Several universities in Ontario were found to have paid almost $1 million to private lobbying groups in order to influence public policy in Queen’s Park, according to a press release issued by the NDP earlier this month.
In documents obtained through the freedom of information laws, the press release revealed some of the lobbyist groups’ most lucrative clients. Chief among these is York University, which spent close to $500,000 on three private lobbyist firms, while Laurentian University paid $102,000 to StrategyCorp and enlisted the help of prominent Liberal staffers. The University of Ontario Institute of Technology also has a lobbyist contract worth $130,000.
There is an economic incentive for universities to lobby, according to Joel Duff, an organizer of the Canadian Federation of Students in Ontario.
“Universities fund lobbyists in Toronto to lobby for their cause simply because it is cheaper to have external private lobbyists than have university administration do it,” he said.
Duff has called Ontario universities’ actions inappropriate, especially at a time when the universities charge some of the highest tuition rates in Canada and classroom sizes have ballooned in relation to other provinces.
“When you are the government, and you fund public universities, you are giving money that is supposed to go to students, labs, classrooms, and professors,” Duff said. “It shouldn’t be going to private lobbyist firms.”
“Something is wrong when money is being diverted away from students into lobbyists’ pockets,” added Andrea Horwath, the leader of the Ontario NDP, in a press release.
The president of the Ontario University Faculty Association (OCUFA), Mark Langer, also criticized the universities asking, “Why are these institutions pleading poverty at faculty bargaining tables and not addressing the needs of students when they seemingly have cash to spare for big lobbying companies?”
Student groups such as the Canadian Federation of Students are fearful that such practices, if left undiscovered, could lead to what Langer called a “dangerous trend whereby decisions around public services like education are made based on partisan and political grounds [rather than] being determined based on the merits of the issue.”
In addition, Duff said that on the board of governors of any school, there are government appointees and business appointees, people that can be influential based on their prior relationship with the government.
He pointed to Laurentian University, where the president was the former assistant deputy minister of Training and Education in Ontario.
“How does that guy not have the phone number of every guy in the ministry?” he asked. Duff suggested that this also applies to all other public universities in Ontario.
The Canadian Federation of Students is part of a wide range of organizations that are supporting the new rule proposed by the McGuinty government to ban publicly funded institutions, including universities, from spending public funds on corporate lobbyists.
