On Jan. 31, Dr. Michael Mahon, president of the University of Lethbridge, cancelled a talk that Dr. Frances Widdowson was scheduled to present. Like all scholars, Dr. Widdowson has nuanced views on many issues, and she was going to speak on “How Wok-ism Threatens...
Rodney Clifton
Sleeping Through the COVID-19 Pandemic
Everyone knows that Canada is in trouble. Like other countries, this country has been racked by various waves of COVID-19 for almost two years. But COVID-19 is not the most troubling issue. Let me explain. Remember at the beginning of the pandemic, we didn’t expect...
Book Review – Nothing Less Than Great: Reforming Canada’s Universities, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021 by Harvey P. Weingarten
Personal experiences breed and nourish intellectual views. Harvey P. Weingarten tells his readers about the benefits he and his wider family received from Canadian universities. He evokes the past with a sense of gratitude, but turns to the present and the future with...
Indigenous Women and Canadian Institutions
As you read the title of this article, your mind probably flashes to a few negative media stories. Perhaps you think of a young Indigenous woman’s bad experience with a Winnipeg taxi driver. Or you think of Joyce Echaquan’s suffering and death in a Quebec hospital and...
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Traditional Teaching is not Obsolete
Artificial intelligence has come a long way. Unlike the rudimentary software of the past, modern-day programs such as ChatGPT are truly impressive. Whether you need a 1,000-word essay summarizing the history of Manitoba, a 500-word article extolling the virtues of...
Ottawa’s Policies Defeat Its Critical Minerals Push
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a recent rush visit to the Saskatchewan Research Council’s experimental rare earth refining facility in Saskatoon. He touted his government’s efforts to promote rare earth discovery, development, and extraction, along with the...
Balancing the Indigenous Claims of Institutional Discrimination
Manitobans keep hearing about the negative ways that institutions treat Indigenous people. Think of what has been said during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women, the Sixties Scoop, the Tina Fontaine and the Colton Bushie...
Teacher Education Must Rise Above Political Correctness
Increasingly, Canadian universities seem to be more concerned about political correctness than educating students. A prominent illustration of this is University of Toronto psychologist Jordan Peterson’s public battle with university administrators, professors and...
What’s in a school’s name?
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its report in 2015 saying that that Canada and the Churches that managed the majority of Indian Residential Schools treated Indigenous people as if they were sub-human. If this is true, then why did many...
What Is In a School’s Name?
It is getting close to Christmas. This makes it a good time to test our knowledge of Christianity and Christian charity. So, here is a question to ponder: When Christian churches founded schools in Canada, what names did they use? Perhaps you think that these schools...
Student Success Is a Question of Attitude
In Western Canada, many university students fail to graduate. In fact, figures suggest that between 20 and 30 per cent of students at many North American universities do not progress beyond their first year, and less than 60 per cent of those enrolled in three- and...
Open Letter to the Anglican Church of Canada
Dear Archbishop, On March 20, 2017 you, along with National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald and General Secretary Archdeacon Michael Thompson, published an open letter to Senator Lynn Beyak in response to a speech she gave in a Senate Committee. In your...
The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Western Canada
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy and The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) today jointly released The Size and Cost of the Public Sector in Western Canada, authored by Rodney A. Clifton, Jackson Doughart, and Marco Navarro-Génie. This study examines...
Then They Came For the Teachers
Hymie Rubenstein and Rodney A. Clifton, January 3, 2017 “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) That white,...
The Cost Disease Infects Manitoba Education
Earlier this year, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies published a report I wrote that showed that the cost of public education in all Canadian provinces and territories has been increasing at rates far above the growth...