Committee issues declaration on restoring university education in Sudbury

A group advocating to preserve university education in Sudbury that reflects English, French and Indigenous perspectives has issued a declaration featuring members of all three communities, outliningits hopes for the future of education in that city after Laurentian University's insolvency..

The Tricultural Committee for University Education at Sudbury consists of members from a northern Ontario coalition for a French-language university at Sudbury, Indigenous advocates and Save our Sudbury.

Its goal is to build connections between the three major demographic groups and work together on a new future for university education in Sudbury. According to its recent declaration, this should involve an independent Indigenous university, an independent Franco-Ontarian university and a refocus of Laurentian University's mandate as an Anglophone school.

"The present crisis we are in, in my view, is the deepest in the history of not only Sudbury, but of northern Ontario," said David Leadbeater, a former Laurentian economics professor who lost hisposition in the restructuring process.

The committee is planning to host its first town hall meeting in October to gather such perspectives.

Laurentian University announced it was insolvent in February 2021. It entered into the Companies' Creditors Arrangements Act (CCAA) process, to begin to restructure the institution, shortly thereafter.

Advocates say this process was unnecessary and inappropriate for a public institution like a university. Laurentian has dropped more than 30 programs and laid off more than 100faculty and staff members. Many of the deepest cuts came to programs that served communities like Francophones and Indigenous people.

Planning a new way forward

David Leadbeater was one of the main architects of the committee's declaration, his introduction said.

"The declaration is a way of coming to grips with the first steps forward, which is to recognize profound failures in Laurentian and opening up a discussion about having three independent but co-operating institutions," he said.

Leadbeater outlined the major components of the declaration. It begins with discussions on the consequences of the CCAA process and why the group says it ran against the best interests of Sudbury and northern Ontario.

Second, the declaration states the board of governors and the president of Laurentian University, Robert Hach, have lost the confidence of Sudbury and northern Ontario, especially among Indigenous and Francophone populations.

The third part of the declaration involves setting new guiding principles for the future, which includes giving Laurentian University a new mandate away from its existing tricultural focus and allowing Indigenous and Francophone schools to exist separately, Leadbeater said.

Declaration authors share concerns

Will Morin, a former professor in the department of Indigenous Studies at University of Sudbury, said a main issue is that Laurentian has long promoted itself as a tricultural institution, but Indigenous voices in particular are often minimized, as is their shared history on campus.

"Laurentian is appropriatingvoices. Our communities have spoken. We are asserting our voices and calling them to task in this public declaration," Morin said.

Save our Sudbury representative Scott Florence said the CCAA process does not address a major concern: accountability.

"We all want to know what happened, where the money went, how we got into this crisis. But the same team that got us into this crisisHach and the board of directorsremain in place during this restructuring and we don't get to see any of what happened," he said.

A preliminary report in February from Ontario advisor Alan Harrison said Laurentian has run deficits since 2014 and the financial issues existed before the current administration.

That report also said the damaging creditor-protection process did not have to happen because Ontario offered the school $100 million in emergency funding, but only with a third-party review of the school's financial status. The school received $12 million instead.

The tricultural committee plans to circulate its new declaration to collect signatures of support.