! MEDIA RELEASE For Immediate Release Thursday, April 23, 2015

!
MEDIA RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Thursday, April 23, 2015
ANSUT condemns Liberals’ Universities Accountability and Sustainability Act
HALIFAX – The Association of Nova Scotia University Teachers (ANSUT), which
represents over 1400 university teaching faculty and librarians in the province, condemned
the proposed Universities Accountability and Sustainability Act today. Labour and
Advanced Education Minister Kelly Regan introduced the Act for first reading on April 22.
The Liberal government advertised incoming financial oversight measures for universities
when it released its report in March on last year’s much contested “university consultation”
process. ANSUT and other organizations called for financial oversight during the
“consultation,” in order to ensure that money is not diverted from universities’ core operating
budgets, which fund academic programmes, to capital investment, administrative
compensation, and other non-academic budgets.
The Act reflects none of those concerns. It substitutes for educational priorities generic
“accountability to the taxpayer” political advertising that does nothing to address our
system’s structural problems. “Nova Scotians are faced with a basic, yet complex, choice
about our post-secondary education system,” ANSUT President Marc Lamoureux said
Thursday morning. “Do we want an education system primarily devoted to business
concerns, or do we want an education system that educates people? We can’t have both.
The Liberal government seems not to recognize that this choice is before us. Perhaps it
does not wish to.”
Lamoureux continued: “There are many other problems with the Act. It threatens collective
bargaining rights, most notably the right to strike and the right to file grievances, by allowing
academic employers to invoke financial emergency. These encroachments are of great
concern to our members. But the biggest issue remains this government’s general
understanding, or misunderstanding, of why our post-secondary education system exists at
all. If they wish to cut corners with respect to labour relations, it’s because they seek to
reshape the system for reasons that have little to do with education.”
ANSUT calls on parliamentarians to vote against the Act, and to work with faculty, student
and staff groups to help our post-secondary education system carry out its core mission: to
give young people a well-rounded, affordable education from excellent teachers, and to
foster a vibrant, diverse Nova Scotia.
-30Contact: Matthew Furlong, Communications Officer
902-414-8578
[email protected]