Those working inside the university understand its fundamental values: freedom of inquiry and expression, academic freedom and intellectual integrity, and the equality and dignity of all people (Turpin & Bailey, 2024). How those values play out in the everyday is constantly being tested.

The university’s biggest threats are not only occurring in fascist and authoritarian countries, but also in traditionally regarded liberal democracies where these attacks follow a similar playbook:

Undermine public trust in institutions that question power, and reward those that remain loyal. The goal is not just to control universities, but to reshape the civic imagination—to erode the idea that higher education should nurture questioning, complexity, and dissent. (Spooner & Westheimer, 2025).

This is most evident in the United States in the current administration of Donald J. Trump’s targeted assaults on “the law, higher education, medical research, ethical standards, America’s foreign alliances, free speech, the civil service, religion, the media and much more” (Edsall, 2025)—all of which parallel a well-worn trajectory to fascism.

The contributors to this book trouble both the internal and external assumptions about what universities have been in the past, what they are like currently, and what they might, could, or should be in the future. Universities have adapted, and continue to adapt, in response to the demands, constraints, and needs placed upon them by the governments, societies, and communities in which they reside and indeed serve.

One argument we wish to make explicit here is that universities operating in a liberal democracy have a special role to play, one that sets them apart from universities in totalitarian regimes and authoritarian and illiberal states.

In addition to seeking truth, making discoveries, and passing on knowledge and wisdom, the university in a democracy has as its unique purpose that of asking difficult questions of governments, of other power structures, and of society itself. Its role includes ensuring that public policy is informed by the best available evidence as well as helping to foster critical and creative citizens whose formation prepares them for a lifetime of meaningful employment, community engagement, and democratic participation. When a society and a university are operating in an optimal fashion, these processes are occurring both inside and outside of campus. The university is in the service of our current society but also, more importantly, to the aspirational one on the horizon.

It is imperative to acknowledge the moment we are in as well as the trajectories of our near past that affect and inform our present and future.

Among a variety of developments of concern, our current moment features the outright banning of entire areas of study, the abolishment of tenure, and the curtailment of academic freedom, as well as a near ubiquitous push toward performance-based funding (Spooner, 2024). It also features chronic underfunding, international student quotas, and anti-woke sentiment with pushback against equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives meant to permit greater participation in increasingly conservative and authoritarian interventionist states.

Still other developments include the widespread use and advancement of artificial intelligence and the uncertain ground upon which universities have based their diverse responses to it. It is a time of audit culture, anti-intellectualism, and disinformation (Spooner 2018, 2024).

It can be stated with little hyperbole that from our fields of study to our campus greens, academies and academics are under attack, just as our global democracies equally find themselves so challenged.

As Mark Kingwell elaborates, “Education is always political, and too often in the service of dominant ideas, not novel ones…. Intellectual inquiry should not offer comfort or affirmation of what we already believe” (Kingwell, 2024).

There is no question that universities have had, and do have, a wide variety of purposes and serve many constituencies, some discrete and diverse and some closely overlapping and entwined. We have seen, particularly in the United States (but also in Canada and the United Kingdom), how national and local legislators can deny or even erase academic freedom and intervene in the business of university governance. We have witnessed the influence of partisan funding of right-wing attacks on higher education.

As governments’ share of university funding has declined, academia has depended more and more on benefactors and donors to fund not just scholarships and bursaries, but to help with operations just to keep the lights on, as the saying goes. The volatility of student enrolments and the dependency of universities on tuition dollars, particularly from international students, have led to difficult decisions being taken on many campuses that have impacted program restructuring, amalgamations, and unit closures.

An emphasis on the need to compete for students coincides with an increasing emphasis on post-secondary institutions preparing students for the job market and, increasingly, being in direct training partnerships with business and industry.

That being said, universities have also learned to reach out and respond to community needs with new programs. In this we see how the values of universities are embodied and reflected in their actions and activities.

This culture of encouragement is also a truth of what universities hope for and aspire toward, all while recognizing the dangers of tokenism and superficial change. Such programs and celebrations illustrate a new role for universities: their desire to respond to societal needs and to build knowledge through action. In so doing they may offer us another truth: our need more than ever for a sense of hope.

In its aspirational ideal, the university is a place of hope and of our collective futurity. In deliberative truth seeking, there is hope. Every society and each generation of scholars must revisit the fundamental question “What are universities for?” and defend its ideals such as they are and are always becoming.

Against this backdrop, we ask, what kind of society do we want universities to serve and to aspire to become?

Gathered in this volume are diverse and thoughtful voices from institutions of higher education. These voices insist that strong counter narratives exist to oppose the dangerous state of affairs facing liberal democracy and human rights. There are vital and useful alternatives with which to chart a course away from these dangerous elements of fascism in the world today. And so, we must say that this unwelcome truth requires that universities work much harder to defeat the tyrants of this world, trumped-up bully boys who are embedded in every aspect of societies around the world and in all ranks of the military, government, business, and industry. They are the twenty-first-century equivalent of the robber barons of the nineteenth century who believed that the goal of the expansionist colonial enterprise was to ensure their own incredible wealth and privilege at the expense of others, both mere lesser individuals and entire civilizations. This is a race and class struggle that universities must address.

There can be no reconciliation with the past if there is not first an understanding of truth even if it is differentiated, complex, and contested. Universities must help us to come to terms with this past. If we don’t, as the old adage goes, we are doomed to repeat it. Specialization, and an increasingly labour-market-focused higher education, means that fewer and fewer of today’s university students study other cultures, histories, languages, and literatures, in other words the humanities and arts. This lack contributes to societies deficient in understanding and knowledge that would better enable them to fight for themselves and for others.

If we don’t know about the unbelievable harm authoritarian strongman tyrants of the past have done, we will be helpless in the face of ruthless tyranny. “The banality of evil,” so eerily exposed by the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals and the reportage of philosopher Hannah Arendt (1963) serves to remind us of this truth.

The great Canadian socialist politician Tommy Douglas, along with those of his generation, experienced the rise of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism; Canada fought with allies in wars against these dangerous “isms.” Douglas understood that:

fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege. (Douglas, n.d.)

Up against such hard truths, what can a university be for? It seems to us that this question is almost as protean as asking about the meaning of life. If there were a simple answer, if only truth were that easy, then perspectives as different as hedonism and puritanism might be easily reconciled in an understanding that nuance and subtlety are lost if we seek easy short-cuts to the truth. Working to make a better world is not merely an individualistic endeavour; a world that is more just and equitable requires the commitment of entire institutions, particularly schools and universities.

Educators over the years have been warmed and inspired by the quotation attributed to Plutarch: “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” Surely that is what, at least in part, a university is for. Do these conflicting images of fire capture the contradictions inherent in today’s university where knowledge is under siege?

We have valued highly the image of the lighthouse to represent the university; ancient lighthouses of course were once giant bonfires, signalling and warning of dangers below. The iconic image of the lighthouse, used for the symposium that instigated this publication, captures the glow of a light that guides us in new and safer directions, helping to safely navigate difficult waters. A beacon is a comfort to those who have lost their way, and the constancy of the lighthouse evokes the vigilance of standing on guard. Piya Chatterjee speaks of an “ethical charge [that] helps me anchor myself in these choppy waters and the jagged shoals which lie close under their surface.” This ethical charge is her own personal lighthouse as she navigates the dangers of researching “others” from her own privileged yet compromised position.

Tammy Ratt, calling for the need for Indigenous knowledge in universities, draws on the image of waskway, the birch tree, and its many uses in traditional cultures to represent the concept of all things being interrelated. The birch provides sap and shelter and medicines and, of course, hardwood to build with and to make fire. Trees have been potent symbols of life in cultures, mythologies, and religions across time.

The tree is a symbol that challenges us in our institutions of teaching and learning to ensure that such magnificence can, should, will, and must continue into the future. That is the threat and the inspiration, and that is the truth the academy must nurture and seek.

Let us not take for granted the precarious freedoms scholars in universities in democratic nations currently, though imperfectly, access as tools to complete their work, for it has not been long the case. In fact, it has only been a little more than a century that it has existed in higher education as it is currently conceptualized in North America. Academic freedom is most succinctly defined as “freedom of inquiry and research; freedom of teaching within the university or college; and freedom of extramural utterance and action” (AAUP, n.d., p. 292).

The threats universities and scholars face are many and include, among others, a creeping authoritarianism and democratic backsliding; growing adaptation of artificial intelligence, anti-intellectualism, and seeping post-truth rot.

Other threats include shrinking funding and ongoing government attempts to repurpose higher education as only an individual benefit and strictly to service the labour market and industry. Ever-present, too, is resistance to and resentment of change and initiatives that champion equity, diversity, and inclusion.

As a final thought, we wish to leave you with this slightly updated Greek proverb: “A society grows great when old folks plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” A properly functioning, reimagined, and fully aspirational university is, then, just that: an investment in the world’s collective future.

The preceding article is an excerpt from Knowledge Under Siege: Charting a future for Universities edited by Marc Spooner and James McNinch, with contributions from: Whitney Blaisdell, Consuelo Chapela, Piya Chatterjee, Jonathan R. Cole, Sheila Cote-Meek, Shannon Dea, Kevin K.Kumashiro, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Simon Marginson, James McNinch, Peter S. McInnis, Liz Morrish, Christopher Newfield, Tammy Ratt, Tom Sperlinger, Malinda S. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Marc Spooner, & Joel Westheimer.

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Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers’ union in the USA. Here she lays out what she sees as the main reasons fascists, authoritarians, the far-right, and the oligarch class (groups that are not entirely synonymous, but are allied in this particular moment) feel threatened by teachers and by the institution of public education, and why they attack teachers while working to dismantle public education.

Much ink has been spilled equivocating over whether U.S. President Donald Trump and other far-right governments can be called fascist, with many people preferring more ambiguous language. But a problem must be named and understood to be acted on effectively, and it’s refreshing to see someone of Weingarten’s stature speak frankly about what’s happening in the education landscape, and why.

In Jason Stanley’s 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, which Weingarten cites extensively, Stanley clarifies that “fascist politics” does not necessarily lead to state-level fascism, but should be recognized nonetheless for the danger it poses to democracy. Weingarten addresses the reluctance to use the f-word with the statement, “The perfect definition of fascism will be clear in the rearview mirror—but by then it may be too late for our children and our country.”

This is a particularly good point to keep in mind in the Canadian context. While many people who were reluctant to label Trump a fascist have admitted they were mistaken and acknowledged the current reality, Canadians may be reluctant to acknowledge fascist politics in our own context. The broader concept of “fascist politics” can guide our reflections on how many of the trends and events described by Weingarten are echoed in Canadian education systems. Culture-war attacks on public education as an institution, accusations of ideological indoctrination levelled at teachers, and a relentless push for privatization in order to undermine and defund public education are all features of current education politics in Canada.

Weingarten opens with a historical overview of the Norwegian teachers’ resistance to the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, and the punishing consequences of that resistance. She then moves on to present-day authoritarian attacks on public education by Vladimir Putin, who has explained his reasoning with the statement, “Wars are won by teachers.” She also describes how far-right activist Christopher Rufo has pioneered modern-day attacks on American public education, prosecuting what he calls a “narrative war” on public education in order to sow distrust. Rufo is one of the architects of the right-wing Project 2025, which aims to reshape the U.S. government in order to enact a suite of right-wing policies. Rufo also invented the panic around supposed “critical race theory” in schools.

The remainder of the book outlines the four main motivations that fascists have for attacking teachers, illustrated by many examples from recent years.

First, teachers teach critical thinking, whereas fascism works to short-circuit critical thinking in favour of gut feelings of fear and rage. Angry and resentful people can be manipulated to believe the system is broken, and to place their trust in an authoritarian who promises to fix it. Fascists also understand that critical thinking makes young people more resistant to indoctrination and the types of simplistic messaging favoured by fascist politicians. Weingarten discusses measures that have been enacted in several states to restrict what teachers are allowed to teach, and identifies how teachers are fighting back.

Second, teachers (and public schools) create safe and welcoming communities for all children, while fascists oppose pluralism and seek to dehumanize various groups such as 2SLGBTQIA+students, Black students, and immigrants. Third, teachers fight for equity and opportunity for all children, while fascists believe in hierarchy and want to reinforce and widen existing class divides, many of which overlap with racial divides.

Finally, teachers build strong unions, which pose a threat to the oligarch class. Teachers’ unions are some of the largest in America, and are therefore singled out by powerful interests. Weingarten outlines the privatization tactics that the billionaire class has employed for decades to weaken teachers’ unions—expanding initiatives such as charter schools and school voucher programs. The hatred of unions stems in part from the political power these organizations hold, which can frustrate authoritarian ambitions. But Weingarten makes it clear how important teachers’ unions are to the overall quality of public education, as collective bargaining often involves negotiations around supports for students. These gains for the most vulnerable students frustrate the fascist goal of maintaining existing social divisions.

The book’s concluding section, titled “The Way Forward—For All” is unfortunately a little thin. Weingarten notes that she is writing this book in the early days of Donald Trump’s second term, and describes his intentions to dismantle the federal Department of Education—intentions that he has since translated into action. Weingarten paints a bleak picture of the consequences of these actions for the country’s most vulnerable students. She also gives a brief overview of how the Trump regime’s attacks on education extend to colleges and universities.

Weingarten notes that fascist politics continues to pose an existential threat to students, and to democracy. However, she doesn’t propose much in the way of action other than a statement that teachers will continue “to show up and stand up for the needs of our students.” This seems like a pretty weak stance for the head of one of the country’s largest unions. Weingarten finishes with some more thoughts on how public education and democracy are inextricably linked, but doesn’t seem clear on how we can collectively resist authoritarian attacks on the public education system.

Despite this shortcoming, Weingarten provides a valuable service in diagnosing the pathologies behind the current attacks on public education. Coming up with a cure will be the urgent task of not only teachers, but parents, student activists and citizens who want to save their democracy.

The post Why fascists fear teachers: Public education and the future of democracy appeared first on CCPA.

I work as a communications advisor for a major union in Quebec. I organize parents at my kids’ school. I sit on a school board. I’m a fairly militant person. And as a political science major, I spend a lot of time thinking about power: who has it, how it moves, and what happens when it gets taken away.

So when I tell you that what is happening right now to workers’ rights in Quebec, and across Canada and the world, feels like something we will look back on with real grief, I am not being dramatic. I am paying attention.

What has unfolded in Quebec over the past two years is not a series of administrative adjustments to labour law. It is a deliberate dismantling of the right to strike, the most powerful tool workers have ever held. The really maddening part is that the same playbook is running simultaneously in Alberta, in Ottawa, in London, in Washington. Different accents, same script: silence workers, protect capital, and pretend it’s in the interest of the former.

Nowhere is this more visible, or more consequential, than in education. The kindergarten teacher managing 25 kids in a crumbling school, the cégep instructor splitting time across three institutions, the university lecturer on a rolling six-month contract, the school support worker who is first on scene for a student in crisis: these workers have become the preferred target of governments that want to break labour power while, with a straight face, claiming it’s in the public interest.

Quebec: Legault Balboa

François Legault’s government started 2025 the way a boxer comes out of the corner in the final round: swinging hard and fast, not particularly interested in what the judges think.

Bill 89, adopted in May 2025 and in force since November 30, gives the Tribunal administratif du travail the power to order the maintenance of “essential services” during a strike, or simply suspend the right to strike altogether at the government’s request. Every major union in Quebec denounced it. Law professor Finn Makela at the Université de Sherbrooke said the quiet part out loud in an article from Pivot: this law is the CAQ’s revenge for the Front commun in 2023-2024, when over half a million workers walked off the job. Teachers, support staff, school psychologists, social workers: out together. They won. And the government did not forget.

Bill 101 (no, not the one you are thinking about), adopted in October 2025, imposed a two-tiered occupational health and safety regime on workers in education and healthcare—the sectors where the government sits across the bargaining table. Think about what that means for a teacher dealing with violent incidents in the classroom, a special education aide working with a student in crisis, a university research assistant in a poorly maintained lab—all of them now covered by weaker protections than workers in other sectors. Not surprisingly, the fines for illegal strike action went up significantly (because of course they did).

Then came Bill 3 (this one made me genuinely angry). Tabled October 30, 2025, it proposes splitting union dues into “principal” and “optional” categories. Core bargaining would be paid out of the principal dues. Everything else—including legal challenges, political advocacy, contesting laws before the courts, donating to charity—becomes “optional,” requiring a separate vote specifically on those subjects. The pretext? Reinforcing union democracy and transparency. The real reason? Getting rid of an annoying check and balance for the government by limiting organized labour advocacy.

This is not reform. It’s the quiet dismantling of the Rand Formula, the post-war compromise that has held Canadian labour relations together since 1945.

Alberta: The template

Quebec did not invent this strategy. It borrowed heavily from Alberta’s Bill 32 in 2020 under the United Conservative Party. Bill 32 imported American-style union restrictions. It buried local unions in financial reporting requirements, made dues for advocacy beyond collective bargaining voluntarily opt-in, and classified everything from lobbying for COVID safety protocols to donating to a food bank as a “political cause” requiring explicit consent from members. For teachers’ unions in Alberta, this was a gut punch: fighting for school funding, pushing for smaller class sizes, opposing education privatization, all of it suddenly classified as political activity requiring specific member authorization. Unifor called it what it was: the worst elements of U.S. labour law transplanted into Alberta, with the goal of draining union financial resources and restricting their ability to do much beyond negotiating collective agreements.

Alberta came back in December 2025 with a revised labour code under Bill 1, again drawing accusations of favouring employers over workers. Province-wide labour action was building heading into 2026. The cycle does not stop because workers keep losing; it stops when they push back hard enough. Alberta isn’t there yet. Quebec is getting close.

Ottawa: Strikebreaking by phone

Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code is the subject of one of the most consequential labour stories of the past two years and far too many people still have no idea it exists.

It is a clause, tucked into federal law since 1984, that gives the Minister of Labour the power to direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board to end a labour dispute and impose binding arbitration, without going to Parliament, without a vote, without any public debate. It sat largely unused for decades until 2024 when the federal government “discovered” it.

In a single year, the federal government invoked Section 107 four times: against port workers in BC and Quebec, against rail workers at CN and CPKC (Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd) ending a lockout that had barely lasted a day, and against Canada Post workers on strike during the holiday season. In August 2025, it hit again: Air Canada flight attendants were ordered back to work less than 12 hours into their strike. A phone call from the Minister. A board ruling. Back to work.

The legal analysis is clear: when the government commits to ending every major work stoppage on economic grounds, employers have no reason to bargain seriously. Why negotiate in good faith when you can stall, lock out your workers, and wait for Ottawa to step in? Air Canada reportedly asked for federal intervention before the strike even started. Once it became clear that the flight attendants, facing fines and potential contempt charges, were going to hold the line regardless, the company reached a deal within 48 hours.

What this means for education workers is worth spelling out. The federal government has now demonstrated in practice that any sufficiently visible work stoppage can be ended by ministerial order. If postal workers can be sent back by phone call, why not university researchers the next time they strike? Why not CUPE members in federally funded institutions? The precedent is there. The tool is there. The question is how far the next government decides to push it.

CUPE, CUPW, the Teamsters, and the Canadian Labour Congress are all in court challenging Section 107. An NDP bill, C-247, calls for its outright repeal. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 2025 budget proposed changes to collective bargaining for federal workers and announced 40,000 public service job cuts in the same document. The message is consistent: the economy is the priority. Workers are an annoying variable.

The global picture

According to the ITUC’s 2025 Global Rights Index: the right to strike was violated in 131 countries, 87% of those surveyed, 44 more than in 2014. Eighty percent of countries severely restricted the right to collective bargaining. Europe, historically the most protected region, has seen the worst deterioration of any region over the past decade. Canada and the Americas hit their worst scores on record in 2025.

In Britain, the Conservative government’s 2023 Strikes Act gave employers the power to issue “work notices” naming specific workers who, despite having voted to strike, were legally required to show up to work anyway. Teachers were among those targeted. Unions were then required to take “reasonable steps” to enforce compliance among their own members, advising them to comply, and reporting absences to the employer. The general secretary of the National Education Union said his union would strike to force school closures at any school that dismissed NEU members under the legislation. The ITUC ranked the UK at the same level as the United States: “systematic violation of rights.” Of European countries, only Turkey and Belarus received a worse score.

The new Labour government eventually repealed the legislation. But the point had been made: in a wealthy liberal democracy, you can pass a law—without political consequence—that puts teachers in the position of crossing their own picket lines.

In the United States, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 has been restricting the right to strike for nearly 80 years. Secondary boycotts are banned. Employers can permanently replace striking workers, a practice normalized when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981. Trump’s second administration went further: the National Labor Relations Board was rendered non-operational for nearly a year after Trump fired a board member to eliminate its quorum. Over a million federal workers lost their collective bargaining rights by executive order, what one labour historian called the largest single act of union-busting in American history. A Cornell labour expert summed it up: “This is great for employers, they have a non-functioning NLRB.” Meanwhile, university faculty and support staff keep organizing in record numbers—regardless of what Washington does—because the conditions have become untenable .

France, Finland, Belgium, countries with deep post-war social contracts, have all moved to restrict strike action in recent years. This is not a series of unrelated policy choices. It is the same ideological project running at different speeds in different countries.

What these laws actually do

Every one of these laws comes packaged in reasonable language: “balance,” “modernization,” “essential services,” “industrial peace.” I’ve spent enough years in communications to recognize what that packaging is designed to cover.

A strike that causes no disruption changes nothing. Workers’ leverage is the capacity to withdraw their labour and make the withdrawal cost tangible . The moment governments commit to ending every significant work stoppage because it inconveniences the economy, collective bargaining becomes a performance with a known outcome. You negotiate, you reach an impasse, the government steps in for the employer. Rinse and repeat.

The “essential services” expansion is particularly dishonest, and education makes this obvious. Of course teaching is essential. But “essential” has been converted into a legal tool for prohibition. You cannot declare teachers essential to society and then cut their sick leave, stuff 30 kids or more into a classroom, eliminate the school psychologist position, and take away their right to walk out. That is not a social contract.

The dues restrictions, Alberta’s proposed Bill 32, Quebec’s Bill 3, the American right-to-work model they both drew from, are designed to limit what unions can do beyond signing contracts. For education unions specifically, this is serious. Teachers’ unions have historically been among the most active civic institutions in their communities, funding legal challenges to bad laws, pushing back on education privatization, advocating for students who need more resources. That is exactly what these laws prevent.

The legal record

Quebec unions have filed challenges to Law 14. CUPW and CUPE are in Federal Court over Section 107. The NDP has introduced legislation to repeal it. The ITUC is documenting the global pattern.

This resistance is not nothing. It is also not sufficient on its own.

Rights in this country were not legislated into existence by generous governments. The Rand Formula came from a wartime strike in Windsor in 1945, where workers held out long enough that a judge had to build a new legal framework to settle it. The eight-hour day, paid leave, workplace safety standards, the right to a school day where teachers aren’t also doing the work of a secretary, a social worker, and a custodian because the positions were cut: none of it was offered. It was won through sustained collective action.

The CAQ calls its laws modernization. Ottawa calls Section 107 industrial peace. The UCP called Bill 32 democratic transparency. But the actual goal is to make unions smaller, quieter, and less capable of causing problems for employers or governments. The machinery of the state is being used to do what employers have wanted for decades.

The Air Canada flight attendants who kept striking after the back-to-work order understood something basic: a right you won’t defend stops being a right. They took the personal risk, and within 48 hours the company was at the table. The school workers in the Front commun held strong and came out with a better contract. The university lecturers organizing across North America on campuses that treat them as disposable are doing it because the alternative is worse.

I think about all of this when I sit in a parent assembly and listen to people talk about what’s happening in their kids’ classrooms. The fight over conditions in schools and the fight over whether the people who work in those schools have real bargaining power are the same fight. That connection is worth making explicit, before enough of it is gone that people stop noticing.

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People of a certain age may remember when then-Ontario Education Minister John Snobelen, (in)famously a high school dropout, was caught ruminating about the need to create a crisis in education to justify its overhaul. He also referred to students as clients, parents as customers, and teachers as “front line service providers” in an interview forebodingly titled “For Whom the Bell Tolls” shortly after assuming this key role in Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution.

A push-poll was conducted, clearly designed to whip up public sentiment against public education. The Education Quality Improvement Act (Bill 160), funding cuts and centralization of authority followed. And at the end of October 1997, unions and the public rallied in a two week period of strikes and protests across Ontario.

On November 10, the strike ended when, one by one, education union leadership instructed members to return to work—despite polling indicating a majority of the public supported the teachers. And on December 1, 1997, Bill 160 became law.

Cuts to public education In Ontario—or across Canada, for that matter, as provincial governments follow a similar template—did not begin in December 1997. And they certainly didn’t end when the Ontario Conservatives were voted out in 2003. But this period is a reminder of what’s at stake when we assume progress, or support for the public institutions that make progress possible, is a given. And it provides a useful and increasingly relevant roadmap of the regressive forces that have never vanished, particularly when it comes to limiting their influence and authority.

Public institutions and infrastructure hold a mirror up to society and are also expected to compensate for (or absorb) society’s inadequacies. The first role—as a mirror—reflects how the State has either invested in and supported communities, particularly those most vulnerable—or not. The second role is indicative of what happens when the State neglects its first responsibility, and how public services (and those who staff them) are expected to respond, often with fewer and fewer resources, in some cases as the last line of defence against the ferocity of neoliberalism.

Inequality is skyrocketing. Wages are not keeping pace with basic needs. Housing is increasingly financialized. Provincial and federal governments aren’t doing even the bare minimum to deal with the crisis in post-secondary education and training. Cuts to the federal public service stand to decimate programs that we all depend on—to massively increase funding to National Defence.

This is where public education is situated—at a time when provincial governments continue to underfund and underresource, as class sizes grow, as special needs programs are shortchanged, and as control is centralized.

And as educators, students and their families pay the price—in communities across the country.

The authors in this issue explore what students, educators and school communities are grappling with in the absence of provincial leadership that sees public education as a system and a service to be prioritized rather than a budget to be decimated.

From rising violence, to pronoun wars, to the denigration of certain degrees as akin to “basketweaving,” to book bans, to (more) cuts to student assistance, to governments using mechanisms to sidestep their legal obligations, public institutions are under attack.

But as these articles also demonstrate, workers are pushing back, in defense of their rights and in defense of the public education system and the students and communities it services.

It bears mentioning that 30 years later we are exactly where advocates warned us we would be when John Snobelen waxed poetic about creating a crisis in education. The difference is that subsequent provincial governments right across the country—within a federal framework that seems intent to willingly shrink to a bathtub sized version of itself (google Grover Norquist)—have steadily, relentlessly chipped away at the funding infrastructure that keeps our schools viable, and the democratic mechanisms that help ensure public responsiveness and community engagement, under the rhetorical guise of “efficiency” and “accountability.”

If we are to learn anything from the decades of activism, it is that progress is never a given, that the fight for justice and equality is ongoing, and that building empathetic and compassionate communities is a full time commitment.

We are as indebted as we were back in the 90s to those who continue to remind us, every day, in word and deed, that while the stakes are high, so too must be our standards when it comes to shaping the world as we want it to be….and what we must do to get there.

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There was no meeting where anyone decided he could not return. No letter withdrawing his place. The process unfolded quietly, the way absences sometimes accumulate when something has already begun to break. The classroom had always been loud. Thirty children speaking at once. Chairs scraping against the floor. The low electrical hum of fluorescent lights overhead. For most students the noise blurred into the background, part of the ordinary atmosphere of school. For him it arrived all at once, every sound demanding attention.

At first the teachers tried small adjustments. A desk moved closer to the wall. Short breaks in the hallway when the room became too overwhelming. Instructions repeated slowly while the other children began their work. The teachers cared about the boy and wanted him to stay. But classrooms run on momentum. Lessons move forward whether every student can follow them or not. Without additional support, the structure could only bend so far.

His parents asked the school for help. The specialized program for students with complex needs had already reached capacity. Educational assistants were assigned to other classrooms earlier in the year. The waiting list for formal assessments stretched months, sometimes years. The administrators explained the situation in careful language. They did not question that the child needed support. The difficulty was that the system had no place to put him.

For a while the family tried shorter school days. Then mornings only. Eventually the boy began staying home entirely on the days when the noise felt unbearable. Officially he remained enrolled. In practice he disappeared from the classroom almost without anyone noticing.

By the time a system fails someone, the decision has already been made. It was made when the budget determined how much care, space, and attention the system could afford to give.

Later the explanation arrived in language that sounded administrative rather than tragic. During the previous budget cycle, the district had reduced specialized support positions. Fewer staff meant fewer placements. The waiting list grew quietly. So did the number of children learning that the school system had not been built for them.

Stories like this rarely appear in policy debates. Education discussions tend to revolve around curriculum reforms, test scores, or teacher shortages. When funding enters the conversation, it is usually framed in the language of efficiency and fiscal responsibility. Yet behind every classroom lies a quieter set of decisions. Decisions about how many staff can be hired, how many programs can exist, and how many students a system has been funded to support.

Budgets are usually presented as technical documents. They appear to be neutral tools for managing limited resources. School boards debate them in long evening meetings filled with spreadsheets and forecasts. Administrators describe them as responsible planning. Yet those numbers quietly determine the limits of what institutions can do. A mission statement describes what a system hopes to achieve. A budget reveals what it has decided it can afford.

The consequences of those decisions rarely appear immediately. They surface later in the ordinary moments of institutional life. A waiting list that grows longer each year. A classroom that cannot stretch far enough to include another student. A child who stops coming to school and becomes one more absence in the record.

The architecture of these decisions has a history. For much of the twentieth century, governments funded institutions through stable operating grants that allowed them to respond flexibly to community needs. Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating through the 1990s, that model was dismantled across North America. Competitive, project-based grants replaced core funding. Organizations were required to demonstrate measurable outcomes within fixed timelines.

In practice, the shift quietly reshaped what schools could do and who they could serve. Programs that produced countable results flourished. Work that required long-term relationship building, open-ended support, or sustained attention to students whose needs resisted tidy metrics became harder to fund and harder to justify. In British Columbia, that transition is visible in school district special education budgets, in educational assistant staffing ratios, in the length of assessment waitlists. The money follows the measurable. The students who fall outside the measurable fall outside the system.

Scholars who study public institutions have long observed that organizations shape their services around the financial structures that sustain them. Economists call this resource dependence: institutions that rely on external funding adapt their activities to match the priorities of those who control the resources they need to survive. In schools, this looks like special education programs that expand where targeted grants exist and contract where they don’t, regardless of whether the student population has changed. It looks like district administrators who genuinely want to serve every child designing programs around the students their budget was built to support.

Researchers studying education systems describe a related consequence as mission drift. Schools and districts founded with broad commitments to inclusion gradually narrow their focus as they align their work with available funding. The shift rarely reflects a change in values. It reflects the reality that even the most committed institutions must operate within financial systems that determine which forms of need are considered fundable.

Political scientists describe a third dynamic through the concept of policy feedback. Once a funding structure is established, it begins to shape the institutions built around it. Assessment tools develop around the categories that funding systems recognize. Evidence of success emerges from those programs. Future funding flows toward the initiatives that already exist. Over time the system reinforces itself. Students whose needs fit the recognized categories remain visible. Those who don’t gradually disappear from institutional attention.

The consequences extend across generations. Sociologists describe this as cumulative disadvantage. Small budget decisions that appear practical in the moment accumulate into long-term inequality. Schools develop expertise around the students they already know how to serve. Infrastructure evolves to support existing programs. Decades later the system is highly effective for some students and nearly inaccessible for others. Not because anyone chose that outcome. Because the budget did.

This pattern is rarely described as injustice. It appears instead as limitation. Officials speak about fiscal constraints, capacity limits, and sustainability. The language suggests that the boundaries of public education are natural consequences of scarce resources. They are not. They are the result of decisions about how resources will be allocated and which priorities will receive protection in a budget.

Why this persists

If the consequences are so visible, the question becomes unavoidable. Why do systems continue to reproduce these exclusions year after year?

Part of the answer lies in the quiet incentives embedded within fiscal structures themselves. Programs designed for students whose needs fit existing funding categories tend to produce measurable outcomes. They generate statistics that can be reported to school boards, ministries, and the public. A workshop delivered, a case resolved, a student who graduated. These outcomes allow institutions to demonstrate success. Serving students with more complex needs often produces fewer visible results, requires more time, and introduces uncertainty into systems evaluated through efficiency.

Political leaders benefit from these arrangements as well. Budget decisions framed around fiscal responsibility are easier to defend than those framed around expanding services indefinitely. A balanced budget, a funded program, rising graduation rates as evidence of good governance. The students who remain outside those systems rarely appear in official metrics.

Even families who benefit from public education often benefit from these arrangements without realizing it. Schools function well for students who fit the classroom structure. Parents whose children receive services quickly and reliably tend to perceive the system as working. The concentration of resources around students already well served reinforces the perception that the system is functioning effectively. This is not cynicism. It is the ordinary operation of a system that has structured itself around the students it can most easily count.

For this reason, calls for increased funding, while important, rarely resolve the underlying problem. New funding almost always flows through the same fiscal frameworks that already exist. Programs continue to be evaluated through the same metrics that defined earlier budgets. Additional resources often strengthen the parts of the system that already function while leaving structural exclusions intact.

The pandemic offered a striking illustration. Emergency funding expanded education supports at unprecedented speed. Yet most of that support flowed through institutions and service networks that already existed. Students already connected to disability services, learning support programs, or resourced schools received help quickly. Those who were outside those systems often struggled to access anything at all. The expansion of funding increased the scale of the system without changing its architecture.

The obstacle is rarely the absence of money alone. It is the architecture through which money moves. Systems built around efficiency, predictability, and measurable outcomes struggle to accommodate forms of need that fall outside those categories. Accountability frameworks count how many students have been served. They rarely ask how many remain excluded.

What structural change looks like

If the problem lies in the architecture of fiscal systems, meaningful reform cannot rely on funding increases alone. It requires reconsidering how education budgets are designed.

One approach involves participatory budgeting. Instead of allowing financial priorities to be determined exclusively by administrators or ministries, communities most affected by school systems are invited to help decide how resources are allocated. Several school districts and municipalities have experimented with this model, shifting focus away from abstract efficiency toward the lived realities of those who depend on the system. When families who have experienced exclusion sit at the table where budgets are built, the categories that get funded tend to change.

Another possibility involves reversing the metrics through which institutional success is measured. Most schools evaluate their performance by counting the students they serve. This obscures an important question. Who remains outside the system entirely? Measuring exclusion rather than participation would force districts to confront the students their programs fail to reach.

Structural change also requires applying principles of universal design from the beginning rather than treating complexity as an afterthought. Many schools attempt to expand accessibility only after systems are in place. Additional supports are layered onto structures that were designed for a narrow set of learners. Building systems that assume diversity from the outset would shift budgeting priorities. Complexity would be treated as a foundational condition rather than an optional add-on.

Funding models themselves may require reconsideration. Grant frameworks that define narrow categories of eligible students often determine which children districts can serve. Flexible, unrestricted funding allows institutions to respond to emerging needs rather than fitting their work into predefined program structures. Some provincial funding models have begun moving in this direction, though the distance remaining is significant.

The most consequential shift may involve rethinking where education budgets begin. Most systems are designed around the students easiest to serve. Programs expand outward from that foundation, adding specialized supports as resources allow. A different approach would reverse that logic. Start with the students whose needs are most complex. Build the system around them. It would almost certainly work for everyone else as well.

Such changes require reimagining how institutions understand efficiency, accountability, and fairness. They also require acknowledging something school systems rarely state directly. Budgets do not simply distribute resources. They draw the borders of belonging within the institutions they sustain.

By the end of the school year, the classroom had rearranged itself. Projects covered the walls. Desks shifted as groups changed. The quiet choreography of a busy classroom continued as it always had.

The empty desk near the back of the room remained unused for a while.

Eventually it disappeared.

So will others. Not because school systems fail dramatically, but because they succeed at exactly what they were built to do: serve the students they were funded to serve and quietly exclude everyone else.

Until we recognize education budgets as moral documents, as maps of who we have decided matters, we will keep building schools that claim universality while budgeting for exclusion. The child who stopped going to school did not fall through the cracks. He encountered the border the budget drew. And unless we are willing to redraw that border, to restructure fiscal frameworks around the students currently outside them, we are not building public education. We are administering inequality with spreadsheets.

The post Budget as border: How public systems quietly decide who gets left out appeared first on CCPA.

Myers LLP today operates under the principles he established; the labour section of the firm represents unions only. Each spring, the Mel Myers labour conference, established in 2002, offers quality labour law education to hundreds of union leaders.

Myers was an impact player, at the centre of many leading local and national labour cases, in short he helped shape Canadian labour law as we know it today.

He began his legal career as a crown attorney, Manitoba’s first Jewish lawyer to hold the designation. His three years in the courtroom taught him to think on his feet.  

He entered private practice at age 28. The Israelite Press in a feature story referred to him as sounding like a “social reformer… interested in moral issues.”

His mentors in his early years in private practice were lawyers Leon Mitchel and Roy MacGregor. He also worked closely with elected labour leaders including Manitoba Federation of Labour President’s Len Stephens and Dick Martin. He quickly developed a passion for labour, and his practice grew as most unions sought his assistance in the early 1970’s.

In 1985 the Supreme Court of Canada agreed with Myers that mandatory retirement at 65 years constituted age discrimination, a violation of Manitoba’s human rights legislation.

In 1987 the Supreme Court of Canada overruled the Manitoba Court of Appeal in the Met Stores case, establishing that provisions such as first contract legislation cannot be set aside through an injunction while employers litigate the constitutionality of the provision. Myers prepared the affidavit of former MFL President, Dick Martin, which defended the legitimacy of Manitoba’s first contract legislation.

The Charter era impacted all avenues of the legal profession including the labour relations community. In 1989, together with prominent Toronto based labour lawyer, Jeffrey Sack, Myers co-founded the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers. Today, over 500 union-side lawyers gather annually to consider trends and to discuss strategy in the ever-evolving field of labour law.

Myers and Sack were instrumental in convincing the 3.5-million-member Canadian Labour Congress, to coordinate charter challenges. Instead of 55 CLC affiliate unions each filing their own constitutional arguments, labour would strive to pool its resources and speak with one voice. This was sound advice that enabled the movement to achieve many groundbreaking precedents, establishing Charter protected labour rights.

In May 2006 I was privileged to introduce Mel Myers as the first labour-side recipient of the University of Toronto, Bora Laskin Labour Lawyer of the Year award. I spoke that evening of Myers, saying he was both a  “…brilliant legal mind and a person who never forgot his roots, a man who respected the dignity of labour.”

In November 2017 Myers was the honoured guest at the annual CCPA-MB brunch, in recognition of his lifetime of support for working people.

In terms of community service, he served as the first Chairperson of the Manitoba Human Rights Commission; President of the Y.M.H.A.; and as a board member of the University of Winnipeg Board of Regents, Rainbow Stage and the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.

In the mid-1990’s he represented the NDP at the Monnin Inquiry into the Interlake vote-rigging scandal that enveloped the Conservative government of Gary Filmon. In 2001 he was appointed Chair of Manitoba Public Insurances, Automobile Injury Compensation Appeal Commission, providing driver’s an appeal outlet in the no-fault era.

His greatest gift to workers was his belief in the trade union movement. He did not believe that the Manitoba Labour Board or the grievance – arbitration system ought to be the sole purview of lawyers. There was a role for legal counsel, but so too there was a role for union representatives, lay practitioners, and he taught many of us the skills needed to navigate these legal waters.

He was a labour historian and great supporter of the movement as a whole. He circulated awards and articles and hosted dinners with prominent practitioners, all in support of developing a generation of union representatives.

The standard cover page for arbitration awards lists the parties to the dispute and the counsel for each party. The words, “Mel Myers for the union” appear on hundreds of such awards. He was indeed a friend to all workers, as well as our staunchest advocate.

Paul Moist is a retired labour leader and currently serves as President of the Manitoba Federation of Union Retirees. He is a former member of the CCPA-MB Steering Committee and is a Research Associate.

The post Mel Myers: For Manitoba’s unions appeared first on CCPA.

Au cours de l’année, le gouvernement de l’Ontario n’a eu de cesse d’accuser les conseils scolaires de mauvaise gestion financière. Le ministère de l’Éducation a alors mis sous tutelle huit conseils scolaires et a grassement rémunéré des superviseurs pour remplacer les conseillers et diriger de main de fer les conseils. Ces huit conseils scolaires pris ensemble regroupent 733 000 élèves dans la province, soit 36 % de tous les élèves.

Les allégations pour justifier cette prise en charge ne sont pas étayées par des chiffres précis. Oui, les écoles de la province font face à des difficultés financières—n’importe quel enseignant ou parent vous le dira. Mais est-ce vraiment un problème de mauvaise gestion financière?

Le CCPA surveille étroitement le financement de l’éducation en Ontario et s’appuie sur des chiffres précis. Or, nous avons une explication différente. Nos analyses indiquent que l’on demande aux écoles année après année d’en faire plus avec moins. Nous avons atteint le point de rupture, les fissures dans la fondation sont littéralement visibles.

Les données sur le Financement principal de l’éducation rendues publiques hier corroborent malheureusement notre position.

Le financement par élève cette année, une fois ajusté pour l’inflation, est légèrement inférieur au niveau de l’an passé et 180 $ plus bas que celui de l’année scolaire 2018-2019. Dans un système scolaire comptant plus de deux millions d’élèves, chaque compression ajoute aux déficits budgétaires considérables. En 2026-2027, le gouvernement ontarien dépensera 362 millions de dollars de moins pour les écoles de l’Ontario qu’il ne l’a fait en 2018-2019 en dollars réels. Nous continuons de reculer.

L’autre problème des compressions financières, c’est qu’elles s’accumulent. Certaines compressions financières veulent tout simplement dire que des élèves font rater des occasions qui ne reviendront jamais. Mais d’autres créent des pressions financières pour les années à venir: les listes d’attente pour du soutien à l’éducation spécialisée continuent d’allonger, les ressources utilisées en classe ne sont jamais reconstituées, les fuites dans les toits ne sont jamais réparées, les programmes de lutte contre le racisme sont reportés à l’année prochaine, comme le sont les mesures de soutien additionnelles pour les élèves de familles à faible revenu, dont les fonds qui leur sont destinés sont affectés à d’autres priorités. La liste est longue.

Il y a des limites à déshabiller Pierre pour habiller Paul—à la fin, Pierre est flambant nu.

Le déficit de financement accumulé pour les écoles de l’Ontario depuis 2018-2019 a atteint la somme faramineuse de 6,4 milliards de dollars. Il s’agit du montant total qu’ont perdu les conseils scolaires de l’Ontario par rapport à ce qu’ils auraient reçu si leur financement avait suivi le rythme des inscriptions et de l’inflation au cours des huit dernières années, présumant qu’aucun financement additionnel ne sera accordé durant la prochaine année scolaire.

Les superviseurs des huit conseils scolaires sous la gouverne provinciale devront faire face à ces déficits budgétaires.

Comme les graphiques l’indiquent ci-dessous, les huit conseils ont été privés de sommes considérables au cours des dernières années: le Conseil scolaire du district de Toronto de 950 M$,  le Conseil scolaire catholique du district de Toronto 290 M$, le Conseil scolaire du district de Peel de 266 M$, le Conseil scolaire du district d’Ottawa-Carleton de 347 M$, le Conseil scolaire catholique du district de York de $123 M$, le Conseil scolaire du district de Thames Valley de 235 M$, le Conseil scolaire catholique du district de Dufferin-Peel de 221 M$ et le Conseil scolaire du district de Near North de 22 M$. Les sommes varient en fonction de la taille du conseil, mais la plupart des déficits représentent de vingt à trente pour cent du financement d’un an.

Ces déficits budgétaires considérables accumulés expliquent de façon beaucoup plus crédible les difficultés financières auxquelles font face les écoles et les conseils scolaires que les allégations de mauvaise gestion financière qui, par ailleurs, n’ont pas été corroborées par des éléments de preuve. Malheureusement, les allocations accordées aux conseils scolaires cette année ne renversent pas la tendance qui nous a mis dans ce pétrin.

Notes méthodologiques

• Le ministère de l’Éducation n’a pas publié les chiffres réels pour 2022-2023 et 2023-2024; notre analyse s’appuie sur des estimations révisées pour ces années.
• Le service de la dette et le financement ponctuel lié à la pandémie, qui ne fait plus partie du Financement principal de l’éducation, sont exclus pour toutes les années.
• Dans des analyses antérieures, les provisions de planification excessivement élevées étaient exclues, mais comme ces montants sont revenus à des niveaux raisonnables, ils sont inclus.

The post Le déficit de financement des écoles de l’Ontario continue de s’accroître depuis 2018, pour atteindre les 6,4 milliards de dollars appeared first on CCPA.

Over the past year, the Ontario government has repeatedly accused school boards of financial mismanagement. The Minister of Education then took over eight boards, appointing generously paid supervisors to replace trustees and run boards with an iron fist. These eight boards have a combined enrolment of 733,000, or 36 per cent of all students in the province. 

The allegations justifying the takeover have not been backed by hard numbers. Yes, schools across the province are facing financial challenges—any educator or parent will tell you that. But is mismanagement really the problem? 

The CCPA closely monitors education funding in Ontario, using hard numbers, and we have a different explanation. Our analyses show that, year after year, schools have been asked to do more with less; we have now reached a breaking point, where the holes in the foundation are literally visible. 

The Core Education Funding figures released yesterday further support our stance, regretfully. 

This year’s per-pupil funding, once adjusted for inflation, falls slightly below last year’s level and $180 below what it was in the 2018-19 school year. In a school system with more than two million students, every cut adds to substantial budget shortfalls. In 2026-27, the Ontario government will spend almost $362 million less on Ontario’s schools than it did in 2018-19, in real dollars. We continue to move backward. 

The other problem with funding cuts is that they add up. Some funding cuts simply mean that students miss opportunities they will never get back. Other cuts create financial pressures on future years: waitlists for special education supports continue to grow, in-class resources are never restocked, leaks in the roof are never fixed, the anti-racism programs continue to be kicked down the road for the next year, as do additional supports for students from lower-income families, whose allocated funds are diverted to other priorities. The list is long. 

You can take from Peter to pay Paul only so many times. 

The accumulated shortfall for Ontario schools since 2018-19 is now at a whopping $6.4 billion. This is the total amount that Ontario’s school boards have lost compared to what they would have received if their funding had kept pace with enrolment and inflation over the past eight years, assuming no additional funding injection in the next school year. 

The supervisors of the eight school boards under provincial supervision will have to face these impacts of budget shortfalls. 

As the charts below show, all eight boards have been deprived of considerable amounts of funding in the past years: $950 million in the Toronto District School Board, $290 million in the Toronto Catholic District School Board, $266 million in the Peel District School Board, $347 million in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, $123 million in the York Catholic District School Board, $235 million in the Thames Valley District School Board, $221 million in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, and $22 million in the Near North District School Board. The amount varies by board size, but most shortfalls represent between 20 and 30 per cent of a year’s funding. 

These sizable cumulative budget shortfalls are a much more credible explanation of the financial challenges schools and boards are facing than allegations of mismanagement, which have not been backed with evidence. Regretfully, this year’s school board allocations are not reversing the trend that got us into this mess. 

Notes on method

• The Ministry of Education has not released the actuals for 2022-23 and 2023-24; this analysis uses the revised estimates for those years.
• All years exclude debt service and one-time pandemic-related funding, no longer part of the Core Education Funding.
• In previous analyses, I excluded unjustifiably large planning provisions, but since the amounts are now back at reasonable levels, they are included.

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The use of the term “AI factory” rather than “data centre” is telling. For all intents and purposes, the proposed facilities are hyperscale data centres that will perform both the training of AI models and their operation. But if the federal government and Telus had hoped to avoid public opposition simply by renaming data centres as something else, they will, no doubt, be disappointed. Indeed, the announced project raises more questions than answers—particularly for the residents of Vancouver, where two of these facilities are to be built.

As Jesse Cole reports, the proposed Vancouver facilities include a 100,000 square foot, repurposed facility in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, as well as a 400,000 square foot development at 150 West Georgia—adjacent to Vancouver’s B.C. Place stadium. Both locations are densely populated, meaning that the proposed facilities would have to be sited close to residential neighbourhoods. 

One must ask: Why are three levels of government encouraging energy-intensive server racks to be located in the middle of prime inner city locations? Are there not better social uses, like housing and businesses?

As we know from the U.S. experience, the closer these facilities are to residential neighbourhoods, the more public opposition they often generate. Data centres require large and extensive cooling systems to function, meaning they emit constant and repetitive noise from industrial fans and other mechanisms. Residents living in close proximity to data centres report difficulties sleeping and other health problems brought on by the incessant low-frequency drone of these buildings. 

Yet conventional noise by-laws are often insufficient to regulate the constant 24/7 noise of these buildings. Attempts at installing suppression devices or sound baffling to reduce noise have had mixed results. Consequently, more local governments are looking to increase the setback limit for these facilities to ensure they are a safe enough distance from housing, schools and hospitals so that they do not affect quality of life. Dropping one of these facilities in an already densely populated neighbourhood will make proper setbacks all the more difficult to achieve. 

In order for data centres to deliver on their promise to provide virtually continuous service, they must be able to operate under any circumstances. This means ensuring they have redundant back-up power requirements to weather black-outs or any other power interruption. Back-up power for these facilities almost always means diesel generators—sometimes hundreds of them. For a 100MW facility like the one proposed in downtown Vancouver, this could mean anywhere between 25 to 50 diesel generators on site, depending on their size. Diesel generators are notoriously dirty, emitting fine particulate matter associated with a host of health and breathing problems. It’s why diesel generation is often strictly regulated. 

However, as electricity grids strain under demands, the pressure to switch to diesel generation at the slightest hint of a potential energy disruption has been growing. Placing that many generators directly in the middle of the urban core could be a major public health issue. Due to these challenges, the state of Virginia—home to the largest concentration of data centres in the world—concluded that the “industrial scale of data centers makes them largely incompatible with residential uses.” 

That leads to the next question: Who asked for this? One would hope that extensive consultations of affected communities would be conducted before moving forward with a project that has the potential to be profoundly disruptive—both in the construction phase and the operational phase. And as it turns out, there was a consultation, just not one that captured what is actually being built. 

When the City of Vancouver rezoned 150 West Georgia in 2023, the applicant at the time—Creative Energy Vancouver Platforms Inc., which owns the site and operates the downtown steam heating network—sought to add ”bulk data storage” as a permitted use to an already approved commercial building. Six people submitted comments during the online engagement period. By the day of the September 28, 2023 public hearing, a single written submission was received (in support) and the rezoning passed. 

The only legally binding public benefit secured through that process was a community amenity contribution of $295,425 (found on page six of the referral report), which is less than the cost of a single affordable housing unit in Vancouver. The $9 billion in projected economic activity, the 525 permanent jobs, and the renewable energy commitments announced were not secured in the application with the city. 

This is precisely the problem that Community Benefit Agreements (CBA) are designed to solve. A CBA is a legally binding contract negotiated between a developer and the affected community before a project proceeds. Unlike a standard rezoning process, which captures only a narrow set of contributions calculated against a floor area, a CBA can require developers to commit to local hiring targets, living wages, noise mitigation measures, environmental monitoring, and ongoing community oversight. Critically, these commitments are enforceable, not aspirational talking points delivered at a press conference. 

For large-scale infrastructure projects with significant community impacts like data centres, CBAs are one of the few tools that shift bargaining power toward residents rather than investors. Voluntary commitments are only as strong as the incentive to keep them. 

The absence of these binding commitments is not incidental. B.C. Green Party Leader Emily Lowan has accused lawmakers of using a “build-first regulate-later model,” and called for a moratorium on new data centres in the province until stronger regulation and environmental policies are in place.

Promising to be the “world’s most sustainable sovereign data centres,” Telus announced that these facilities will run almost exclusively on renewable power and will use state-of-the-art cooling technology to minimize water consumption, as well as recaptured heat. In his remarks, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon stated that “this is how you build right.” 

While it is important that these facilities be built to the highest environmental standards, it does raise the question of why we do not regulate to ensure that all future builds meet such standards. Instead, we seem to be relying on boosterism and wishful thinking that private corporations will prioritize the environment in their mad rush to cash in on AI infrastructure without asking the right questions about impact. 

The post Not up to code: The potential downside of hyperscale data centres in Vancouver’s downtown appeared first on CCPA.

Almost a quarter of Canadians are now experiencing food insecurity, including 2.4 million children. The burden is not shared equally: 35 per cent of Indigenous people and 41 per cent of Black people are experiencing some level of food insecurity—a glaring reminder that inequality in this country runs deep. 

Food insecurity has persisted for years. Although there was a slight decline in the share of individuals living in food-insecure households from 2024 to 2025, the 2025 figures remain among the highest recorded over the past two decades of tracking. 

Through our network of almost 450 organizations on the frontlines of this crisis, we’re hearing how people from all walks of life are struggling to keep up with the cost of living, even as they do everything to make ends meet. Sadly, the gap between what people earn and what life costs has widened to the point where even full-time work is no longer a guarantee of stability.

Most food-insecure households in Canada rely on employment income, not social assistance programs like welfare. In fact, in 89 per cent of these households, the primary earner works full-time yet still cannot afford the basics. If a full-time job can’t even cover basics like fruits and vegetables, something’s clearly broken.

The situation is much more dire for those on social assistance, disability supports and other fixed incomes where the average monthly benefit rates are below our current poverty threshold.

As food and fuel companies raise their prices, people are stretching their shoe-string budgets even further in order to get through the week. . Many are taking things on a day-by-day basis now. Parents are struggling to keep their children fed, clothed, and the rent paid. Of course, people are profoundly creative and resourceful, but there is a limit to what mac and cheese and instant noodles can do. 

Ultimately, food insecurity isn’t the result of personal failure. It’s the outcome of systems that fail to distribute income and resources fairly. Canada has more than enough food. Even in times of economic uncertainty like these, we have the wealth to ensure that no one in our country goes hungry.

The consequences of this crisis are too many to list. Food insecurity is linked to worse physical and mental health, higher rates of chronic illness, and increased strain on our health-care system. It affects children’s development, and limits people’s ability to work, learn, and participate fully in society. It absolutely undermines productivity. 

Recent analysis from Scotiabank demonstrates rising costs for essentials like food and energy are hitting lower-income households the hardest, precisely because they spend a greater share of their income on basic needs. Without targeted intervention, these pressures will continue to deepen inequality and push more people into poverty, homelessness, and hunger.  

And there is every reason to believe the situation will deteriorate. Global volatility—including ongoing conflict in the Middle East—is already driving up costs. The pressure on household budgets is intensifying precisely at a moment when things feel fragile, with kids experiencing unacceptably high levels of material deprivation.

Against this backdrop, Canada’s policy response has been lacklustre. The recent fiscal update introduced some affordability measures, but a serious, coordinated national plan to reduce food insecurity is still missing. For example, suspending federal excise taxes on gasoline until Labour Day will deliver just $59 in savings to households in the lowest income quintile, compared to $211 for those in the highest, according to analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), Canada’s independent fiscal watchdog. Broad-based measures like these stop short of making a meaningful difference, especially for the households facing the greatest financial strain.

Similarly, the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit—which organizations like Right To Food advocated for—also falls short of its potential as a serious cash-transfer program capable of reducing food insecurity. While the federal government committed an additional $12.4 billion over the next five years, the average increase for a single adult amounts to $136 per year—or $11 a month—and $272 for a family of four, or an additional $23 a month. Food prices were already expected to rise an additional $1000 this year, and that was before the war on Iran was launched. 

Hunger in the midst of abundance is ultimately indefensible. In a country as wealthy as Canada, this contradiction reflects political choices rather than scarcity. That Indigenous communities are so deeply affected only sharpens that reality, revealing a profound and ongoing failure of reconciliation.

We pride ourselves on being a fair and compassionate country. Yet nearly 10 million Canadians – people we live alongside every day–are navigating this cost-of-living crisis largely on their own. More than a policy gap, this is a test of our national priorities and whether the federal government, now buoyed by a majority, is prepared to meet the gravity of this moment.

The post New data shows food insecurity is still a national issue in Canada appeared first on CCPA.

Prior to formally taking the pledge, councillors asked city staff to review Brampton’s contracts and investments to determine if any were supporting companies complicit in Israeli apartheid. On April 8, a report from the city’s assistant commissioner of corporate support services recommended the city “not proceed with the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge due to the legal and financial risks arising from the pledge’s numerous principles.” 

One of the main reasons the report cites is Canada’s supposed commitments under a variety of free trade agreements, which would apparently be violated by the municipal government taking such a stand. In particular, the report cites provisions under the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and the internal Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA). It claims that these agreements contain provisions which ban governments from “discriminating” against specific countries using procurement restrictions. 

Those supposed problems do not line up with reality. The report contains a number of factual errors about Brampton’s procurement obligations and allowances in domestic law and international trade agreements. These inaccuracies discouraged elected officials from taking an action they felt morally compelled to take and for which there would be no serious financial or legal repercussions. 

Late last year, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs sent a letter to Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown urging city council not to sign the pledge. That letter also erroneously states that the pledge asks cities and communities to take actions “far beyond municipal jurisdiction.” 

As other Canadian municipalities see campaigns to endorse the Apartheid Free Communities pledge, elected officials are likely hearing similar misinformation about their trade-related obligations with respect to public procurement. To clear the hot air, we sent a letter containing the following information to Brampton’s mayor and councillors and hope that it can be useful to other cities looking to become Apartheid Free Communities.

Israeli firms not covered by procurement commitments

 Canadian municipalities have no public procurement obligations to Israeli suppliers. Israel is not a party to any of the three trade agreements referenced in the report (the CETA, CUSMA, and CFTA). Israel and Canada are both parties to the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) at the World Trade Organization, but this agreement does not cover municipal public procurement. Thus, Israeli suppliers have no reasonable expectation that they will be included in any municipality’s procurement and no recourse to dispute settlement under any trade agreement.

Brampton’s public procurement obligations

The Brampton report states that “the Purchasing By-law does not allow the City to impose restrictions on procurements based on the vendor’s location or the place where the goods or services are produced.” However, the by-law’s non-discrimination clause (Article 2.1) is tied to “the requirements of any applicable trade agreements.” In other words, if there are circumstances in the applicable trade agreements in which the non-discrimination rules do not apply to certain procurements, those exceptions would cover procurement by the City of Brampton. 

In his report, the Commissioner lists the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) and the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) as relevant applicable trade agreements. These agreements all contain exceptions that would safely shield procurement policies that directly or indirectly discriminate against firms profiting from Israel’s international law and human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as could be aspired to under the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge.

Canada-EU CETA

The Canada-EU CETA contains the most extensive procurement commitments Canada has made in a trade agreement. Despite widespread municipal opposition, the federal government agreed to European demands to cover public spending down to the municipal, school board and hospital level. CETA prohibits covered public agencies from discriminating against EU firms or in favour of domestic firms in public tenders for goods, services and construction. The agreement also prohibits “any condition or undertaking that encourages local development … such as the use of domestic content.”

Notwithstanding these onerous terms, which frustrate governmental efforts to foster domestic economies of scale to withstand the U.S. trade war, CETA includes exceptions to these rules that should allow for the novel use of public spending to support local causes. Article 19.9 allows procurement agencies, including municipalities, to set “technical specifications to promote the conservation of natural resources or protect the environment,” for example. 

More relevantly, while CETA is silent on social or environmental procurement (i.e., public spending that takes into account working conditions, human rights or the environmental impact of bidding companies), the European Court of Justice has determined that such policies are acceptable under EU procurement directives derived largely from the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), on which the procurement chapter in CETA is based.

CETA contains further safeguards for the kind of procurement restrictions that could align with the aspirations of the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge. In language drawn from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Article 19.3.2 of the procurement chapter grants public entities the right to take any measure necessary to protect public morals, order or safety, or necessary to protect human life or health.

Article 19.3.2

Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner that would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between Parties where the same conditions prevail or a disguised restriction on international trade, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed to prevent a Party from imposing or enforcing measures:

a.    necessary to protect public morals, order or safety;

b.    necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health;

c.     necessary to protect intellectual property; or

d.    relating to goods or services of persons with disabilities, of philanthropic institutions or of prison labour.

A similar public morals exception in Article 28.3 of the CETA covers much of the rest of the agreement. States can rely on these exceptions in state-to-state disputes where a dispute panel finds that a policy has violated some aspect of the trade agreement. However, for two reasons, it is highly unlikely that a procurement policy at the City of Brampton would generate an international trade dispute of this kind.

First, European countries, including Spain and Slovenia, are taking much more trade-restrictive measures—including import bans on goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements—to exert pressure on Israel to end its violent occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. States have non-derogable obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent further loss of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 

Dozens of European municipalities already have procurement policies that restrict bids from companies identified by the international Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement as being complicit in Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians. Among the priority companies listed by the BDS movement are Dell, Reebok, Re/Max, Chevron and Teva Pharmaceuticals, while pressure targets include Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Siemens and Cisco. 

Second, under the procurement rules in CETA, Canada is only obligated to provide EU-based firms with an administrative or judicial means to dispute procurement tendering decisions they believe violate the terms of the agreement. Such a process exists in Brampton under the procurement by-law. Trade-related procurement disputes at the Canadian International Trade Tribunal rarely lead to fines against federal agencies.

Canadian Free Trade Agreement

The CFTA does not have a public morals exception, but the agreement allows provinces (and their cities) to deviate from its terms, including the procurement chapter, in the pursuit of legitimate objectives, which include “protection of human, animal, or plant life or health” and “protection of health, safety, and well-being of workers.” As the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge is concerned with stopping harms to people and protecting workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, procurement restrictions emanating from the pledge should easily pass this test. 

Canada-US-Mexico Agreement

Contrary to the report, Canada is not covered by the procurement rules in the CUSMA. Canada’s procurement obligations to the United States are covered in the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) at the World Trade Organization, which does not apply to Canadian municipalities. This is how the City of Brampton itself was able to safely pass a “Buy Canadian” procurement policy in March 2025 to prevent U.S. firms from participating in city procurements while U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports remain in place. 

However, even if Canada had agreed to cover municipal procurement under the GPA or CUSMA, both allow plenty of room for the kinds of procurement restrictions that could align with the aspirations of the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge. As mentioned already, the WTO procurement agreement includes a public morals exception almost identical to Article 19.3.2 in the CETA. As opposition to genocide is a nearly universal moral belief and international law obligation on states, municipal actions aimed at ending genocide would likely survive a trade challenge.

Final comments

Brampton’s report grossly exaggerates the legal and financial risks to the city—and, by extension, all other Canadian municipalities—from signing the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge or from excluding bids from firms profiting from Israeli apartheid. The pledge does not ask the city to take actions that would be illegal or impossible under Ontario or Canadian legislation. Rather the pledge is aspirational in nature. As such, the assertion in the report that the city “does not have the authority to direct OMERS investment decisions or require divestment from specific countries, companies, or sectors,” while true, is beside the point.

The report asserts that discriminating against companies that enable apartheid or Israeli violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will “reduce the pool of qualified vendors” as well as “reduce quality” and “lead to service disruptions.” There is no data to support this claim. At the federal level, Israeli firms account for a fraction of contracts. Specific to 2025, only 29 of 56,092 contracts went to Israeli firms. This is one-twentieth of a percentage point. This number is likely much lower in provincial and municipal procurement where auctions are generally lower in value and salience. If the city has data that proves that the exclusion of Israeli suppliers and suppliers that profit from apartheid would meaningfully raise its procurement spending, it should supply that data to the public.

As it happens, the staff report’s line of critique contradicts both the city’s and Ontario’s own local procurement strategies. As mentioned above, Brampton excludes U.S. vendors under its “Made in Canada” preference. The city also has a local social returns policy (the “Community Benefits Policy”) that could potentially be challenged as a prohibited offset under the CETA or the GPA procurement rules. Meanwhile, Ontario purposefully restricts municipal procurement competition through the Buy Ontario Act. 

Finally, the report raises the potential of “reputational harm” in dropping Israeli suppliers from its procurement auctions. This is a baseless scare tactic that ignores the reputational harm of inaction in the face of apartheid and genocide. 

In municipalities across the country, residents are pressuring their municipal governments to adopt policies that ensure local governments are not materially supporting Israel’s crimes. If municipal elected officials aren’t interested in doing so, they should say so explicitly and defend their position, rather than hiding behind false interpretations of trade agreements.

The post There are no trade risks to becoming an Apartheid Free Community appeared first on CCPA.

Against a background of renewed nuclear tensions, two separate international studies examine steps towards bringing about the demise of nuclear weapons and the importance of recalibrating security thinking away from belief in their relevance.

Their analysis is of relevance to Canada as it grapples with the uncertain consequences of U.S. threats to withdraw the ‘nuclear umbrella,’ and has echoes of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s “strategy of suffocation” to end the arms race in 1978.

In 1986 the world came close to abolishing nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik summit between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, leaders of the Soviet Union and U.S., whose legacy was major arms control agreements.

But current weakening of nuclear restraints threatens a renewed arms race. U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambiguous threat to Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight” and Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats in the Ukraine war have fanned nuclear angst three decades after the end of the Cold War left the impression nuclear dangers had been interred with it. 

Planners tend to view contemporary nuclear risks through the prism of the 1950s and 1960s, says Nick Ritchie, a professor of international security at York University in the UK, part of a research program to determine how nuclear ‘abolition or relinquishment’ can be achieved.

The investigation, led by the Nuclear Knowledge Program at Sciences Po, a public research university in Paris, is examining the conditions under which nuclear-armed states would most likely give up their weapons. 

The lack of urgency regarding nuclear disarmament is illustrated by the absence of study it receives, the investigators point out. Research is hamstrung by the “relative scarcity of direct evidence of nuclear disarmament” to which specialists can turn.

The importance of the project stems from the fact that “we live in a different world from the Cold War and nuclear weapons aren’t going to provide stability,” says Ritchie. 

Separately, a policy paper, the conclusion of a two-year project coordinated by the London School of Economics Non-Nuclear Deterrence Project, draws the same conclusion: it urges a shift in security thinking away from nuclear deterrence, while warning against a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to current tensions.

The paper, produced by the Network for Effective Security, a group of scholars and practitioners from across Europe and North America including the former head of Britain’s Royal Marines, declares, “democratic resilience offers a safer, more effective path to securing Europe and defending democratic values than nuclear deterrence.”

“In response to Russia’s war against Ukraine and growing uncertainty about the U.S. commitment to European security, European countries have agreed to increase defence spending and are discussing the possibility of a European nuclear deterrent,” the paper says.

“There is, however, very little public discussion about the nature of current threats and about the most appropriate way to counter them. There is a risk that decisions being taken now may mis-frame the threat, with long-term dangerous implications for the future.”

Despite the widespread perception among policymakers that nuclear weapons are irreplaceable and alternatives unrealistic, growing opposition to the war with Iran—waged on dubious claims about that country’s nuclear activities—offers context for changing the narrative. While the war demonstrates the limits of military intervention and may reshape the global order, it offers no reassurance about the use of nuclear weapons and highlights the strain the global nuclear non-proliferation regime is under. 

Whether nuclear arms control has reached an inflection point may become clearer from the outcome of the five yearly review (April 27 – May 22) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the global bargain attributed with curbing the spread of nuclear weapons.   If its 191 member states cannot reach agreement, says Izumi Nakamitsu head of the UN’s disarmament office, it risks being ‘hollowed out;’ UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned the treaty is ‘eroding.’

A bookend to current discussion about nuclear weapons is provided by a new history examining the roles of experts who established the architecture of arms control in the Cold War. Benjamin Wilson’s ‘Strange Stability’ publication catalogues how disarmament was rejected in favor of the continued modernisation of weapons by strategists and science advisors, many in the pay of the US military industrial complex, in pursuit of so-called strategic stability.

“Strategic modernisation is not a failure of arms control. It is an accomplishment of arms control’s most important Cold War success: the intellectual marginalization and political defeat of disarmament,” Wilson writes. Tellingly, some estimates put the final bill for the 30-year modernisation of the U.S. nuclear arsenal at three trillion dollars.

Canada appears to have forsworn its own nuclear option after Trump’s threat to deprive the 32 member NATO alliance, of which it is a prominent member, of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. 

But 81 years after the first atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the more than 12,000 thermonuclear nuclear weapons in possession of nine countries are more than capable of destroying life on earth, the nuclear Gordian knot becomes  tighter bound.

Time to recall an observation of the Cold War by Robert McNamara, the longest serving and reviled U.S. defense secretary who recanted after his support of the Vietnam war and became an opponent of nuclear weapons: “it was luck that prevented nuclear war.” 

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