The labour dispute between Capilano University’s faculty and administration that’s bringing an unceremonious end to the spring semester has been a long time coming.
The two sides have been on a slow-motion collision course since, in the midst of a budget shortfall in 2013, the board of governors cut a swath of programs and laid off the instructors. The administration was later found to be in violation of the University Act and then further agitated the teachers by seizing an effigy of the university president made by a studio arts instructor as he was losing his job.
Most strikes are over wages, working conditions, benefits and the like but the two sides in this dispute are now bogged down on issues that reflect old scores being settled: academic freedom and who has control over layoffs and, by extension, what courses are offered at the school.
And sadly, as in all labour disputes, it’s the people who depend on the service that’s been withdrawn who suffer the most. Students who paid their tuition and worked hard all year now face potential delays to their careers or further education.
Yet in the midst of this ear-pulling, the two sides seem content to blame each other and not the provincial government that saw fit to turn Cap into a university but continued funding it like a community college.
The province, at the very last moment, even reneged on the transitional and base funding promises it had made when Cap “graduated.”
We’ll do that blaming for them.
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