The Chronicle of Higher Education: Canada’s Provincial Leaders Unite in Appeal for More Federal Support of Higher Education
By KAREN BIRCHARD
Ottawa
The leaders of Canada’s provinces and territories emerged from an unprecedented summit on higher education here on Friday saying the country needs a vision that will create a culture of higher learning if Canadians want to maintain their standard of living and compete internationally.
They also called on the country’s new government to spend billions of additional dollars on higher education. The premiers stressed, however, that developing a national strategy on higher education and skills training was just as critical as obtaining additional money.
“Failure is just not an option,” said Dalton McGuinty, the premier of Ontario and a co-chairman of the meeting. “Why do we Canadians insist that our hockey players are the best in the world but we settle for less with our postsecondary system?” he asked. “… We’re after nothing less than the best.”
Canadians are deluding themselves if they think the current situation can continue, said Bernard Lord, the premier of New Brunswick. “We need to realize that in the next decade and beyond, 80 percent of all new jobs created in this country will require some postsecondary training or education.”
The summit was organized as a result of a meeting last summer of the Council of the Federation — the group that represents the premiers of the 10 provinces and three territories. Education is a provincial matter, but the provinces depend on some money from the federal government for higher education.
The premiers agreed to put aside their regional differences and take a united approach with university leaders and others in asking the federal government to join them in improving higher education. They invited hundreds of people from across the country — university executives, faculty representatives, students, and business leaders — to a one-day meeting on Friday to gather their ideas on a number of issues that should be included in a pan-Canadian higher-education strategy.
“There’s a lot of intellectual firepower in this room,” Mr. McGuinty said before the delegates broke up into working groups to come up with recommendations for the premiers to help formulate that strategy.
A Quest to Recover Lost Funds and More
Everyone agreed that the premiers had to ask the federal government to restore the $2-billion dollars (U.S.) designated for higher education that it cut in 1995 from federal transfer funds to the provinces. That $2-billion figure is only a starting point, according to Mr. McGuinty, if Canada is serious about competing globally. “India and China are not focused on the 1995 standard; neither are Brazil and Russia,” he said.
“People recognize that cut caused problems in a number of different ways,” said George Soule, national chairman of the Canadian Federation of Students. “You can talk about access, you can talk about quality … but the bottom line is the federal government’s cut had drastic results.”
While Canada’s new Conservative-led government, elected in January, has promised to restore designated funds for higher education, it has not said how much money that will entail.
Getting education, business, and political leaders together for the summit was a good idea, several delegates said. “It’s about time,” said Peter J. George, president of McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario. “It’s really important in this country to get a handle on what the federal role in higher education ought to be, apart from the traditional areas of supporting research and supporting student assistance.”
There was a sense of urgency in the working groups, participants said, with senior administrators and executives stressing the need to be able to compete with other countries for faculty members, graduate students, skilled workers, and leading-edge researchers. “We’re in a global talent race,” said H. Wade MacLauchlan, the president of the University of Prince Edward Island, one of the participants.
More Than Money Is Needed, Delegates Say
Some delegates noted that it would take more than money to become the best. “If you don’t have a clear vision and benchmarks, throwing money at the problem isn’t going to do it,” said David L. Lindsay, president of the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario.
“In our group discussing research, people said it’s going to take courage from our politicians, who naturally work within a short time cycle, to invest now in something that’s going to bear fruit 10 or 15 years from now,” said Bonnie M. Patterson, president of Trent University, in Peterborough, Ontario, and chairwoman of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.
At the end of the day, there was optimism that perhaps a new way had been found to deal with the federal government. “The very fact of this national conversation will raise the issue on the national political landscape,” said Tom Traves, president of Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“In the past, it used to be like Oliver Twist,” said Ken Webb, vice president for academics at Red River College, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. “The provinces would go to Ottawa and say ‘Give us some more, please,’ or that’s how Ottawa would characterize it.” With the summit’s united approach, “saying that it’s just the provinces coming for a handout is something the federal government may not be able to do now,” he said.
He added that the premiers can say, “Look, we had hundreds of people — academic leaders, student leaders, industry leaders — from across the country come together and this is what they said is important, and we are here as 13 premiers to tell you it’s important to us.”
The summit’s other co-chairman, Premier Jean Charest of Quebec, said the timing “was perfect” because the premiers could discuss their conclusions at an informal dinner that evening with Canada’s new prime minister, Stephen Harper, telling him that higher education was now a priority item.
But none of the premiers expected an immediate answer. The prime minister had joked when they arrived that the evening would put dinner, not dollars, on the table.
Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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