U OF C BOSS DEFENDS ROLE IN ENBRIDGE RESEARCH CENTRE
The University of Calgary’s president says she personally intervened in a research centre funded by a $ 2.25- million donation from a pipeline giant despite the fact she was a corporate director of a related company.
In early 2012, Enbridge and the U of C launched the Enbridge Centre for Corporate Sustainability, but months later Elizabeth Cannon sent an email to her business school dean passing along the company’s concerns about his leadership on the initiative.
Cannon, who has been a board member with Enbridge’s income fund since 2004, insists she was “absolutely wearing my university hat” when she typed the email to the dean.
“It was simply an email sent to the dean expressing frustration that he, as the one who oversees, and has the delegated authority to oversee the operations, needs to do his job,” Cannon told the Herald in an interview Monday.
But for one leading Canadian advocate of academic freedom, the fact Cannon sits on the board of Enbridge Income Fund Holdings and is president at the U of C, raises some serious questions.
“A president of a university, wherever she is, is still president of the university,” said James Turk, a professor at Ryerson University and former executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
“To try to pretend that you can separate the two is simply untenable.”
The controversy came to light Monday following a CBC investigation into the relationship between the university and Enbridge, a Calgary- based energy transportation company.
The CBC obtained 1,200 pages of documents under freedom of information legislation, including an email between Cannon and Leonard Waverman, then dean of the Haskayne School of Business.
“They ( Enbridge) have traditionally been strong supporters of ( the University of Alberta) and this is the first major gift to the U of C,” Cannon said in her message to Waverman.
“They are not seeing your leadership on this file and are feeling that once the funding was committed, the interest from you was lost. This is not good for you or the university.”
The message was featured in the public broadcaster’s investigation into whether the university gave up academic independence in favour of corporate sponsorship when it set up the new centre.
Waverman, who now works at McMaster University, declined an interview request.
“I left the University of Calgary 3 ( sic) years ago and cannot add anything,” he said in an email to the Herald.
Cannon’s email was written after a United States academic recruited to lead the new centre had balked at a position with the research institute he felt would be perceived as too cosy with Canada’s largest pipeline company and a 10- year pledge of money aimed at rejuvenating its corporate image in the wake of a massive spill in Michigan in 2010.
“I have the impression that Enbridge sees the centre as a PR machine for themselves, whereas I see it as an academic research centre,” Joe Arvai wrote in one email provided to CBC.
Arvai was the inaugural director of the U of C’s Center for Corporate Sustainability but has since left the university and is teaching at the University of Michigan.
Cannon said Monday she has been on Enbridge Income Fund’s board since 2004 and security filings show she was paid $ 130,500 last year for her work as an independent director.
Enbridge holds about 90 per cent economic interest in Enbridge Income Fund.
Company documents also show that at the end of 2014 Cannon was owner of 25,300 shares in the income fund with market worth of approximately $ 810,000.
Cannon said she purchased those shares with her own money.
While the university’s code of conduct contains conflict of interest provisions that forbid employees from taking part in a university decision which may result in a real or perceived private benefit, Cannon says she didn’t break the rules by sending the email “expressing frustration” to Waverman.
“It was a simple reminder to him that when we get into an agreement he has to be held accountable for delivering back, but that does not contravene any conflict of interest,” she said.
“There’s no direction from me other than that we need to provide leadership and to deliver back to the community, but not getting involved in the day- today operations.”
While she intervened when problems arose, Cannon said she was not involved in discussions with Enbridge around the creation of the centre that began in 2008 nor the final agreement that was inked in 2011 with the university’s vice- president of development.
“There was a rocky start to the centre,” she said.
“There could have been better transparency, better communications and since those emails were written in 2011 and 2012 there have been changes made in terms of agreements with third parties.”
D’Arcy Levesque from Enbridge called the allegations concerning Enbridge’s partnership with the university unfair and false, in a statement Monday.
Levesque, vice- president of enterprise communications and corporate social responsibility at Enbridge, said the company’s philanthropic partnerships with the university have no strings attached.
Academic freedom advocate Turk said post- secondary institutions have long faced pressure from donors who give money to universities and want a say over academic matters in exchange.
“Responsible universities have always declined that offer,” he said.
Turk dubbed the allegations brought forward in the CBC investigation “extremely serious” and “absolutely staggering.”
He called for a full- scale investigation into the school’s conduct, which is something the Canadian Association of University Teachers ( CAUT) said Monday it could pursue.
Lori Sigurdson, minister of advanced education, said in a statement she’ll monitor the situation at the U of C moving forward but for now, will allow the school’s autonomous board to “assess the situation to ensure the proper polices are in place.”