Transcript

October 21, 2003 Bill 43 Discussion Forum

Topic: The efforts of AUSU and CAUS, regarding bill 43

Speakers:

Shirley Barg, VP External AUSU, Chair of Council of Alberta University Students
Melanee Thomas, Executive Director, Council of Alberta University Students
Brett Bergie, Provincial Director, Alberta College and Technical Institute Students’ Executive Council

Shirley Barg: Some of you have requested information about Bill 43. I’ve sent some of you information, just a v Brief overview and then a website. For those of you who are in front of your computer and want to kind of follow along with some of the information the website is www.deregulationnation.com.

So, Bill 43... back late last fall, and then through winter and spring, the government was working on amalgamating the three Acts that govern post-secondary education in the province, those being the Universities Act, the Colleges Act, and the Technical Institutes Act.

Melanee Thomas: And the Banff Centre.

Shirley Barg: Sorry, and the Banff Centre. So, the result of that is what will be known after it’s passed as the Post-Secondary Learning Act, or a we have come to know on very intimate terms as Bill 43. Bill 43 was tabled in legislature on May 12, and we have done nothing but deal with Bill 43 issues as provincial student groups since that time.

Now, I’ll mention that I’m the Vice-President External with Athabasca University Students’ Union so it’s my mandate to deal with these external issues, but I’m also the Chair of the Council of Alberta University Students so I’ve been working very closely with this whole issue.

Bill 43, when it was tabled, we didn’t know what was going to be in this and it hit us like a ton of those proverbial bricks that the government likes to swing every once in awhile.

Melanee Thomas: What we had done in fall was, all education stakeholders—what they call stakeholders is basically institutional administrations, boards of institutions, student groups, faculty associations, all these groups in post-secondary—were asked what amendments they’d like to see to their particular act. What things they’d like to see added and what things they’d like to see deleted.

So we dutifully did a submission, as did everyone else, and we expected to see some things show up from the submission that we had recommended. We knew certain things that the institutions were going for were going to be put into Bill 43. Things like recommending the tuition cap be lifted, and removal from the tuition fee policy and stuff.

There were some other things that hit us like a ton of bricks that we didn’t see coming out of the blue at all. And that they were thrown in in a completely unamended state. It was like "Oh, Harvey Weingarten [President of University of Calgary], you want this in there? All right, let’s go then." It was very frustrating.

Shirley Barg: So, one of the first things that happened—when hit with something very detrimental as Bill 43 could be—sometimes when disaster hits it’s like strangers come together. And in this case it happened within the province of Alberta. The universities students’ group and the colleges and technical institutes students’ group in the past have sometimes been working at opposite ends of the scale and sometimes the government was using the differences between the two groups to kind of pit them against each other.

When Bill 43 hit it wasn’t long before CAUS and ACTISEC formed an alliance known as the Alberta Post-Secondary Students’ Alliance or APSSA. We were trying to come up with a better acronym but I wanted to call it the Alberta Network of Unified Students because I love that acronym but nobody else wanted it. [laughter]

So what happened—we started meeting with the [Learning] Minister, we started meeting with Alberta Learning. To begin with things weren’t very good.

Here’s some of the things that Bill 43 contains and I’ll mention one and we’ll just kind of go around the table here between me, Brett, and Melanee and we’ll cover them.

The biggest thing, and I’ll mention it first, because it has a very detrimental effect on Athabasca University students in particular. Up ’til now, or until this Bill passes, there is a legislated commitment by the provincial government—government controls on post-secondary tuition in the province. There’s kind of a convoluted formula, but in a nutshell what happens is institutions are not allowed to bring in more revenue than what would equal 30 percent of their net operating expenses.

What was happening was institutions were reaching that 30 percent and all of a sudden they couldn’t raise tuition and they were saying, "Well, how are we going to deal with this?" And provincial funding hasn’t been keeping up to the demands of the institutions. So, with this Bill they [government] were going to remove the legislated commitment to affordable tuition increases.

How it directly affects Athabasca University students is even worse in that tuition for distance education undergraduate students would be totally deregulated, meaning there would be no government controls whatsoever on what tuition is charged.

Melanee Thomas: Basically, the government’s rationale behind that was that if they left it to "market forces" that would be enough to keep it affordable and we all know what happened when they did that to electricity and natural gas and how market forces really kept that all under wraps. We also know the experience from Ontario, from Nova Scotia, and from BC where Nova Scotia currently has the highest undergraduate tuition in Canada. They’ve got a deregulated system. Ontario had a deregulated system until they realized that this was a bad thing and then they re-regulated undergraduate tuition. BC went from a tuition freeze to a complete free-for-all and they’re now experiencing annually 30 percent increases.

So we knew the government was aware of pretty much what would happen when they went forward so any kind of assurance they tried to give us that things would be okay we just didn’t buy because we that it wasn’t actually going to happen.

Shirley Barg: Schools were asking for flexibility in how they could charge tuition so the government came up with a revised Tuition Fee Policy that said schools that are at the 30 percent cap could raise tuition beyond it by CPI plus 2 percent, CPI being the Consumer Price Index.

Shirley Barg: Inflation right now in Alberta is starting to creep upward pretty nicely. Now, one thing they did put into the Tuition Fee Policy is a stronger method of consultation with the students. In the past there’s been—I guess it’s always been there that there has to be consultation with the students’ association or students’ union when an institution is going to put in tuition increases. Now in the Tuition Fee Policy it’s more defined as stronger consultation.

Some of the other issues—and we’re just going to touch on them very briefly because I want to talk mostly about tuition at the forum tonight—one of things is student organizations—students’ associations, students’ unions. There was a lot happening in the Bill that would undermine the rights, and the powers and the mandate of the student organizations, one of the big things being the mandate of student organizations. Now, as students we all pay fees to our students’ union or students’ association and we expect that our students’ association is going to speak up on our behalf for us.

In the past, students’ associations’ official mandate in legislation is that the students’ association is the official channel of communication between the students and the institution. In Bill 43 that was changed to read students’ associations shall be responsible for maintaining appropriate communications with the institution. That’s a huge change from being the official medium of communication, and we have very, very strong concerns about that.

Brett Bergie: In addition to that, with associations we have clauses in sections 97 and 99 that deal with looking at student [association] finances and "irregular manners," which haven’t been defined in the Bill. So the scope of this legislation is significant and concerning for students’ associations primarily because students’ associations are often at odds with boards of directors of the institutions and/or the government. Those two bodies have authority under the Bill to request audited statements, which we make publicly available anyway, and then look over those statements. And if something irregular is found within those statements, they could—the board, that is, of the institution—could report that to the Minister who subsequently would appoint an inspector to investigate said financial irregularity, or "irregular manner," I should qualify that again. And, essentially, if the Minister saw fit, after viewing the report, Bill 43 would allow the Minister to dissolve a students’ association—effectively dissolve the students elected officials and their voice within that institution without providing for any guidelines or any timetables as to get new students into the system to represent students again, and fulfill the mandate of the students’ association.

So, very concerning from our point of view given the scope of powers and the lack of definition as to what exactly would constitute an "irregular manner" and justify such action without any provisions in place for a students’ association to exercise any safeguards or appeal mechanisms to protect themselves from any abuse of the system, which we maintain the view, is quite real.

When you look at the relationships between some students’ associations in the province and their board, particularly here at Athabasca given that the one unit of keeping students together and presenting that voice is the body here within the student executive. If that were to be dissolved that would be disastrous for this organization among others in the province.

Shirley Barg: And actually what Brett was just talking about puts students’ unions in the province very much into a conflict situation where it’s students who pay the student fees and it should be students that students’ unions are accountable to. All of a sudden with this Bill, students’ unions have to be accountable to the institutions. And because sometimes a students’ union and a university are working at cross purposes—students are pushing for something the university doesn’t want or urging the university to not do something they want to do—then it would put the students union into a very precarious situation where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Now, are there any questions about any of that? I’m going to talk about what has been happening with tuition here at Athabasca University, so before I go on I’m wondering if anyone has any questions.

So here at Athabasca University Students’ Union—we’ve got a few Councillors on the line—there’s Karl, Stacey just left, Nicholas, Teresa, and Ryan here. Now Teresa and Ryan have been just recently voted on in our by-election, so they don’t know some of this background probably to the extent that Nicholas and Karl and I do, and of course Carla and Tamra have been quite involved with it, too.

Okay, what happened was Athabasca University administration came to the students’ union and asked us if we would support their request to have deregulated tuition. We decided as a students’ union the majority of us knew what our own responses would be, but we thought we had to take it to the students. So we had put a small survey up on our website and we actually had some very good response on it. I think we’re sitting at about 210 responses and it looks like representation from right across Canada in much the same proportion as our students across Canada and even outside of Canada.

A good 85 percent—am I right on that, Tamra?

Tamra Ross Low: I just brought it up actually. I got two more responses to it today, so 214. And you wanted to know how many opposed it? 85 percent, with 83 percent indicating AUSU should be fighting it.

Shirley Barg: So we had very clear indication from students on what direction to take on it, that students did not want us supporting it. Through CAUS and provincially we have been meeting with Alberta Learning, we have been meeting with MLAs, and the deregulation of any tuition in the province was just not something students want.

Now, with Athabasca University it does affect students outside of Alberta, even though students outside of Alberta do pay an out-of-province fee, your base tuition which at one time used to be broken out in the calendar and now they have that out-of-province fee kind of factored into it, is still regulated by what the province says. If the province says it can’t go up by more than seven percent then Athabasca University cannot raise it to more than seven percent. So, all students across Canada are affected by this, by what happens here.

We contacted Athabasca University and said we were unable to support them in their request. They put forward a compromise proposal, and the compromise proposal, when we first received it was marked as confidential so we could not release the information to students. We’ve since been given clearance that it’s no longer considered confidential information and has been given approval by Governing Council. The compromise proposal that AU put forward was that they were willing to cap tuition in absolute terms rather than in percentage of increases. They would cap it at the same amount as whatever the tuition would be at the highest charging institution in the province.

Right now the highest charging university in the province is the University of Calgary. Right now our base tuition is $381 with Athabasca University. Calgary’s is $434. This would not come into effect until next fall at which time Calgary would raise theirs by probably 5 or 6 percent taking it to over $460. So, if Athabasca University, if their compromise proposal were accepted by the government, they would be able to raise tuition—if they wanted to do it all in one year—by 22 percent. That’s base tuition. On top of that you would still have pay your $150 course material fee plus whatever out-of-province fee there is. Now, I know Athabasca University is moving towards trying to eliminate that out-of-province fee.

This was unacceptable to us as the Students’ Union, as I’m sure it would be unacceptable to all Athabasca University students. So, we wrote a letter to the Governing Council, to the President of the university explaining why we felt it was unacceptable. We also wrote a letter to the Learning Minister explaining our position and asking to please keep distance education tuition under tuition control.

Now, in the course of meetings with Alberta Learning we have been making some headway. Amendments have been discussed with us on some of the issues such as putting the mandate of students’ associations back to being the official channel of communication.

Melanee Thomas: For the amendments, we’ve basically being going hard since June on lobbying, not only meeting with Ministry officials every month, but also meeting with MLAs. We’ve met with the Assistant Deputy Minister, the person who’s in charge of adult learning, or the post-secondary portion of Alberta Learning as our coalition. And that’s one of the first places where we saw a little bit of headway because when the compromise proposal was brought up the Assistant Deputy Minister voiced a very strong concern against that. That was tempered somewhat by the Deputy Minister who’s directly below the Minister who said, "Well, Athabasca University has most of its students outside the province so we really don’t care about those students because they’re not Albertans." So those of you who aren’t Albertans, I’m sure that makes you feel fabulous.

We had voiced very strong concern about that thing and we’ve basically got word that the intent of the amendment on the Tuition Fee Policy is to take the deregulation of distance education off the table and to ensure that Athabasca University complies with the Tuition Fee Policy, and complies with the changes that they’re making to the Tuition Fee Policy, but that they’re still required to follow the Tuition Fee Policy.

So this is probably, I think, the biggest plus we can look at with some of the amendments. Unfortunately, while the legislated so-called "cap" is moving back into the legislation, which is something we had asked for, the ability for institutions to raise tuition above the cap at a rate that will continually out-pace inflation is also going to be included as well. And that does effectively render the cap meaningless. That’s something we had advocated against. So while we won on the deregulation of distance education, we still didn’t get everything that we wanted.

Basically it’s a step away from status quo, and it’s sad to say but we were thinking that the status quo would be a rather large victory at this point.

Shirley Barg: So, some very good news then for Athabasca University students and the group at the Forum here tonight, you’re the first ones to be hearing this news.

Melanee Thomas: Some of the other important things with Athabasca University as well—Athabasca University has a different governance structure than what a residential university does in Alberta. Athabasca University doesn’t have a Senate, which is something the Universities of Calgary, Alberta, and Lethbridge have, and it’s because of the nature of the institution and because of so many students, and therefor its governing people aren’t necessarily in the same geographic area or able to come together on a really regular basis. So it’s unique in that sense, but as far as student representation goes, Athabasca University only has one student representative on Governing Council and one student representative on Academic Council.

Looking at the colleges, technical institutes and universities, universities have more than one student on their board of governors, the equivalent of Governing Council. They have two. It’s my understanding that that is going to be amended for Athabasca University, so there will be more students on Governing Council and more students on Academic Council. We don’t know how many are going to be put on. I would imagine they’d only add one extra onto Governing Council, because they won’t give the rest of us any more on that particular body. We’re not sure what Academic Council is going to look like because at other universities it’s mostly broken down by faculties, and I’m not sure what the colleges and technical institutes Academic Council looks like, so I don’t know the student representation on that. But suffice to say there’s going to be more student representation in the university governance, and that’s something that’s very important.

Shirley Barg: Actually, that’s something that—I have to give Athabasca University credit where credit is due—and they were the one school of any college, technical institute, or university in the province that was asking the government for more representation on Governing Council. They had never asked for more on Academic Council, and I think this came about as a result of the letter that AUSU did send to the Minister referring to General Faculties Councils on other universities having up to 10 percent. . .

Melanee Thomas: Up to 30 percent.

Shirley Barg: . . . up to 30 percent representation of students when we only had one on our Academic Council. So I believe that more students coming onto Academic Council is the result of the request by AUSU.

Melanee Thomas: Now I feel the need to raise a flag about these amendments as well because they’re not a done deal. These amendments haven’t been seen by Caucus yet. They’ve been seen by something called the Standing Policy Committee and they’ve been approved by the Standing Policy Committee. This is something that’s necessary for any kind of amendments to go forward and any kind of legislation. . . [inaudible] . . . or anything like that. I’m confident that Cabinet has seen it, the Minister didn’t say explicitly that Cabinet has seen it but I’m assuming that Cabinet has, especially considering the number of Cabinet Ministers on the SPC [Standing Policy Committee]. But Caucus has not seen these amendments. . .

Shirley Barg: Tomorrow. It goes to Caucus tomorrow.

Melanee Thomas: . . . and this government’s Caucus is full of neo-conservatives, and neo-conservatives tend to see groups like students, despite the fact that we represent rather a large demographic diversity—there’s close to 200,000 of us in this province—but apparently 200,000 of us are apparently a "special interest group" and therefore not to be negotiated with or treated very kindly.

I’m from Alberta, I love Alberta’s political culture because it’s fascinating and it gives me something to study, but when it comes to me getting a guarantee from this Caucus that they’re going to do the right thing to protect Alberta’s students, I don’t trust them. So I don’t know what’s going to be coming out of this Caucus meeting.

What also makes me worry is after the Minister had explained all the amendments—there were 12 of them in total—he basically gave us a 5 minute lecture—I would call it a lecture—where he gave us a tacit threat saying now instead of going out in the media and. . . I want your support on this. If he had just said I want your support on these amendments it might not have raised any flags but when he said I don’t want you going to the media and saying bad things, I don’t want to see any protests on the steps of the legislature, and I want you guys to get hold of the opposition parties and get them to not debate this in the legislature so we can pass it really smoothly.

The opposition parties, even if we go to them and say please don’t debate this, they’re going to debate it because that’s the nature of opposition parties. They understand how democracy works and they understand how the legislature and public debate work. And while CAUS and ACTISEC might choose to not sponsor any legislature steps events, there’s nothing to stop one of our member organizations from doing the same thing, there’s nothing to stop individual students or members of the public from doing the same thing.

So, the battle’s not done and we need to make sure we’re very vigilant to hold them accountable to what they told us today.

Shirley Barg: I think this whole thing came at a time—they had to get the amendments in before the house sits on November 18. The Learning Minister, his reputation is not exactly gold right now in the province. And I think the last thing he wanted was to give a group that’s almost 200,000 strong right now in the province to bring more negative publicity. So, I don’t know if it’s timing. I’d like to think it’s the hard work we put in, but we still don’t consider ourselves totally in the clear on this.

One other thing I do want to mention that came up when the Minister talked about the tuition at Athabasca University remaining under the Tuition Fee Policy. Because Athabasca University right now is at the 30 percent cap, Alberta Learning, the Learning Minister said they’re willing to put in at least a million dollars in funding to the university to bring the university’s budget down below that 30 percent.

So we not only got the news of remaining within the Tuition Fee Policy, we got the news that Athabasca University would receive an extra million dollars in funding. We want to make sure that the Learning Minister holds firm to the commitment that he did give us and so any media we seek we will temper it by saying we will hold the Minister firm on the commitments that he did make.

Melanee Thomas: What we know is that Bill 43 will go through second reading most likely on November 18, maybe November 19 depending on how busy it is. The Fall Session is very short, they only sit for about 10 days, which usually means they’re passing a piece of legislation every day. They set speed records. I can’t understand why they don’t sit a little earlier and deliberate a little more.

Second reading will be Bill 43 in its form now, as unamended. Then it will go to committees and amendments will be presented. At that point that will be the first time we’ll be able to see the amendments actually written out. We have the intent of the amendments and basically what they’re designed to do, but we haven’t looked at the language yet. We’ll probably only have about three days to do something with the amendments.

Shirley Barg: The one thing the Minister did say when we do get the amendments and look them over, if there’s anything different from what he has told us at the meeting today then we are to get in touch with him ASAP and they’ll set things right.

Melanee Thomas: I think we also need to make it known that we expect to have all this stuff honoured and even if it’s not quite what we’re looking for, if they renege on anything—if we look at the amendments and they’re not what was promised and they are more damaging, or if they’re just not as good as what was promised us, I think we’re duty-bound to go public and raise a right nasty stink about it.

Shirley Barg: Call us cynical. To tell you the truth, we are because a lot of the things we have told the provincial government have not been heard, so all of a sudden when they’re saying we hear you, we’ve written down what we wanted, we’ve listened to you it makes us rather suspicious. After the meeting today with Alberta Learning we probably spent the next hour and a half sitting there talking about okay, when’s the other shoe going to drop? Where’s the bomb underneath this pile of gold?

Melanee Thomas: I still feel that way and I still think that there’s something there, whether an agenda that we’re not seeing or something going on that we just haven’t figured out yet. So, when we figure it out, if we figure it out, we’ll let you know.

Shirley Barg: Brett do you have anything and then we’ll open it up to questions?

Brett Bergie: Maybe the only thing I’ll say is that with regards to Bill 43, probably what was most crippling with the first draft was the idea that distance education would be deregulated and allowed for market forces to completely dictate how those fees would be set. And certainly that’s concerning for every student whether it be a college or TI student or university student, and I think all of us at some point have raised that issue but I think it’s important to state at this point that no-one has championed that cause more greatly than Shirley and I’m sure her colleagues have at the executive here with Athabasca University -- sorry, I’m getting all my memberships mixed up now – but I do think that as Melanee and Shirley have well noted that it’s too early to pop the champagne cork.

The success today is very much the success of the executive and Shirley here at Athabasca, but also other groups of students here across Alberta, and in this case, Canada. So this is a big opportunity for this organization to celebrate, when this second draft is read in November.

Melanee Thomas: I think we really in particular need to watch the deregulation of distance education issue because I remember this coming up in August 2002. I’ve been working with Shirley since May of 2002, and this was an issue that we first heard in our first meeting with the minister almost a year ago. And it’s something that we’ve been speaking out against since then, so it really wasn’t too much of a surprise when we saw it in Bill 43, but it wasn’t any less devastating.

Shirley Barg: Yup

Melanee Thomas: . . . I couldn’t believe my ears this morning when he said that deregulation of distance education was off the table, but, I mean, don’t piss Shirley off, she’s a spitfire. [laughter] She will let you know if she doesn’t like what you’re doing, as Minister Oberg knows well.

Shirley Barg: I’ll open it up for questions, I know this has been a lot of information and of course, for some of us we’re talking in terms and talking about issues that we’ve been dealing with, as I said before, very intimately, for the last number of months. So for some of you it may be information overload, so if you need clarification on any one point, if you want us to backtrack and speak on something again, you know, walk it past you again, just a little more slowly, we’re certainly willing to do that. So ask away, just state your name before you ask, and of course that applies to people in the room here too.

Nicole: Okay, this is Nicole, I just want to know, is there a way that I can get a copy of the bill?

Shirley Barg: Certainly, there is one online, and I will – what’s your email address Nicole? ... Actually, what I’ll do – do all of you go into the discussion forum on the AUSU website? [general agreement] Okay, what I’ll do when I get home tonight is I’ll find the Bill 43 online, and I’ll post that website in the discussion forum, under the heading tuition. Okay?

Nicole: And you have a soft copy of the student submission to the Ministery as well, will that be in the discussion forums?

Shirley Barg: The student submission is on the www.deregulationnation.com website, and if you go to there and look under the heading media kits, the first one you’ll see is APSSA submission, and that’s the submission, the joint submission made by ACTISEC and CAUS to the Alberta Government, to Alberta Learning. So you can see how we dealt with some of the issues.

Now when you’re reading it, because you’ve received a little bit of information on it this evening, maybe it’ll help clarify what the heck are we talking about there, so maybe now it’ll be a little more easy to understand.

Melanee Thomas: And it also addresses all of the issues that we have with Bill 43, actually not all of the issues, all of the issues we chose to champion. Bill 43 is so large that somebody dubbed it something for everyone to hate. I mean the faculty associations and administrations and all that sort of thing, they weren’t very impressed with this whole thing either.

Shirley Barg: Any other questions?

Nicholas: Yes. Nicholas. Tell me, you say there’s going to be an increase of student representation on Governing Council?

Shirley Barg: That’s correct.

Nicholas: And you say by one?

Shirley Barg: We don’t know. Once the bill is passed and proclaimed, it would be nice if it could happen right away. Right now though, from what the Learning Minister is saying, the President of Athabasca University isn’t very happy with Alberta Learning changing their mind with the deregulation of distance education tuition.

Melanee Thomas: The reason that we think it’s probably going to be only one more additional representative is the structure of student representation at other universities. Currently at the Universities of Lethbridge, Calgary, and Alberta, the President of the Student’s Union sits on the board of Governors, and they also elect an undergraduate board of governors representative from the undergraduate student body, and if there’s graduate students (and there’s graduate students at all three campuses, or institutions) they would elect a graduate student representative as well. So at most, there would be three student representatives.

If it’s primarily undergraduate or if the graduate students are represented by the students union for the undergraduate students then there would be two representatives. We asked for increased membership on the board based on how much we contribute to institutional finances, and the reason why that was denied was apparently the board chairs didn’t seem to think that more student voices around the table would be valuable. So then the Ministry said "Well, they’re not saying it, so we’re not going to put more on."

Shirley Barg: And as I said before, Athabasca University was the only institution that did ask .. so we don’t know about Academic Council either yet, Nicholas, how many additional there will be.

Melanee Thomas: But, the Ministry will not give AU more student representation then it gives any of the other institutions.

Nicholas: Supplementary to the question: When you say ’elected’, elected by who, the students’ union or by the university?

Melanee Thomas: By the student body, so all of the students at the institution. So when you vote in a general election, then you would vote for your board of governors representative, that would be a position that you elect as a student union.

Shirley Barg: And that person is not involved on Council.

Melanee Thomas: More often than not they sit on Council in an advisory capacity only, just to let the Council know what goes on at the board meeting but they don’t have an actual vote in SU matters.

Nicholas: So basically it’s the body who elects it and not the students’ union actually putting a representative in there.

Shirley Barg: That’s correct. Yes. That’s standard procedure at other institutions.

Nicholas: Okay.

Shirley Barg: Other questions?

Simon: Hi, yeah, Simon here. If Bill 43 is ratified what’s the worst case scenario, as it were to use a cliché, on the tuition increase?

Shirley Barg: Okay

Simon: Is it, can they write a blank cheque kind of thing or is it within reason?

Shirley Barg: If the amendment didn’t go through, and the tuition for Athabasca University was deregulated?

Simon: Yeah.

Shirley Barg: Okay, as we saw from the compromise proposal of the university, to increase it up to basically the highest in the province. Frankly that was worse than I’d envisioned. I had envisioned maybe 9 or 10% increases, but all of a sudden they’re talking more like a 22% increase.

Simon: Right. Sorry to interrupt. Would that be like from January 1st next year?

Shirley Barg: Yeah. It wouldn’t come into effect until fall of next year.

What they were saying was, if the tuition was deregulated, Athabasca University was saying they’d have to kind of let market forces take it where it would go, of course they wouldn’t want to raise it too high or they’d price themselves out of the market. They were concerned about the Ontario market, because they wanted to be in the price range ...

Melanee Thomas: But do you remember what happened to your gas bill? Picture your gas bill without a government rebate, and that’s what would happen to your tuition.

Shirley Barg: And also Alberta Learning was saying, "Well you know, they still have to submit their business plan, we’re not going to let them do something that’s totally unreasonable." And the thing is, we can sit here and trust the Learning Minister when he says they’re not going to let them do anything unreasonable, we can trust the university when they say "Oh we’re not going to raise it unreasonable amounts," but the thing is if they didn’t want to raise it by unreasonable amounts, why would they need to be removed from the tuition free policy.

Unidentified: I mean, unreasonable on whose terms?

Shirley Barg: That’s just it. And, you know how much we trust the government.

Melanee Thomas: The current framework, what was suggested today is that for institutions that are under the cap, particularly larger institutions such as the University of Alberta, Calgary, Grant McEwan college, Mount Royal college, institutions that have large enough increases in their net operating expenses through research or through enrollment or what have you . . .

Shirley Barg: Infrastructure.

Melanee Thomas: . . . infrastructure, yeah, exactly. The cap doesn’t protect those students, so it’s conceivable that the students in the biggest institutions in this province will never get to the tuition cap. I mean we saw the differential tuitions in Law and Medicine at the U of A and the U of C last year, and they still had an average undergraduate arts degree tuition of 6.5 or 6.9% while Law and Medicine are approaching ten or twelve thousand dollars a year, and because it averaged to less than the annual maximum allowable increase, in the tuition fee policy that’s ok. That’s something they can do under the tuition fee policy. So arguably the policy doesn’t protect those students that much.

Once you hit the cap, the institutions at the cap are AU, the University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge Community College and I would imagine some of the smaller colleges as well are pretty close to the cap, what happens then is that you’re allowed to increase tuition at a rate of inflation plus 2% or 5%, whichever is lower.

What gets me about the inflation plus 2% is that students and their families are expected to contribute routinely more than inflation. Alberta from the period of 1991 to 2002 had the highest rate of tuition increase, and it was 168% and Stats Canada figured that out so it’s a reliable stat. So our tuition has increased at the highest rate in the country and the framework is such that it will continue to outpace inflation while the government grants to institutions have decreased dramatically in real dollars.

I mean, just at the University of Calgary, their base grant was $165 million in 1995. In 2002 it was $165 million as well, and they had gone through a cut, and it took them seven years to get back to the actual real amount of $165 million, let alone in 2002 dollars versus 1995 dollars. What really irritates me is that the individual is expected to pay a user fee basically that continually outpaces inflation, and isn’t protected very much. I mean it’s regulated but it arguably doesn’t protect anyone very much, while the government doesn’t pony up the cash that they expect the rest of us to.

Shirley Barg: So there will still be some publicity, probably some media attention around the fact that while the cap’s gone back into legislation, or the commitment to affordable increases will go back into legislation, there is still allowance to increase tuition beyond what the grants are going up by.

Melanee Thomas: And because you’re allowed to increase tuition above the 30% cap it basically, effectively renders the cap meaningless. When we asked the Minister today if by moving this back into legislation this was the recommitment that the 70-30 split was the proper balance of public versus individual contributions to post-secondary he kind of dodged around that and didn’t really answer it, but wasn’t really positive about it. So this government isn’t saying what it thinks is an appropriate balance for post-secondary education, and how much they feel the public should be contributing to their public post-secondary institutions.

Shirley Barg: So, it is a victory, but it is a shielded one at this point.

Melanee Thomas: I hate saying that a return to the status quo or a step below the status quo is a victory. It’s not a very sweet one.

Shirley Barg: Other questions?

Shirley Barg: Just want to thank you all for taking the time to come and listen to this. This is a very crucial issue for Athabasca University students and we’re not out of the fog totally yet, but it is starting to get a little lighter.

I will give my email address and for any of you who would like to be kept in the loop I did collect some email addresses of students who had emailed and wanted to be here but couldn’t so had asked for information. So my email address is sbarg@ausu.org and just email me your email address, and I’ll keep in touch with you as the bill hits the legislature this fall and what happens with amendments. I’m sure there’ll be stories in the Voice and news on our website as well, but I can give you a little personal update too if you just email me.

Any other comments?

Melanee Thomas: Make sure to check out the website www.deregulationnation.com because that basically distills all of the real big important issues into the smallest nutshell we could put them in.

Shirley Barg: And it’s pretty.

Unidentified: And does it include the bill as it’s presented?

Shirley Barg: The bill isn’t on there, but I will post that on the AUSU discussion forums under the heading tuition, so I’ll do that later tonight.

Nicholas: I have a question or comment, it’s Nicholas.

And that’s to do with funding. Granting. The government granting toward a post-secondary institution.

Athabasca is very unique because they are distance education. Now funding in education is a provincial matter. Each province charges or funds, their own educational system. Except they have transfer payments from the federal government, okay?

Shirley Barg: [agreement]

Nicholas: Every province gets a different percentage through transfer of funds from the government. We being, at Athabasca University, distance education, we then are right across Canada, as opposed to U of A or University of Calgary which are strictly Alberta based. If somebody comes out of BC and wants to attend Calgary or U of A, you pay the tuition, that’s it.

Now, AU is distance education, we’ve got students coming from all around the world. So when he talks about funding and all this, ceilings, caps, and tuition, it kind of puzzles me and I’m kind of scared. I know I’ve taken a few grad courses and they’re 935 bucks as opposed to our undergraduate courses which are only 541 bucks.

Shirley Barg: Right.

Nicholas: And there’s where your dilemma is. And I think I can see where Dominique is coming from.

Melanee Thomas: Can I explain how transfer payments work for you?

Nicholas: Sure.

Melanee Thomas: What happened is, when Paul Martin came in in 1993 what he did was changed the way transfer payments were done to make them a lump-sum payment to the province and it was called the Canada Health and Social transfer, and basically what he did is he would hand over a cheque to each provincial government and said "Here, use it on health and social stuff" and didn’t really give them any direction – there weren’t any strings attached to the money.

What’s recently happened with that is the Canada Health and Social transfer was split into the Canada Health Transfer and the Canada Social Transfer. So a certain portion of the transfer payment goes directly to Health Care in the province, and the rest of that money goes to other social programs, including education.

What I know that the federal student lobby groups are advocating is that money within this federal transfer payments to the provincial government be earmarked for post-secondary education, similar to what’s going on with the Canada Health Transfer. I don’t what they’d call it, but basically the federal government would hand over money to the provincial government and say "You have to spend this money on post-secondary education."

Basically, even though Athabasca University has students studying with it from all across the country and all across the world, I mean, if you’re a student from BC and you attend the University of Alberta, if you need student loans, you still need to get that from the BC government. You don’t get that from the Alberta provincial government and therefore BC is mucking about in the whole Alberta post-secondary system as well. So there are certain things that because Athabasca University is located in this province that the Alberta provincial government has to step up and pony up the money for.

Minister Oberg said that they only give Athabasca University ten million dollars, so that’s the base operating grant that they give them. When this government runs a six billion dollar budget surplus it begs the question why they can’t put a couple million dollars toward each institution. It begs the question. I don’t see the argument that this money has to come from tuition. Particularly when you’ve got a federal government running a budget surplus, and you have an Alberta provincial government running a very large budget surplus as well.

I personally don’t think government should be aiming for budget surpluses, you don’t run government like you run a business. We know that the money is there, it’s just not being allocated where it ought to be.

Shirley Barg: What’s happening though is because Athabasca University students pay for a larger percentage of their education – Athabasca University doesn’t have a lot of the massive infrastructure costs of other universities. As a result of the actual cost of delivery of education, Athabasca University students pay a lot greater amount of their tuition fee toward the actual cost of delivery of their course. The tuition isn’t going to keep the building maintained, or to keep lights on or that sort of thing like they do in massive physical campuses.

So as a result that means that there is actually very little subsidization by the Alberta Government, if any at all, in students who live outside of Alberta. Right now there still is that $55 out of province fee and that, if anything, offsets it. If you ask Dominiq, and I believe he did say at the last meeting where he presented that Alberta students are not subsidizing out of province students at all.

So it isn’t as if the Athabasca University is actually losing money on out of province students.

Does that answer your question Nicholas.

Nicholas: No. What I’m saying is that transfer payments are not based on quotes, say 5 or 6 percent, it’s based per capita.

Shirley Barg: Right

Nicholas: So if there’s a deficiency in say Quebec then they get more money in a transfer payment then say Alberta who’s oil rich. Okay. So this is where when you get uncle Ralph talking and he says "Well I don’t want to subsidize the other provinces, the other students," which I did mention in one of my emails I am taking a grad course, and we are studying about adult education and distance education in Quebec and they have a unique situation. I don’t have all night to tell you about that, after I finish my paper I’ll give it to you. But anyway, it’s different.

Shirley Barg: It is.

Nicholas: Each one is funded differently, each one does not want to give their students the go ahead to another university, and that’s all I’m questioning.

Shirley Barg: And that’s the same thing that happens right now in BC. Now I understand that this is changing but right now Athabasca University students in BC cannot get BC student financial aid to take a course outside of their province. And that’s the same thing. So it’s not students from BC who are applying to Alberta for financial aid, they have to apply in the province where they live. So Alberta’s not funding student financial aid for other students.

Melanee Thomas: I understand your confusion with the transfer payments though, it is a messy, messy process, and what we don’t know and what the government doesn’t disclose is what it does with the transfer payment it gets from the federal government once it actually gets it.

Me in my cynicism would argue that none of it goes toward education, and I would be really surprised if it didn’t go into the Alberta Lottery Commission or something like that.

Nicholas: It does go into general funds, so what’s the difference?

Melanee Thomas: Exactly. It goes into general funds, and then treasury, the treasury board, ministerial bureaucrats can go forward and request from treasury that they increase the base operating grant by 6% for every institution in the province and what does treasury give them? Two [percent].

Shirley Barg: Nicholas, phone me tomorrow and I’d love to have a long chat with you about it.

Nicholas: Sure thing. Oh you mean you’re going to rely on my major in economics?

Shirley Barg: You bet.

Nicholas: Alright.

Shirley Barg: Any other questions?

Rebecca: I just wanted to make a comment, it’s Rebecca here. I just wanted to say that I think you guys are doing a great job and thank you very much for doing it.

Shirley Barg: Thanks so much Rebecca.

Shirley Barg: Thank you very much for attending. You all have my email address. If you have any other questions that pop into your head in the middle of the night or whatever, email me and I’ll be happy to answer them, or at least point you in the right direction if I can’t answer.

Nicholas: Is that toward Andrew?

Shirley Barg: Yeah! Call Nicholas! Thank you all.

This concludes the Bill 43 transcript. Please contact ausu@ausu.org for more information on this, or any other issue affecting AU students.

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