“Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” That is the famous phrase said by Lord Farquaad in the Shrek film that has since become a popular meme, and could very well have been what Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said to her province’s post-secondary institutions last week. In its eternal war against Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, Alberta will now examine all research grant funding coming from Ottawa in search of his alleged ideological bias. And you thought Jason Kenney’s war on experience was counterproductive.
Smith’s new government Provincial Priorities Law, which she described as a “stay out of my backyard bill,” will effectively erect a massive gate between the federal government and Alberta’s municipalities, universities, school boards, housing agencies and other provincial entities. It is modeled after the Quebec Act on the Ministère du Conseil exécutif and provides that any new, modified or renewed agreement between Ottawa and a provincial entity in Alberta must first be approved by the UCP government. For a government that likes to talk about the importance of freedom and the need to reduce bureaucracy, this is ridiculous hypocrisy.
This is all a bad joke, really. As she told the crowd in Ottawa at last week’s ManningFest (aka Canada’s Strong and Free Networks Conference), “We don’t need [Ottawa’s] policy advice on school lunch programs, pharmaceutical care, and dental care. “Just give us the money and trust that we can deliver.” But why would Ottawa trust a government whose recent record includes spending $1.3 billion on a glorified electoral bet and $80 million worth of unbranded Turkish Tylenol that the province I couldn’t even give away in the end?
AND when she says that “when we spend, it has no ideological nuance”, well, the jokes write themselves. For Smith, the almost biological need to co-opt federal liberals at every available opportunity clearly supersedes mere petty concerns like honesty or intellectual coherence.
But their willingness to inflict lasting damage on Alberta universities in the process is no laughing matter. The data on federal research grants was already available for review, and the UCP could have simply examined it to assess whether there is some nefarious ideological agenda at play. If only they had, as Andrea Dekeseredy, a doctoral student at the University of Alberta, says did, they wouldn’t discover anything of the sort. “There is simply no factual basis to suggest that Tri-Council agencies like the SSHRC favor research with a ‘liberal’ agenda,” he said. said on social media. “Whatever Danielle Smith is going to impose on the province’s post-secondary institutions, it is based solely on ideological misinformation.”
Ah, but the unintentional ironies here are just beginning. As Andrew Leach, an economist at the University of Alberta, noted, “If this were a progressive government testing grants based on their DEI bona fides or other features, Smith would be front and center as an advocate for academic freedom. But now she is angry because there are academics who point out when the evidence does not support their positions.”
It’s not just about academics and their research, either. When CBC’s David Cochrane he pointed When data on federal research grants were already available, Smith focused on a familiar complaint about alleged anti-conservative bias in the mainstream media. “If we really had balance in the universities, then we would see that we have as many conservative commentators as liberal commentators… Outside of our journalism schools, we would see as many conservative-minded journalists graduate as progressive ones. Journalists with mentality graduate. “We don’t see that, and that leaves me worried.”
This is blatant nonsense, especially since Canada’s largest national newspaper company is staunchly conservative. Postmedia newspapers, especially in Alberta, are made up almost exclusively of conservative commentators Smith regularly appointment in defense of his government’s policies. But it’s also nonsense because Smith, a proud and avowed libertarian, advocates the academic and intellectual equivalent of affirmative action. Are journalism schools now supposed to evaluate the partisan orientation and affiliation of their students and ensure that they apply a standard of ideological equality? Once again, it’s all hypocrisy and irony.
It might be tempting to dismiss this as simply more chaos and confusion sown by a government that thrives on it. But for Alberta universities, which punch far above their weight nationally, this is an existential crisis. As Lisa Young, political science professor at the University of Calgary noted in their Substack, “If the ability to obtain federal research grants is eliminated, decades of work to turn these institutions into nationally and internationally recognized research universities will disappear overnight. Just like the best researchers.”
Danielle Smith’s government has decided to stifle all aspects of Ottawa’s relationship with its province with red tape and controls, including the funding of individual post-secondary research scholarships. And you thought Jason Kenney was bad.
Young suggests that this could not be the government’s real intention. “Surely his comments were intended to please the party base and shake the ‘so-called experts’ in their ‘ivory towers’, but not to signal any real intention to move forward.”
I think this is overly optimistic and perhaps even a little naïve. Like all populists, Smith resents what higher education stands for. Universities tend to produce people who are more evidence-oriented, more educated about their society, and less susceptible to things like misinformation, conspiracy theories, and other forms of weaponized stupidity. If he continues down this path, he will turn Alberta’s top-tier research universities into third-rate intellectual backwaters. Worse yet, he could see it as a victory, as long as he can blame Justin Trudeau for it.