Mount Royal University staff and faculty will gather outside the institution on Tuesday to protest proposed Alberta legislation that would prevent funding agreements with the federal government without provincial approval.
Bill 18 — the Provincial Priorities Act — which received royal assent in May, forbids a “provincial entity” from entering, extending amend or renewing intergovernmental contracts without approval.
The definition of a provincial entity includes post-secondary institutions, and researchers fear Alberta will use the legislation to violate academic freedom. “It increases the red tape specifically around researchers being able to access federal funding, which is a significant impact,” said Brenda Lang, president of the Mount Royal Faculty Association.
Alberta’s advanced education minister has stressed the bill is not intended to obstruct federal money for post-secondary institutions. “I don’t believe the intent of this bill is to stop funding,” Rajan Sawhney said. “It’s to have an understanding and knowledge and information about what is being funded.”
However, she added: “We want to make sure that this funding does align with provincial priorities.”
Smith’s statement, Lang said, is false.
The councils gather panels of independent academics and researchers across the nation, who collect applications for grants and recommend which projects should be approved. The federal government has no involvement in those decisions.
The provincial regulation, however, will ensure the research projects funded by the councils are agreeable to the province. “It’s the provincial government that’s actually doing what it accuses the federal government of doing,” Lang said.
University of Alberta law professor Eric Adams in an earlier interview said the government may not impede research on issues that it has an ideological position on, although he asked the province to clarify its intentions.
“It’s incumbent on the government to very quickly indicate that there is no interest or capacity to individually police the kinds of research that professors are undertaking at our provincial universities,” he said.
“If they take a different view, then we will be a massive outlier.”
Although Bill 18 has received royal assent, it remains in the developmental stage. The ministry has been meeting with researchers and listening to their concerns as it develops how to apply the regulations.
Dr. Robert Sutherland, a University of Lethbridge neuroscience professor whose projects have been funded by CIHR and NSERC, was part of a roundtable with other researchers in Alberta and representatives of the ministry.
The researchers said the provincial regulations could add years to their project, which would be detrimental to their competitiveness and relationships with colleagues outside the region. “It would place Alberta researchers at a terrible handicap relative to researchers in other provinces,” Sutherland said.
Sutherland said every researcher received a chance to speak, and although the ministry representatives took notes, they haven’t provided feedback on his concerns.
The association is asking the province to repeal the legislation or at least exempt post-secondary institutions. Lang said the new rules could also affect the employment of research assistants, jobs many students rely on.
Lang also highlighted a lack of transparency from the province about confidential mandates for public sector employees.
“One of the challenges is we’re not actually sitting across the table with the government,” she said, adding the MRU Faculty Association and MRU Staff Association, both of which will rallying on Tuesday, have been at the bargaining table after their contracts expired in June.
“It’s unfair bargaining when you can’t actually sit across the table from the party that’s actually got the authority to bargain,” Lang said, calling on the provincial government to provide more information on its mandates so the association can make requests in response to those plans.
“It’s really hard to bargain around anything that might have a cost when we don’t know what we’re up against.”
The Ministry of Advanced Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With files from Matthew Black