Alex Sévigny

It sometimes feels good to give vent to personal bitterness, but before sounding off, critics must carefully consider that what they are saying is correct.

Recently, Jeanine Krieber expressed several personal concerns about the Liberal Party’s impending demise, adding that she does not want to support a party that ‘could end up in the dustbins of history’.  Had these concerns been based on solid facts, she would be right in what she says.  But her opinions – they are not solid facts! – do not hold up to careful examination.

For instance, the Party’s current challenges do not signal that the “Liberal Party is falling apart, and will not recover” nor that “like all liberal parties in Europe, it will become a weakling at the mercy of ephemeral coalitions”. On the contrary: these challenges signal the need for radical recalibration of Liberal policies to place the party again at the centre of the Canadian psyche. This is not something new.  The Liberal Party of Canada has always drawn its strength from and for the needs of the people of Canada.

Canadian Liberalism has always represented the middle ground of the hopes, fears, dreams and ambitions of Canadians. It has given the world peacekeepers, following the trauma of two world wars. It created the Canada Pension Plan, as our society moved toward a culture of greater individualism and senior Canadians wanted to feel secure in their ability to maintain their independence. It welcomed immigrants following a model that was unique in the world – multiculturalism – that enabled new Canadians to keep what made them feel at home from their cultures of origin, but also the freedom to shape their own individual identities within the Canadian mosaic. Liberals gave Canada a well-funded and well-organized health care system that is the envy of the world.

Liberalism has always united Canadians, made them feel secure, given them economic and cultural hope for themselves and their children. That has always been its strength.  How the Party has done that has changed with the ages.

In the 90s, Liberalism meant giving Canadians the financial security they needed. While other countries were burdening themselves with debt, Liberal governments were maximizing Canadians’ freedom by reducing our debt load and restructuring government spending to reduce the burden on future generations. Through  serious investments in higher education that created opportunities for Canadians from every social class to comfortably engage in postgraduate studies, Liberal policies enabled a boom in science and culture in Canada that, yet again, made us a beacon for the world.

Today, things have changed again. Radically.

Information and communication technologies, ranging from smart phones to computers to GPS, biotech and social media, have turned society on its head.

Our society is aging and that brings new challenges and opportunities.

Add to this that Capitalism has changed. Information and communication technologies have transformed the economic landscape.

This is the new reality. And it is terrifying for many.

However, we must not overlook the fact that Canada helped build the infrastructure for modern commerce, with world-beating companies like Nortel Networks, Research in Motion, Open Text, SoftImage and too many others to name. And Canadians will not stop there. We must surf the international wave of change and use our education advantage to be producers of high quality content to fill the bandwidths our engineers have created. We are quiet people of great innovation and great humility. But much of that potential is dormant.

Every generation or so, the Liberal Party of Canada has re-centered itself on the common ground of Canada’s social, economic and political life and then lighted a hopeful, moderate path forward through dark forest of an uncertain future.

Laurier did this. Pearson did this. Trudeau did this. Chrétien did this. Martin began to, but was cut short.  And now Michael Ignatieff must do the same.

This is not the time for ideological certainties and simple solutions to complex problems.  These are not visionary and will not make Canada a world leader and beacon of hope for the next 50 years – a position we have enjoyed for the last 50 years. This is nothing new.

In the past, the Liberal party has been the one that saw past the ideology, saw past the short-term political fixes, and had the courage to sound out the Canada public. To find out what is making it work, what is holding it back, making it dream, terrifying it. And then to propose a set of policies that take what is best and most widely applicable to most Canadians.

Liberal solutions have always been an elegant compromise between practical needs and visionary idealism.  There is no defensible reason to believe that things are any different today.

Ms. Krieber rightfully says that the “time for choices is now.” But she is wrong to despair. The current rudderless feeling that Canadians are experiencing will become a part of the past, a part of the PREVIOUS generation, when Liberals look boldly toward the future and – yet again – set an example for the world.

She says that she feels members do not know Ignatieff because, presumably, they have have “not done their homework”, “did not read his books” and “were satisfied that he would be charming at cocktails”.  She also says that “Stéphane would have been willing to take all the time and absord all the hits needed to rebuild the party”.  If these conjectures are correct, they do point to squabbles and shortcomings that need to be addressed.  However, this is not the time to “absorb all the hits needed to rebuild the party”; rather, it is the time to recognize that the Party has moved on, that it is facing today’s challenges head on.

Liberals must stop squabbling among themselves and with the other parties and get to work. They need to step back and think about what Canadians want.

It is time for a new vision. Mr. Ignatieff has the smarts, the vision and the generosity of spirit to guide Liberals toward it.

In the past, it has been Liberal policies that have awakened the dormant giant of Canadian creativity, enterprise, social justice and foreign affairs innovation. The Party will do so again but to get there, Liberals must engage the Canadian citizenry with an open mind and an open heart.

Canadians are waiting to be inspired and moved to action by a new Liberal vision for the next twenty years.

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[This piece was originally posted as a Facebook note on Tuesday, 04 August 2009 at 19:23]

I spent the afternoon, a while back, at the Orange Alert Café, a pleasant, unassuming organic coffee spot kitty corner to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. I was there with a few friends, talking about the happy coincidences of their family lives, their children’s successes and challenges, the ups and downs – mostly downs these days, sadly – of their investment portfolios, the longing of some to go back to school for various things: creative writing, marketing, pottery, accounting, sculpture, and so on. It was warm and pleasant.

Everyone left around 5pm to go back to their busy lives – close up shop, pick kids up from after-school activities, buy fresh fruit and flowers for dinner that night. I was feeling calm and happy afterward, so I decided to spend a little more time there, on my own, with a book and a jasmin green tea. I like watching the business day end and people hurrying to get away from the lives they lead at work to transform into the people they are at home. You can almost see it happening in their faces, as they lug briefcases and rolly bags through revolving doors, down the sidewalk, and then into streetcars, buses and subways, en route to domesticity and the delicious luxury of personal time.

After an hour or so of this, I decided to join a friend for dinner in Richmond Hill, north of the city. We went for Korean bbq – one of my favourites, because you have an incredible variety of meats and veggies and also there is a lack of pretension because everyone has to roll up sleeves and get cooking. It’s like having a casual bbq, but in a chic, modern decor that would normally be reserved for mid- to high-end restaurants. I like the contrast.

After dinner, we hung out casually for a drink and chatted about our lives – the fact that we’re both still single and looking, the challenges of living and working near Toronto, a great metropolis in which it is difficult for people to connect, like electrons flitting around a great atom smasher, never quite hitting one another quite right to stick. We talked about our careers, our extended families and exchanged stories about our friends’ lives – catching up on the nothing news that makes life pleasant and gives Torontonians a feeling of connection, despite the city’s vastness and the loneliness of our cars and cubicles.

Feeling a little bored and antsy, we decided to meet another friend to see an film at one of the giant suburban movie theatres that ring Toronto and have absurd names like Colossus. I like the work of the director, J.J. Abrams – it is stylish, moving and sometimes even profound. The film didn’t disappoint – in fact, the casual suburban crowd in attendance gave it a rousing ovation once the credits rolled! So that was great. When I dropped my friend off at home, he was excitedly going on about flaws he had found in the film. I drove off into the night, back towards my home in Hamilton.

Then I got a terrible phone call.

You see, there was a very poor man. I will call him Simon. He worked beside me as a volunteer on a community campaign a long time ago. He has a slight mental disability and is a little obsessive at times. He can be very trying, even vexing to speak to because he always wants to talk to you about the same things: his broken family background, infrastructure funding – especially public transit systems – and municipal politics. Sometimes Simon would come to the office and sit with us while we worked. Sometimes he would be quiet and read a magazine or snack on the home-baked goodies that we always had in the front lobby, provided by kind neighbourhood grandmas. Sometimes Simon would find internet sites about improvements to the city’s systems and tell me: “Professor, if you get a chance, you should bring this one up with the Mayor or those big shots in Ottawa – it would be great to have something like this in Toronto”. I was always patient with him and often enjoyed his enthusiasm for the topics he brought up with me.

Well, the voice on the phone said that it was from the hospital and that I should come. It was a nurse. She said that Simon had identified me as someone who would come to see him. I turned the car around and drove down to the hospital. Apparently Simon had been beaten almost to death. I waited in the cracked plastic chairs until they called me in and then I saw him, his face a swollen mess. One of his eyes was bandaged. And his cheeks were raw and bruised. He had wisps of dried blood at the corners of his mouth that the nurses had missed, I guess. When he saw me, his face lit up and he gave me a big smile with his good eye twinkling. He said: “Thanks for coming, Professor. I thought you might.” Then he coughed hard. A furrowed look of worry passed across his face and then he asked “Have you heard about the new VIA Rail plan for Hamilton, where you live?” And so we talked for a bit about the city and its systems until he had quieted down and the nurse told me he was ready for sleep. She said to me: “He had a big panic attack when he came in here and asked for you. He said you were his friend and would come. That you would understand. I guess you did. Thanks. He has no one.” She shrugged and turned away. And then I left to drive home.

When I got home, I had a real mix of thoughts. What a crazy, weird, unfair world we live in. One minute I am in a suburban theatre with the well-heeled Abrams fans watching an engaging fiction, the next I am in Toronto with a destitute, solitary old man, suffering from panic anxiety disorder who had been beaten to within an inch of his life.

We must work to fix this world.

It has to be better, more hopeful, more loving: less navel-gazing, less fake – more real. In Simon’s suffering lie the missions of the political progressive and the person of faith – the reminder that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. That we must overcome our selfish anxieties and strive be a light to others. To be bringers of light: the light of hope and inclusion. A politics of hope, aimed at building a loving society, must reach out to and embrace all of its members. We must find ways to create roles and places for everyone, both emotional and economic. At the heart of a life of poverty lies a profound loneliness and alienation – a feeling of rejection that can lead to hopelessness.

Someone very dear to me asked me once if I was ever jaded by my volunteer work in politics. It can take up a lot of time and offer little tangible reward. Often its emotional costs are high. So why am I not jaded by politics? Am I a hopeless idealist? I think not. Politics is visceral – it is the negotiated story of people’s dreams and fears, anxieties and hopes. It is a practice that lays the road for human potential in a society.

It is by helping and sharing of ourselves that we are transformed and liberated from our fears and insecurities. A certain joy can only be experienced in the giving up of self to others, in humble service. It makes one light of step. It is freedom.

I can answer that I am not jaded by politics – it is because of those who cannot represent themselves that we engage.

I left the hospital energized and feeling light – not heavy hearted – because Simon was not defeated. For Simon, as he told me, beatings may be a part of life, but a moment of friendly support is the star that guides him forward toward hope.

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Don Smith, Director of Operations, Public Affairs Division at the Canada Revenue Agency dropped by our CMST 4n03: New Analysis, Theory and Practice class to deliver a guest lecture and lead a discussion about working for the federal government.

He presented his M.A. thesis which was a content analysis of compliance messaging for the CRA in Canada’s major dailies. He then presented a case study on how the CRA dealt with the crisis of the internet going down a couple of years ago. He described his issues management approach and how the crisis management team was constructed. It was fascinating. After his two presentations, Don fielded questions on how students can become employed by the federal government. It was a spirited discussion and there were several questions.

We had a bit of a curveball thrown to us at the beginning of class, when one of our student presenters took very ill and had to go home. Life is never boring in News Analysis!

Don and I went for lunch at Cora’s in Ancaster and had the all-day big breakfast.

An excellent day.

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Yesterday, I stayed late, writing in my office. I had a manuscript to finish for submission to a journal. It was an interesting piece about how Barack Obama uses time words to create a link between past and present in his speeches.

I had a quick dinner and glass of merlot with a friend at 1280, McMaster’s student-run pub and café. The wine was okay and the service was great. I have to say that 1280 is a great improvement over Quarters, the pub that used to occupy that space until it folded last year. I also had a carboholic Irish nacho fries – a caloric nightmare, but they tasted good.

After that, I went to the library and had an extended convo with one of the desk clerks about the pros and cons of unix, Mac OS and linux. Finally I decided to go to my car and finish writing at home. It was about 8 o’clock.

As I was leaving the student centre, I saw a group of kids breakdancing in the common area. The beats were great and they had some amazing moves. Most of all, I was amazed at how natural the whole thing felt – there was quite a crowd, maybe 120 people sitting in a circle around the dance floor, which was marked by yellow tape on the ground. The kids would take turns on the dance floor, sometimes they would coordinate in pairs. It was amazing. I was impressed.

I like working late and seeing McMaster’s campus after-hours. You never know what community event or performance you’ll run into.

Every day is an interesting day at the university.

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On Wednesday night I went out to a new pub for me – One Duke in Hamilton. It was a night of great conversation and good wine. The grilled calamari was excellent. It’s a shame that busy schedules and time constraints don’t let me hang out with one of my favourite people as much as I would like.

Last night I went out to the CLiC Paparazzi event at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. I went with my friends from kitestring.ca, a PR and advertising agency that specialises in youth marketing. I met Meg Coppolino and Chris Farias at their shop at 7pm and then we went to CLiC. The theme was celebrity and paparazzi so people showed up dressed like their favourite celebrities. Meg won “best costume” with her likeness of Lady Gaga to which she added a Hamilton twist as Lady Gage Park. Very clever.

The CLiC event was really well put together. The crowd was lively and mixed well. The space was great – small enough to feel full but not claustrophic. The food was Asian-inspired and there was a good selection of drinks. There was a diverse and fashionable crowd, representing Hamilton’s entrepreneurs, lawyers, business people and artists, most of whom were under 40. Good networking event.

There was an excellent lecture and tour by featured artist Jesse Boles, who does large-scale photographs of industrial sites, mostly in Hamilton and Toronto. His work was very beautiful and evocative. I love the detail that large photos of industrial wastelands and scenes provide. You can stare at it for hours. His show, Crude Landscapes, is featured at the Art Gallery of Hamilton right now. Check it out. Highly recommended.

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The highly controversial Conservative Economic Action Plan is being used in an essay question for potential applicants to an elite management training program in the federal public service.

One of my former research assistants was really excited recently – he was applying to get a job in Canada’ public service. So he logged on to the Public Service Resourcing System to fill out requisite forms. Part of the job application process meant writing an essay. Making applicants write a 1000-word essay is probably a good way to see whether candidates can reason.

But look at what the topic was:

• “In 1000 words (maximum) ‘In 2009, the Government of Canada introduced Canada’s Economic Action Plan to help Canada’s economy weather the economic storm. In 1000 words or less, please choose two of these measures and discuss their implications for Canada. In your answer, please consider, as appropriate, the social, economic and international policy imlications of each measure.”

It seems as though, to be recruited into the public service under the watch of this government, you must find a way to discuss the Economic Action Plan – a plan that has already been communicated to Canadians in a strongly partisan fashion.

The political communication around the Economic Action Plan has been venal to the point of being divisive:

• the scandalous Conservative-branded cheques,
• the fact that municipalities have to ante up money to pay for signs advertising the Action Plan, the uneven distribution of stimulus (with the majority being doled out to Conservative ridings),
• etc.

The highly politicized, outrageous political communication of the plan has been so riddled with controversy that it has effectively invalidated the Action Plan as fodder for an impartial essay question for a public service entrance exam.

It doesn’t seem right for the Government of Canada to potentially make applicants feel as though they should pass a partisan or ideological litmus test to get a job with the public service.

Here is the screen shot of the webpage in which you type out your essay. Just make the text bigger to see the picture in higher resolution.

The Web Address and Text of the Job Description:

https://psjobs-emploisfp.psc-cfp.gc.ca/psrs-srfp/applicant/2/page1600?careerChoice=102441&action=viewPoster

Accelerated Economist Training Program (AETP), Post-Secondary Recruitment

This career choice is part of the Post-Secondary Recruitment Program* (PSR) which provides entry-level positions to university and college graduates.

Department Name: On behalf of Government Departments (current participants: Department of the Environment, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Department of Industry, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Health, Department of Transport, Treasury Board Secretariat, Privy Council Office, Department of Finance)
Locations: Ottawa, Gatineau
Classification: EC – 02
Salary: $49,381. The salary may be increased with relevant experience.
Closing Date: November 9, 2009 – 23:59, Pacific Time Useful Information
Reference Number: FIN09J-009189-000371
Selection Process Number: 2009-FIN-EA-BL-17074
Employment Tenure: Indeterminate
Vacancies: between 8-12 positions.

The Program is seeking highly motivated candidates who have an interest in Canadian public policy and governance, and who possess good judgment, analytical skills, leadership talent, and the ability to work as part of a team. The Program offers four challenging, six-month assignments in central agencies (i.e. the Privy Council Office, the Department of Finance Canada, and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat) and various other departments in the National Capital Region (Ottawa/Gatineau). Participants will have an opportunity to analyze and contribute to a variety of social, economic, and international policy issues. Upon completion of these assignments, participants are eligible for intermediate-level positions in the Public Service of Canada. The combination of hands-on work experience and training provides participants with a unique introduction to a challenging and rewarding career and a chance to serve Canada and Canadians.

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[This piece was originally posted as a note on Facebook on Saturday, September 12, 2009 at 15:24 and republished on the Talent Egg Career Incubator on September 15, 2009]

The three or four years you will spend at college or university should be some of the best years of your life. You have a rare privilege: a few years to devote most of your time to learning about yourself, your culture, your society and your areas of interest. Understand that your real purpose here is not only knowledge but also to develop a life guided by wisdom and reason.

You have moved out of your parents’ home. You are meeting new people and starting to make your own decisions, your own life. You are now pretty much your own boss. But you are also on your own and that can be unnerving, lonely and a little scary.

This is your opportunity to struggle with your new environment, to understand your challenges through reflection, insight and the help of others. Use the support systems at the university. You are never alone, and the very act of seeking help or advice, of opening up to others, may become a vital part of your education – of your experience of learning about yourself through others.

Speaking of dialogue, I recently met a woman at an alumni dinner, a graduate of my department. She had graduated with high B average and now works in a public affairs agency. I’ll call her Simone.

It was a beautiful night – a fancy dinner, elegant surroundings and quiet, meaningful conversations among alumni and professors who shared the bond of having been members of the McMaster community. I was seated beside Simone and we chatted for much of the evening, mostly sharing memories: people we knew in common from her grad year, observations that she and classmates had made about faculty quirks of dress or mannerism, little things. We laughed a lot and reminisced. At the end of the evening, as we got up to say goodnight, she looked at me fixedly and said:

“Alex, I want you to tell your students something from me. Do you know what I really gained from my years at Mac?”

I shook my head, surprised by her suddenly intense expression.

“I gained understanding. Understanding that the world is complicated and profound, even when it is trying to be simple and ridiculous. Understanding about how to learn and how to know. Above all, I understood that although the world is sometimes sad, it is never boring and that I should love it, and try to improve it, even though it sometimes seems to betray me.”

I was surprised by her comments. She had obviously thought about this very deeply.

“Alex, I didn’t understand until maybe the middle of third year. I finally understood that education is about storytelling – the stories of art and science, society and engineering, health and commerce and how they all weave together into the grand story of our lives together.”

Heed Simone’s advice. It is wise. Learn to catch the storyline of the courses and conversations and relationships and solitary epiphanies you will experience at college or university. It isn’t easy. It requires a lot of hard work. It requires a personal sense of purpose. It requires an open heart and a seeking mind. But the payoff is amazing: a life that is transformed from mere existence to living. From shades of gray to millions of colours.

A life in which every experience becomes a possibility for adventure, growth and love.

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(This was originally posted to my Facebook page as a “Note” on Monday, 13 July 2009 at 23:24)

I recently had an unusual moment while sitting on a bench, at Lime Ridge Mall, in Hamilton, Ontario.

It was the end of a long day and I was tired. I let my eyes close gently and fell into a sort of momentary reverie, into a half doze, I suppose. After a minute or two, I drifted back to the world and noticed that a woman, in her late 50s or early 60s – it was hard to tell, she had one of those ageless faces – had sat down beside me. She looked disconsolate. Being naturally nosy, and seeking a momentary diversion from the day’s efforts, I asked her what was wrong.

She turned her head sharply to face me, as though I had startled her and then moved her gaze to some imaginary place on the tiles in front of us. In a gentle, lilting voice, she told me that her heart was broken that day. She looked down at her shoes. She was embarrassed by the fact that I had noticed her emotions. Expecting a typical tale of love lost, I asked her what was wrong. That was when she related to me a most extraordinary story.

I will call her Jeannette. She lives in an apartment building in Hamilton. She is alone but has a roommate. It is a run down building full of older people and their pets, cats and dogs mostly. Jeannette had lived on her floor for 25 years and seen many people come and go. She had seen prosperity and then decline. As the years flowed by, her friends started passing away or leaving, but one friend in particular worried her. This friend had an autistic son who had grown up to be a dysfunctional adult – for lack of health care and therapy but also because of the severity of his affliction and his mother’s poverty. His mother had spent much of her time and all of her scant resources caring for him. About ten years ago, she had lost her job and Jeannette had felt it was her duty to step in and help her friend cope.

Jeannette spent time caring for the son when his mother was not around or too depressed to be able to. She took him to the store and to his medical appointments, as well as for walks in the park. She says that he didn’t talk much – he just enjoyed sitting on the bench with her and watching people walk their dogs or looking at squirrels chase one another up and around the oak trees. The chattering squirrels always made him laugh. Jeannette didn’t go on vacation very often because she knew that mother and son couldn’t take care of themselves without her help.

Very recently, the son had passed away, and then, a few days before our chance meeting, his mother passed too. Jeannette suspects that she took her own life.

So this morning, Jeannette woke up decided to go to the mall, alone and free for the first time in years. To spend a few hours among people. To take her mind off things. She was not at ease. Her mind was racing with the reality of what had happened. She had spent the last seven years as a sort of sleepwalker in a dream, slowly deepening her commitment to helping mother and son, until she became a primary caregiver. Now that they are gone, Jeannette is struggling with the fact that her life was put on hold for so long. She doesn’t resent or regret anything – she just feels sad and lonely. She feels spent.

After this encounter, an idea entered my consciousness. The idea of people, strangers often, feeling the responsibility to care for one another and going to great sacrifice to do so. I heard similar stories again and again from others. The roommates in a house who cook and clean for a housemate who has severe panic-anxiety disorder. The student who falls into a deep depression and becomes dependent on her neighbours to the point that they took her on vacation and paid for her, for fear that she would hurt herself while they were gone. The brother and sister who put their lives aside for years to care for a sibling who has a personality disorder. The friends who take a friend who is scarred from an abusive relationship into their home and under their wing. These are but a few examples of those, who like Jeannette, have felt the moral or ethical duty to help and care for the people around them who are vulnerable and hurting because of mental illness.

These stories reveal a hole in our social safety net.

We have not figured out how to deal with the social cost of mental illness for the people who live around and care for the sufferers. Quite often it seems that it is these quiet heroes, who give so freely and completely of themselves who are the only firewall between the mentally ill and complete social alienation, loneliness and rejection.

They stand at the edge of the abyss and are vigilant – pulling the vulnerable back from the void when they approach it. They bring a measure of security and stability to lives that would otherwise be precarious. They bring love and the light of friendship to lives otherwise hidden behind a closed door or shrouded in the darkness of profound loneliness, isolation and hurt. They do this at great cost to their finances, emotional well-being and personal freedom.

Something has been overlooked here.

Building a caring society – a loving society – means finding ways to take the pressure off the generous family members and strangers who are dealing with the wages of knowing and caring for someone who has mental illness.

These quiet heroes are holding the ladder while the rest of us climb. Something must be done to help shoulder their burden. As a society, we have moved toward de-stigmatizing mental illness. Investing millions to improve the identification and diagnosis of mental illness is one thing. Building a more caring, loving and mutually supportive society is another.

Is this utopian? Not at all. It simply requires a cultural sea change away from selfishness and personal insecurity toward sharing and confident openness. Jean Vanier’s L’Arche communities are an excellent example of how this can be achieved. It is possible to build more humane, caring communities.

This is a job for governments and faith communities at every level. It can no longer be ignored. We need to start working hard to build, with our leaders, a better culture of mutual support and respect, rather than one that seeks to maximize personal success and prestige.

To walk this road, we need to acknowledge that by including the vulnerable as equally valuable to us, we are not being condescending or charitable, but rather engaging in an exchange that will lead to mutual transformation. The helper becomes the helped.

We must link arms and find a means of integrating, including and healing those who suffer from mental illness rather than isolating, rejecting and neglecting them.

Then, perhaps, we will be able to unburden the quiet heroes, like Jeannette, who give so freely and so completely of their lives to keep the vulnerable away from the cliff’s edge of despair, while the rest of us live on in happy oblivion.

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My 4th-year News Analysis class had a special treat today. We had a guest lecturer – Dr Andrew Laing, president of Cormex Research.

Cormex Research is Canada’s leading media content measurement and analysis firm. Here’s an example of the sort of work Cormex does.

Andrew is a unique and admirable person. He took time out of running his company to go back to school to complete his PhD (thesis advisor, Dr. Fred Fletcher) in the Communication and Culture Graduate Program at York University in Toronto. His thesis is on developing a new research methodology – the “media-centric model” – for studying agenda setting effects. He defended his thesis three weeks ago – congratulations, Andrew!

Today, he described for the class how his company conducts content analysis research – what the process is, the types of people he employs and the types of clients that he works with. He also described two case studies that his company has developed – one about genetically-modified foods, and another about satire in the Canadian media. After his presentations and a 10-minute break, Andrew workshopped with each project group in the class. The students really benefited from his advice and mentorship.

One more thing – we had an excellent student presentation on the article “Agenda Setting and the ‘New’ News” by Althaus and Tewksbury. A classic article describing a set of content analysis and audience research experiments comparing agenda setting effects in on-line and paper versions of the newspaper. The findings are interesting: the regular paper news readers showed an agenda setting effect and the readers of the electronic newspaper didn’t. The student presenters did a great job – congrats to Michelle Woodruff, Laura Braun and Darryl Spong.

Afterward, Andrew and I went for a late lunch at Maccheroni Cucina Al Fresco in Westdale, near McMaster.

An excellent day.

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When I began teaching at McMaster University on July 1, 2001, I had a pretty unique experience as a new professor.

I was the first person hired into the Communication Studies Program at McMaster University. The program was so new that it didn’t even exist. In fact, the program only officially took existence with our first enrolled program students who all had to have taken the two first year courses in 2001 to be able to enroll in 2002! I taught the Introduction to Communication, and we were joined by Dr. Laurence Mussio, a successful communications consultant in Toronto, who taught the other first year course in the History of Communication.That was it. We were the program.

The newness of our program made my experience as a newly-minted tenure-track faculty member completely atypical. Graham Knight and I built the program from the ground up. I have had the opportunity to sit on every hiring committee since the program’s inception. I remember the lean days, when we truly offering the program on a shoe string. It was exciting. We had hundreds of students, starting in our first year. Our first graduating class was in 2004. It was composed of 17 students – all of whom had already begun in other programs and transferred into communication studies. The next year we graduated over 60. Now we graduate a steady state of about 125 students in our honours and combined honours BA programs. We have about 5 tenured and tenure-track faculty in communication studies. This year, we began our Master of Arts in Communication and New Media. We’ve been growing constantly.

The ride up to now has been exciting. It’s been a story of constant change and growth. But our situation is stabilising. We are now beginning to face the challenges of a mature department.

What this has meant for me personally is that I am now getting a sense of what faculty and students in other mature departments have been feeling all along during the last 10 years. We aren’t atypical anymore.

Faculty and students feel frustration at the fact that classes are so big. This is not a case of fat cat professors complaining because they have to mark a few more papers. Rather, this frustration is born of the fact that professors see the future of Canada through a lens that many Canadians don’t get to peer through.

Professors see that students – especially those who don’t come from families where parents are not university-educated – need the mentorship of committed, permanent faculty to help them make sense of the university system, the job market and the confusing world of media, politics and money that they are stepping into. Large classes put up huge barriers to building these mentorship relationships.

Let me take a moment to talk about the larger institutional context.

The Faculty of Humanities at McMaster has been very intelligently managed. Starting in the late 90s, the faculty has completely revisioned and redefined itself. It has become very lean, fiscally. All faculty teach their share of classes. Research productivity is higher than it has ever been. Almost every department has reflected deeply on its mandate and mission. Many have completely re-defined themselves: the French department (to which I am proudly jointly appointed) adopted “Francophonie and Diversity” as its theme, English added “Cultural Studies and Critical Theory” to its program offerings, music and linguistics have redefined themselves along cognitive science lines, and, of course, a new department – Communication Studies and Multimedia – was formed. At the same time, all the fat was cut.

I sat on the McMaster University Planning and Budget Committees for three years (2006-08) and I can say that, from what I saw and read, there is nothing non-essential to cut in Humanities. There is no fat. There are no frills. There are simply basic needs that are being met: base operating costs, the cost of maintaining a basically safe physical plant and the basic cost of supporting faculty research costs. No more food at meetings. No free lunches.

Any budgetary issues in Humanities now are – quite simply – problems of basic income. That income, however, is not market-based. We don’t charge students the full cost of their education. We rely on government.

Since the Harrris government, there has been a chronic underfunding of higher education. No subsequent government has restored funding to higher education. And the underfunding is reaching crisis proportions. Ontario is 10th among Canadian provinces in its per student investment in higher education. Roger Martin reports in, “Who killed Canada’s Education Advantage?”, in the November edition of The Walrus, that faculty-student ratios have risen from 18.8 students per permanent faculty member in 1993 to 24.4 students per faculty member in 2005.

The greatest education is when students spend some quality time discussing ideas with faculty that were touched upon in class. When they feel comfortable enough with ideas to chat about them over coffee with one another in spaces that are conducive to such conversations. The problem is that unless you come from a family background in which such conversations about ideas, culture, science and future plans are common and normal – chances are excellent that you don’t know how to have them. They are outside of your ken. Learning how to converse about your life in a considered way is one of the greatest pleasures and benefits of post-secondary education.

The problem is that this requires time and opportunity. The opportunity to make the personal contact. The time to have the conversation. Both time and opportunity are becoming scarce commodities in the current higher education system.

In our Faculty of Humanities, the one I know best, any cuts now will mean dropping successful programs with high enrollments. Cuts will mean even bigger classes. Cuts will mean fewer meaningful conversations between faculty and students. There are no more “savings” to be had.

At risk is our future as a Canadian civil society that encourages social mobility through education.

In fact, we may be graduating young people who are not as well-equipped as previous generations to understand the complicated world they will step into and eventually be in charge of. This is a terrifying and disheartening prospect that will affect our productivity, our international competitiveness and – most importantly – the health of our democracy and the strength of our social cohesion.

A society that doesn’t allow its citizens the time or opportunity to reflect upon itself will crumble under the weight of individual self-interest and short-term thinking.

Governments must invest in higher education. Ontario parents and students should demand it. Our future depends on it.

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