The case of First Nations University of Canada is certainly sad, but timely. Sad, in that it’s another example of liberal hopes gone horribly awry. Timely, in that it’s yet another indication of how Ottawa intends to get serious about how it spends money.

To sum up the news story: both the Saskatchewan and federal governments have pulled more than $12 million in funding from FNUC: $5.2 million from Regina, $7.5 million from Ottawa. That’s over half of the university’s funding, and unless you’re planning on running a post-secondary institution on an austerity scheme, the double-whammy effectively kills FNUC for 2010-11.

The reason? Extended problems with the university’s governance. You’ll note that in neither Globe nor Star-Phoenix story, no Opposition politician, provincial or federal, is being quoted on the story. And that’s because the governance problems are so systemic, so far gone, and so well known, that no politician with any sense would be willing to argue with either government’s decision.

Of course, that’s not going to stop some vested interests from trying a weak protest:

“I can’t find the words to describe how stunned I am at what the federal government has done and how destructive I think it is and how almost vengeful it is to do this after FSIN has taken action,” said the [Canadian Association of University Teachers]‘s executive director James Turk.

“They had five years to put pressure on the FSIN [Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, which oversees FNUC] … and then they choose to do it afterwards when the problem looks like it’s on a road to a solution,” said Turk, who also encouraged the provincial government to put back its funding now that FSIN has taken steps to address the governance issues.

What Mr. Turk seems to have forgotten: FSIN weren’t supposed to need pressure from governments in order to fix their problems. In fact they shouldn’t have needed five years. But instead, they insisted on playing their petty politics with the university board, secure in their belief that there was no way that either government would cut their funding, and risk accusations that they refused to help young aboriginals escape the poverty trap.

And of course, this belief blinded them to developments around them. Things like other education institutions catering to a First Nations audience, that didn’t have the same governance problems. Things like mainstream colleges and universities offering special entry programs for First Nations and Inuit students. And things like a changing Aboriginal demographic that was less interested in the politics of the reserve system.

These things made an institution like FNUC less and less special, until the two major levels of government became bold enough to see it as simply another funding project, and one that was becoming an expensive boondoggle. You can see this in one little detail:

The federal government said the $7.3 million that would have been allocated to the university for the 2010-11 fiscal year will remain within the government’s Indian student support program, and will be available for proposals that do not include operational funding.

It’s a given practice among bureaucrats, faced with the threat of budget cuts, to assert that their particular program or project is the only or best way to solve Problem X, whatever X may be. These days, though, it seems that neither Regina nor Ottawa are buying that reasoning.

And perhaps that’s the main takeaway from the FNUC situation: that governments in a post-recession period are finally getting serious about pulling the plug on certain spending initiatives that no longer merit the budgets they’re used to. Think your pet project’s federal funding is protected? You might want to check your books again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 00:01 and is filed under Aboriginal Affairs, Federal Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.