Morning everyone.  Ready for another term of being trampled by a goddamn virus?  Me neither.  Still.  Onwards.

Towards the middle of December, the Prime Minster’s Office released mandate letters for all cabinet ministers.  Yes, a mere three months after voting day, a meager 18 weeks after Parliament was dissolved for an incredibly urgent election, “the most consequential election of our lives”, the Prime Minster finally figured out what it was that he wanted his cabinet to do.   Better late than never, I suppose. 

There are three letters which touch most closely on the topics this blog cares about: the ones to Marc Miller (Indigenous Services), Carla Qualtrough (Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion), and François-Phillippe Champagne (Innovation, Science and Industry)

Let’s start with the bad news: there is diddly-squat in the Indigenous Services letter about post-secondary education.  And there should be: back in the 2019 budget, the government committed to engage with Indigenous peoples on the development of long-term Indigenous-led post-secondary education models: that is, to funding Indigenous post-secondary institutions as well as Indigenous students.  Work to that effect has been going for two and a half years, and delivering on this promise is something that logically should get done in this Parliament, and yet there is nothing in this letter (and neither is it present in the Crown-Indigenous Relations letter).  This absence does not mean the government isn’t going to work on this problem: it does mean that it doesn’t consider this promise to be one of its top dozen or so priorities within this portfolio.  Not good.

Now over to the letter for Carla Qualtrough,  Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion (although, for reasons only decipherable in Ottawa, the Ministry she heads is still called “Employment and Social Development Canada” because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).  The letter diligently re-listed the commitments made in the manifesto, including:

• raising the student loan repayment threshold to $50,000.  this one is going to cost a fortune in the long run – something which was carefully disguised by only presenting the costs for the first five years – and when the government finally gets around to pruning unnecessary subsidies, I’m pretty sure this one is going to get pared back to $40K or even lower.  As it stands right now, the median college graduate won’t be paying anything at all for three or four years after graduation and many graduates will never pay back their loans.  This is not going to look good after awhile.
• giving parents a complete holiday on repayment while they have children under the age of 5.
• removing all interest rates from student loans (this might seem cheap and harmless if loan rates stay at historic lows, but if they ever rise again, this is going to be a very expensive subsidy which confers zero benefit with respect to access.)
• increasing student debt relief for doctors and nurses who work in rural/remote areas.

Intriguingly, however, they leave open the question about what will happen to student grants.  Until 2019, those were $3,000 per year.  In election 2019, the Liberals promised to bump them up to $4,200 but never enshrined this in either legislation or regulation.  During COVID, the government doubled this figure to $6,000, eventually extending this grant out to mid-2023.  The letter gives no guide as to what should happen after that date.  Revert to $3000?  Slip back to the initial promise of $4200?  Keep it at the current high level?  We have no idea, and the letter sheds no light on the issue.

My only comment on this issue is that it would be an absolute travesty if grants (which actually are proven to somewhat improve access) get reduced while interest subsidies and subsidies for borrowers in repayment (which have ZERO proven impact on access) are maintained.  

Now to the final mandate letter, that for François-Philippe Champagne, the Innovation, Science and Industry Minister (who, again, for reasons which only makes sense in Ottawa, runs the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development).  As with the ESDC letter, there is a lot of stuff pulled verbatim from the election manifesto – 1,000 more Canada Research Chairs, money for university/college commercialization efforts, creating a new fund for (eyeroll) Moonshot research on vaccines.  All expected, nothing new here.  There is also an effectively meaningless commitment to “engage with provinces and seek feedback from universities, colleges, experts, lenders and other post-secondary education stakeholders to explore ways to better protect the public interest functions of public post-secondary educational institutions in insolvency and restructuring situations”, which is just a cost-/commitment-free way of saying “Laurentian’s use of CCAA is bad”.

But look, here’s my favourite bit.  Remember when the Liberals committed themselves to spending $2 billion to “establish a Canada Advanced Research Projects Agency (CARPA) as a public-private bridge for research that helps develop and maintain Canadian led technology and capabilities in high-impact areas”?  Meaningless gobble-de-gook, a solution which provided an answer to no actual real-world policy problem, and frankly impossible anyway in an Ottawa context (as I have explained in detail here and here).  Well, it turns out that the promise to make this create CARPA is still in there, but it now reads *very* differently.  The directive to the Minister now reads:

Develop a new approach to support high-risk/high-reward transformative research and development to unleash bold new research ideas, drive technological breakthroughs, protect Canada’s competitive advantage and help Canadian companies grow and create highly skilled jobs. In moving forward with a uniquely Canadian approach modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), work with the Minister of Health to develop a plan to modernize the federal research funding ecosystem to maximize the impact of investments in both research excellence and downstream innovation, with a particular focus on the relationships among the federal research granting agencies and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

If you’re confused by this, you are not alone.  The entire point of a DARPA, such as it is, is to stimulate private sector innovation and at all costs avoid the bureaucracy and groupthink that dominate organizations like granting councils.  Yet now, a CARPA is supposed to be dependent on a) working with the Minister of Health (?), revamping the councils and building on existing CFI Programs?  It is very hard to tell if this was written by someone who is unaware of S&T policy, or if the CARPA idea is being deliberately killed off by being saddled with a set of ludicrous and irreconcilable conditions.

I will be magnanimous and suggest it is probably the latter.  And, since I don’t think anyone else in Ottawa spoke up about how gratuitously awful the CARPA idea was, I think I might be justified in claiming this as a personal victory.  Score one for snark-blogging as a means of affecting public policy.

And on that positive note: let’s go start this semester.  Bon courage à tous.