Ottawa recently passed Bill C-59.  It’s an omnibus act that is being used to make various changes in numerous laws to allow the federal government’s economic statement and budget to be realized.

One of the interesting things in the act, as it pertains to post-secondary institutions, is that they are now specifically excluded from the definition of a corporation that can declare bankruptcy.  While it would seem this is a solution in search of a problem, it happened because the Laurentian University took advantage of being able to declare bankruptcy, and then used that protection to slash staffing and programs, in the process pointing out the damage Ontario provincial funding has done to schools, and causing significant headaches for both provincial and federal governments, not to mention thousands of students (and just imagine trying to figure out what happens to your student loans when the program you’re taking has been cut due to bankruptcy.)

This has been hailed as a good thing by some Ontario universities who understand how seeing any Ontario university go bankrupt reflects poorly on all of them (though it may have helped in that it goaded the Ontario provincial government to increase funding for post-secondary in the province), and how doing so created an end-run around some of the collective agreements in place.  On the down-side, simply removing the ability of a post-secondary institution to declare bankruptcy may result in the leadership of these institutions being afraid to take necessary steps to aid a university if it would result in a significant debt-load.

And, given current trends in politics, such as our own Premiere Danielle Smith positing that the condensation trail left by planes in the atmosphere are being done to seed clouds and prevent hail, I’d argue that post-secondary education, or at the very least, training on critical thinking (or maybe just thinking) is more necessary than ever these days.  Seriously, why anybody would think that Danielle Smith is paying somebody to fly planes that spray chemicals into the air over Alberta to sterilize people is beyond me. It fails as a theory on so many levels, not the least of which is that it’d be much less expensive to spike the water supply with fluoride to sterlize people and so avoid wasting so much of the chemical in the atmosphere (this is sarcasm, people, I know there’s some fluoride conspiracy nuts who saw that report about fluoride harming reproductive abilities, but that was in animals much smaller than a human at concentrations much higher than any amount being put into drinking water supplies—again, the cost factor to get the concentrations needed in a major water supply make it non-feasible).

At any rate, this week in the Voice, we’ve got a new student interview, and Alek Golijanin goes more in-depth to the subject of my editorial last week, looking at the specifics of the Lola Akinlade case and her ability to remain in Canada being taken away.

We also have inspirational content, including how to look at losing a job as an opportunity rather than a hardship, the importance of surprises—even bad ones—in life, scholarships, events, a round-up of social media about AU, and much more!

Enjoy the read!