Four editorials for the price of frozen tuition

CARSON JEREMA STAFF

The motion presented by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to recognize Québécois as a nation, symbolic as it may be, was, as everyone knows, the result of the Quebec wing of the Liberal party and leadership hopeful Michael Ignatieff being duped by separatists. The motion passed earlier this week.

Ignatieff in particular is convinced that the concept of civic nation, far from an abstraction, is clearly understood by Canadians. Everyone knows nations are ethnically based, no matter how rational professor Ignatieff thinks he is.

The maelstrom of debate on the definition of nation that has followed would have been best left to graduate seminars. Yes, seminar participants often neglect to do their reading and choose to rant anyway, but at least they aren’t doing damage in the House of Commons. One can only hope that as the Liberal party chooses its next leader, cooler heads will prevail and pass on Ignatieff and his desire to use the country for his personal intellectual stimulation. On Monday Gerard Kennedy announced he would not support the motion, the only front-running Liberal leadership candidate that, at press time, has done so. I say hear hear.

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Got the time? Well if you’re one of the unfortunate ones taking an in-class mid-term over the next week, you probably will notice that there is a dearth of time-measuring instruments at the U of M. For students writing tests, budgeting time is essential to ensure that the appropriate amount of time is spent on each question so as not to be unduly rushed at the end. Unfortunately, clocks are not a priority for the administration. Perhaps they are busy writing their rebuttal for next year’s Maclean’s university ranking issue.

I only bring this up because there has been an unusual number of students coming into the Manitoban office complaining about the lack of clocks. And by unusual I mean one student (a former Toban editor-in-chief) who apparently can’t afford a watch. Still, how expensive can it be to equip classrooms in such neglected buildings as Tier with a clock?

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On Nov. 13 UMSU held a Semi-Annual General Meeting and, surprise, their top priority is the tuition freeze. UMSU’s obsession with the tuition freeze, coupled with the delusion that it can actually affect government policy, has been the consequence of the union’s affiliation with the Canadian Federation of Students, a multimillion- dollar lobby group. UMSU announced that the topic for this year’s National Day of Action, a CFS organized event, will be . . . wait for it . . . the tuition freeze!

Indeed, if CFS’s Ottawa headquarters was replaced with an automated answering machine that repeatedly said “freeze tuition,” I think I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who noticed that something had changed.

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There has been a lot of talk about the supposed takeover of the government by Stephen Harper and his merry band of “theo-cons” who are apparently hell-bent on turning Canada into a fundamentalist state the likes of which the world has not seen since “excommunication” was a household term. However, as far as I can tell, the only evidence that is being offered is that members of the Conservative caucus attend church. Ooh ooh, the big bad Christians are coming to eat us.

The separation of church and state does not mean the abolition of religion; it simply means that there is no state religion. John Locke, the English philosopher who might be credited with the intellectual origins of secularism, would agree. He was, after all, devoutly religious. And by the way — Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s champion of freedom of conscience, attended church every Sunday.

Following the argument of Harper’s detractors we should pass a decree prohibiting all members of Parliament from being affiliated in any way with any religion whatsoever. Judaism? Out. Islam? Out. Buddhism? Out. And why stop there? To ensure they are completely free from bias, our MPs should also be void of all other beliefs and ideas. Say bye-bye to not only conservatism but also to socialism and liberalism. The government is already a mindless bureaucratic blob anyway.