NSCAD to Cut $1.2 Million from Deficit

The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) approved budgetary measures on July 3, to cut $1.2M from the university’s deficit by introducing student fees, eliminating under-enrolled classes, and decreasing labour costs.

These spending reductions are part of a plan submitted by the troubled fine arts school on Mar 29 to get NSCAD on the path towards financial stability, NSCAD’s President David B. Smith said in a press release on Apr 5, 2012.

According to NSCAD’s “Framework for Sustainability,” the school intends on balancing the budget by cutting jobs, mostly part-time positions, through attrition. Attrition is the gradual reduction of employees through retirement

As for new student fees, NSCAD plans to increase tuition by 3% as well as add an adjustment fee of $82.50 a term for students taking five courses in the school year. Students who wish to take six courses will soon have to pay an Override Fee of $600 per term. The framework stated that a $45 facility fee and a $50 technology renewal fee will also be added to tuition for the upcoming school year.

Currently, NSCAD does not charge students for graduating. However, in order to generate revenue of approximately $11,600, students graduating from the 2012-2013 class and onwards will have to pay a $50 fee.

Despite the new fees, NSCAD’s tuition for the 2012-2013 school year is below the provincial average, resting at $6,000 per year.

Kevin Finch, Communications Advisor for the Department of Education and Labour in Nova Scotia, said NSCAD’s financial troubles started 5 years ago, “after the province agreed to invest $4.7 million to move the university from leased premises to a new port campuses” in order to handle enrollment growth.

One of these campuses is the Waterfront Campus which required $8.9 million from the government to house NSCAD’s sculpture, design, ceramics, and foundation programs, said a report issued by the Nova Scotia government in December 2011.

However, enrollment did not increase as expected and “anticipated federal funding did not arrive, leaving NSCAD in a financial crunch from which it has not recovered,” Finch said.

According to the 2011 report, NSCAD’s current debt is projected to be $19 million.

The 2011 report also stated that NSCAD relies on funding provided by the Nova Scotia government more than any other school in the province. “The total operating and facilities grants from the province were approximately $11 million or 60 per cent of NSCAD’s total revenue,” the report said. The average for universities in Nova Scotia is around 30 per cent.

Without the cost-saving measures introduced in NSCAD’s Framework for Sustainability, NSCAD’s deficit, which currently sits at $2.4 million, could balloon to $4 million by 2013.

Sarah Trower and Kelly Zwicker, President and VP Internal for the Student Union at NSCAD, said that the budget cuts are the result of a “serious lack of transparency in regards to the distribution of money.”

According to Trower and Zwicker, the Student Union of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (SUNSCAD), recently sent letters to the NSCAD Board of Governance and the Minister of Labour and Advanced Education as a response to the new fees.

Trower and Zwicker said the budget contravenes a Memorandum of Understanding which states that students must be informed of proposed ancillary fees 4 weeks in advance. “We were consulted only a week and a half before the fees were passed,” Trower and Zwicker said.

NSCAD’s financial woes cast a dark shroud on its 125^th anniversary. Nonetheless, the Nova Scotia government remains optimistic in securing NSCAD’s future.

“Nova Scotia has a rich cultural heritage and NSCAD’s roots go back 125 years,” Finch said.  “We are committed to having a fine arts education in this province.”

Released in Full

After wandering around in Carleton's new River Building where the Clayton Riddell Graduate Program is housed, to find out that the administration was on vacation, to returning to Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs, only to be told that I need to send an e-mail to the President's Office, to having my e-mail redirected to the University's Communications Department, I finally obtained a copy of the donor agreement between Clayton Riddell and Carleton University that was first released on June 29, 2012. I've uploaded the document here.

As current news stories show, there are numerous inconsistencies in the Press Release issued by Carleton University and the actual document itself, particularly the hiring process. According to the Press Release, the donor has no say as to who is hired and who is not. But, according to the donor agreement, it seems that Riddell does have agency to determine who can or can't join the teaching staff. Since Riddell will be contributing donations for coming years, he is authorized to assess whether the school is meeting his standards. His standards most likely aligning with his and his associates' political affiliations.* Moreover, the size of the donation has generated some backlash among the teaching staff at Carleton University who have decried Clayton Riddell's contribution as "irresponsible."

There are some other issues that need to be fleshed. For instance, the Graduate Program comprises of 25 hand-picked students. As I detailed in my last post, a vocal majority of the students happen to have blatant Tory leanings. So, not only does Clayton Riddell get to decide who teaches at the School, he also indirectly gets to decide who is admitted. Therefore, it's likely that the students who are accepted into the school already have Conservative loyalties that can be further enhanced by the education they'll receive from -- mostly -- ex-Conservative/Reform strategists and supporters.

As I mentioned in my last post, this story is far from being over. Developments are sure to follow.

Quite the Riddell: An Analysis on the Clayton H. Riddell Graduate Program of Political Management

For my inaugural blog post, I thought it would be appropriate if I looked no further than my own school as a wellspring of information and insight. Recently, Carleton University has made the news due to their newly established Political Management School for Graduate students.  

The school, named the Clayton H. Riddell Graduate School for Political Management, came under fire last year for failing to release documents regarding donor information to the Canadian Press. When Carleton University requested a nine-week extension for the documents, it was declined by the Information Commissioner. What resulted were heavily redacted documents in which key elements, such as the conditions Carleton University is subjected to as part of an agreement to house the program, are blacked out. (1) However, it's only a matter of time before the censored portions become open to the public.

According to an article in Carleton University’s student newspaper, Beth Gorham, the manager of Public Affairs at Carleton, claimed the redacted portions only blacked out “confidential and personal information.”  

By giving $15M, Carleton’s biggest donation to date, Riddell established the program in the hopes of impacting Canada's political culture.

Riddell is the CEO of Paramount Resources Ltd., a corporation he established in 1978 in his home province of Alberta. One of Paramount’s most significant activities, I think, involves the Athabasca Oil Sands. [1] As the footnote below illustrates, the Athabasca Oil Sands operations – and the entire industry itself – severely alter our environment in a negative way (duh).


So, it was entirely fitting that the University of Manitoba offer a program named the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources. Riddell, of course, made a hefty donation of $10M inFebruary of 2004 to University of Manitoba in order to start the institute. Not to mention, it makes complete sense for Carleton University, an institution that prides itself over its budding Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering program and its annual Green Energy Symposium, to accept the financial support of a wealthy oil man.


As a corporate head and as a heavy proponent for the oil industry, Riddell has a questionable agenda for setting up a Political Management school in the nation’s capital...

...as does the rest of the program’s faculty.

This blogger outlines brief biographies of some of the most prominent staff on board. The author concludes that “almost 50% of the faculty [listed] have connections to the former Reform party, and the current Conservative party.”


Moreover, the School has the vocal support of Preston Manning, the current President and CEO of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. However, he is most famous for founding two of Canada's most right-wing parties: the Reform Party and the Canadian Reform Canadian Alliance. In brief, this is what Preston Manning, the leader of the Reform Party, said about homosexuality and the advancement of Gay Rights: "homosexuality is destructive to the individual, and in the long run, society" (4).

For information on the course outlines, the Clayton H. Riddell Graduate Program has provided most of their syllabi on their official website. The courses, by and large, seem fairly neutral and display a lack of partisanship, notwithstanding a few concerning issues. First, the course on for Political Campaigns, POLM 5011, has this as one of their topics: 


"Voter Contact and Getting Out the Vote: Voter Contact. Voter identification vs. voter persuasion. Phone banking: types of calls, scripts, systems. Information management. Using voters’ lists. Alternative voting methods and their impact on the campaign. Getting out the vote (GOTV)."


This seems to correlate with the Robocalls scandal and the use of automated calling systems during political campaigns. 


Second, the Political Advocacy class, POLM 5012, "explores the knowledge, mechanics, and skills necessary to succeed in the practice of political advocacy in Canada." Judging from the course outline, this course primarily teaches how to seize power and to maintain it as long as possible. 


Third, the first part of the Political Management Course, POLM 5005, has a lecture devoted to the Access of Information Act, which recently turned 30 years old last week. Surely, the lecture will revolve around spinning the media and ways to handle the Access of Information Act in a "politically sensitive" way. Essentially, how to get around the Act for political gain.


On their official website, MacOdrum Library (Carleton University's library) lists all the books that are held on reserve for summer Political Management courses. Of course, the literature used in courses is only meaningful if we know how exactly they're being used. A quick glance at the book titles show that Tom Flanagan and Marc Lalonde are among the authors studied in the Political Management. But, like I said, having these authors doesn't guarantee that the course will take a right-wing slant, especially in a Graduate program where critical thinking, discussion, and debate is highly encouraged and expected. 

What is especially compelling are the testimonials of former students, the former students being the class of 2011. According to Carleton’s official testimonial video, the school emphasizes “diversity” and “sharing of opinions.” I conducted a search to inquire about the students via their LinkedIn pages and found some telling results:


Matthew Burbidge, the creator of the Political Management Graduate Program group on LinkedIn, is currently the Special Assistant at the PMO (Prime Minister's Office.) He's also worked in the office for the Conservative MP Laurie Hawn. Here are some of Burbidge's tweets (which are available for public viewing) if you aren't entirely convinced of his Tory loyalties:

Thomas Mulcair can’t see the difference between Canada and Nigeria shar.es/q16WJ
— Matthew Burbidge(@MBurbidge) May 18, 2012 

There are no bad jobs soc.li/CFmzNxE
— Matthew Burbidge(@MBurbidge) May 15, 2012

Enough hypocrisy!You can’t excuse yourself from the energy equation! lnkd.in/A4bZtV
— Matthew Burbidge(@MBurbidge) December 5, 2011

The tweets speak for themselves as they're evident Conservative propaganda. Although, there are some noteworthy things to point out: 1) The website Burbidge links in the first tweet is none other than EthicalOil.ca; 2) There are, in fact, bad jobs regardless of what Jim Flaherty says otherwise; and 3) The link that Burbidge adds to his third tweet is from the National Post. Specifically, an editorial that lambasts the criticism made by Archbishop Desmond Tutu regarding the Alberta Oil Sands. The National Post, of course, has very close ties with Oil Corporations and have adopted a "sales-pitch" style when writing articles about the Oil Sands.


Sebastien Togneri is among the 20 or so students who took POLM 5010. Some of you may recognize him as the former Conservative aide who resigned after the RCMP investigated into his interference in an access-to-information request which is against the law. However, Rona Amrbose, the Minister of Public Works, dropped the investigation in August 2011. Three lobby groups -- the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Newspapers Canada, and the B.C. Freedom of Information Privacy Association -- have since criticized Togneri and rightfully so. (5) Togneri is mandated to take POLM 5005, a course that was discussed earlier in this post. Although Togneri's enrollment in the class isn't causal of the course devoting a week to analyzing the Access of Information Act, it certainly is telling. 


Dan White, a self-proclaimed CPC and PC activist, has served for three Tory MPs -- Eve Adams, Gary Schellenberger, and Peter Braid -- as an assistant. Like Burbidge, he opines about current affairs while dishing out Tory rhetoric and propaganda. Here are some of his most noteworthy tweets:

Todays White Paper from @timhudak stands up for the freedom of workers #onpoli
— Dan White (@DanAHWhite) June 27, 2012

One year of our strong stable national majority Conservative government #cpc #cdnpoli
— Dan White (@DanAHWhite) May 2, 2012

Only @ElectDanielle can lead Alberta back to surplus, she needs to be the next Premier of Alberta #abvote #cdnpoli
— Dan White (@DanAHWhite) April 14, 2012

I am proud to call @ElectDanielle one of my political heroes, her professionalism showed this week is an example politicians should follow
— Dan White (@DanAHWhite) April 1, 2012

And the next leader of the 4th party following the next election is... #NDPldr #NotTopp
— Dan White (@DanAHWhite) March 25, 2012

Like Burbidge's tweets, I can't really provide any commentary on this...they speak for themselves.


Ian Kaufman, who is featured in the testimonial video for the Graduate School, is currently an intern analyst for MacPhie & Company. According to their official website, MacPhie & Company "offers strategic planning services in the public, private and non-profit sectors." On their 'Our Experience,' they claim their job is to help clients "influence opinions." In essence, the firm handles Communications services and "business strategy." As you can see in the profile picture on his LinkedIn, that's him on the left, all atingle, right next to Stephen Harper.


Andrew McGrath is currently the Communications Assistant for the Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Ottawa and also takes to his Twitter page to communicate his opinions that are, according to him, "my own." Like his colleagues, he supports Danielle Smith, trash-talks the NDP and Thomas Mulcair, specifically his correct assertion that the country is suffering from Dutch Disease, and complains about the Quebec Protests, dismissing the protesters in a hashtag as "damn kids." Although this hashtag is mostly in jest, it's still very telling and is aligned with Conservative popular thought on the general protests on Quebec's austerity measures.


The two other students featured in the testimonial video, Jackie DaSilva and Dan Murray, offer little information about their respective positions as either an Intern for an MP or Research Analyst for the Federal Government. Judging from DaSilva's twitter page, however, we can deduce that she is not a Tory as her Profile Picture is draped with the 'Blackout Speakout' Twibbon. She has tweeted about Occupy Wall Street, Elizabeth May, and Sierra Club as well as dished out criticism on Bill C-38 and the Oil Sands.


Likewise, judging from Dan Murphy's tweets and following list, it's natural to assume he's a Grit, through and through.


Moreover, another student, Tyler Sommers, is a Coordinator for the organization Democracy Watch. Kevin Geiger is currently the Deputy Finance Director for Democratic Senator, Maria Cantwell. 


So, what does this tell us?


Nothing, really. Students are both Tories and Grits/NDPs. In fact, guest speakers have included noted left-wingers such as Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Liberal MPP for Ottawa Centre Yasir Naqvi. That said, it's hard to say what will occur in the next 5, 10, or 15 years as more students enroll and as more noted academics or politicians are invited to join the School's faculty. Will the School allow a more diversified staff or will the Riddell and Manning connections influence who teaches?


Whatever the reasons Clayton Riddell had for establishing the school, you have to admit that it was pretty tactical and shrewd. Carleton University is renowned nation-wide for their prestigious Journalism, International Relations, and Public Affairs programs. Now, some of the most talented students in any of these fields interested in a career in public service would not have to look further than Carleton to study Political Management. To drive this point home, in their annual university rankings, Maclean's Magazine once called Carleton University "the route to government" since most Carleton University grads often find work in the public sector.


What I find the most interesting in this whole debacle is the fact that Carleton University, one of Canada's most Left-wing universities (as student testimonials will tell you), is now the institution that houses a Graduate program like the Clayton H. Riddell School of Political Management. A school with a very prominent GLBTQ society now associates itself with Preston Manning.


A school that has this on one of its murals...

...now associates itself with the same Tories they would normally say do a half-ass job.

---

[1] For some background on the Athabasca Oil Sands, to wit: according to the David Suzuki Foundation, the Athabasca Oil Sands has increased the number of carcinogens in the environment therefore affecting the cancer rates of Alberta, which used to be lower than the Atlantic Provinces. However, a study by the Alberta Health Services in 2009 concluded that there was an increase in cancer rates among residents in the Fort Chipewyan region between 1995-2006.(2) Oil sands operations have also shown to be responsible for deadly toxins in the nearby Athabasca River. Toxins, like mercury and arsenic, which heavily affect the fish population in Alberta. (3)

What is 'Tics?

The short answer is "politics." The long answer is "politics."

A vitriolic, charged, all-encompassing term.

A topic that should never be discussed around the dinner table.

A topic that is always discussed around the dinner table.

A way to resolve conflict.

A way to begin conflict.

A way to keep track of conflict.

An exercise of power.

A set of ideologies.

An identifier.

A headline.

A job.

A blog.