Robert MacLeod, President of the PC Party of NB, voices his concern about the Liberals’ plans for post-secondary education in “Where is the ‘action’ in PSE plan?” (TJ, 5 July 2008). Not too surprisingly, his criticisms reflect PC views on the role of government and how the PC’s would do things differently from the Liberals.

Some of his suggestions are reasonable, others are not. When, for example, he points out that the 33 recommendations are disappointing, especially because they will produce little more than costly bureaucratic growth when much of what the government wants to achieve along those lines “could be done by the universities and colleges without government interference” he is on the money. At the same time, he is of the view that 3P’s are a good thing and that some post-secondary education funding should be allocated to institutions that successfully form such partnerships. Similarly, he advocates making some post-secondary funding equally “contingent” on institutional cooperation between community colleges and universities. Those offering successful joint programs would be eligible for funds from a designated pool — no doubt funds extracted from the existing bugetary allocations!

Now, it would seem that politicians would like to make others, in this case, universities and colleges, abide by rules they would not want to follow themselves. In other words, too bad there aren’t stricter rules and regulations for the spending of federal transfer monies to the province. If the provincial government allocated the social transfer payments so as to ensure that New Brunswickers had access to the same level of educational (and health) services as found elsewhere in Canada (with the exception of Alberta and BC which provides superior services to their citizenry) then much of the fancy footwork taking place (i.e. the PSE Review) would be unnecessary. Instead, we get the Liberals trying to “find savings” in education and health — see the latest reorganization of health and cuts in French language instruction, in addition to the maneuvering in post-secondary–and the PC’s telling the Libs how to use government funding (i.e. federal monies) to make things happen.

The level of political debate in this province is truly discouraging.