True reconciliation means acknowledging our right to develop our lands as we see fit
Speculation has swirled for months that Ottawa is planning to introduce a new Indigenous loan guarantee program, and last week’s fiscal update confirmed that more details will be included in the next federal budget. I am not totally against this idea, as it could help Indigenous groups overcome historical barriers to raising capital, particularly through borrowing. However, there has also been speculation that certain industries could be excluded from loan eligibility, in accordance with the government’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment framework. This is not OK.
If the government follows through with its plan to roll out a new Indigenous-tailored financial program, it should respect our right to self-determination, which encompasses our autonomy to make investment decisions based on our own, internally defined objectives.
For instance, we are well within our rights to pursue investment opportunities in the energy sector, which offers a path to prosperity for many Indigenous communities. Indigenous-Canadians who work in oil and gas extraction currently make almost three times more than their peers. Quite frankly, it would be irresponsible for us to not seek out new energy investments, given the potential for good-paying energy jobs to lift scores of Indigenous families out of poverty.
A new loan guarantee program would, in theory, provide Indigenous nations with the resources to build our own path forward. But if the loan program were handled by the Canada Infrastructure Bank, as budget 2023 suggested, loans for oil and gas development may be excluded. Applying ESG requirements to the program would have a similar effect.
Such conditions would put remote communities at a disadvantage relative to those located near large urban centres. And communities that are dependent on energy projects for their economic well-being would be left in the lurch.This would be a step away from reconciliation. The federal government should not be able to pick and choose for us which projects we partner on — this is paternalism of the worst sort. Decisions about our lands and the projects built on them should be ours to make — and ours alone.
We have long made decisions about projects in our territories — decisions that balance economic development with stewardship of land and water. The Trudeau government has pledged, repeatedly, to value mutual respect and restorative justice. We need to remind them of that.
Right now, the most important thing the federal government can do is respect the right of all Indigenous communities to self-determination. We have a limited window of opportunity to persuade the Liberal government to include oil and natural gas extraction projects on the list of eligible loan guarantees, and make sure that our inherent right to make decisions about projects on our lands is respected.
This is also an opportunity to forge a much-needed and long-overdue relationship between the Tsimshian, Nisga’a, Haida, Haisla, Heiltsuk, Wet’suwet’en, Gitxsan, Tahltan, Tse’Khene, T’exelcemc and Carrier Sekani people, and build an Indigenous economic corridor stretching from British Columbia to Newfoundland.This loan guarantee program could help lift thousands of Indigenous-Canadians out of poverty, and bring prosperity to our people for generations to come, through inter-generational knowledge and wealth transfer. When our communities prosper, Canada prospers, but we cannot do that without the rest of the country’s help.
This is an opportunity for the federal government to bridge the divide and make Canada the economic powerhouse it ought to be. This loan guarantee program can serve as a much-needed catalyst. We should have the opportunity to invest in any project that has the potential to bring prosperity to our communities, including projects in the oil and gas industry.
Indigenous communities want to be a part of Canada, not apart from Canada. Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job.
Chris Sankey is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a businessman and former elected councillor for the Lax Kw Alaams First Nation.
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Conservative MPs presented a petition in Parliament defending pro-life charities and religious organizations against a Liberal proposal to strip their charitable tax status.
Conservative MPs presented a petition calling for the rejection of the Liberals’ plan to strip pro-life charities and places of worship of their charitable status.
During the September 16 session, Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs) Andrew Lawton, Jacob Mantle, and Garnett Genuis defended pro-life charities and places of worship against Liberal recommendations to remove the institutions’ charitable status for tax purposes.
“I have received from houses of worship across this country so much concern, reflected in this petition, that these recommendations are fundamentally anti-free speech and anti-religious freedom,” Lawton told Parliament. “The petitioners, and I on their behalf, advocate for the complete protection of charitable status regardless of these ideological litmus tests.”
Similarly, Mantle, a newly elected MP, added that Canadians “lament that some members opposite are so blinded by their animus towards charitable organizations that they would seek to undermine the good works that these groups do for the most vulnerable Canadians.”
Religious charities provide care and compassion to the most vulnerable in our society, but some members of the Liberal and New Democratic parties are so blinded by their animus towards religion and faith that they are actively seeking to revoke the charitable status of ALL… pic.twitter.com/O12rkw3pJ0
Finally, Genuis, who officially presented the petition signed by hundreds of Canadians, stressed the importance work accomplished by religious and pro-life organizations.
“(R)eligious charities in Canada provide vital services for society, including food banks, care for seniors, newcomer support, youth programs and mental health outreach, all of which is rooted in their faith tradition, and that singling out or excluding faith charities from the charitable sector based on religious belief undermines the diversity and pluralism foundational to Canadian society,” he explained.
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, before last Christmas, a proposal by the all-party Finance Committee suggested legislation that could strip pro-life pregnancy centers and religious groups of their charitable status.
The legislation would amend the Income Tax Act and Income Tax. Section 429 of the proposed legislation recommends the government “no longer provide charitable status to anti-abortion organizations.”
The bill, according to the finance department, would require “registered charities that provide services, advice, or information in respect of the prevention, preservation, or termination of pregnancy (i.e., destroying the unborn)” to disclose that they “do not provide specific services, including abortions or birth control.”
Similarly, Recommendation 430 aims to “amend the Income Tax Act to provide a definition of a charity which would remove the privileged status of ‘advancement of religion’ as a charitable purpose.”
Many Canadians have warned that the proposed legislation would wipe out thousands of Christian churches and charities across Canada.
As LifeSiteNews reported in March, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) appealed to the Liberal government to rethink the plan to strip pro-life and religious groups of their tax charity status, stressing the vital work done by those organizations.
It’s true that tuition has been on the rise. According to Statistics Canada , between 2006-2007 and 2024-2025, the average undergraduate full-year tuition fee at a Canadian university grew from approximately $4,900 to $7,360.
But do the students really know what’s behind the increases?
University administrators looking to deflect responsibility like to blame provincial government cutbacks to post-secondary funding. Here, the evidence is unconvincing. Going back two decades, nationwide full-time equivalent (FTE) student transfer payments from provincial governments have remained essentially constant, after accounting for inflation. While government grants have remained flat, tuition fees are up.
The issue, then, is where all this extra money is going – and whether it benefits students. Last year researcher and consultant Alex Usher took a close look at the budgeting preferences of universities on a nationwide basis. He found that between 2016-2017 and 2021-2022 the spending category of “Administration” – which comprises the non-teaching, bureaucratic operations of a university – grew by 15 percent. Curiously enough “Instruction,” the component of a university that most people would consider to be its core function, was among the slowest growing categories, at a mere 3 percent. This top-heavy tendency for universities is widely known as “administrative bloat”.
Administrative bloat has been a problem at Canadian universities for decades and the topic of much debate on campus. In 2001, for example, the average top-tier university in Canada spent $44 million (in 2019 dollars) on central administration. By 2019 this had more than doubled to $93 million, supporting Usher’s shorter-term observations. Usher calculated that the size of the non-academic cohort at universities has increased by between 85 percent and 170 percent over the past 20 years.
While some level of administration is obviously necessary to operate any post-secondary institution, the current scale and role of campus bureaucracies is fundamentally different from the experience of past decades. The ranks of university administration used to be filled largely with tenured professors who would return to teaching after a few terms of service. Today, the administrative ranks are largely comprised of a professional cadre of bureaucrats. (They are higher paid too; teaching faculty are currently paid about 10 percent less than non-academic personnel.)
This ever-larger administrative state is increasingly displacing the university’s core academic function. As law professor Todd Zywicki notes, “Even as the army of bureaucrats has grown like kudzu over traditional ivy walls, full-time faculty are increasingly being displaced by adjunct professors and other part-time professors who are taking on a greater share of teaching responsibilities than in the past.” While Zywicki is writing about the American experience, his observations hold equally well for Canada.
So while tuition fees keep going up, this doesn’t necessarily benefit the students paying those higher fees. American research shows spending on administration and student fees are not correlated with higher graduation rates. Canada’s huge multi-decade run-up in administrative expenditures is at best doing nothing and at worst harming our universities’ performance and reputations. Of Canada’s 15 leading research universities, 13 have fallen in the global Quality School rankings since 2010. It seems a troubling trend.
And no discussion of administrative bloat today can ignore the elephant in the corner: diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Writing in the National Post, Peter MacKinnon, past president of the University of Saskatchewan, draws a straight line from administrative bloat to the current infestation of DEI policies on Canadian campuses.
The same thing is going on at universities across Canada that have permanent DEI offices and bureaucracies, including at UBC, the University of Calgary, University of Waterloo, Western University, Dalhousie University and Thompson Rivers University. As a C2C Journal article explains, DEI offices and programs offer no meaningful benefit to student success or the broader university community. Rather, they damage a school’s reputation by shifting focus away from credible scientific pursuits to identity politics and victimology.
With universities apparently unable to restrain the growth of their administrative Leviathan, there may be little alternative but to impose discipline from the outside. This should begin with greater transparency.
Former university administrator William Doswell Smith highlights a “Golden Rule” for universities and other non-profit institutions: that fixed costs (such as central administration) must never be allowed to rise faster than variable costs (those related to the student population). As an example of what can happen when Smith’s Golden Rule is ignored, consider the fate of Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.
In early 2021 Laurentian announced it was seeking bankruptcy protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, under which a court-appointed manager directs the operations of the delinquent organization. Laurentian then eliminated 76 academic programs, terminated 195 staff and faculty, and ended its relationships with three nearby schools.
Ontario’s Auditor-General Bonnie Lysak found that the primary cause of the school’s financial crisis were ill-considered capital investments. The administrators’ big dreams essentially bankrupted the university.
The lesson is clear: if universities refuse to correct the out-of-control growth of their administrations, then fiscal discipline will eventually be forced upon them. A reckoning is coming for these bloated, profligate schools. The solution to higher tuition is not increasing funding. It’s fewer administrators.
Jonathan Barazzutti is an economics student at the University of Calgary. He was the winner of the 2nd Annual Patricia Trottier and Gwyn Morgan Student Essay Contest co-sponsored by C2C Journal.
