An update on the new wave of pluralism

To be sure, the government has gone out of its way to sweep this consultation straight under the rug of the student movement in this country. The Tories have backdoored both national lobby groups, who have calculated, responsible policy recommendations, in the interest of reaching an unknown, likely ignorant, constituency.

It turns out that those two statements aren't exactly true. The mouthpiece for HRSDC says the department sent out letters to a wide range of stakeholder groups, such AUCC, CASA and CFS, on August 14, informing them of the PSE consultation. BUT it's now more than two weeks later and none of those organizations have recieved the letter (AUCC recieved an email in its general inbox, but nothing official). So somebody fucked up.

In terms of other "promotion," the government announced the fiscal imbalance consultation in its May budget (pgs 79 & 80), and posted a news release on August 8. Both HRSDC and finance department officials say that was enough, despite the fact that the release makes no reference to post-secondary education.

Next, an HRSDC spokesperson says the government is planning on meeting with provincial and territorial officials in the coming months to discuss solutions to the same sort of problems it put to the Canadian public. It will then incoporate the outcomes of both "consultations" into some sort of policy change in the 2007 budget.

The spokesperson says the budgetary deadline forced the government to run the public consultations in the late summer, eventhough the timeline is encredibly awkward for students returning to school.

Finally, Jen Bond wanted to know why the government is running this online consult when it already has at its disposal the body of knowldge collected during the Council of the Federation's summit on PSE, which had roughly 300 stakeholders in attendance. A finance department spokesperson speculated that the Conservatives are taking that body of knowledge into consideration, but he couldn't say for sure.

Despite all this, my opinion stands. If the government wants "to ensure that people from every corner of the country have the opportunity to provide their thoughts on how [it] should proceed," as Minister Flaherty suggests, then it *probably* should have gone a little further than an announcement three months before the consultation, a single, vague news release on the day of its launch and a bunk letter campaign six days later. The legitimacy of the entire process, including the outcome, has been completely undermined by the way it was administered.

To make matters worse, our paper goes out a day before the consultations end, so I don't know if we'll reach anyone in time. But for those of you who made it passed the title of this post, you likely care enough, and know enough, to participate. So DO IT!

Having said that, though, I need to stress that my reservations about the quality of insight that Joe Canadian can offer remain. While I'm not trying to suggest that public consultations necessarily inhibit the legislative process (weelll, does anyone remember the Charletown Accord?!), I'm merely saying that in this case, our student leaders should have been at the helm.

But since the government has gone ahead with this, informed students should take advantage of the opportunity.