Summary
Even after the promise to continue the freeze was revealed, Doer's minister of Advanced Education and Literacy responded with a dubious lesson in semantics, pointing out the difference between "extending" and "maintaining" a tuition freeze. In one of the most lacklustre political performances ever, she argued that "extend" means for a finite time period, whereas as "maintain" means an indefinite continuation of the policy.
The NDP committed to ensuring 700 nurses were hired -- but did they mean on a one-year contract? I doubt it. The party guaranteed not to privatize Hydro. Is that a one-year guarantee on parts only? Unlikely. Words like "continue", "keep", and "build" were used, or no action words at all, just quantities like "100 more doctors". Despite the variety of ways in which promises were made, there should be little doubt that the seven commitments constituted promises for the current mandate.The reality is that both students from low- and middle-class backgrounds can ill afford tuition fee hikes. At the same time, "modest" fee increases will not fill the funding gap that students and their universities decry. "Modest" fee hikes will only cement the call for still higher fees. It gets worse: in other jurisdictions where tuition fee freezes have been lifted, government funding has declined greater than tuition fee revenues have increased, leaving universities worse off than under a fee freeze.See the full content of this document
Extract
Gary Doer Promised Tuition Freeze
By David Jacks
The Doer government is engaging in some fancy footwork on the tuition-fee freeze.In the May 2007 provincial election, centrally produced NDP campaign materials, distributed in the hundreds of thousands to potential voters, stated that the party was committed to "extending the ...See the full content of this document
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