Smith’s delusions target universities

So what’s next? Removing books from university libraries because they challenge Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s right wing ideology? Or is her UCP government going to establish its own university?

Judging from what Smith has said over the past week it’s clear that she craves the authority to not only oversee Alberta’s universities but to determine exactly what they teach, research and publish.

She must have heard that Viktor Orban, the dictatorial prime minister of Hungary, established his own university and took control of all the others in order to quell any ideas that he disagreed with.

Or perhaps she’s had a chat with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who took over a small liberal arts college and turned it into a Christian conservative stronghold as part of his ongoing battle against “wokeness.”

Smith’s bent for controlling the work of universities came to the fore last week at a press conference when she spoke about the Provincial Priorities Act, or as she calls it the “stay out of my backyard” bill. She was steamed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was making deals with some of Alberta’s mayors to fund new housing without consulting her first.

So the bill prohibits any provincial entity, including municipalities, post-secondary institutions and health authorities from concluding funding agreements with the federal government without first getting approval from provincial authorities. When asked if federal funds for university research projects would come under scrutiny Smith jumped at the chance to bash the Trudeau government yet again.

“How are they politically interfering by using their federal spending power to fund certain research projects? That’s what we’re worried about … That they fund in a certain way based on a certain ideology,” Smith told reporters.

Never mind that the federal research grants are allocated by three independent councils of academics from the fields of science, health, and social science who study the merits of each application before deciding which projects to fund. Four universities in Alberta get about one third of their research funding from the federal government. But it isn’t just research funding that Smith wants to upend. She’d like to have more control over what is actually being taught in post-secondary classrooms.

On CBC’s “Power and Politics” Smith told David Cochrane that she was seeking “balance” on university campuses, where there would be “just as many conservative commentators as we have liberal commentators out of journalism schools, see just as many conservative-minded journalists graduate as progressive-minded journalists.”

As if she doesn’t get constantly favourable coverage from Postmedia, the decidedly conservative and largest newspaper chain in the country.

In the legislature, Smith cited an article written by a Dalhousie professor complaining that there wasn’t enough university research into the carbon tax’s impact on the cost of food. She must have missed the study by two University of Calgary academics detailing the minimal impact of the tax on food prices. But Smith is so opposed to the carbon tax she only hears what she wants to hear. When 334 economists recently penned a public letter in support of the tax, she said: “I think the economists should get out their ivory towers and come into the real world, is what they should do.”

Of course in Smith’s “real world” climate change science is not to be trusted. Vaccines do more harm than good. Physicians who treat transgender teens don’t know what they are doing. Renewable energy is a plot against the oil industry.

Alberta’s university presidents and other administrators have been particularly meek when it comes to responding to Smith’s smearing of their institutions. The president of the University of Alberta, Bill Flanagan, only raised some polite questions about the impact of the bill on universities who rely on federal research grants.

But perhaps that was Smith’s intention. By threatening to impose restrictions on funds for academic research, by holding that club over academics and administrators, they will become more compliant.