Central executive committee, 16 May 2021

The insolvency of a public institution is a manufactured crisis by the ruling class. The company creditor arrangement and bankruptcy process in Canada is a tool to ensure that the big banks are paid off first while pensions and jobs are slashed. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling states Laurentian University, the third largest employer in Sudbury, can “permanently or temporarily cease, downsize or shut down any of its business or operations” and “terminate the employment of such of its employees or temporarily lay off such of its employees as they deem appropriate”. 

We have seen many insolvencies and bankruptcies in the private sector trample collective bargaining with mass layoffs. Now the ruling class turns their weapon to the public sector, which has a higher union density and provides essential social services. This is a dangerous development against all working people in Canada. The global public health crisis and deepening economic depression demands expansion of universal access to social services. As young communists we need to bring forward the demands for public monopolies and against commodification. 

As for the student movement, it is unfortunate to note that its opposition to the commodification of education in Ontario (and across Canada) has been far too timid to be able to lead youth in the fight against large corporations and their presence on our campuses, let alone in the fight for free, democratic, and emancipatory education.

Either way, both in Sudbury and elsewhere, there is no doubt that we must confront those who seek to bind our education even more closely to the wants of capitalist monopolies. It is in this sense that Laurentian University, and Franco-Ontarians and Indigenous people in general, serve as guinea pigs, because for anyone who can read between the lines, the message that the ruling class is trying to send to universities is clear: either they commit 100% to the commodification of education, or they go bankrupt

On April 12, this bilingual university in northern Ontario cut 69 programs for financial reasons, including 28 in French. And these figures hide another reality: French-language programs at Laurentian have been reduced by 45%, versus only 20% of English-language programs. In other words, this restructuring plan disproportionately harms Franco-Ontarians, including teachers and students, as well as residents of surrounding communities for whom the University contributes to local economic and cultural strength.

“Bilingualism is dead at Laurentian University,” read a press release from the Francophone Assembly of Ontario. The Young Communist League of Canada – Ligue de la Jeunesse Communiste du Canada, as a pan-Canadian organization that defends the collective democratic rights of nations and national minorities inhabiting the country, can only add its voice to this observation.

We cannot ignore the context in which this situation occurs, namely that the Ford government tried in 2018 to halt the project for a Francophone university in a larger crusade against Ontario’s Francophones. Had it not been for their mobilization, reminiscent of their defense of Hôpital Montfort (the only French-speaking hospital in the province), the project would have been shelved. Moreover, a few months before the official opening of the university, a smear campaign was launched highlighting the small number of registered students at the Université de l’Ontario français (UOF), seeking ultimately to nip the project in the bud after decades of struggle and lobbying by Franco-Ontarians, without taking into account the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on enrolment. Clearly, the goal here was to discredit the building of a Francophone university in Ontario and to use it as leverage to discredit bilingual educational institutions like Laurentian University in general, emphasizing their lack of profitability.

One can plainly see the extent to which the commodification of education in Ontario, just as everywhere else in Canada, demands assimilation. Laurentian University previously had a “tri-cultural” mandate, promoting the use of Anishinaabemowin on campus, but now the entire Indigenous Studies program could be defunded. At the same time as Ontario is closing a bilingual university and hanging the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the UOF, the English-speaking population in Quebec (comparable in number to Francophones in Ontario) is entitled to two exclusively English-speaking universities, in addition to one bilingual and seven anglophone CEGEPs. Moreso, there is not even one Indigenous-centred university in Ontario, and Indigenous studies programs are underfunded and few and far between.

When education becomes a commodity, it is no longer democratic or emancipatory. Thus, non-English education weighs little in the balance of this capitalist vision, where post-secondary education serves only capitalist interests, and where studying is no longer an emancipatory activity, but rather a prelude to capitalist alienation.

This view of education as a commodity is not new. For several decades, students have been grappling with Canada’s neoliberal policies, where enrolling in post-secondary education becomes an investment rather than a commitment. Education has long been a commodity rather than public service. In fact, for several years now in Ontario, university boards have consisted mostly of business representatives.

Now, whose fault is it: the universities? governments? the student movement? 

There is no doubt that the provincial and federal governments deserve the blame: the federal government for the cessation of post-secondary education transfer payments in the 1990s, and the provincial governments which, little by little, have reduced funding to educational institutions and have forced them to run like businesses. 

It cannot be forgotten that we find ourselves — contrary to what bourgeois economic commentators claim — in the midst of an economic crisis, and that the ruling class is doing everything it possibly can to make young people and the working class pay the price. Attacking universities is just one part of the business model for which young people must suffer the consequences of a crisis they are not responsible for.