U of M campus crumbling: Tories

Magally Zelaya, staff

The University of Manitoba has accumulated $211-million worth of needed building maintenance because it has not had the funds necessary to address repairs and upgrades.

“We got so far behind over a number of years because we didn’t have enough money to put into infrastructure upgrades. Although recently we have had some money to be able to do it, there’s a huge backlog of work,” said Debbie McCallum, vice-president (administration).

Established in 1877, the U of M is Western Canada’s oldest university. Seventy-three per cent of the campus’s buildings are between 35 and 96 years old, according to McCallum.

“Once buildings get to that age they need new roofs, they need new windows, they need new heating and ventilation and air conditioning systems, they need new foundation upgrades, as well as cosmetic improvements,” said McCallum.

Of the 119 buildings at the university, 13 are in critical condition, 63 are in poor condition, and the remaining 43 are fair or good, according to the results of a 2005 assessment.

Myrna Driedger, Tory advanced education critic, brought the deferred maintenance issue to attention last week during question period at the legislature.

Driedger said, “They’ve been forced to take money out of maintenance in order to operate the university because of what could be called a chronic under funding of postsecondary institutions under the NDP government.”

A statscan study shows that per-capita, Manitoba has the lowest provincial government expenditure on postsecondary education in Canada, at $856.20 in 2007.

“[The government] uses rhetoric to say they’re doing all these wonderful things — the statistics aren’t backing them up.”

However these numbers do not include capital expenditures, as pointed out by the office of Diane McGifford, the minister of advanced education.

“There are lies, damnable lies and then there are statistics,” quipped McGifford.

McGifford said that Manitoba is actually fourth in the country when looking at funding per student instead of funding per capita.

According to the most recent information from the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the province ranked fourth in Canada, with an average annual provincial funding of $11,730 per student.

McCallum said the backlog in infrastructure maintenance started in the ’90s. “The ’90s were very lean. We received very little money in the ’90s for infrastructure,” she said.

She noted that since the 2000-01 academic year the provincial government has provided an annual allocation for infrastructure. “But of course we were so far behind and we had such a big backlog that it hasn’t been enough to really help us make significant progress.”

The university took out a $130 million loan with the provincial government to address the infrastructure problems, and $90 million from the $237 million Building on Strengths capital campaign was directed specifically to upgrades, repairs, and new buildings.

Since 1999, the province has increased all funding to colleges and universities by 52 per cent and tripled the amount of capital support to $465 million from the $130 million provided by the province from 1989 to 1999.

“There has been a lot done in recent years, but we still have a long way to go, unfortunately,” said McCallum

Emergency safety issues are dealt with and not deferred, according to McCallum. “Certainly asbestos is a concern,” she noted. “We have done a lot of work on the highest priority asbestos problems.”

She said that every building built before the mid-’80s has asbestos in it. “We don’t actually even know how much we have left to do, but it’s probably somewhere between $30-50 million to deal with the asbestos.”

Currently the top priority building is the Buller building at the Fort Garry campus. Built in 1932, it is the building that the university is investing the most in at the present time.

“It was in very bad shape so we’re spending about $11 million on Buller building alone and that isn’t even going to fix all of the problems,” said McCallum.

“There are many other buildings that are in pretty rough shape, so it’s going to take a lot of money to fix them all.”

Driedger is concerned about the impact that insufficient provincial government expenditures and the tuition freeze will have on the quality of students’ educations.

“You can’t tie one hand behind their backs by chronically under funding them and expect that our universities are going to be able to perform,” said Driedger.

“We want to have pride in the university, in the grounds, in the buildings, and the quality of education that can be offered inside.”