The Truth About Canada (20 page)

It’s interesting to note that in the 2006 edition of the OECD’s excellent
Education at a Glance
(some “glance,” at 449 pages), “Finland and Canada as well as five out of the six East and Southeast Asian countries … are among the countries in which social background has the smallest impact on student success. This suggests that these education systems succeed better in creating meritocracies that maximize the human potential of their countries more effectively” than countries such as Germany, France, Italy, and the United States. Once again, this said, almost a third of families polled in Canada say that financial difficulties are the main reason that family members do not pursue higher education.
¹⁰

It’s also interesting to note that for today’s 25-to 64-year-olds, the average Canadian spent about 13.2 years in the education system. Norway is tops among OECD countries at almost 14 years, followed by Germany, Denmark, the United States, Luxembourg, and then Canada, followed by 24 other countries, where the length of time the average student is in the system goes all the way down to about 8.5 years in Mexico and Portugal.

It’s worth underlining here that many EU countries have either no post-secondary tuition fees or only token fees. There are no tuition fees in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Slovak Republic, and Sweden. In the following countries, tuition fees average less than $1,000 (U.S.): Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey.

By contrast, in 2006, the average university student debt on graduation in Canada was over $24,000. In Quebec, the province that had the lowest tuition fees and the most generous grants programs, the average
debt was less than $13,000. Average undergraduate tuition fees for full-time university students in 2006/2007 were $4,347. For law students they were $7,221, for medicine $10,553, for dentistry $13,463.

Anyone who has spent time with university students across Canada knows the huge problem rising tuition has been causing in recent years. With such substantial tuition increases, ever-growing numbers in crowded classrooms, and more and more students forced to leave the country to enrol in university, it’s time to examine funding for post-secondary education.

First, let’s look at Ottawa’s role. In real per-person dollars, federal government transfers to the provinces for post-secondary education, even with the Harper government’s $800-million increase in the 2007 budget, are an estimated $1-billion less than they were 15 years ago.

In May 2007, the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada said that

the quality of education has been experiencing a decline over the last two decades, largely as a result of poor investment levels on the part of provincial and federal governments.

Federal cash transfers to the provinces for post-secondary education, for example, fell to 0.19 percent of gross national product in 2004-05 from 0.56 percent in 1983-84 … and while student growth increased nearly 50 percent between 1987 and 2003, faculty growth lagged at 7 percent.
¹¹

University of Alberta President Dr. Indira Samarasekara has pointed out that since 1992 Canadian universities have added 222,000 more students, but only 2,000 more faculty.

Meanwhile, public opinion polls show that 70 percent of Canadians believe Ottawa should increase funding for post-secondary education, two-thirds say university tuition fees have reached an unacceptable level, and 50 percent say that the federal government should supply a free university or college education to any qualified student who cannot afford it. In 1990/1991, student university fees contributed 12 percent to university
incomes. Today, it’s well over 21 percent. And one study estimates that by 2020 a four-year university education in Canada will cost $90,000.

Some other interesting numbers. Between 1980 and 2004, public university funding in the United States (in constant dollars) increased by 25 percent. In Canada, it fell by 20 percent. One study showed that public funding of post-secondary education in Canada on a real per-student basis declined by 30 percent between the 1980s and 2004. University of Toronto president, Dr. David Naylor, says that 20 years ago Canadian universities received $2,000 per student more from government than their U.S. peers, while today they receive $5,000 less.
¹²

Here is one of the places where Canada does very poorly. In September 2006, an OECD report said that out of 14 industrialized countries, Canada was dead last in public spending on early childhood education as a percentage of GDP. At just a quarter of one percent, Canada’s early-childhood spending was only one eighth that of Denmark, and far below the spending in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Even the U.S. rate was double Canada’s.

David Crane of the
Toronto Star
comments:

The OECD review reports that among societies most concerned with their future competitiveness and about the social benefits of improving life chances for all children, there is “a growing consensus — based on research from a wide range of countries — that government on a cost-benefit analysis must invest and regulate early childhood education and care.”
¹³

Great, except governments in Canada, for the most part, have shown they aren’t much interested. In contrast, in more than half of the OECD countries, 70 percent of children ages three to four are enrolled in either pre-primary or primary programs.
¹⁴

Returning to the question of university tuitions, some people suggest that we needn’t worry too much about rising fees because we have very generous programs for student loans, grants, and scholarships. We do, compared to some countries, but all of the following have more generous
programs: Norway, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland, and the United Kingdom.

Others say there is little evidence that high tuition fees are an inhibiting factor for potential students from low-income families. One Statistics Canada study suggested that the gap between the attendance of affluent and poor young people was not so much a matter of money as it was reading scores at age 15, high school marks, and parental education. I have grave reservations about the logic here. If indeed it is correct, then surely a reading of the preceding chapters in this book on poverty indicates all the more reason why Canada should increase social spending to at least the EU averages. Young people growing up in poverty, with poor shelter, empty bellies, and inadequate clothing, are hardly going to be as well prepared for school tests as students from affluent families. The elitist conclusion of the study seems to somehow forget the inability of many poor children to properly compete on any kind of a level field. Of course there are exceptions, but they tend to be exactly that — exceptions. A 2006 public opinion poll found that more than three-quarters of Canadians believe that low-income students have less opportunity than high-income students to attend post-secondary institutions in this country.

Anyway, not to worry. In a February 2007 editorial, the
National Post
tells us, “If anything, tuition fees in Canada should be
increased
.” Meanwhile, a spring 2007 poll showed that students surveyed as to why they were not pursuing post-secondary education cited financial issues as their number one reason.

A look at what happens in elite U.S. universities is interesting. A study released in the fall of 2006 showed that no fewer than three out of every five students at elite American universities gain entrance because of wealthy or alumni parents or because of “sporting prowess.” Only 3 percent of the students in these universities came from the bottom income quintile, and only 10 percent came from the bottom
half
of the income scale.
¹⁵

On another topic, sadly many students graduating from our schools and our post-secondary institutions have little knowledge of our own
country. The excellent 2005 book
What Canadians Think
, by Darrell Bricker and John Wright of Ipsos Reid, showed that we’re faced with a terrible lack of knowledge about Canada among our own citizens. Some examples:

• only 37 percent of Canadians could identify the first line of our national anthem;

• only 45 percent knew that Confederation was in 1867;

• only 47 percent knew about D-Day and Canadian participation;

• only 31 percent were able to name Dieppe as the French seaside town where almost 1,000 Canadians lost their lives in the infamous 1942 raids.

In November 2006, a Dominion Institute survey found that more than one in four Canadians thought U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was a Canadian, and only 31 percent identified Billy Bishop and Sir Arthur Currie as Canadians. In a list of questions including simple knowledge of Vimy Ridge and the poem “In Flanders Fields,” 60 percent of those surveyed failed the test, and only a third could identify the four political parties represented in the House of Commons. In 2007, fewer than half of Canadians aged 18 to 24 could name Sir John A. Macdonald as our first prime minister, and three-quarters polled could not give the date of Confederation, while only 12 percent were able to name the Canadian prime minister who won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Good grief! It’s been at least 30 years since I first raised the issue of poor Canadian content in our schools after doing a survey of over 3,000 students in their last year of high school in all 10 provinces. In the interval, many others have complained about the same problem. I can think of no other country that would so ignore its own history, its own heroes, its own culture, its own accomplishments to such an appalling extent. It’s hard to imagine, but only four provinces require students to take a Canadian history course before they graduate. This said, I can’t end this chapter without paying tribute to Avie Bennett, Peter Lougheed, James
Marsh, Charles Bronfman, and Red Wilson of the excellent Historica Foundation (
www.histori.ca
), which is doing so much to support programs and resources, in both French and English, to encourage Canadians to explore their own fascinating history and culture.

In conclusion, I don’t know of any expert in post-secondary education who doesn’t think that our universities are seriously underfunded. And new forecasts suggest we’re going to have to plan for up to 170,000 additional new students in the next decade over and above the 815,000 full-time students enrolled in our universities in 2007.
¹⁶
At the three major universities in Toronto alone — York University, the University of Toronto, and Ryerson University — projections indicate a future need for between 40,000 and 75,000 new spaces, leading to talk of a whole new university.

At the beginning of this chapter I warned that you would be shocked by how Canada’s spending on education compares to other countries. The latest edition of the United Nations
Human Development Report
reveals these truly appalling numbers for the period 2002–2005. In public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP, Canada is way down in 57th place. In public expenditure on education as a percentage of all government spending, Canada is 90th.

90th!

Great numbers in a rapidly increasingly competitive world, especially when all signs indicate record numbers of students will be applying for post-secondary institutions in 2008.

22

CULTURE IN CANADA

“Bleed and starve Canada’s cultural institutions until they croak.”

F
or us to largely ignore our own history and identity when we live next door to the world’s most aggressive culture-exporting country is a foolish mistake. Nevertheless, Canadian politicians seem determined not to provide adequate support for our own cultural community.

Jeffrey Simpson, writing in the
Globe and Mail
, put it well: “There cannot be another country in the world that makes it so difficult for domestic creators to find an audience.”
¹
For example, Air Canada is “a Canadian-owned airline that almost never showed a Canadian-made film.” And, “Can anyone imagine a store window of Barnes and Noble in Chicago or Foyle’s in London filled with imported trash from other countries?”

Margaret Atwood, writing in the
Globe and Mail
, laments the poor Canadian government support for culture, noting the apparent intention of the Harper neocons to “bleed and starve Canada’s cultural institutions until they croak.” This, despite the fact that we “now have an artist stimulated ‘creative economy’ that’s worth — so they say — $40-billion a year. Why invest money in the arts? Because — simple answer — it’s a great investment. A few dollars in means a lot of dollars out. Without the arts, the average Canadian citizen would be poorer and I don’t mean just spiritually.”
²

Atwood has previously pointed out that there are more direct jobs in
the cultural industries in Canada than in agriculture and mining combined. I think you can throw in forestry as well.

This will come as a great surprise to many Canadians. But every year, total spending on live performing arts in Canada exceeds spending on sports. The same is true for spending on books. In 2005, Canadians spent $1.2-billion to attend live performing arts presentations, more than the amount spent attending paid-admission sports events, and another half-billion was paid for admission to museums.
³
The same year, the book publishing industry in Canada had total revenues of $2.4-billion.

Yet when we measure total support for culture, it’s under 1.5 percent of the total annual budgets of all three levels of government. Meanwhile, culture represents some 5.8 percent of GDP, and an enormous 94 percent of Canadians say we should be doing much more to promote our own culture.