Key External Stakeholders: Government

• Author: Cheryl Foy
• Pages: 66-74

66

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Key External Stakeholders:

Government

A. KEY EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS

Understanding and addressing the interests of all stakeholders is critical to

making a contribution and fullling your duciary duty as a board member.

e ecosystem of universities is such that your stakeholders will be multiple

and from a wide variety of groups. When making key decisions, the board

should ensure it has identied the stakeholders aected and that it under-

stands the eects of the decisions on those stakeholders and their interests.

Chapters , , and  are intended to give board members an overview of

who the external stakeholders may be.

B. GOVERNMENTS: THE BACKGROUND

Universities have relationships with all levels of government. e Canadian

Constitution Act, 1867 provides that provinces have exclusive authority

over education within the province. However, the federal government has

long played an active role in education, and the relationships between and

among universities and the federal and provincial governments has long

been dicult to navigate. David Cameron’s description of the challenges

of the s gives a glimpse at the foundations of the ongoing tensions and

patterns we see today:

1 Constitution Act, 1867 (UK), 30 & 31 Vict, c 3, s 93.