Pacific Free Press: Alberta: Storming the Ivory Tower
In Alberta an attack is gathering force on the most fundamental principles essential to the academic viability of universities. This attack has implications that go far beyond the jurisdiction most stereotypically associated with cowboy culture and the lucrative vastness of this province’s oil and gas resources.
As demonstrated by the political genesis of Canada’s current federal government, developments in Alberta tend to lie at the origins of changes with broad ranging implications. Alberta has long been a laboratory for experimentation in right-wing techniques of political manipulation and governance. This experimentation is aimed most often at subordinating the activities of public institutions to the will and desires of the executive branches of private corporations, but especially the Texas-based energy conglomerates that dominate Calgary. Hence the stakes are large in the current drive to make Albertan universities conform to the energy industry’s preferred models of business management. If this insidious power grab succeeds here, it may soon spill over to contaminate the educational policies of other provinces and states.
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