan-Canadian blog and by God no provincial budget or election is too small for us at HESA Towers to cover.  So, buckle up to find out what the parties are offering.

Let’s start with the NDP, who are not even remotely close to getting a seat this time out (no change there: in the 16 provincial general elections since the party  was founded, they have only managed one seat) but, you know, are generally good for a laugh.  No surprises for guessing that their big offer is…free tuition!  Actually costing a platform seems to be beneath the NDP, but looking at financial statements from UPEI  and Holland College like about a $50 million promise.  The party is also promising to open a medical school at UPEI, the better to attract and keep doctors in the province.   Again, unclear what this is going to cost, and in any case medical school costs are as much an art as a science (the line between what costs get attributed to universities and what gets attributed to allied hospitals varies enormously).  One might suggest something on the order of $7 million is possible – that’s what Dal charges UNB to run a small English-language medical program in Saint John with an intake of about 30 students a year.  But starting a new medical school is something else entirely, particularly when trying to up your research output to the point where accreditation is possible.  Then you’re probably looking at something closer to what Canada’s smallest medical program, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, costs, about $50 million/year.  All told, the NDP may be talking about adding $100 million in spending to a current government spend of about $70 million per year.  I guess it’s easy to promise things if you aren’t going to come even vaguely close to power.

Next up are the ruling Liberals, who are currently running either second or third (depending on the poll).  Their platform has a lot of heady rhetoric about being the most affordable/accessible (they seem not to understand the distinction) PSE system in Canada, and since Ontario and New Brunswick got rid of their targeted free tuition (TFT) systems, PEI does have a reasonably good claim to that title (here at HESA Towers, we’re pretty sure the 2018 changes to student aid in the province gave them a de facto TFT, though for some reason the province doesn’t want to use that term.  But in terms of new programming, the Liberal promises are quite modest: a top-up of $500 to every child under 18 in the province who is eligible for the $2000 Canada Learning Bond, and a $500 increase in the value of the George Coles Bursary, which is a slightly weird universal grant awarded to every Island student attending an Island institution (why don’t they just reduce tuition?  No idea.  Presumably they think there are more votes in charging tuition and then rebating it every year).

Then there are the Progressive Conservatives, and I really urge everyone to read their platform because it is proof positive that Canadian Red Tories still exist.  Seriously, it’s quite a remarkable document.  From a PSE point of view, it’s probably the most interesting of the platforms.  They make a similar pledge to the Liberals with respect to the George Coles Bursary (only slightly larger – a $700 bump instead of $500); and also promise i) a tax credit to employers who hire high school and post-secondary students,  ii) $75,000 for funding an open textbook initiative,  iii) the creation of a rental voucher for low-income Islanders, including students, who are looking for rental accommodation in an increasingly overheated Charlottetown market (that sentence may sound ludicrous to readers in Toronto and Vancouver, but in local terms it’s a big deal), and – maybe most interestingly – suggest a pair of partnerships with the UPEI’s new School of Sustainable Design Engineering to solve some problems with respect to fisheries and watersheds, suggesting that the Conservatives see the institution as a significant source of knowledge, which can be put to use for economic development. 

And that brings us to the Green Party which, perhaps improbably, is currently leading in all the polls, though perhaps not by enough to form a majority government.  Their platform is also interesting; I particularly like the way they describe their platform into long-term goals and things they think they can achieve in a single mandate; it’s a nice way to separate vision and mission that I wish more parties would do.  But as far as post-secondary education goes, the platform is almost silent.  The only firm financial commitment is $25,000 for an open text book project (which seems to be conditional on finding other provinces to partner with). Other than that they will i) “review” grants and loans programs to provide incentives for high-demand skills training, ii) provide debt forgiveness for graduates with high-demand qualifications (whatever those are), conditional on staying on the island, and iii) provide immigration support to international students who want to stay in PEI, but all of these are apparently expected to be cost-neutral. 

The PEI standard in platform costing is, unfortunately, to tot up all the individual spending commitments and what they will cost annually and say “this is what our platform will cost”.  None of the parties provide an overall fiscal framework to get a sense of how they think expenditures will evolve over time, so there’s no way even to get a rough sense of how payments to institutions might evolve: presumably they will go up more or less in line with overall expenditures but since no one has put any thought into that question the answer, for the moment, is that we have no damn clue how any of the parties will treat the island’s two PSE institutions.  Nor do any of the parties – other than the easily-ignorable NDP – say anything about their plans for tuition fees.  It’s all a mystery – and a shame.

Anyways, none of these platforms exactly set the world on fire.  Everyone will probably assume the Liberals will be friendliest to PSE because their leader and current Premier, Wade McLaughlin, is a former President of UPEI.  But on the basis of these platforms, it sure seems like it’s the Progressive Conservatives who actually “get” the kind of economic role that PSE institutions can play in a small province.  And if the Greens win, I’d say the leadership teams at UPEI and Holland College have some work to do. If you’re an Islander, make sure to vote tomorrow.  If you’re not: do take a minute to watch this guide to Islander English