Tag: Platforms

2019 PSE Platforms-Conservative Party

The Conservative Party is sometimes unfairly maligned when it comes to higher education.  Virtually no one, for instance, gave the Harper government credit for the quite stunning amount of money it spent on research during its first two terms, preferring to focus instead on the slow erosion of funding during its third term (during which time, it should be recalled, the party was trying to bring down an enormous post-financial crisis deficit).  Or the fact that it chose not to just

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2019 PSE Platforms-NDP

One of the tricky things about evaluating platforms in this election is that there is no way for anyone to know when a party is “done” with its announcements. They all get the PBO to cost bits of their platform, and that’s great. They can even, as the NDP has done, release a set of “commitments” (uncosted) and a vague “fiscal plan” (which basically says the party is going to stick to the Liberal formula of decreasing the deficit over

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2019 PSE Platforms – Liberal Party

The governing Liberal Party released its entire platform all at once on Sunday (the costing document is here), and there are a bunch of interesting things pertaining to PSE.  Let’s dig in. (For those of you looking for extra thoroughness, you may want to review my assessment of the Liberal record over the past four years first.  Finished?  Ok, onwards.) Without question, the most disappointing thing in the platform is the scientific research plank.  It consists of a $30 million commitment for pediatric cancer research

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2019 PSE Platforms – Green Party

Today’s blog will be the first in a series looking at the various federal party election platforms on post-secondary education, skills, and science. First up: the Green Party. I opened this year’s Green Party Manifesto with some trepidation because, well, the 2015 platform was such a dumpster fire. And, wouldn’t you know it, the 2019 platform is also a dumpster fire. Quelle coincidence! This is not merely an issue of bad policy; it’s about policy incoherence. Prior to the writ,

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Canadian PSE History Through Election Manifestos: the 2010s and a Historical Perspective

This is part five of a five-part series.  Just showing up now?  See Monday (1949-62), Tuesday (63-74), Wednesday (79-93) and Thursday (1997-2011) to catch up. I dwell much on the 2015 election today.  Most of you probably remember it reasonably well, and if you don’t, then you can click on these links to see details on that year’s Liberal platform, Conservative platform, NDP platform, Green platform, the various science platforms and an overall analysis here.    What was maybe a bit surprising in historical perspective about the 2015

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