Archive for June, 2010

Class-action parking lawsuit goes out with a whimper

UBC students holding out hope that their parking tickets issued by the university would have the same value as Zimbabwe currency were surely disappointed last week.

The Supreme Court of Canada tossed out a class-action appeal against the University of British Columbia, meaning the university will not have to repay the approximately $4 million they’ve collected in parking fees since 1990.

Last year at this time, it looked as though those dinged by the university over the years would get payback. The BC Supreme Court ruled that UBC, which isn’t under the municipal jurisdiction of any city, didn’t have the legal right to issue tickets/fine people/tow cars as it pleased. This greatly upset UBC, for the valid reason that they would lose $4 million, but also for the petty reason that it never like being told it can’t act like a city.

Luckily for the university, the provincial government stepped in last year to amend the University Act, allowing all BC universities to have jurisdiction over parking on their campuses. A few appeals by the university later against the original court ruling, and suddenly free parking only exists on a Monopoly board once again.

After UOttawa speech was canceled prez was advised not to invite Coulter back

The president of the University of Ottawa wanted to invite Ann Coulter, the abrasive right-wing American commentator, back to campus after her scheduled speech last March was shut down amid fierce protests. But Allan Rock’s advisers talked him out of it, warning that Coulter’s appearance would only turn into another media circus, newly disclosed documents show.

“An invitation to Ms. Coulter to return to the campus would demonstrate good faith on the part of the university and an unqualified commitment to freedom of expression,” Rock wrote in an email to senior university officials on March 24. That was the day after the speech was cancelled because of raucous anti-Coulter protests outside the auditorium. But several advisers, including Elly Alboim of the consulting firm Earnscliffe Strategy Group, strongly advised against the move. “My own personal view is that, on balance, I would not re-invite her,” Alboim said in a email to Rock. “Should she decide to take you up on the offer, her appearance will become a live news event that she will cynically use to personal advantage to extend her sense of grievance and victimization and amplify her profile.  . . . It will be her win, not about your gesture.”

University records surrounding the Coulter controversy were obtained by The Canadian Press under Ontario’s freedom-of-information law. Coulter, 48, is well known in the United States not only for her social conservatism but for the deliberately provocative ways she expresses opinions. She has said she likes to stir the pot without pretending to be impartial or balanced. During her three-campus speaking tour in Canada last spring, for example, she told a Muslim student at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., that the woman should “take a camel” if she was barred from flying.

Dissension about Coulter’s pending appearance at the University of Ottawa was inflamed by an email sent by a senior university official to her on March 19. It warned that Canadian law places limits on freedom of expression, including restrictions imposed by defamation law and laws against promoting hatred toward an identifiable group. “I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind,” wrote Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost.

Coulter made the email public, claiming the university was trying to gag her — triggering an avalanche of angry invective directed at the university for its allegedly heavy-handed effort to smother free speech. The negative reaction dominated the news media, and resulted in hundreds of often vicious emails to Houle himself.

In fact, the released documents show that it was Rock — not Houle — who asked that the email be sent. Rock even dictated some of the wording. “Ann Coulter is a mean-spirited, small-minded, foul-mouthed poltroon,” Rock wrote to Houle in a March 18 email. “She is ‘the loud mouth that bespeaks the vacant mind’.”

“She is an ill-informed and deeply offensive shill for a profoundly shallow and ignorant view of the world. She is a malignancy on the body politic. She is a disgrace to the broadcasting industry and a leading example of the dramatic decline in the quality of public discourse in recent times.” At the same time, he argued, “we should not take any steps to interfere with her plans to speak next week on our campus.”

Instead, Rock advised Houle he should write to Coulter informing her of the different rules surrounding free speech in Canada compared with those in the United States. “You, Francois, as Provost, should write immediately to Coulter informing her of our domestic laws. .  . You should urge her to respect that Canadian tradition as she enjoys the privilege of her visit.” After seeing a copy of the final email to Coulter, Rock praised Houle: “Quel excellent message! Merci et felicitations. I am sure she has never been dressed down so elegantly in her life!”

The Houle-Rock email was itself prompted by a March 17 letter to Rock from Seamus Wolfe, president of the university’s student federation, who alerted the president to Coulter’s pending appearance the following week. Wolfe cited Coulter’s past comments attacking aspects of the Muslim and Jewish faiths, arguing she had a clear history of promoting hatred and should not be allowed to speak publicly on campus. “I would request that you notify Ms. Coulter that she is not welcome on our campus, and that her event will not occur on uOttawa property,” Wolfe wrote.

Province approves large increases for dentistry and MBA students, while rejecting several others

The Manitoba government has accepted proposals to permit massive tuition increases for students in dentistry and students in the master’s of business administration program, while rejecting several other proposals from the province’s universities. And, like decisions made elsewhere regarding tuition, there appears to be no concrete rationale, no underlying principle, no apparent reason whatsoever really, why significant tuition increases are permitted for some programs but not others. Or, for that matter, why some programs wouldn’t see tuition decrease.

Of 10 requests made by the University of Manitoba, and two made by the University of Winnipeg, the Council on Post-Secondary Education (COPSE), which serves as a buffer between the government and universities, recommended that four programs be permitted to increase tuition. Of those four, the province accepted only two. COPSE does not make public its reasoning for recommending or not recommending tuition increases to the government.

A proposal, recommended by COPSE, to increase tuition for the U of M’s dental hygiene diploma by 20 per cent was rejected by the department of advanced education because  of supposedly insufficient “future income” for graduates. Dental hygienists earn around $60,000 per year depending on region and experience. The province’s denial of a tuition increase for dental hygiene, on grounds that compared tuition and earnings, is curious. If such a rationale can be used to increase tuition, even though it wasn’t in this case, couldn’t it be used as a justification to lower tuition?

To draw a comparison with another program, a four year arts degree sets U of M students back by about $11,280, while the two-year dental hygiene diploma costs a little over $13,000, when accounting for the qualifying year students are required to take.  However, it is likely that if opportunity costs are taken into account, due to the extra year of study and  therefore extra year of foregone earnings, the cost of an arts degree would likely be much more expensive. So, assuming that tuition for dental hygiene is set correctly in proportion to future earnings, wouldn’t this suggest that arts students who have lower earning potential (see here, bottom of page) are paying too much and should have their costs lowered? Of course, neither the university or the province has plans to lower tuition.

The province used entirely different reasoning to explain its rejection of a proposed increase to medicine by 73 per cent: to ensure “that recruitment of additional doctors is not compromised.” Presumably, this means that students would be deterred from entering medical school if tuition was too high. Well, maybe, I suppose, if you ignore doctor’s salaries, this reasoning might have some traction.

Presently medical school tuition in Manitoba is $6,700. If the increase were permitted, tuition would have risen to $11,591, and, while the national average is $10,216, that figure is pulled down by Quebec where medical students pay about $2,400. Manitoba tuition would have stayed well below several other medical schools, like the University of British Columbia, or the University of Toronto, that charge in excess of $15,000 per year.

And even if some students were deterred from applying to medical school, the U of M received 851 applications in 2009, and admitted only 110. Though not all of those students are likely to meet admissions standards, it is overblown to suggest that the pool of acceptable applicants would disappear. To offset any declines in applications due to higher costs, the university could also open its doors to students outside Manitoba, as only six out-of-province students were admitted in 2009, in line with protectionist university policy.

The decision to deny a tuition increase to medicine becomes even more obtuse when considering the fact that tuition for dentistry students–who already pay more than $12,000 compared to medicine’s $6,700–will rise by 20 per cent. To add to the confusion, in its statement, the province provided no justification as to why dentistry students, as well as MBA students, would see their tuition rise. Are those programs somehow special?

Hindsight very similar to foresight

When the University of Toronto announced it would be shutting down for the duration of the G20 there was a wide range of opinions on the subject. Student unions felt the campus should remain open. CUPE (representing university employees) supported openness as well, though with concern for the safety of its members. The faculty association was miffed about a lack of consultation and dialogue around the measure but stopped short of disagreeing with it. And the university issued a public statement that contributed, according to some, to the impression that protesters are inherently violent and that the threat to the campus is entirely one-sided.

The G20 is now officially over and life has resumed on campus. One can hardly say the protests have ended, as one of the largest yet is occurring this very moment outside police headquarters downtown, but the likelihood that this will directly impact U of T is much smaller now that the designated protest site is gone from Queens Park north. In fact this site didn’t stay designated very long, and police swept through it in the evening on Saturday, dispersing protesters throughout the campus and forcing them northwards. This seems a good time to review the university’s decision with the benefit of hindsight. But it doesn’t seem as though anyone’s opinions have changed.

U of T’s latest announcement on the subject combines discussion of arrests on campus (see below) with general statements such as this: “Unfortunately, G20 summits have been accompanied by violence in recent years.” In the nuanced world of media phrasing, it would be a huge difference to even say that G20 conferences tend to “inspire” violence, as this would at least leave the door open for interpretation as to who’s fault that happens to be. Adam Awad, speaking on behalf of the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) representing undergraduates, says that “police actions over the weekend were heavy-handed and an affront to people’s rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.” This perspective includes the view, hardly unique to student groups, that a significant portion of the problem is caused by authorities rather than protesters.

Professor George Luste, President of the university faculty association (UTFA) concedes that “it really wasn’t viable or safe or prudent for the university to continue business as usual.” He points out, however, that the university’s decision was made hastily and without consultation outside the most senior levels of administration. As before, even if the university’s decision was necessary, more sensitivity around tone and approach, as well as details of implementation, might have gone some way to achieve greater consensus. This is the one thing just about every critic agrees upon.

Looking back on the summit, Awad offers the sort of assessment that has become common amongst groups opposed to the event. “No event warrants this level of police presence and officially-sanctioned brutality against civilians. It is a testament to the lack of integrity of the G20 summits that such a high level of security was required and that so many people were unjustly arrested.” He finds some unlikely support from Professor Luste, who is certainly expressing his individual opinion when he offers this view: “All of the riot police looked like Darth Vadars. Were I confronted with that it would have inflamed me. This sort of measure provokes a response even from people who are otherwise neutral.” He notes that intimidation tactics tend to encourage either submission or aggression in reply, leaving room for no middle ground.

CUPE 3902 was unfortunately not available for a follow up at this time, very likely still dealing with the consequences of the G20. The Graduate Students’ Union (GSU), meanwhile, has made their position abundantly clear through their actions, and theirs is a story still developing. What we know at this time is that the GSU opened their space, including a small pub and gymnasium, to temporarily host protesters coming to Toronto for the G20. On Saturday night that location was raided by police and a significant number of people were arrested. While its certainly clear the GSU stood by their resolution to keep the campus open and accessible for the G20, further details about the nature of the arrests and the reasons for them are not yet available. We’ll update as we can.

Until it wasn’t

I don’t think I have the right to use this photograph here, but I’d urge everyone to have a look at it because it’s already iconic. Here’s another really good one of the same scene. Now think again about what civil dissent has looked like on the streets of Toronto this weekend.

For complete coverage of this story click here

I wasn’t at Queen and Spadina when the lines finally closed in around an otherwise peaceful protest. It was the same thing we’ve seen again and again throughout the weekend. It was the same thing when the police cleared the “designated” protest site at Queens Park north. It was the same thing last night when I was boxed in with 80 or so demonstrators outside the Pape/Eastern detention center. It’s the same thing now–only this time they’ve boxed in an immense number of people and the media and television crews who were there to film the (non-existent) riot and the (non-existent) violence have started to notice the other story. Quite a number of them have unwittingly become part of the story, finding themselves on the other side of police lines, treated as protesters, identifying with protesters, or simply arrested no matter their press credentials.

This is a breaking story as I write this. I’ll head back out in a moment. But for those tired of the media storm and sick of the images of burning cars out there, please tune in to your televisions tomorrow, read a variety of news sources, and hear what journalists are trying to tell you; what they are already telling us via twitter in real time. The ability to peacefully assemble and to protest in Toronto has been entirely suspended. It doesn’t matter who, where, how, or what you’re saying. The new police power is essentially “leave as soon as we say so or you’re part of the problem and will be arrested.”

As you read these accounts from other journalists and media types who finally experienced what it’s like out there, please consider that Queen and Spadina was not a unique encounter–only the biggest and perhaps the final one. Police tactics and mentality of this sort do not excuse violence. Please do not imagine I am suggesting otherwise. But also, don’t allow yourself to be tricked into regarding anyone who refuses to immediately and unconditionally cooperate with every police demand issued for every reason as “violent.” Police have never had unilateral powers to order our citizens in this way and they still do not. Our rule of law has not changed.

Or maybe it has. It’s terrifying to me how many people feel this is a measured and appropriate response. Show some scary stuff on television, create an identifiable fear-inducing peril (the Black Bloc!), rope the media into cooperating with your message with constant and repeating coverage of the same material and bam, you’ve got a blank cheque. At least in America it took 9/11 to threaten their commitment to civil liberties. It’s sad how much they compromised but anyone would admit they had good cause. In Canada, for all we trumpet our civic values, all it takes is repeating video images of some police cars that were burned yesterday, and a few damaged Starbucks, and too many people are eager to be rescued on any terms at all.

Think carefully what you wish for.

Legitimate demonstrators are frustrated by both anarchists and police

In my last piece on protest at the G20 summit in Toronto some seem to have missed the most essential point I was trying to make. I was almost arrested in a confrontation with police that came within a hair’s breadth of becoming violent, yet the action I was a part of was as non-violent and as peaceful as any action on the streets could be. As I prepare to head downtown for the second day of continuing protest activity–in the genuine hope of avoiding anything violent–I’m left wondering what could possibly be done differently.

For complete coverage of this story click here

We were gathered on the sidewalk and within the bike lane of the street in a largely industrial area. Organizers were making genuine effort to keep everyone in that space and to avoid impeding traffic, even though there was little enough to impede. Even at the point where police blocked off traffic themselves we tried to stay on the sidewalk to avoid giving them any excuse. We were loud. I’ll give them that. And it was 1am. If that’s sufficient grounds for arrest then we were all guilty, and if anyone reading this genuinely believes that a bit of noise is an unfair imposition on the life of Toronto streets then so be it. But I want everyone to understand what we’re talking about here.

If protesters are not allowed to peacefully congregate and make noise without being threatened with arrest and forcibly removed from the areas where they have gathered then we are inevitably faced with the circumstances we now have. People are milling about aimlessly and then congregating in new places. What police call tactics I call the logical consequence of dispersion. You can’t tell people they are allowed to protest on the one hand and then push them off every space where they attempt to do so without creating frustration and problems. If a peaceful demonstration on a side street outside the largest concentration of police in the city (we were demonstrating directly outside the detention center) and far away from the G20 security fence isn’t going to be tolerated, then what is?

Bill Blair has repeatedly claimed that violent black bloc protesters are infiltrating peaceful demonstrations and hiding behind the “curious and the naive.” While this may at times be true it omits consideration of the fact that peaceful protesters aren’t entirely stupid and those who wish to avoid violence are reasonably good at policing themselves. But this only works when peaceful protesters can congregate and successfully establish a sense of identity and community spirit. When strangers are wandering around together no one is going to step up when violence happens. It would be dangerous and foolish. Even police are traveling in squads. But when peaceful protesters are gathered in groups with other peaceful protesters they can protect their action from outside elements. And they try really hard to do so.

I do not fault the police for their response to violence and aggression. There is no doubt in my mind that at least some of the people detained genuinely deserve it and a good number of people who aren’t presently detained deserve it too. But enough of this stuff about how protesters have “ruined it for themselves.” The fact that police response is justified in one or more occasions does not justify a citywide crackdown. And it’s insane that police have tried to characterize people who simply want to witness for themselves–rather than trust the official narrative of events–as part of the problem.

I hope nothing goes badly this evening. I really really do. But in the event that it may, I’d urge everyone to remember that even the most peaceful of protests have been repeatedly shut down by police and that they’ve already overrun the site that was officially designated for peaceful assembly. The resultant chaos is their own fault as much as anyone’s. Much as I’d prefer peace in my city to anything else right now, I can’t escape the sense that these are the occasions when our true commitment to free expression is tested. And I simply can’t accept a version of free expression that exists only until the authorities find it inconvenient. Even if someone on the other side of the city, earlier in the day, did something violent and stupid.

Plenty of blame to go around for G20 protests turning violent

To this point, my coverage of the G20 protests in Toronto has come from the perspective of its impact on the University of Toronto. I remain very concerned about that, and I’ll shortly have some reactions from figures within the university and I’ll be on campus to survey the damage. As Leslie Jermyn, Chair of CUPE local 3902 (University of Toronto) has observed, violence and damage sells and that’s what the mainstream media (meaning us) want to report on. Well, I can’t deny the premise that violence sells, because you can hardly turn on a television just now without watching footage of a burning police car on the streets of Toronto. But speaking personally, I sure as hell don’t like it. I’d rather have a slow news day and see my city remain intact, thank you very much.

For background click here.

Also see On the front lines at the G20

So what’s left to say about the protests and protesters that hasn’t been said already? The great majority of people who tried to exercise their democratic rights to free expression came with peaceful intent. Whatever messages they might have delivered have been largely lost in the chaos. No one gives a damn why anyone would choose to throw a paper box through the window of a Starbucks. No message goes along with that act–other than a general projection of violent anger. And so the people who commit such acts are directly responsible for the silencing of every other voice.

Very often those who come with a cause and with a statement to make are fond of saying that they respect a diversity of tactics in protest and expression. Notions of solidarity compel many who might otherwise voice their disapproval to suggest tolerance for this sort of thing. I share no such view. I want to go on record as saying that the violent acts in Toronto today are stupid. They achieve nothing. And most of the violence comes from people who have little thought of achieving anything anyway. This isn’t public expression in any true sense–it’s just extreme sport.

I have no way to gauge how much of the violence was committed by foreign individuals who came to Toronto for this purpose and how much is the fault of local idiots. Certainly statements from Mayor Miller (bless his optimistic little heart) suggest that we’d all prefer to blame outsiders. But it would be a mistake to ever underestimate the power of a public circus. Even if Canada has relatively few professional anarchists, the desire to be part of the event inevitably motivates a lot of followers and joiners to jump into the mix. They add to the total wreckage, even if the worst stuff is coming from a deeply committed few, and most importantly they provide cover for the genuinely violent amongst them.

I’m mad as hell at what’s been done to my city. I’ve lived in Toronto all my adult life and I recognize every location and street corner on the news even before I’m told which shop has been vandalized, which corner has the burning car, and where police are clashing with protesters now. I have plenty of blame to go around. It was stupid to host this in Toronto. Decisions were made hastily, with little communication and no consultation. Locating the “designated protest site” in the middle of U of T was asinine. Just as I predicted, protesters have been pushed back from the legislature and into the heart of the campus. Police have actually pushed right through this zone in an effort to disperse people, and while it’s understandable they’d want to do that it rather defeats the point of a designated site if people aren’t allowed to stay there. And yes, I blame the violent elements amongst the protesters and anyone who willingly provides them with safety in numbers. Nothing justifies this.

Now I’m heading downtown to see how big a mess has been made of the city I love.

-Image originally published at Macleans.ca

Stephen Hawking at the Perimeter Institute

Last Sunday an array of VIPs—Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Kevin O’Leary, the angry guy on the CBC reality show Dragons’ Den—convened in a theatre at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo to pay tribute to Stephen Hawking. The British astrophysicist sat in his wheelchair while the politicians buttered him up. Then he delivered a lecture through his speech synthesizer about his early years in physics.

The next day a bunch of physicists took a lunch break from a conference where they were discussing what happens when black holes of various sizes orbit each other. A caregiver pushed Hawking to a place at one of the cafeteria tables, where he ate some lunch and listened to the chatter and gossip among his colleagues.

There were no cameras or dignitaries at the lunch. I was there only by chance. But in some ways this was more significant than the previous day’s pomp. Hawking didn’t become the world’s most famous physicist by giving lectures, after all, but by thinking and working, and he is at Perimeter to think and work.

He is one of 10 Distinguished Research Chairs, leading international scholars who will camp out periodically at Perimeter and work with its faculty and students. He’s about halfway through his first six-week visit. On evenings and weekends he gets out to sight-see. So far he’s gone to African Lion Safari and enjoyed the ribs at Ethel’s Lounge.

Days are for discussion and calculation. Motor neuron disease slows him but doesn’t stop him. He controls his computer by twitching his cheek to control the cursor on a computer screen. It works best if you frame questions to him as a yes or a no. Neil Turok, Perimeter’s director, is an old Cambridge colleague of Hawking’s. He admitted after Sunday’s big televised show that he was impatient for the fancy business to be done “so we can get back to work.”

Of course in its own way, Sunday’s glamour was work too. A lot of taxpayer money has gone into Perimeter, about $90 million from the feds and as much from the Ontario government since 1999. That’s on top of $170 million from Research in Motion founder Mike Lazaridis. The physics that goes on there is so hard to explain (quantum foundations, anyone? Superstring theory?) that constant effort goes into underlining its importance. The man in the wheelchair is handy to that effort. After his speech, Hawking joined Turok and Lazaridis at dinner with two federal ministers, Flaherty and Gary Goodyear, both plainly starstruck.

O’Leary also became part of the sales pitch. “Imagine in 1905,” Lazaridis told the audience, “if Albert Einstein had stood in the Dragons’ Den.” Would the business geniuses have funded his crazy ideas? Not likely. But that’s what’s needed today, Lazaridis argued.

That’s the point Hawking wanted to make too, as it turned out. Sort of. Mostly he used his own life to show that you can never know what you’ll need to know. Governments spend a lot of time trying to pick winners in science. Hawking, the greatest winner of his lifetime, has never even bothered to try. He just followed his heart.

He showed up at Cambridge in 1962 hoping to study the nature of the universe with Dennis Hoyle. “Cosmology was at that time hardly recognized as a legitimate field. Yet that was where I wanted to do my research.” Hoyle was too busy so Hawking fetched up with a lesser-known prof, which came in handy when Hoyle’s defence of a steady-state universe fell into dispute soon after.

All the action was in elementary particle physics, where you could design experiments to peck away at electrons and nucleii and eke out their secrets. Cosmology was mere guesswork. Hawking quoted a colleague who considered attendees at a 1962 Warsaw conference on general relativity to be “hosts of dopes.”

Hawking’s instincts ran all the other way. Elementary particles? “Too like botany.” Hushed admiration for odd species of quarks and gluons. “Cosmology and gravitation, on the other hand, were neglected fields that were ripe for development.”

By the late 1960s, data from radio telescopes had driven a stake through Hoyle’s steady-state hypothesis. With Roger Penrose and other colleagues, Hawking was hot on the trail of proof that the universe began with a big bang. “It was a glorious feeling, having a whole field virtually to ourselves. How unlike particle physics, where people were falling over themselves to latch onto the latest idea. They still are.”

A single-minded focus on pursuing the latest trends would never have got him where he wound up. “The importance of special places and special times cannot be overstated,” Hawking said. “That happened in Berlin, Germany, in the 1920s when quantum mechanics was born, and again in Cambridge in the 1960s. It seems to me that the same ingredients are being assembled here,” at Perimeter. “I am hoping and expecting great things will happen here.”

What’s important is not that Hawking said these nice things but that he was in Waterloo to say them. And with that, it was back to work.

Officer in plain clothes tried to monitor 10 G20 protesters from the student paper’s office

If you are planning to protest the G20 meeting being held in Toronto, and you want to make plans from the Ryerson University Student Campus Centre, be warned that the RCMP may be watching you. Late Wednesday afternoon, officer Leslie Tull, who was wearing plain clothes, was using the office of student paper the Eyeopener, to observe 10 protesters in the student run building. According to the paper, Tull “refused requests to leave while asking several people in the office if they knew how many exits were in the building and if the protesters could be kicked out.” After Eyeopener staff contacted security,students’ union president Toby Whitfield had Tull escorted off campus.

University makes cuts to balance the budget, but avoids layoffs

In order to balance its budget, the University of Winnipeg is demanding all departments reduce costs by 3.5 per cent, but no layoffs are planned.

Support staff will see only a modest pay raise of 1.5 per cent, while many unionized, as well as non-unionized, staff and management have volunteered to take up to 10 furlough days, or unpaid time off. The university executive, including president Lloyd Axworthy, will see their pay frozen, a move that follows a voluntary 10 per cent pay cut last spring. How academic staff will be impacted is yet to be determined, as the university is currently in negotiations with the faculty association.

While there are no plans to layoff staff or faculty, the university is employing a strategy of “vacancy management,” meaning many job openings will go unfilled depending on the importance of the position. Manitoba universities are required by law to balance the books.

Increased pressure to stay in the black was motivated by a smaller government operating grant, which saw a two per cent increase this year, down from five per cent in previous years. The U of W’s  budget is $100 million with $49 million coming from the government. At $6800, the U of W received less than two thirds funding per student as other Manitoba universities. The University of Manitoba received approximately $10,500 per student from the province while Brandon University received about $11,700 per student.

Unlike other provinces, the Manitoba government does not factor student enrollment when calculating operating grants. According to Dan Hurley, in the external affairs office of the university president, if the U of W had received per student funding at the same level as the University of Regina ($8,500), which is of comparable size, the U of W “would have added $12 million in revenue to the University each year.”

Additionally, the U of W has an $8.6 million loan that it was recently forced to take out to comply with an order from the provincial pension commission to repay current and past pension plan holders outstanding disbursements. Servicing the loan will cost the university $530,000 annually over the next 40 years.

Tuition will rise five per cent for students, in accordance with provincial regulations.