Alberta's Accidental Policy to Destroy Research and Innovation in Higher Education
Some Notes About Bill 18
This post is focused on a development in Alberta. What happens in Alberta politics is very influenced by what happens in Texas, Arizona, Hungary and other right-wing states. When you read this from outside Alberta think: this could happen here.
One conception of the university is that it is a collaborative, collective enterprise in which scholars and researchers explore ideas, connections, thoughts and understanding so as to push the boundaries of knowledge and possibilities. The core requirement of this is that university professors and researchers must be free to explore wherever their ideas take them. This is what enabled Einstein and Stephen Hawking to discover so many new aspects of physics. It is also what enabled medical researchers to discover, in record time, a vaccine for COVID-19 that saved millions of lives. In economics, it what enabled William Nordhaus to understand that carbon pricing was both good for the planet and the economy – he won a Nobel prize for his pioneering work.
A different and politically popular (with right-wing dictators and wing nuts) is the idea that a university is a feed for the needs of industry’s insatiable desire for high-quality people (HQP) and to engage in research which solves problems defined by industry or government. Basic research is for the birds. What is needed is research that solves “real problems” (sic) in real-time. Rather than academic freedom, the key to this approach are non-disclosure agreements, intellectual property rights and commercialization.
Universities are their own worst enemies. Fearful of more budget cuts, they pursue both models of what a university is, depending on the audience. To make matters worse, they make ridiculous claims about “commercialization” and “driving the next economy” – most of which (based on evidence) are nonsense. Universities, especially in Canada, are outstanding inventions and very poor at innovation for commercial value. A great many of the patents they hold produce no return on investment at all.
Then we have politicians who want to “shape” what a university is and what it does. In Turkey, Erdogan shut down Galen universities because they were breeding grounds for opposition to his dictatorial regime. In Hungary, Viktor Oban shut down a university created by multibillionaire George Soros because he could. In the US, Texas is requiring universities to end their initiatives regarding equity and inclusion – acting as copycats of Florida. In Florida, Ron de Santis is defining what can and cannot be taught – he bans subjects (gender identity) and books (To Kill a Mocking Bird). Overall, despite a rise in the 1980s, academic freedom is back to where it was in the early 1970s – constrained. Many colleagues are self-censoring and are frankly feeling oppressed.
In Alberta, our beloved and deceitful premier has decided to “play in this space.” Bill 18 is intended to stop the Government of Canada doing what it has been doing for decades – engaging in support for innovative and quality research through the granting councils. These councils – there are three of them – use peer review and thorough academic assessments to determine which researchers and which teams will receive funds. There are other Federal funds at play here too – Canada Research Chairs, funds through the cluster organizations like Genome Canada, NGen (advanced manufacturing). What Mrs. Smith wants to do is require all applications for Federal funding to receive approval from the province before they submit and if they are successful, to report both to their funder and the province.
This has always been the case when matching funds are involved. A project that requires 50:50 funding from SHERC and Alberta will require approval from an Assistant Deputy Minister (a Deputy Minister if it is a large budget, and a Minister if it is super-large). But this is different. Mrs. Smith wants a right to say yes or no to ALL proposals as a political act.
She has no clue what this will do to Alberta’s research institutions – the four research universities and NAIT and SAIT in particular, but also to applied research in our polytechnics in Red Deer and Grande Prairie and Keyano (which will be a polytechnic one afternoon soon).
· It will scare away smart people who cherish their academic freedom. It is already difficult to recruit to tenure track positions in institutions whose budgets have been cut so dramatically. Adding a layer of significant bureaucracy and (more importantly) ideological political interference makes Alberta more like a GOP Red State on steroids. Smart people, especially those working on the future of energy, COVID and the next pandemic, political sensitivity, or identity will also start to leave.
· It will make it more difficult for granting councils to assess Alberta applications, given that they now have to pass some kinds of “smell test” Ministers might apply. Imagine if I were a researcher looking at how the Government of Alberta mishandled COVID and applied for a grant…(say no more). Or if the application was about the potential of green energy for Alberta and the need to phase out carbon fuels and introduce tougher forms of carbon pricing than we already have.
· It will make it more difficult for our research institutions to sustain their research brand and reputation on which they depend for some of their funding.
· It will make it more difficult to attract quality graduate students – the bedrock of this work – who will be fearful that a project with many phases may not secure funding beyond Phase 1 if their “results and findings” are not liked by some Minister (and lets just acknowledge that a few Ministers are not exactly smart).
· It will make some of the work of colleges more difficult. They secure funding not just for research but skill-based programs from ESDC and the Future Skills Council, as well as funding from Indigenous Services Canada and Health Canada to support certain activities.
This, I suspect, is what is known as an “accidental policy.” The real target of Bill 18 are the Municipal governments who, in law, are simply creatures of the Province and can be created or suspended at will. They have been collecting huge cheques from the Government of Canada for housing, transport, green energy and other initiatives, going “around” the province to do so. Mrs. Smith wanted the province to agree to those funds. Fair enough. It is her bailiwick. But the drafters of Bill 18 included all money coming to a government agency (like a university or college) and now she is stuck with it. Rather than being smart and offering an exemption for all applications to the granting councils and related bodies, Mrs. Smith dumbed down on her Bill 18 and said that she did intend that these institutions be included. To make matters worse, she went onto mention research she didn’t like and made a suggestion that researchers chose not to look at some things that matter, like carbon pricing. In doing so she revealed her total ignorance of the way research works and her total inability to comprehend that carbon pricing (her big example) has been extensively studied and analyzed, including by some smart people here in Alberta (not to mention a Nobel prize winner - William Nordhaus).
Bill 18 needs amending now. Her Advanced Education Minister, Rajan Sawhney, needs to reassure researchers that she has their back and is exempting all of the research institutions and researchers from Bill 18. They need to do this now, since the clock is ticking on applications and research collaborations – end of term (now) is when many colleagues start the process of writing grant applications and attending conferences and gatherings to develop collaborative proposals. This needs fixing quickly.
If Mrs. Smith were smart – and we know she is not – she would admit that this adventure was a mistake and apologize not just to researchers and their institutions, but to all Albertans who, after all, benefit from the research investments made by our national Government.