MARK MACDONALD
BRITISH COLUMBIA – Stop the madness.
Some of the federal government’s latest moves have been – and will be – absolutely devastating to two important sectors of the economy: Universities and community newspapers.
Queen’s University is arguably the crown in Canada’s university fraternity. In an article in the Globe and Mail, Provost Dr. Matthew Evans says the Kingston, Ontario icon is posting record deficits – $48 million this year, and over $50 million the previous year.
While it may be politically expedient for the Ontario provincial government to freeze tuition rates to capture the votes of students, that makes it difficult to keep up with rising costs, including staff salaries.
Dr. Evans put it bluntly in the Globe & Mail: “This is very, very serious. Queen’s could cease to exist if we don’t deal with this issue.”
Then this: the Liberal/NDP alliance is threatening to limit the number of international students at universities across the country. This would be the death knell for some institutions, except they’ll just have to go back to the government, cap-in-hand, for more tax dollars.
International students have been a major fund stream for post-secondary schools for many years now, as students from other countries pay significantly higher tuition rates than Canadians. Universities and colleges have come to depend on that extra revenue to meet budgets and fund future growth.
It’s the same model that is used successfully in the United States, as out-of-state students pay more to attend State universities in other states. That is fair, because their families and perhaps themselves have been contributing to the schools through taxes. People can attend state universities from other states or countries, but they pay different, higher rates.
Then there’s the media.
It’s no secret that the federal government has been subsidizing Canadian media since the pandemic, much to the detriment of the industry, really. By receiving regular deposits from the government, media members know it’s risky to bite the hand that is literally feeding them. That is not good for democracy, as part of the expected mandate of media is to hold governments accountable for their actions. They can scarcely do that if the government is a major customer.
Subsidies are already recognition that Canadian media is in trouble. But the federal government’s Bill C-18, otherwise known as the Online News Act, is an act of slow strangulation that has resulted in unintended consequences.
Newspapers in Fort St. John, operated by Glacier Media, and Kamloops This Week, by Aberdeen Publishing, recently closed, leaving both cities without newspapers. It was announced earlier this year that Black Press has been placed in creditor protection.
How did C-18 do such damage? By disallowing links to online stories, the government has cut off one of the most needed revenue streams available for newspapers wanting to expand their online presence and shift from reliance on printed publications.
An article announcing This Week’s closure stated that “website views have fallen by half as a result of Meta and Google blocking news links due to the Online News Act”. Aberdeen President Bob Doull stated “To operate our business, we need a stable revenue base and controllable costs so that we can commit to providing forward advertising contracts with certainty. The cost half of our equation no longer makes sense and we don’t see any way to solve it.”
Then there’s the Trudeau government’s all-out assault on the oil and gas industry – which provides much of its revenue and is the major driver of the economy in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
When the video of Justin Trudeau stating that he admired China’s government, it seemed like an anomaly. Surely he wasn’t saying he revered a communist dictatorship.
Well, perhaps it’s more truth than fiction, especially considering how Trudeau and the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh have formed a two-headed monster atop a minority government that is trying to drive Canada’s oil and gas economy towards extinction.
Consider the efforts of Chairman Mao Zedong through his infamous “Great Leap Forward”, a five-year economic plan that started in 1958, but was mercifully abandoned in 1961. Mao’s scheme called for modernizing the agricultural sector while at the same time urging Chinese citizens to manufacture stainless steel instead. Millions of people died of starvation as the country’s food production almost disappeared overnight, and scenes of families trying to make steel in backyard furnaces have to be seen to be believed.
It was an incredibly naïve idea, as the steel was completely useless, and worthless. Mao had the power and used it as he saw fit.
In Canada, the Trudeau/Singh alliance has become just as radical, adopting the ideologies of far-left eco-fanatics that salivate at the thought of choking off every pipeline out of Alberta in favour of electric vehicles.
It’s the same mindset that fought the construction of the Site C dam in northern BC with everything they had. On one hand they fight electricity producing plants like this, and on the other they want everyone to operate electric vehicles. Just where might that electricity come from, then?
Not to mention that current North American governments have been providing car makers with extravagant incentives that any manufacturer would be foolish to resist. Except we get to where we are today, that the companies are realizing that the market for electric vehicles has stagnated, due to several factors.
When ideologies dictate policies, common sense is thrown out the window. That spells trouble.
Mark MacDonald is President of Communication Ink Media & Public Relations Ltd.: mark@communicationink.ca
