NOTLEY HAS HER ETHICS WEDGE CASE
There could soon be legislation with an Elizabeth Cannon clause — one that forbids university presidents from serving on corporate boards, especially when the corporations donate to the university.
Premier Rachel Notley certainly seemed to be heading in that direction Tuesday, a day after her advanced education minister, Lori Sigurdson, gave an airy it’ll-be-OK response to the startling revelation that Cannon personally intervened in a research centre funded by pipeline giant Enbridge. Cannon has been a board member with Enbridge’s income fund since 2004.
The situation does not appear to be OK with Notley, although she wisely refrained from attacking the university, the president or the board. This school hardly needs a premier kicking it around.
Notley said the government will monitor “what the ultimate facts of this situation reveal ... one of the issues that we would be looking at would be the application of the conflict of interest legislation to ensure a consistent approach to these issues.
“You would recall ... that I’ve raised this issue in the past when I was in opposition. I think it’s certainly very important that we develop a consistent practise across the province and one in which all Albertans can have faith.”
Notley has long been unhappy with the great jumble of provincial agencies, boards and commissions, many operating under their own rules as they distribute public money.
The universities fall into the high end of that category. Now, the U of C has handed Notley her wedge case to deal with ethics, conflicts and academic independence. We should be clear that U of C president Cannon didn’t break any university rules. We should also be clear that the absence of rules is exactly the problem.
The university’s board of governors knew all along that Cannon was on the board of Enbridge Income Fund, for which she earned $ 130,500 last year.
Her employment contract permits her to sit on corporate boards. It’s seen as a way to connect with the business community on a deep level. The extra pay? That’s fine, too.
The president, whose base university salary is $ 480,000, intervened via email when troubles arose over the launching of the Enbridge Centre for Corporate Sustainability at the university. The company donated $ 2.25 million for that project.
Cannon says that when she scolded a dean because Enbridge was evidently unhappy with him in 2012, that was just university business.
So, she broke no rules. But there should be rules, if only to save these appointed boards from themselves.
There are times when the potential optics are so bad that a public organization should say, yes, we don’t have a specific rule against that, but we’re not going to do it.
You’d think U of C would be especially sensitive after the fiasco over the university’s federally funded think- tank on energy and environment that was widely perceived as a front for the oilsands. Bruce Carson, the former director, now faces criminal charges for improper lobbying.
When the money is corporate, there’s an inevitable campus debate over where the donation begins and academic freedom ends.
A top- level academic, Joe Arvai, was recruited to head the Centre for Corporate Sustainability. He left, claiming that he saw the Centre as a research hub, but Enbridge considered it “a PR machine for themselves.”
Such fears always arise on campus when a company is heavily involved in a new academic field. Sometimes it’s justified, sometimes not.
But that climate is not improved by news that the president earns extra money from the company.
The people who run modern universities spend a good part of their time chasing corporate dollars and donations from rich individuals.
This can be unambiguously positive, especially in healthrelated fields. It gets a lot more complicated when pipeline politics enter the picture.
But one principle seems pretty clear; university executives who seek the money should not be earning any from the donors.