The University of Alberta in sunnier times – why does the United Conservative Party hate the institution? (Photo: U of A).

University of Alberta President William Flanagan’s mildly worded protest Friday that nearly half of the massive $126-million cut to post-secondary education in Alberta will be borne by the University of Alberta is certain to fall on deaf ears within Premier Jason Kenney’s governing United Conservative Party. 

“In Budget 2021, the University of Alberta’s provincial grant has been decreased by a further 11 per cent, or $60.1 million, almost one-half of the total $126 million cut to the post-secondary sector in this year’s budget,” Mr. Flanagan wrote.

University of Alberta President Bill Flanagan (Photo: U of A).

“This 11-per-cent reduction, combined with cuts in 2020-21, totals a $170-million reduction in our provincial funding over the last two and a half years,” he said. “Twenty-five per cent of Alberta’s post-secondary students attend the University of Alberta, yet the province has required us to bear nearly 50 per cent of the reduction in provincial funding.” (Emphasis added.)

“This disproportionate cut is especially disappointing considering the extraordinary efforts the university has undertaken to reduce our expenditures,” he continued, illustrating the conciliatory tone that suggests Mr. Flanagan imagines he can still somehow mollify the UCP.

This is the kind of brutal effort to starve a public institution of funds that can do real lasting damage to what has up-to-now been one of the most prestigious public Canadian universities. It is clearly intended to do damage. 

At least 750 support employees are expected to be laid off and programs not part of the UCP’s petrocentric worldview are bound to be badly damaged or eliminated.

The recent UCP-appointed additions to the U of A Board of Governors need to be asked by citizens in their own community just what they have to say about this.

Albertans who believe in post-secondary education are busily crunching numbers as this is written and a complete list is not available, but some of the comparative cuts that have been calculated are interesting.

The University of Calgary will face cuts of about 6 per cent – also serious, but not quite as devastating given the cuts at the U of A.

Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

Cuts at the University of Lethbridge are in the same ballpark, 5.8 per cent. But Athabasca University – awash with case already from increased pandemic online admissions – will face a cuts of only 1 per cent, and Edmonton’s MacEwan University will see no cuts at all. 

These are preliminary numbers and presumably by later this week we will have a complete list in hand. 

It will be interesting to see what has happened to public funding for private religious universities – if it is has increased while funding to public institutions is slashed. Full information – there was no mention of the post-secondary cuts in Finance Minister Travis Toews’s Budget Speech – may help us sort out what the UCP’s strategy on this is, if any. 

To speculate on why the focus is on the U of A right now risks engaging in amateur psychologizing, but it’s pretty clear the UCP has it in for the U of A in particular.

Edmonton-Highwoods-Norwood NDP MLA Janis Irwin (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

It’s unlikely that it’s simply because the U of A lies behind the electoral Orange Wall of Edmonton, since MacEwan U does too. It may just be that the deep anti-intellectualism and resentment in UCP ranks is particularly fired up when contemplating a prestigious institution that is something more than community college or tech school training fossil fuel industry functionaries. Or maybe it’s because it refused to be bullied by Mr. Kenney into withdrawing environmentalist David Suzuki’s honorary degree in 2018.

It undoubtedly has something to do with the fact that the UCP, forced by pandemic-induced public pressure to moderate its war on public health care and dealing with Premier Kenney’s plummeting popularity with voters, saw post-secondary education as one of the few targets for which crippling cuts were still possible. 

Still, there’s almost certainly something more about this peculiar animus. Something about the U of A that particularly gets UCP shorts in a knot. 

Pandemic paranoia pandering pastor leads another tiki-torch parade

Tiki-torch-bearing COVID deniers were at it again yesterday afternoon, parading unmasked through downtown Calgary with Artur Pawlowski, Alberta’s pandemic paranoia pandering pastor, in the lead. 

Anti-mask COVID denier Artur Pawlowski, tiki torch in hand, leads his supporters through Calgary yesterday (Image: Screenshot of video).

Nazi-style torches, Trump flags and “all lives matter” signs were popular accoutrements of the crowd, which was estimated by Calgary media to number about 400, including the counter-protesters who turned up to jeer from the sidelines. 

One sign proclaimed that masks cause tooth decay – an easy mistake to make, I suppose, if you’re someone who doesn’t regularly brush your teeth in fluoride-free Calgary. 

Meanwhile, in Edmonton overnight Friday, a local tiki-torch type spray-painted “Antifa liar” on the window of Edmonton-Highwoods-Norwood MLA Janis Irwin, a New Democrat. 

“Good morning to everyone who continues to denounce racism and white supremacy, no matter how angry or uncomfortable it makes some people,” Ms. Irwin tweeted when the mess was discovered. 

“I condemn the vandalism of MLA Janis Irwin’s office today,” tweeted Premier Jason Kenney, huffing darkly, “many other MLA offices have been vandalized in recent months.”

They have? Surely Mr. Kenney wasn’t referring to the sidewalk chalk drawings that sometimes appear in front of UCP constituency offices to protest his government’s policies? 

It’s embarrassing that Alberta’s right wing – loony anti-maskers and premiers alike – seem to get all their messaging inspiration from Donald Trump’s supporters south of the 49th Parallel as the MAGAvirus continues to spread into Alberta.

Janice Sarich, former Progressive Conservative MLA, dead at 62

Janice Sarich, two-term Progressive Conservative MLA for Edmonton-Decore, died Friday just weeks after a cancer diagnosis. She was 62.

Former Progressive Conservative MLA Janice Sarich (Photo: Janice Sarich, Creative Commons).

Ms. Sarich was appointed to cabinet as Parliamentary Assistant to the minister of education in 2008 by premier Ed Stelmach. Between 2001 and 2006 she served two terms as a trustee on the Edmonton Catholic School District. 

Although a Conservative, Ms. Sarich was capable of reaching across the political aisle, joining the progressive group Public Interest Alberta in 2004 and sticking with it even as she ran for the PCs. “It’s all about civic engagement,” she told the Edmonton Journal in 2007. “It’s just a great dialogue, a very open organization.” She was a member of PIA’s Democracy Task Force, which examined potential areas of democratic reform in Alberta.

Ms. Sarich held bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from the University of Alberta. She was appointed to the board of MacEwan University in 2019.

Join the Conversation

32 Comments

      1. Jerry: This attack on the University of Alberta is consistent with the behavior of the Cons over the past years and goes beyond specific items like the Parkland Institute. The Cons systematic trashing of scientific libraries during their time in Ottawa cannot be seen as just near-sighted policy. It has to be recognized for what it is: the active sabotage of our publicly financed research and development capacity by people who do not value or understand knowledge in the public interest. The trashing of the U of A is just more of the same from the same bunch.

        Not that evidence matters, but here are a few links to support my contention:
        https://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/30/Harper-Library-Closures/
        https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/health-canada-library-changes-leave-scientists-scrambling-1.2499217
        https://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/23/Canadian-Science-Libraries/
        https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/capt-trevor-greene/science-cuts-canada_b_4534729.html
        https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/vanishing-canada-why-were-all-losers-in-ottawas-war-on-data/
        http://www.cwbafacts.ca/2012/04/trashing-cereal-research-center-puts-gm-wheat-on-the-table/

        Incidentally the last link from 2012 is proving to be very prescient as the Feds continue the process.

        In my experience these Cons have an inflated sense of their own intelligence and they resent those who have worked to develop real expertise in a subject. Their belligerent “everyone has a right to their own opinion” is indicative of their mind-set. Over the 40 or so years I have grown grain, forage, and cattle I have been enriched by the generous help and sharing of expertise by Agriculture Canada research scientists from across the prairies. I cannot adequately express my utter contempt for the Cons who have done this knowledge massacre and are now continuing to do so at my old Alma Mater from which I actually graduated so many decades ago.
        If this was just about privatization they would be preserving the assets they wish to get rid of. Instead, they are destroying them.

  1. Regarding the vandalism at Janis Irwin’s office and Jason Kenney’s claim that many other MLAs have experienced vandalism:

    The CBC story reporting the vandalism reached out to the premier’s office for more information on other vandalism incidents, but were told to contact the Legislative Assembly. As CBC dug a bit deeper, a spokesperson for Justice Minister Kaycee Madu reported that after a couple of protests they spent ‘hundreds of dollars’ each time to have some adhesive left on windows cleaned up.

    This is speculation on my part, but I can’t help but wonder if this ‘adhesive’ was residue from tape used to stick some kind of poster to the window. If so, a $10 can of acetone at Canadian Tire would have been all that was necessary to remove it, and paying someone, no doubt a UCP supporter, ‘hundreds of dollars’ to remove it doesn’t really sound like something Mr. Madu should be admitting to, especially doing it twice. Did no one in his office watch the ‘hundreds of dollars’ worker and think ‘I can do that.’

    By comparison, one of Ms. Irwin’s constituents cleaned the graffiti off, presumably for free.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ndp-mla-office-vandalized-antifa-1.5930856

  2. I doubt the U of C’s School of Public Policy irritates the Kenney Klowns anywhere near as much as the U of A’s Parkland Institute. Kenney’s major backers include a lot of oil guys in Calgary–the ones who got rich selling oil companies to each other in the Klein years. They’re smart enough to know they need engineers to find and extract oil. But they might NOT be smart enough to know engineers come from the U of A, too.

    I think there’s a simpler explanation. The U of A pissed off Jason Kenney. He holds grudges. This is payback. If you have a better idea, let’s hear it.

  3. Another reason that they might have it in for the University of Alberta is that the Parkland Institute lives in the U of A even though it is an independent entity. Ever since its creation in 1996 it has been one of the only institutions that offered an alternative to the right-wing thinking that came out of the Fraser Institute, C.D. Howe Institute, and the School of Public Policy. The University of Calgary had the Calgary School which had the other Flanagan teaching there and it is has had a very friendly relationship with the oil industry and the Conservative governments past and present. Unfortunately all of the post-secondary institutions are full of top heavy administration that is very costly. The wages and salaries of university presidents are obscene and the last two presidents of the Universities of Calgary and Alberta were amongst the highest. The people who sit on those boards are full of corporate hacks with ties to the Conservatives even though there might be incidents where a university shows its independence like the U of A did.

  4. I think Premier Randy’s motivation for his War On Higher Education is actually quite simple: price out university for the plebes, leaving them with little option but to go to welding school (or wherever) which will inevitably lead to a life of service to Big Oil & Gas. Sure, the kids of Randy’s rich buddies will be among the few that are able to afford post secondary so they can get educated and then bugger off to greener pastures (as in not Alberta), but then again it was never in the cards that those rich kids would end up as oilfield grunts to begin with.

    You might think that most societies would put a large value on a highly educated work force (and retaining them) but doctors, lawyers and scientists don’t suit up in coveralls to work in the patch. And that doesn’t fit Randy’s fairy tale vision of Alberta, nor advance his deluded goal to Make Oil & Gas Great Again.

  5. Puzzling indeed as to why Alberta universities don’t take a more confrontational approach to the UCP. It merely promotes the illusion that a rapprochement can be reached with an opponent that wants to undo the essential relationship between academe and society. Given that, what do universiities have to lose?

  6. Just maybe the UofA does not have the equivalent “school of private enterprise” that the UofC does, so unless and until it does have a “school” for privatization and fossil fuel advocacy, the cuts will continue apace. So incredibly STUPID, but what can we do until some time in 2023? More letters, more [illegal] demonstrations – seems like beating head against a brick wall. There is no sense in this bunch. Are they hearing from their corporate masters that this is what needs to happen? Are they hearing from their voters, who are surely benefactors of what the UCP is doing {can that really be true?}, that this is what should be happening? Are they really into getting people to stop ‘thinking’ unless it is the kind of mindset to which they are ingrained? Yes, seems so!!
    Like so many in the world now, from Davos to most legislatures, we are seemingly trapped in a world of “pretend”; a world that persists in denials of way too many types.

  7. It’s amazing and historic leadership that these academic elites will finally have to make their own living in our free market economy like the rest of us. And it’s time that we stop funding students entirely. These are great first steps towards greater freedom and liberty in Alberta.

    1. You are certainly entitled to your opinion but I am curious how you think this would be any kind of benefit whatsoever to society? Other than make owners of private educational facilities filthy rich, that is. As well, when you say “it’s time that we stop funding students entirely” are you referring to post-secondary only or are you lumping K-12 students in there as well?

    2. When the “academic elites” get a $1.5 Billion grant along with $6 Billion in loan guarantees, and when student support matches the $260 Billion unfunded liability for orphan well cleanup, we’ll be living in the Alberta version of a “free market economy”.

  8. Readers should not underestimate the chaos these cuts have inflicted on the UA. If you have children entering University age over the next few years, you should seriously consider sending them out of the Province: SFU, Saskatoon, UNBC, UBC Okanagon would all be reasonable and affordable choices.

    As for faculty, I’d imagine anyone who can is looking for a way out. I do not see how the institution can recover from this. The President and BoG should all have resigned, in my opinion. If the Government insists on gutting the institution, or turning into a tech school, they should wear it.

  9. Rumor has it that one of the Horner clan has close ties to a former friend of the premier. It wouldn’t do to bite the hand of a friend of the family?

  10. I have many fond memories of my three years at U of A in the late ’70s, so it pains me to see this petty, paranoid revenge-seeking unleashed on a good place.

    For students seeking an alternative in a friendlier setting, let me put in a plug for UNBC. The climate is no worse, and they’ll enjoy much smaller classes.

  11. Everyone has it wrong re the post-secondary sector – it’s like every other sector in the province, it will be up for sale to the highest bidder once the system is dismantled and broken. Don’t ever kid yourself, the appointees to the Boards of the post-secs were made solely to ensure that whatever missive is sent down from the Premier via the Minister will be passed without issue. Staff members who upheld the integrity of the universities have been let go or forced out of their jobs, which will make that transition even easier once the orders come in from the Minister. All the consultants were hired to do was a smoke screen to support a business plan that was already baked in 2019. I can’t imagine the universities that received larger cuts weren’t playing ball properly, but the issue is even bigger – it isn’t just a cut in the budget, it is going to be a cut and then metrics, and then expense control, and then all of the saleable items in the unis will be sold. It’s gross, but I guess Albertans deserve it.

    1. Hmmm…Alex, I think you’ve made a good point. I hadn’t considered how anti-intellectual bias and pro-privatization bias would interact. I’m pretty sure the Parkland Institute–affiliated with the U of A, and NOT a fan of Tory policies–was an obvious target for Kenney’s ire, but the added incentive of “cut, tenderize, sear and serve hot” would appeal to neo-Republicans like Kenney.

      The only hope we have is that, with enough voices saying, “What were you THINKING?” Kenney et al might back off a bit. It set back the coal-mining stupidity, at least for the moment. (March 29th, the public “consultations” start. How they structure that will tell us what Kenney Inc. intends to do to our province.) The voices will have to belong to rich, powerful businessmen in this case.

      2023 can’t come soon enough.

  12. I suspect the reasons the UCP has it in for the U of A are all the one you mentioned. However, being unfair under the guise of cuts, just makes the UCP look even more petty. Suspicion about arbitrariness will only further diminish support for their fiscal agenda.

    Also, trying to destroy the U of A doesn’t help our economy, it hurts it. Yes, it damages Edmonton more than elsewhere, but when you attack the preeminent post secondary school in the province, it actually diminishes the whole province. I suppose it only confirms how some outside of the province see us, as a place that got lucky on resources, but can’t or won’t adapt to a changing world.

    I don’t know where Kenney dug up that line about all all those other MLA’s offices being vandalized. Funny, hadn’t seen anything else in the news until now. I guess he likes playing the martyr whether that is the case or not. I suppose this also allows him to avoid taking any responsibility for the behavior of his supporters – as according to his story, there are bad people on all sides. However, I think his imaginary martyrdom only further diminishes his own credibility.

  13. The UCP is making things so unaffordable and miserable for Albertans. It’s par for the course, unfortunately.

  14. UCP has it out for the U of A?

    Let’s check the facts …

    U of A is not in Calgary.

    U of A is big.

    U of A doesn’t get heavy O & G sponsorship. (Not in Calgary)

    I guess that covers it.

  15. This death by a thousand cuts and the use of a meat clever in U of A’s case is shortsighted and petty at best . If we damage the post secondary institutes it will force the younger folks to head to better pastures in places like BC for schooling. We end up with a brain drain of young talent as they probably will not return and BC benefits with a more educated workforce.

  16. welcome to the moronic inferno that is alburd’uh under the thumb of Kenney/UCP leadership
    what planet do these people come from / live on ?

    for example (and there are many)
    funding to retrain workers who have little or no hope of going back to their old jobs ? . . . nope
    retrain workers with the input, cooperation and fiscal sponsorship of companies that need specifically skilled workers ? . . . nope
    jump on the opportunities in the new world of energy, fintech etc ? . . . nope
    beef up post secondary education to nurture and help towards achieving these goals ? . . . nope

    turn up the dial on moronic, don’t actually work republican policies ? . . . yup
    starve public services etc of funding so they can’t be properly run then say
    see
    that doesn’t work
    guess we’ll have to privatize . . .

    welcome to the school of
    “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”
    Grover Norquist

    please lord have mercy and the NDP win the next election
    even if they are kinda left of centre AB Progressive Conservative in their approach
    they don’t call it Oilburda for nothing
    NDP does have to make themselves palatable to a wide assortment of Albertans including the many (maybe even the majority) that are hard of thinking

    siGh !

    still not holding my breath

    Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
    H.L. Mencken

  17. I keep coming back to the UCP’s utopian/dystopian vision of Alberta, if they have one, and if they can think more than one day ahead, which is questionable, given their failure to plan for the vaccine rollout and countless other follies, too numerous to mention here.

    The UCP wants an uneducated populace, living in the past. They want oil and gas workers only, and men only in their lopsided Paradise (or is that pair-a-dice?) Lost. They resent places like the University of Alberta, with its international award-winning virology research. Black Swan events like the Black Death opened the door to changes in the feudal economy. The only kind of change the UCP wants is to restore serfdom to its rightful place in the post-pandemic world. Allow the peasants to own one used car per family, but other than that, shell out all their earnings to insurers and health care providers and private schools for their undeserving children (remembering that women and children really serve no purpose in this nouveau h*ll, other than replenishing the Old Stock). And make darn sure that any and all tax revenue reverts back to corporations (mainly oil and gas), which will not pay the rent, nor pay their share.

    The UCP will install cronies at all levels of government, civil service, and boards of public institutions. One day we will wake up to a Brave New World with Kenney at the helm, and all public good privatized. It will be too late to do anything about it, if it isn’t already. Alberta is going, going, gone. The tiki torches are lit. Soon crosses will burn on lawns. The nightmare is just beginning. Fresh h*ll every day.

    Oakville took out the trash. This is not my Alberta.

  18. It is hard to understand the motivation behind the cuts, especially with the strange way the AB government actually shows Post-secondary budgets (see Alex Usher’s blog on this), and the lack of transparency in University budgets themselves.

    The three Universities with the most research seem to have been hit hardest (Lethbridge, Calgary and Alberta). I wonder if this is because the UCP feels that they are the ones with the most overpaid public employees in them, and this is their way of playing hardball. I can imagine that last year’s arbitration decision to award a 1.7 % increase to U of C Academic staff really annoyed the government. Now the two major justifications for that award were 1) U of A salaries are substantially higher (with no particular justification in terms of either status or costs of living) and 2) U of C salaries (median, non medical/dental) rank among the very lowest in the U15 (large research Universities -basically all the big medical ones plus Waterloo) group. If the government wants cuts to compensation, and clearly it does, cutting funding is one way to do it, forcing the hand of the board of governors in collective bargaining. And since there is more room to cut at U of A since they are paid better…….

    I am sure there are also political considerations. U of C is in Labour Minister Jason Copping’s riding (Calgary Varsity), which he won only narrowly. Education minister Nikolaides’s riding is nearby. And Calgary is going to be the big battleground in the next election.

    Although the McKinnon report complained about the cost of PSE per student, nowhere does it say that faculty members are overpaid (the arbitrator also mentioned this in his decision). However, I am sure the notion of overpaid fat-cat profs persists in the UCP, and the annual sunshine list does little to dispel this (since it reports total income paid through University accounts, not just rank salary). Plus there are the pensions, looked at enviously by the grassroots right wing UCP base. It might be no coincidence that Lethbridge, Alberta and Calgary all belong (along with the Banff centre, but not, I think, Athabasca and certainly not Macewan and Mount Royal) to the Universities Academic Pension Plan. Its terms are indeed fairly generous (though not as good as they were up until about 1992), but members of the public probably don’t take into account that many Profs don’t get their first faculty position until well into their 30s, and sometimes 40s, so the opportunity to get to the 35 years of service needed for the maximum pension might be quite limited.

    The elephant in the room is that Alberta is not out of line with other provinces in terms of expenditures per student for Universities, but our PSE spending overall per student is much higher. Why ? Luxury colleges all over the place. Some of these are truly excellent, but the smaller rural ones are expensive.

    Again, Alex Usher’s HESA often shows some of these statistics, and I have no reason to disbelieve them – they often come from Statscan. The U15 salary comparison comes from a recent post related to the insolvency of Laurentian University, where faculty seem to be very highly paid given both the cost of living in Sudbury and the status of the University.

    Full disclosure: I am a faculty member at University of Calgary.

    1. Michael: your observations are cogent, based on facts, and logical. But you have to apply Occam’s razor to your question about the UCP’s motivation. The simple answer, which most completely explains and puts into context their actions, is that they hate you and your fellow academics because of your diligence and attention to evidence and detail. The UCP especially hate academics and others who use evidence to call into question their goals, policies, and opinions.

  19. My first three degrees are from U of A. That being said, of all AB post-secondaries, it has the greatest ability to raise revenue through research grants and higher tuition. Given the lack of revenue options elsewhere in the government’s three big budget items (healthcare, K-12, post-secondary), calling on U of A to replace government funding with something else has the most potential.

    1. Sorry Doug: what those outside sources of funding have the greatest potential to do is undermine the credibility of the research coming out of the university. To pick an obvious example, do you really think academics working in Monsanto sponsored projects have any credibility at all with either the public or independent academics? The strength of publicly funded research is it can put the public interest first, not the interests of its private sponsors.

      As to higher tuition fees: all you need to do is look at the inbred fools coming out of the British universities to see where that leads. Intelligence is equally distributed in the population independently of income. High tuition and the indentured slavery of student loans filter out the financially poor and the intelligent.

    2. That’s a phrase you don’t hear that often. Where did you take your next three degrees?

  20. The UCP has little respect for research-intensive universities. This is why both the UofA and the UofC are being visited with large, multi-year, grant cuts.

    The clear reason why the UofA’s cuts are larger than those at the UofC is that there’s much more fat to trim at the UofA – compensation is much higher, and the student to faculty ratio is much lower.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.