Murdering LU

What is occurring at Laurentian is a conspiracy of silence that goes all the way to the mayor's office so I really don't know what's happening or what will happen to students (or anybody else) - but here is my take.

My mother was part of the first graduating class of LU nurses, my father got his Sociology degree here before going to Osgoode Hall law school, my grandmother went here to advance her education when she was a widowed school teacher trying to raise my dad; my good friend went here and was a key part of the Nobel Prize winning work into solar neutrinos, another friend became a teacher after taking the Education program, my partner got her Psychology degree here and now does vital work with local children and their parents. I come here to finish my degree after Carleton became too expensive and have been an educator since 2003.

This is what is being killed.

The 'murder' of Laurentian University is a crime beyond any one of us. It is as a direct assault on Sudbury and Northern Ontario. So I'll tell you who I think the 'criminals' are.

Dominic Giroux - A Liberal golden-boy from Ottawa whose decade long mismanagement of the university horribly weakened a vital public utility. Giroux and his Masters in Business degree should never have been allowed near a public school. He spent LU's money on public relations, "CEOs-in-Residence" and a massive building expansion that he tried to finance using "interest rate swaps" and other shady capitalistic tools.

No MBA should ever be put in change of public institutions. Ever. They are trained in dangerous con-artistry and capitalist grifting. LU was financially fine when our President had her PhD in French Translation but a decade under a MBA was fatal.

Giroux also used professorships as gifts to hand to his political allies. When he was tasked with the political operation of seducing Glen Thibeault from the NDP to the Liberals he promised him a professorship if the jump failed.

Giroux is currently in charge of Sudbury's Hospital. If he destroys that too he should be tarred and feathered.

Board of Governors - All the VALE vice-presidents and local elites who hired Giroux and signed off on all his plans. Our bourgeois leaders are always claiming to be the 'adults in the room' but now their utter incompetence has killed a university. Where is their responsibility for this disaster? They have made no attempt to rectify their horrendous mistakes.

KPMG and Ernst & Young -  The accounting firms that swore the "budget was balanced" until it all collapsed.  Now they are the vultures swooping in to control the bankruptcy sale. Ernst & Young basically controls LU at this point, everything is under their 'monitoring'.

Dr. Robert Hache - [Ph.D. Biochemistry from Queen’s, VP of Research at the University of Calgary (2009-2011), current President of Laurentian.] Instead of appealing to the professors, students and community when he first realized the crisis over the summer, Hache decided to choose the coward's path of absolute secrecy and conspiratorial dealing with Doug Ford and Ernst & Young until he surprised the university with the news that LU had been handed over to insolvency courts. It was a planned ambush done in the middle of a pandemic when the campus was empty and under guard.

Dr. Allan Harrison - [Provost & VP Academic at Queen's; Provost of University of Calgary (2006-2011), Doug Ford's special advisor to Laurentian.] A dull economist who just wants Laurentian to be a better commercial enterprise (“more efficient delivery model”). Dr. Harrison should be receiving far more criticism from University Provosts across the country for pioneering this new form of assault on public institutions. He is supposed to produce a report on this mess, which I'm sure will clear his buddy Hache and his boss Ford. Maybe he'll pin it all on the Franco-Liberal Giroux....

Queen's University and University of Calgary - Hache & Harrison both worked at these universities before coming to assault Laurentian and their scummy actions reflect horribly on these institutions.  Laurentian is a classic case of treating a public/guardian institution as a commercial enterprise and destroying it in the process - and the Hache/Harrison  partnership was the driving force behind driving LU into commercial bankruptcy courts. LU is the first Canadian University forced into due to bankruptcy, it is unprecedented and these are the professor who planned this "innovation".

The fact the University of Calgary's Economic department is run by Americans from the University of Chicago and were the same low-lifes who trained Steve Harper is not a coincidence.

Doug Ford and Conservative voters - LU *might* have had a chance under a NDP or Liberal government but not under the Ford crime family. From their days of being spoiled rich kids who sold hash to becoming the leaders of Toronto and Ontario, the Ford brood have always been right-wing criminals. When Ontarians voted for Doug Ford and his promise of 'buck-a-beer', tax cuts, and punishing austerity, they clearly voted to "kill the weak" - it was one of the most disgusting votes I've witnessed. The "Ford Nation" victory once again revealed a shocking moral ugliness in southern Ontario.  

Ford is just the latest 'pro-austerity' politician, he is a symptom of a deeper problem.  Ontario has among the lowest funding levels per student in Canada at the post-secondary level. In 2002, it was the lowest in North America, with the exception of Alabama. In 2017-18, the province’s funding per university student was 37 per cent lower than the average for the rest of Canada. And southern Ontario keeps voting for this barbarism.

Sudburians must face the fact that this is punishment for being a labour town and voting NDP.

Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act Before 1997 Canada's insolvency laws didn't apply to the non-profit or public sectors. This was the legal device used to allow Toronto scum lawyers to demand their pound of flesh.


Saudi Arabia - In a very stupid move Laurentian recruited Saudi Arabia foreign students - some were very nice but others were entitled misogynists. When Saudi Arabia's criminal starvation war against Yemen (heavily backed by the US) became so outrageous that even Trudeau had to raise a note of protest, the Saudis decided to withdraw all their foreign students in an act of petulance that seriously harmed Laurentian's finances. Apparently the oil-sands of Calgary and Saudi Arabia create not just environmental toxins but political poisons.

COVID - Yep, Laurentian is another COVID casualty. This was the final trigger that got the Desjardins Credit Union and Royal Bank to cut their lines of credit in the summer of 2020 beginning the crisis that exploded in February.


What's been done to Laurentian is a 'crime' but our culture has not advanced enough to call it that yet, so instead elites blame their crimes on "The Market" as they try to disguise the real-world damage they do in the name of more "profit". The sheer lack of responsibility or consequences for these elites when they catastrophically fail in their duties reveals the con-game. The poor can be subjected to any humiliation, the rich "fail upwards". Watch the careers of Giroux, Hache, Harrison, VALE executives, Ernst & Young and KMPG accountants after this and you'll see what "fail upwards" means.

One of the deep lessons of this course is to develop your ability to see the crimes in actions that we currently accept - wars without UN authorization, factory farming, hunger caused by political austerity, treating hospitals, police, power generation and universities like commercial enterprises - but one day all these acts will be clearly seen as horrible violations of civilization and human dignity.  

The criminal codes of the future are founded in the ethics and perceptions we have today, and I believe what has been done to our university is undoubtedly 'crime', and I have my list of the 'criminals' who did it. In a week I'll find out if I still have a job at "Laurentian" but what was done to our alma mater will never, ever be forgiven or forgotten by me.

so the LUFA vote question to ratify the contract was: Yes = I approve their criminal actions; No = make Ford openly kill the University if he dares

I voted No -- but 81.7% voted Yes. People who think universities are hot-beds of 'radical leftists' have never been on a picket line with professors. They whine about $$$, and cars, and sports, and what's on NBC. They complain about the union, political correctness, radicals and trouble-makers.

The last line in the LUFA zoom meeting - a meeting where freshly fired professors plead their case and some openly wept - was" See ya at the links!" sent in by some soul-dead "mining consultant" prof. Many YES profs complaining they had just bought a house, or they had to vote YES because the union said it was better than the threat of total destruction....

It was a "vote under duress" or more properly not a "vote" but a threat.

A CONCLUSION

June 2024

A bill excluding public universities from the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) and Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) has passed third reading in the federal Senate and is awaiting Royal Assent to be passed into law.

The changes to the CCA and BIA, included in Bill C-59, exempt public postsecondary educational institutions from corporate-style restructuring processes. This is a huge success for public universities and all those affected by the bankruptcy crisis at Laurentian University.

This news comes more than three years after Laurentian filed for bankruptcy under the CCAA and BIA. OCUFA, our 30 member organizations, and our allies worked tirelessly for years to push the federal government to amend the CCAA and BIA to exclude publicly funded universities so that the disaster at Laurentian can never happen again in Canada.

Now, that consistent and persistent advocacy has resulted in concrete, positive change for our universities and communities.

Faculty, staff, and students will be protected from the corporate-style restructuring processes prioritizing creditors over the public interest. This will lead to a more secure future for our vital public universities.

What was done to LU was illegal - it was all so "novel" that that they got away with their Capitalist Crime but a mere three years later its already banned. That's what the history books will now have to say: bad idea forced through by very stupid and evil lawyers, judges, monitors, and corporate media. That's the final judgement.

All the people who talked about it's "necessity" are exactly the same people who would have defended slavery in the 1800s. All those who said they "could not understand it" are those who would have been "neutral" about slavery. Those folks will always choose Capitalist Authoritarianism over any form of 'democracy' or 'socialism'.

Everyone actions will be remembered.