Mike ClareOctober 13, 2009 13:56 EST

As we clamour for greater accountability in society, especially the public sector, how accountable are Standard and Poor's for their pronouncements and their impact on a nation's fiscal policy?

Joel DuffOctober 14, 2009 10:13 EST

It's not every day that a former University of Toronto President re-affirms the analysis of the Canadian Federation of Students, that high fees do not lead to high quality in education.

“The undergraduates are really the big losers here. Our principal response to the Harris cuts, in the short term, was higher tuition. Unfortunately, the new funds from undergrads did not improve quality for them; the money just mitigated the damage. Students were right to feel abused.” Former U of T President Robert Prichard.

Too bad Prichard didn't have the clarity or courage to share these views when he took cues from Premier Mike Harris and deregulated graduate and professional tuition fees at U of T. Playing his part, Prichard allowed law tuition fees to spike by 500%, paving the way fees that today are over $20,000/year. Thanks for the belated epiphany.

LeoOctober 14, 2009 12:56 EST

I think Joel Duff is purposely misrepresenting Robert Prichard's remark. Mr. Prichard did NOT reaffirm some general principle that high fees don't lead to higher quality. He simply stated that, in this case, the previous cuts to education funding were so severe that the higher fees did not lead to quality improvement but only mitigated the damage to quality already done. So, in other words, if there hadn't been tuition hikes, the quality of education would have been worse.

AnonymousOctober 14, 2009 13:08 EST

As a follow-up to my comment yesterday (which I notice has not been posted) about the "Ontario-centricity" of this article, have a look at this article, found on CBC.CA today, about how people feel about health care in Newfoundland.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2009/10/13/nl-health-satisfaction-1013.html

AnonymousOctober 14, 2009 19:47 EST

So here's the latest propaganda attack on Medicare: it's just "consumption" - not something people need but just more stuff they choose to buy, like flat-screen TVs and Hummers. Canadians are weak and lazy so we "consume" health care instead of "investing"
in education. How sad and demeaning to U of T, to have its name attached to Republican trash like this. Why doesn't the Walrus just re-publish Stephen Harper's diatribes from his days at the National Citizens' Coalition, about how Canada is just a crummy European-style welfare state?
For the record: as the Canadian Institute for Health Information continues to point out year after year, the main reason the health system is "crowding out" other expenditures is that governments are steadily reducing their own REVENUES by cutting taxes. They can't cut health because it's the voters' top priority; so they cut everything else. That's the real political expediency - most of all Harper's GST cut, which all by itself eliminated nearly enough revenue to restore the ENTIRE shortfall in education funding that the author laments. But of course he doesn't mention any of this, because he's a Republican himself, as committed as any of them to turning public life in this country into a race to the bottom. The only difference is, he wants health care cut instead of education.
Is this really all it takes to impress the editors at the Walrus - a sort of nonsense pun on the word "consumption" to demean one of Canada's proudest achievements, a health system where rich and poor are - for most part at least - treated equally and with dignity when they're sick and scared and helpless?
What a sad day, when a "distinguished" person like this can tell his fellow Canadians that Medicare is just another consumer good like an i-pod or a flashy car - and a magazine is willing to print it.

Geoff WilsonOctober 17, 2009 09:37 EST

I commend Roger Martin for illuminating the failure of Canadian public policy around education spending. I was especially drawn to his point that the declining fiscal fortunes of our public education system have as much (or more) to do with the politics of here and now than they do with our overall financial health and prosperity.

One criticism of Mr. Martin’s commentary is his understatement that the “Canadian political system has a deep bias toward consumption.” The decline of public education (spending and quality) in Canada is our collective fault as an electorate, an abject failure of our politics, and a dereliction of leadership vision.

Who could possibly disagree with the wisdom: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime? But that is precisely what we have done in Canada. We have sacrificed future opportunity, innovation and economic growth on the alters of lower personal taxes and shorter health care wait times today. And, by and large, we have done it willingly.

It’s neither right nor fair to pit one important social policy against another, and I do not accuse Roger Martin of doing that. However, a critical point I believe he left out of his essay was that for all our health spending, the health of Canadians is not improving and in some instances, it’s declining. We believe that the shiny baubles of health care - bigger hospitals, more expensive technology, and pricey drug therapies - is good health care and, therefore, will lead us to better health. In reality it is better basic education about how to be healthy that will shorten wait times and reduce chronic disease. We believe and invest in drive-thru health care with instantaneous fixes, when what we truly need is to dine on the “slow food” of health policy: population health and primary health care.

And so to Roger Martin’s call for Canada to shed it’s policy dunce cap and invest in public education I would also add that we need to realign our health care policy focus away from the illness model towards the wellness model.

LouiseOctober 20, 2009 14:41 EST

I agree that cutting education funding is short sighted in terms of long term value. This article identified the political to and fro of funding and value. The level of illiteracy is increasing a problem. Illiteracy seems pretty universal among those serving time in our jails.

But what about behaviour?

With more media announcing education funding or cut backs the real tragedy are the helicopter parents who grew up in a better funded education system in Canada. Parents who believe they know how to handle a child's education better than the professional trained teachers.

Funded or not, those in the education industry are battered and bruised by helicopter parents demanding adjustments to timetables, suspensions and report cards for their 'wonder child'. All the child learns is to manipulate 'authority figures' for personal gain. What about teaching children life lessons that come with an educational system that respects the professional educators? Common things like yes, no, please and thank you type of manners.

As long as educators are treated like hired help rather than professionals trying to prepare children for life, we raise a generation of young adults who can not manage the world. No amount of education funding or cutbacks will prevent the senseless damage done to children who leave school knowing they are special, wonderful, valued just because they are.

AnonymousOctober 27, 2009 20:11 EST

They can't cut health because it's the voters' top priority; so they cut everything else. That's the real political expediency - most of all Harper's GST cut, which all by itself eliminated nearly enough revenue to restore the ENTIRE shortfall in education funding that the author laments. But of course he doesn't mention any of this, because he's a Republican himself, as committed as any of them to turning public life in this country into a race to the bottom.

AnonymousDecember 08, 2009 21:49 EST

In response to Leo: what "quality"? The kind that ensures client-centred models of fee-paying customers dressed up in learner-centred environments privileging "student experience"? A political economic system relying on casual academic labour to service the goods? Reliance on NSSE quality standards to guarantee more of the same: do less for more with less?

Duff is correct on docile university admins and the deficit of political courage among university elites. Further, CFS has been telling it on the mountain for years regarding a national PSE act and dedicated transfers.

Canadian CitizenDecember 30, 2009 11:10 EST

I agree that the public education has done a great service. Relative to education before the public system, our literacy rates are extremely high and education for the future is essential to a thriving economy. Our education system has certainly been negatively affected by the cost cutting that has happened over the last 15 years.

Having said that, it's also very clear that government funded monopolies aren't very efficient and aren't as productive as they could be. Vast amounts of money are wasted in our public education system. The statistic of how much money is spent per capita is not a valid statistic since it doesn't describe how well that money was spent. There are many countries that spend less per capita than Canada yet achieve better scholastic results.

Giant bureaucratic blobs need to be removed as much as possible. This is OUR money. It's time for people spending OUR money to spend it more effectively and stop trying to simply throw more money at a problem and expect it to magically resolve. Other options have been put forth such as a privatization of educators and a voucher system. Of course people in the current education system are going to attack these alternatives as hard as they can because they have a major incentive to protect the current system but that prevents them from truly being objective on this issue. Competition leads to excellence and competition is nowhere to be found in our public education system.

In my opinion, it's clear that our system is not working as well as it should but simply throwing money at it is not going to be the solution. Other education alternatives need to be tried and we need to start demanding more efficient use of OUR money.

DaveSeptember 15, 2010 11:51 EST

The kind that ensures client-centred models of fee-paying customers dressed up in learner-centred environments privileging "student experience"? A political economic system relying on casual academic labour to service the goods? Reliance on NSSE quality standards to guarantee more of the same: do less for more with less?

PDNovember 04, 2010 17:04 EST

I find this to be typically Canadian shoddy journalism. I started out trying to validate my pre-conceived perception of the poor quality of public education at the K-12 level in Canada, only to be confronted by numerous statistics showing that Canadian public education continues to score extremely well in international comparisons. Sure, all those OECD studies may be bunk, but it would be really useful (and much less misleading) if this esteemed author would address the facts and statistics that large numbers of people are citing and working from.