Government Agreements With Universities Remain Secret
Ontario's 
Liberal government is keeping secret key accountability agreements it requires universities to sign in order to secure funding, according to a press release from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). McGuinty's liberals have received praise for agreeing to extend the provincial Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA) to cover universities (commencing June 10, 2006). But they have also earned public scorn based on their record of a long list of broken promises commencing from the moment they took office. The government's refusal to release agreements with the universities to the public flies in the face of their supposed commitment to transparency and accountability strategies. When it comes to dealing with universities we are not surprised that the government continues to keep the public in the dark. We suspect university administrators are chortling with glee - behind closed doors.
Ontario's universities will face a new regime of disclosure and avenues to appeal denials that cannot be circumvented when, on June 10, 2006, they must be in compliance with FOIPPA. "It's a new ball game. Universities have been forced, kicking and screaming, a step closer to accountability," said York University professor David Noble. The Ryerson Eyeopener recently commented that inclusion under FOIPPA will be of benefit to the press, and to the student press in particular.
Over a long period of time university administrators have developed a culture of secrecy and unaccountability. To expect administrators to change overnight and embrace a culture of openness is perhaps naive. Predisposed to secrecy, university administrators will likely seek new and creative strategies to circumvent the transparency and accountability of FOIPPA . We at OurTrent therefore temper our optimism that extending FOIPPA to include universities will bring a measure of accountability and transparency to university management and governance.
Trent University is a case in point. On the eave of the imposition of FOIPPA Trent is pursuing the creation of the Trent University Development Corporation to manage development of its lands. The new corporation would circumvent traditional bicameral management of lands and would likely be exempt from FIOPPA. In creating its Endowment Lands Master Plan the Trent administration appears to have engineered the imposition of a pre-determined plan while craftily paying lip service to transparency and public consultation even though the whole process was demonstrable absent those virtues. In her capacity as chair of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) Trent president Bonnie Patterson has appealed to federal politicians for more money from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI). CFI is not subject to federal Access to Information legislation. Patterson is now the chair of the Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) board, having previously been a board member for several years. Being a hospital the PRHC remains exempt from FOIPPA and has been widely criticized for operating in secrecy.
To add insult to injury, the very government that purports to demand accountability from universities will not reveal its own accountability agreements with our taxpayer-funded universities. This is indicative of the government's own failure to adopt a culture of openness, as has been repeatedly recommended by the Privacy Commissioner. As a result the information is now being sought through the formal FOI process.
Surely the public might be excused if confidence that the imposition of FOIPPA will have positive effect has been somewhat eroded.
References:
- Ontario government holding back on accountability agreements
OCUFA Media Release - March 22, 2006 - Access Granted: FOI extends to Rye
Ryerson Eyeopener OnLine - March 14, 2006 - Ontario Universities Must Comply With FOI Legislation On June 10, 2006
OurTrent article - January 9, 2006 - Of Poor Governance, Suburban Isolation And Snake Oil
OurTrent article - January 18, 2006 - Trent University Development Corporation Plan Still Alive
OurTrent article - February 20, 2006 - Hospital Board Secrecy Criticized: Is There A Trent Connection?
OurTrent article - October 3, 2005
| Ontario government holding back on accountability agreements Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) Media Release Canada NewsWire - March 22, 2006 TORONTO, March 22 /CNW/ - The Ontario government is keeping secret key accountability agreements it is requiring universities to sign in order to secure funding, says Michael Doucet, president of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). "The government claims it wants universities to be more accountable to the public, and these agreements are central to the government's accountability strategy," says Doucet. "But irony among all ironies, the government refuses to release those agreements to the public. Where is the accountability in that strategy?" OCUFA has submitted a Freedom of Information request in an attempt to secure the agreements, which detail how many faculty universities have agreed to hire in return for government funding as well as the number of faculty who will be departing from universities. "Ontario universities need to hire 11,000 professors within four years to avert a faculty shortage crisis due to pending Baby Boom retirements and growing student enrolment," Doucet says. "All we're asking of the government is to release public documents that indicate whether we're on track with those hirings. We think the public has the right to know whether its government is managing to avoid a crisis." For further information: Henry Mandelbaum, OCUFA Executive Director, (416) 671-3230 or Mark Rosenfeld, Associate Executive Director, (416) 306-6037 |
| Access Granted: FOI extends to Rye Ryerson Eyeopener OnLine - March 14, 2006 By: Margarita Poliakov Ontario universities will be included in the Freedom of Information Act this June for the first time since 1988. The act, which gives citizens the right to access information about themselves held in public institutions, as well as information in the public realm, came into effect in 1988 but did not include universities nor hospitals. This meant that students and the general public could not request access to documents the public had but were not making available. "(The Freedom of Information Act) is very important to public institutions," said Robert Cribb, an investigative reporter at the Toronto Star and a journalism professor at Ryerson University. "Public institutions receive millions of dollars and should be accountable. The deal that was struck (in 1988) was not (made) in the interest of the public." By excluding universities from this Act, the government restricted the amount of information known to the public about issues such as budgeting. While public money goes into universities, the public relies on universities to tell them what is being done with the money. The addition of universities in this Act will open doors to journalists, particularly the student press. "It would give student newspapers more leverage," said Sean Patrick Sullivan, president of the Canadian University Press. "Some likely stories will be about pay since expense accounts will be readily available." The Information and Privacy Commission, an organization independent from the government, had been pushing to get universities included in the Act. Nobody can say why universities weren't included in the act, or the reason why they are finally being included in June. It isn't just student newspapers that can be affected by this act. In British Columbia, where universities are included in the Act, Sarah Schmidt of Canwest News Services uncovered a scandal at the University of British Columbia. Administrators there were reorganizing class sizes and manipulating class enrollment in order to get a higher rank in Maclean's yearly university ranking. Schmidt was able to unveil these facts by requesting inter-department memos under the Freedom of Information Act. |
