Tag: Liberal Party

Party Platform Analysis: The Liberals

Two quick things at the outset.  First, this will only look at the Liberal’s Monday announcement on student financing.  Tomorrow, I’ll look at their science/innovation policy in conjunction with that of the NDP, which apparently released a similar platform in conditions of complete secrecy last week.  Second, in the interest of full disclosure: I was asked by the Liberals to comment on a draft of their platform a few weeks ago.  I did so, as I would have for any party had they

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What a Trudeau Education Policy Might Look Like

So, Justin Trudeau says one of his major policy priorities is to “put more money into education and training”.  As with all Liberal policies these days, it’s short on specifics, though whether that’s because he wants to participate in policy-making, or because he has either no clue/intention of giving Tories a target to shoot at, is unclear.  With the Liberal policy convention underway, it’s an opportune time to think about how a future Liberal government might deliver on this promise.

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Attainment Rates 101

Apparently, the new Liberal Leader has decided that one of his touchstone policies will be to raise post-secondary attainment rates in Canada from 50% to 70%.  No details yet on how he plans to achieve this, but that’s not my focus today.  Rather, I’d like to look at the underlying math of how you move an attainment rate. An attainment rate is the percentage of a given population that has completed a certain level of education.  Although Trudeau has never

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The Justin Trudeau Effect

As you know, we at HESA have a national panel of students with whom we frequently commune to check the pulse of the student body.   Usually, we use this to look at students’ educational experiences.  Occasionally, though, we also use it to look at broader social and political issues.  And today, we’d like to show you what Canadian students really think of Justin Trudeau. Why Trudeau? Well, part of the man’s narrative is that he connects with the young.  His

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You Couldn’t Make It Up

This email is G-rated, so I can’t use the full range of sexual/scatological imagery needed to describe my true feelings about the Ontario government’s Tuition Rebate announcement last week. I’ll keep it to: I told you so. To recap, the Ontario Liberals made a not-particularly sensible election promise to give a 30% rebate tuition to full-time dependent students. But at least it involved giving some new money to low-income students, even if it came at the cost of providing a

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