On the Situation at Laurentian University
Sudbury Says NO! to CCAA Wrecking
of Laurentian University
- David Starbuck -
The people of Sudbury are enraged at the wrecking of Laurentian
University by the financial oligarchy through the Companies' Creditors
Arrangement Act (CCAA). The Laurentian administration, which had
declared bankruptcy and applied for creditor protection under the CCAA
on February 1, announced its restructuring plan on April 12,
cancelling 69 programs (58 undergraduate and eleven graduate programs)
and terminating the employment of about 150 employees (faculty and
staff).
This follows the break-up of Laurentian's federation with three
other northern universities and the resultant cancellation of all
programs offered by the federated universities. This restructuring
decimated French-language, Indigenous and Faculty of Arts programs in
particular.
 On
May 2, Justice Geoffrey Morawetz of the Ontario Superior Court approved
the university's restructuring, including the breakup of the
federation. Laurentian's lawyer, D.J. Miller, argued that Laurentian
needed to retain the $7.7 million in grants and funding which it would
normally disburse to the federated partners in order to reassure its
lender and qualify for another $10 million loan. In his decision the
judge approved Laurentian's restructuring plan and approved the new
loan of $10 million which allows the university to continue to operate
"while protected from creditors" until August 31.
Many of those terminated officially lost their jobs at noon on April
30. Rallies on Wheels were organized on that day in Sudbury as well as
Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston and Kitchener-Waterloo to protest the
decimation of Laurentian University, the chronic underfunding of
post-secondary education, and the refusal of Premier Ford and his
government to defend Ontario’s public education, provide
emergency funding to Laurentian and stop the CCAA process.
 Earlier
in the month on April 16, a four-hour physically-distanced protest
rally was held near the Laurentian president's residence. About two
hundred people attended at different times of the day and there was a
cacophony of motorists honking their horns in support. The event was
organized by Laurentian midwifery students whose cancelled
program was one of three midwifery programs in Ontario and the only
bilingual midwifery program in Canada. The cancellation of the
midwifery program, under the pretext of low enrolment, is particularly
galling as the midwifery program had three hundred applications for
thirty spots in the program and the costs of the program were
completely
covered by tuition and provincial grants.
Sudbury and the Laurentian community are also shocked at the depth
and breadth of the program cancellations: programs in environmental
science where Laurentian is a world leader in reclaiming land
devastated by industrial processes; its physics program which has been
instrumental in the development of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
(SNOLAB) whose director, Dr. Arthur McDonald, was awarded the 2015
Nobel Prize in Physics. Philosophy, political science, gone.
French-language engineering and nursing, gone. Nor are the cuts limited
to academic programs. The University also cut the varsity hockey and
swimming programs. The Laurentian Swim Club won two Olympic gold medals
for Canada in 1984.
 Laurentian
students and faculty have been exposing the callousness with which the
CCAA process is being implemented at Laurentian by the university
administration and the financial oligarchy. Normally, when educational
institutions cancel programs, they "teach out" the program for existing
students. Not at Laurentian under the CCAA.
Students have been left high and dry. Midwife students have been told
to transfer to nursing. Political science students have been told to
take interdisciplinary studies. Students do not feel that these options
allow them to pursue the course of studies they had dedicated
themselves to.
Faculty have shown how they were bulldozed into accepting the terms
of the financial restructuring of Laurentian under the CCAA. Terminated
employees were informed by mandatory Zoom meetings, a procedure which
faculty considered demeaning and insulting.
The Senate was given four hours to approve the restructuring plan,
in camera, without any opportunity to consult with their colleagues
under threat that if the Senate did not approve the CCAA restructuring
plan Laurentian University would cease to exist at the end of April.
The following day, the Laurentian University Faculty Association
(LUFA) was presented with a new collective agreement with a five per
cent reduction in pay and in other benefits, including severance pay
for the terminated employees. They were given twelve hours to agree
under threat that the University in its entirety would cease to exist
if
they didn't.
 The
situation at Laurentian has received national attention. This is the
first time that the CCAA has been applied to a public, post-secondary
educational institution. If the financial oligarchy is successful in
wrecking Laurentian through the CCAA process, they will be able to do
the same at any public sector institution: create a crisis, proclaim
bankruptcy, apply to the CCAA, and rewrite every social, economic and
political relationship in favour of the financial oligarchy.
On April 15, an emergency debate on the situation at Laurentian
University was held in the House of Commons, but no solution was put
forward and on April 19 Paul Lefebvre, Liberal MP for Sudbury announced
that there would be no federal financial aid for Laurentian.
The Laurentian community has been receiving messages of support and
of opposition to the CCAA wrecking of Laurentian University from
unions, faculty organizations, community organizations and individuals
across Canada. Two people who had been awarded honorary doctorates by
Laurentian returned those degrees in protest. The
Chancellor of Laurentian University resigned in protest.
Sudbury, Northern Ontario and the Laurentian community have put
forward several demands surrounding the CCAA process at Laurentian
University:
1) That the CCAA process at Laurentian University be stopped immediately;
2) That the Ontario Government provide Laurentian University with
sufficient funds to operate with all existing program offerings; while
3) Sudbury, Northern Ontario and the Laurentian community review the
programs, operations, organizational structures and finances of
Laurentian University over a period of two or three years with the aim
of building a university which serves the interests and needs of the
entire community; and
4) The Ontario Government provide the necessary funding to operate
Laurentian University as a bilingual, tricultural institution on an
on-going basis.
Stop the CCAA! Fund Laurentian University!
This article was published in
May 14, 2021 - No. 44
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08441.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
