This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Peter MacKinnon, March 26, 2025
Observers should pay no heed to the non-confidence motion brought by York University’s faculty association on March 19 against their university president, provost and board chair, for it is only another reminder that Canadian university governance is sorely in need of reform.
The motion was a response to a decision by the university’s leadership in late February to suspend admission to 18 programs identified as unviable. The university is reportedly in serious financial trouble and must act to prevent a crisis, but these recent program cutbacks have been met with outrage from individuals and groups at York and some other universities. One York research group, the Critical Trafficking and Sex Work Studies Research Cluster, denounced the suspension for taking place “in a time when transphobia, anti-Black racism, queerphobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semetism, Sinophobia, Xenophobia, whorephobia, and misogyny are on the rise.” Now, four university senators are trying to take the university to court over the suspension.
Non-confidence motions are tediously common at the institution and it is well known that these votes, at York or elsewhere, are easily won because faculty unions and their supporters can say what they like — no matter how slanted or disingenuous. Senior leaders, on the other hand, must be circumspect, avoiding the hyperbole that may aggravate differences. It is well known, too, that organizers and strong supporters of faculty unions are mobilized to vote while many indifferent or dissenting members distance themselves (or are distanced) from the proceedings without casting a ballot. In the York case, the non-confidence motion was “overwhelmingly” passed by the 200 faculty association members who voted — the other roughly 1,500 members didn’t participate at all.
Notably, the administration at York merely suspended admissions to the target programs. It did not cancel them; it does not have the authority to do so. The university’s senate has the authority but it is circumscribed by collective agreement processes that make cancellation a doubtful if not remote prospect. Change does not come easily to universities, a vulnerability that is hidden in good times but becomes apparent when money is short and trust is in decline.
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Peter MacKinnon is President Emeritus of the University of Saskatchewan and a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Aristotle Foundation.
