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Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 14:46:57 -0500
From: Bob Olsen

VARSITY NEWS (University of Toronto student newspaper):
November 17, 1997

A national snapshot of the top decision-makers at Canadian universities paints a startling picture of those at the helm of these public institutions.

Whether it be a vice-president of the Hong Kong Bank of Canada at the head table of Simon Fraser University's board of governors on the west coast, the president of the Bank of Montreal assuming that position at the University of Toronto in central Canada, or a retired banker in the chair at Acadia University on the east coast, critics say the blurred line between public and private spells disaster for the future of post-secondary education.

"It's so immersed in the corporate culture and corporate mindset, you can't even see it," said Greg Inwood, a professor at Ryerson Polytechnical University and a past student governor at the University of Toronto.

"It's this corporate ideology that pervades these board rooms. It's just so enormous that it's hard to pin-point," he added about universities' highest governing bodies in charge of setting the budgets, tuition fee levels and programming for their schools.

The top decision-makers at McGill University last year included the chief executive officers of the Royal Bank, Noranda Inc., Canadian National Railway Co., and BCE Inc. They were backed up by senior executives from the Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia, Ernst & Young and Canadian Pacific Ltd.

"The McGill board of governor members are elected on the basis of their personal quality, not corporate connection," said T.H. Chan, the institution's acting principal academic.

A few blocks away at Concordia University in downtown Montreal, senior executives at Nesbitt Burns, Ernst & Young, BioChem Pharma Inc., Arthur Andersen, the Molson Companies Ltd, TNG Corporation and SOPAMY Inc. are joined by six faculty and five students.

"In a way it's not new-all these corporate guys on the board," said historian David Noble who has written extensively on the evolution of post-secondary education in Canada. "But in the past, they were local companies integrated into the community. These are multinationals.

"The university became too important to be left to the academics," Noble added.

At the University of Calgary, the chief executive officers of Husky Oil, Canadian Pacific Ltd., Nova Corporation, Telus Corporation and Dauntless Energy Inc. make up a strong contingent of the top decision-makers. They are joined by five other senior executives of major corporations, one faculty member and three student representatives.

The conflict of interest built into this arrangement is obvious, says Jennifer Story, national deputy chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students and former governor at the University of Guelph.

"Those people on the board were not there out of an interest in quality, accessible education. They uphold private sector interests," said Story about her experience last year of the Guelph board. She was joined by senior executives of Delta, Nestle and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

"Having your boys on the board gives you an access to the resources, which is why the corporations came to the universities in the first place-as a way of socializing their costs," added Noble.

Anna Kruzinski, last year's graduate student representative on McGill's board, says that self-interest seems apparent on another level. "You have the CEOs of lucrative banks advocating tuition fee increases and they're the ones benefiting from the interest of our debts. I would call that a conflict of interest."

But Canada's business leaders who double as trustees of the country's public universities say they are well-intentioned.

David Bond, chair of the board of governors at Simon Fraser University and vice-president of government and public affairs for the Hong Kong Bank of Canada, says governors are key players in making sure that institutions remain well-financed in the face of government cutbacks.

"Board members are put on the board to give money or raise money. It's like an honourary degree," said Bond. "You either give, get or get out.

"I can understand concerns over exclusivity. But unless the public opens its cheque book this is the avenue for survival for the great universities."

Gerry Pond, the president of NBTel who is a recent government appointment to the University of New Brunswick board of governors, says corporate Canada has a lot to contribute.

"As a businessperson, what would you do if your market share was down," said Pond about the advice university administrators have requested from him. "Plus, I have two customers there," referring to his two children.

NBTel is also a donor and advise-giver in the academic realm at the University of New Brunswick. In addition to a cash donation to the multimedia development centre, it has worked with the US-based company Genesis to develop courses in a field of computer technology. NBTel is also providing funding and expertise in the development and delivery of courses in electronic commerce.

Story says the business language and relationship are very telling.

"That very language-marketing, competing with other institutions-is about an increasingly individualized, privatized system," she said. "They are part of the process of moving from a publicly-funded and owned system to a private one."

Attracting top decision makers from corporate sector to the helm of Canadian universities isn't about privatizing the system, but rather making it more efficient and cost-effective, says Tom O'Neill, president of Price Waterhouse and governor at Queen's University.

"In a bizarre way, the government cuts were positive because it had to have each institution take a wack at its agenda," said O'Neill.

On the Queen's board, O'Neill is joined by the chief executive officers from TransCanada PipeLines, American Airlines, Warner-Lambert Company and Amarok Holdings. Senior executives from Ernst & Young and Power Corporation, as well as retired executives from the Bank of Montreal, Canada Life Insurance company, Northern Telecom and the Empire Financial Group round it out.

"There is an issue of self-reliance," added O'Neill, alluding to his former involvement in a theatre company. "We made it a minimum to make it less reliant on funding, so if we lost it all it would hurt but it wouldn't kill us."

But critics say this is too convenient a strategy from executives of corporations which stand to benefit from the opening up of the university market.

"It's an ideological perspective about the appropriate role of public and private," said Inwood. "They're really so deeply embedded both ideologically and practically."

Price Waterhouse, for example, is the world's largest privatization consulting firm-bringing in over $22 million from its nearly 80 privatization ventures last year.

O'Neill, however, says none of those profits was reaped from the university sector. Instead, they came from privatizing things like public-owned airlines and gas utility companies. He adds that he himself would rather see private programs within Canada's public universities rather than the establishment of private universities outright.

But Story says you can't tease out public education from such an exhaustive privatization agenda.

For example, KPMG, ranking third on the global privatization consultants' list last year, was instrumental in the contracting out the entire public education system of Hartford and part of Baltimore to the private firm Educational Alternatives Inc. a few years ago. KPMG also recommended contracting out of the support staff in the Ottawa school boards in 1992, called for the privatization of municipal services in its 1996 Megacity report and proposed a "leaseback" arrangement for public schools in the same year.

While the chair and chief executive officer of KPMG Canada is a member of U of T's Governing Council, another KPMG executive is the chair of the board at the University of Regina.

Ernst & Young, which has representatives on McGill, Concordia and Queen's boards, has a manual stating that the 1990s represent the decade in which profit-making opportunities abound in the privatization of publicly-run organizations.

And the former chair of Ernst & Young Ontario, Bill Farlinger, was a member of the Bradford Group, the Tory advisors who drafted the Common Sense Revolution.

These same corporations which are represented on the board of Canadian public institutions are also members of business lobby organizations like the Business Council on National Issues and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. For years, both the council and the chamber have lobbied the federal government to bring down the deficit and debt.

"We're very clear on the deficit," said Tim Reid, president of the chamber. "Overspending is the best way to ruin a country. And without wrestling down the deficit and debt, universities will be worse off."

However, Linda McQuaig, author of Shooting the Hippo, says one of the greatest ironies of the overwhelming corporate presence on universities' highest governing bodies is the work they do with these business lobby groups.

"What they've done is suggest we as a society can't afford good public health and public education, that we've over extended ourselves on all these indulgences. They try to suggest that we can't afford them," she said. "But the real reason is that they're trying to dismantle the system of government. They want to scale back so private companies can move in."

Bond, chair of board at SFU and a vice-president of the Hong Kong Bank of Canada, says the business lobby can't be blamed for the cuts. "The BCNI lobbies to bring down the deficit. It's the government who decides what to cut."

"The cuts of the universities are not a direct result," echoed UNB governor Pond, who is also the chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. "It's the government's decision to make that allocation."

Story says this argument is nothing but intellectual gymnastics.

"They're telling the government to cut the deficit and cut it quickly," she said, adding they also lobby for tax cuts. "By default, they are advocating cuts to post-secondary education."

McQuaig dismisses their deficit-mania argument outright. "The whole deficit thing has been to a large extent a smoke screen for a redistribution from an egalitarian public society to an inegalitarian privatized system."

Story says the best strategy to undo this intimate arrangement is to expose what's going on in the board rooms of Canadian universities.

"Students need to start going to the board meetings and document it," she said. "Governors have to make these decisions [about tuition fee and research deals] with students staring them in the eye because they know deep down that their interests aren't in the right place."

Copyright c 1997 Varsity Publications, Inc.