Ottawa University To Launch First School of Governance in Canada

University of Ottawa

The University of Ottawa is planning to build Canada’s first School of Government to be a “national, non-partisan and independent resource.”

“Our intention is that the School will occupy a unique place in the Canadian academic firmament, contributing to both teaching and scholarship in ways that will be unmatched,” Allan Rock stated.

It would also actively be a partner with other schools of public policy in Canada and internationally, the university’s president wrote in an email to the Citizen, “accelerating discovery and refining insights through the sharing of information and the exchange of views.”

Rock has received a presentation on how the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., operates as plans for the U of O’s proposed school were refined.

Officials are currently evaluating the “best design approach to the creation of the School,” he wrote. The university hopes to launch the institution next year and enrol the first cohort of students in September, 2015.

The bilingual “comprehensive research university” is better positioned than any other school in Canada to play host to such a facility, Rock stated.

The former Liberal cabinet heavyweight said U of O has “deep and long-standing links with federal departments,” which provides “a strong basis for the interaction with government that will be essential to the School’s success.”

Just Monday, the university announced that it had named Kevin Page, Canada’s former federal parliamentary budget officer, to a three-year posting as the Jean-Luc Pepin Research Chair on Canadian Government.

Page’s experience in the public service “will be a major asset in developing the taxation and governance projects we have planned,” Rock stated in the press release announcing the appointment.

(Page has said he hopes to set up a new fiscal studies institute at the university that would provide analysis on issues facing all levels of government. The university stated that Page intends to work toward the creation of a new institute “dedicated to taxation issues.”)

Rock also pointed to the university’s location in the capital, and “next to government and our national institutions as well as embassies from the world over.”

The faculty, he stated, is diverse and increasingly international, with “respected scholars, accomplished researchers and outstanding teachers.

“By gathering together and consolidating the relevant talents that already reside in our various faculties and their departments, we will give profile and prominence to the outstanding scholars and practitioners who are already here, as well as adding to them through international recruitment,” he wrote.

The university’s plans have been in the works for some time.

In February 2012, Rock told a monthly breakfast held by Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson that the new school “will consolidate and build on the exceptional cluster of expertise that is already at the University,” according to prepared comments from that event.

The university’s strategic plan, meanwhile, refers to “a premier centre for governance and public-policy research” among its major initiatives.

Another strategy document submitted to the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities in the fall stated that the university planned to “launch Canada’s first School of Government, to prepare the next generation of leadership, foster dialogue and discussion about Canada’s key challenges, and conduct leading-edge research in key issues of public policy — all in a bilingual environment in the heart of our nation’s capital.”

During a trip in January to Massachusetts for various reasons, Rock told the New England-Canada Business Council that the Harvard Kennedy School’s executive dean, John Haigh, had “made a most helpful presentation, responded to our many questions and gave us much to think about as we discuss and decide the shape and structure of our new school,” according to a prepared speech.

Haigh said Tuesday he had provided information about the Kennedy School’s structure. Harvard University has several research centres and institutes.

“I have a kind of standard discussion I can walk through about what is the Kennedy School and how we are organized. … Generally, not broad public information, but how big are we revenue-wise, how many faculty do we have, how do we organize our research centres. It was a kind of tutorial for them on the structure of the Kennedy School and how we operate,” Haigh said.

The university plans “extensive consultations on campus among interested parties, in order to ensure that the proposal goes forward with broad support and wide enthusiasm,” Rock stated on Tuesday.

In March, the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa, which represents more than 1,200 professors and academic librarians at the university, suggested that the project so far had been “opaque,” and asked Rock for more information.

Rock replied at that time that there had been discussion within the faculty of social sciences, and that the project was in the consultation phase, making it “premature to expect that detailed answers are available to many of the questions you have asked.”

There would be an opportunity within the faculty to discuss the proposal in more detail, Rock stated in a response letter posted to the union’s website.

“Following the consultations and when a fully developed proposal has been prepared, it will be brought forward to the relevant University bodies for such formal approvals as may be required according to University policies and procedures,” he wrote. (Ottawa Citizen)