By Lauren Phillips | The Coast
A controversial bill affecting university funding in Nova Scotia is being revived. Amendments to the old bill will change how schools enter crisis-planning mode. If passed, the province can require a university in financial trouble to follow a “revitalization plan” as a condition of funding.
The amendments are included in a new omnibus bill–Bill 12–called An Act Respecting Advanced Education and Research, introduced by the provincial minister of advanced education, Brendan Maguire, on Feb 19.
The revitalization plan concept is not new. It’s meant to be used as a last resort if a school is in such dire financial shape that it would request emergency funding from the province. It was introduced in 2015 in the Universities Accountability and Sustainability Act. This act sets the conditions under which some or all funding is given to universities—or withheld. One possible condition is that the university follows a revitalization plan, as put forward by the school. A revitalization plan must consider such things as shutting down faculties and departments, or merging with another school.
In both the amended and original legislation, a university in a revitalization planning process with “a significant operating deficiency” can ask the minister to ban its unionized workers’ right to strike. A university in such a revitalization period—which could last between 12 and 16 months—would also be prevented from signing any new collective agreements, or unionized worker contracts.
As it stands, schools must request a revitalization plan, which is the first stage in applying these changes to workers’ collective bargaining rights. Schools are also bound by a time limit: they can’t ask for one if they have already done so in the past two years.
The proposed amendments to the act, introduced as part of Bill 12 last month, mean that the minister can now decide that a revitalization plan is necessary for some or all university funding to continue. As proposed in Bill 12, a revitalization planning process can be initiated as often as the minister decides is needed.
If the minister isn’t satisfied with the university’s plan at the end of the process, or if a school fails to identify “a strategic connection between the social and economic priorities of the government and the university’s funding decisions,” funding to universities can be withheld. Or, schools can be asked to pay the province back for partial grants.
As reported by the CBC, the presidents of the province’s 10 universities were not consulted or told this change was coming ahead of time, said Peter Halpin, the executive director of the Council of Nova Scotia University Presidents. Halpin told CBC News that CONSUP met with Maguire in January but that he didn’t mention the changes. Halpin declined further comment.
Nova Scotia’s universities receive over $380 million yearly in operational funding, plus $43 million for specific programs from the province. These grants are most schools’ second-highest revenue source, behind tuition. Whether a revitalization period is ever mandated to continue that funding, the threat is built into the legislation.
Critics of the bill in 2015 said that threat was enough to cause repercussions for students, faculty and staff. As reported by the CBC, the week before the bill became law, Scott Stewart, president of the Cape Breton University Faculty Association, said CBU had imposed a 21% tuition hike and a cut to faculty and staff over the next five years. Stewart called it a “revitalization plan” that would “not have been put forward without the threat of this bill hanging over us.”
Violating workers’ constitutional rights
When then-premier Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government introduced the Universities Accountability and Sustainability Act in April 2015, university workers and students protested the bill in the streets and at the Law Amendments Committee—a stage in a bill’s becoming law where members of the public can explain how proposed legislation will affect them. Nearly 60 people, including representatives from faculty associations, student unions and trade unions, attended the committee to speak against the bill.
Most of their criticism was directed at the revitalization planning period.
As preserved in the amended legislation, a school can request that the minister suspend the university workers’ right to strike while drafting a revitalization plan if the minister is satisfied that the school can show “a significant operating deficiency” and is undergoing a revitalization period. Again, this period also prevents new collective agreements from being signed.
In 2015, the Canadian Association of University Teachers warned this bill’s provisions “would violate constitutional rights.” CAUT executive director David Robinson wrote, “the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the right to strike as constitutionally protected and an essential part of meaningful collective bargaining in Canada,” in the release. “According to the Court, equality in the bargaining process depends upon the right to strike. [This bill] flies in the face of [that].”
The CAUT also called the bill “an unacceptable intrusion of government into the academic affairs of universities in Nova Scotia” because of what revitalization plans must have. These plans must “satisfy the government that research will be turned into ‘business opportunities’ and program and course offerings will be ‘relevant’ to students, society and the economy,” wrote the CAUT, drawing from the bill’s language. Plans must also include “ideas for exchanging knowledge and innovation with the private sector, with an emphasis on university-industry collaboration.”
Robinson said that “by requiring specific curriculum and research objectives” as part of these plans, the province is “directly interfering with the institutional autonomy of universities to determine their own academic directions and priorities and violating the academic freedom of teachers and researchers.”
‘The framework for a crisis actually exists within this bill’
During debates on the bill in the House of Assembly that spring, Progressive Conservative MLA Tim Houston echoed the concerns raised by presenters at the Law Amendments Committee. His first concern was the bill’s language and the loose definition of a “significant operating deficiency.” A school must show they have one before initiating a revitalization plan and pausing workers’ rights. Houston said this term was “the crux of the whole bill.”
Testing for it involves looking at a five-year forecast and finding “a situation that [could] reasonably be expected to threaten the ability of the university to continue.” Houston said that, because the province significantly funds universities, “the government could itself trigger significant operating deficiencies just by a decision made on the floor of this Chamber,” like if it decided to cut school funding. “You come into a bit of a circle there,” he said 10 years ago, “but when you look at the framework for a ‘crisis’ [not his word for it, he clarified]—the framework for a crisis actually exists within this bill.”
However, the amended legislation put forward by now-premier Houston’s supermajority PC government last month does not update the language on what defines or tests for a significant operating deficiency in a university.
The same day Houston expressed concerns in the House in 2015, acting leader of the New Democrats Maureen MacDonald called it “probably the worst piece of legislation I’ve ever seen come forward,” a “flawed bill,” and one that “will do nothing to improve the accountability of our universities or their sustainability.
MacDonald also noted who spoke against the bill at the Law Amendments Committee—and who didn’t. She said not one university president or chair of a school’s board of governors from any university “that supposedly are going to be made more accountable and more sustainable as a result of this bill” came to the committee. “I’m troubled by that.” It meant that the legislature “had no opportunity to speak to and hear from the very people who will be required to trigger the provisions of this bill,” to put universities on a path to restructuring through revitalization plans and, therefore, the House has “no idea under what circumstances the boards of governors or the university presidents envision using these extraordinary powers in this bill.”
MacDonald said the bill “does not hold accountable the senior administration” in the university, including presidents, executive staff and boards of governors. “What it does is it passes the responsibility on to the cleaning staff, to the electricians, to the library assistants, to the instructors, to the TAs, to the clerical and administration people in the payroll department and the HR department.”
She said it does this by taking away “the hard-earned rights of those workers to bargain with the senior administration and the boards of governors for fair wages and working conditions. It tips the balance in collective bargaining towards the employers and the administrators and the senior managers and the presidents of the universities and all of the vice-presidents—and there are lots of them; they have grown exponentially in the last number of years. This bill tackles none of that.”
MacDonald said it’s true that some universities “are facing financial challenges because previous boards and previous senior administrations have made really bad decisions,” but that “now the government is going to permit a process that will make the average person in those universities pay the price for those bad decisions. It doesn’t seem fair.”
The amended bill introduced on Feb 19 does not change the provisions in the bill that allow the minister to pause workers’ right to strike while a school undergoes a revitalization period.
‘In a perfect world, we will never get to that point’
In a phone interview with The Coast last week, advanced education minister Maguire said he doesn’t “want to ever get to the point of revitalization,” and that he’ll “be working directly hand-in-hand with the universities to put the regulations in place and the stop gaps in places to ensure that we never get there.” But the possibility remains.
Asked what would make him trigger a revitalization plan for a school, Maguire said, “I don’t have a specific number, because we’d have to evaluate it based on universities, but that they get down the path so far in debt that it’s quite hard or impossible for them to climb out. I don’t want that. I want our universities to be around for a long time.”
As minister, he can trigger a school’s revitalization process if the amended bill passes. If he did, he says he would tell the university: “You need to put forward a plan to ensure that you protect your employees, that you protect your students, you protect everyone involved in the university, and that you can put forward a plan that digs you out of it.”
Maguire said he doesn’t know of any university that had submitted a revitalization plan to the previous ministers since the original bill passed, but that schools have “approached [the province] for substantial money to help cover their debt and costs.” He added that “some universities right now have substantial debt.” He said this amended bill is meant to prevent these universities from needing substantial emergency funding and requiring a revitalization plan.
“In a perfect world, we will never get to that point.”
Dalhousie University, for example, is currently in a hiring freeze that started last September, because of its projected $18 million budget shortfall. “One of the last things I want to see happen,” said Maguire, “is that these universities get in a position when they’re so far in debt that they start cutting programs and they start cutting services.”
When asked whether he would want a university to pause its workers’ right to strike if he mandated a revitalization plan, Maguire said, “absolutely not—those are hard-earned, bargained rights.”
But the threat still looms.
In a March 3 release commenting on the revival of this bill, the Association of Nova Scotia University Teachers criticized the minister’s proposed “unchecked authority to force universities into a revitalization process,” saying “the threat here is to the right to collective bargaining for all university employees, from the staff who clean the halls, and keep the boilers running, to those who offer administrative support and faculty who teach the students.”
Tuition not mentioned in the bill
Students are another group affected by a revitalization period—or the threat of one. When universities fear or experience government funding cuts, tuition increases are a well-known fallback.
The bill says the university must consult with students, faculty and staff when drafting a revitalization plan. Concerning students, this plan must include a strategy to “achieve access and inclusiveness for students and faculty from a wide range of backgrounds, communities and groups;” an “assessment of the potential impact of the proposed revitalization plan on students;” and “a description of the university’s long-term strategy for financial sustainability, including present and projected student enrolment and plans for student retention.”
Maguire said that, often, when schools face insolvency, ask for a bailout or plan an overhaul, “we see tuition increases, and we don’t want that.” He said this amended legislation gives universities “all the tools they need, from a government standpoint, to ensure that they have long-term sustainability and [are] protecting the students, also.”
The province has signed one-year bilateral agreements with each university, which expire on Mar 31. These agreements set a maximum domestic tuition increase of 2% and a minimum international tuition increase of 9%.
“What we want is our students to be able to afford tuition and, at the same time, our universities to be sustainable and not [put] themselves in a position where they either have to borrow money, or they have to ask for money, or they have to take money through tuition,” said Maguire on the phone with The Coast.
Yet, nothing in the original or amended legislation prevents tuition hikes from happening in the future. Tuition is not mentioned at all.
In 2003, New Democrat MLA Darrell Dexter proposed an amendment to the Universities Assistance Act, a precursor to the legislation now being changed. The amendment would have required universities to freeze student tuition fees at their current level to receive government funding. It didn’t pass.
Nova Scotia did freeze tuition from 2008-2011 after the province saw a drop in student enrollment because its universities had the highest fees in the country. During the Dexter government, that tuition freeze ended and was not renewed, and students took to the streets in protest.
Tuition in Nova Scotia has been rising faster than the national average every year since. Domestic undergraduate tuition has consistently ranked highest in Canada for the past five years. In 2024/25, Nova Scotia’s average undergraduate domestic tuition across all fields of study was $9,762, compared with $7,360 across Canada.
