Canada's cash-strapped universities may be trading away their academic freedom in order to attract research money directly from the federal government, critics say.
A recent example they cite is at the University of British Columbia, where a hiring committee vetted a job candidate through a Conservative party insider.
Former Tory MP John Reynolds was asked whether the appointment of Liberal MP Stephen Owen as vice president would be a “problem” for the university.
Mr. Owen, who was eventually hired for the position, was considered a potential roadblock for relations with the federal government because of his past political affiliation, said Darren Peets, a student member of UBC's hiring committee.
“The question was something along the lines of ‘Well, one of the obvious concerns is going to be that you are in a non-partisan job and you are from a political party.'
“His response was that he was non-partisan and we shouldn't take his word for it,” said Mr. Peets, recalling an informal spring meeting with Mr. Owen, a candidate for the post of vice-president, community and external relations.
Mr. Peets said concern that Mr. Owen's appointment could sour relations with the Conservatives “was an immediate and obvious thought in almost everyone's mind” during the hiring process.
“You are hiring a guy for government relations who is from a party that is not in power and that should be a concern,” he said.
“You worry that if you hire someone from the opposition side that they may have burned some bridges with the government side and the government relations thing may not work well for them.”
Mr. Owen assured committee members he wasn't tainted by partisan battles and suggested they contact his political colleagues to gauge his non-partisanship, recommending several names in all four parties, said Mr. Peets.
Mr. Peets said politicians in all four parties were contacted about Mr. Owen, including Mr. Reynolds.
Mr. Reynolds, co-chair of the Conservatives' 2006 election campaign, acknowledged he was asked for his opinion but said in an interview that he has no say in how the Conservative government decides on university funding.
“I am a private individual and I got nothing to do with the party,” he said.
“I don't decide with the Conservative party who spends money and who doesn't spend money. I am not involved with that end of things at all. I don't think this was done at all or had anything to do with funding whatsoever. It's not (Mr. Owen's) job — his job is community relations.”
Mr. Owen declined to be interviewed about the issue.
UBC's decision to contact a senior Conservative was probably pragmatic in the current funding environment, said University of Ottawa political science professor Claude Denis.
“(Owen's position) is inherently a political position and a significant part of the job is to find ways for the university to get along with both the provincial and federal governments,” said Mr. Denis.
David Robinson of the Canadian Association of University Teachers said UBC's political concerns expose a worrying trend in efforts by universities to obtain research dollars that is compromising academic freedom.
Dramatic changes in federal post-secondary education funding over the last 15 years have forced universities to ramp up political lobbying for scarce research dollars that are increasingly allotted by Ottawa with little or no academic input, said Robinson, CAUT's associate executive director.
The last Conservative budget was the first to bypass the peer-reviewed process of federal granting councils by directly funding seven research institutes to the tune of $105 million in matching dollars.
“That is what has a lot of people in the academic community really concerned,” said Mr. Robinson, whose association represents about 55,000 academics ranging from librarians to researchers across the country.
“No one is questioning that these institutes weren't deserving, but there are a lot of deserving institutions and the question is how do you decide which one? Do you make a political decision or an academic decision?
“We would argue that, for a whole number of reasons, it has to be an academic decision. We can't have political interference in the academic world.”
Universities were severely hobbled by Liberal government cuts in the mid-1990s.
Despite fresh post-secondary dollars in the last federal budget, including a promised $800-million increase in cash transfers, universities are still more than $1 billion short of pre-1993 funding levels, adjusted for inflation and population growth, according to CAUT's budget analysis.
