Budget generates heat

DIANA GRIER AYTON | Sometimes you can't win for losing. Federal Finance Minister Paul Martin introduced a zero-deficit budget this week, a concept undreamed of in this country a few years ago, and has been taking heat ever since.

Probably predictable were the responses of the other parties -- gains achieved on the backs of the taxpayers (Reform), not enough for the unemployed (NDP), no real tax breaks (PC), interference in provincial jurisdictions like education (Bloc Québécois).

In fact, Quebec Finance Minister Bernard Landry was hopping mad about the proposed Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, and labelled the action of the federal government in creating the fund "abusive and predatory."

But not everyone is out for Martin's blood, because the "education budget," as Health Minister Alan Rock has referred to it, tackles some of the issues on which students, academics and university administrators have been trying for some time to get government action.

Principal Bernard Shapiro said yesterday, "I have been urging government leaders at all levels to recognize the crucial role of Canadian universities in contributing to the welfare of all our fellow citizens. I want therefore to express McGill's appreciation of the high priority given to the learning society in this new budget."

Having earned this recognition, Shapiro said, "We must now engage public interest more intensely and more urgently in discussions of how Canadian universities can make a differenceÉ It is only from the perspective of a learning society that we will succeed in the years ahead. Either education is seen as important and therefore deserves wide support, or it is not, and we are doomed to mediocrity."

As for territorial squabbles, the principal said he was confident they could be resolved so that "Quebec's universities will share actively and successfully in the resources that are being made available."

But, according to Anna Kruzynski of the Post-Graduate Students' Society, the $2.5 billion earmarked for Millennium Scholarships and the further millions which will be poured into measures to ease student debt loads aren't enough. Kruzynski says transfer payments should be restored to previous levels.

"I'm not going to say that those measures are horrible. This shows that the student movement is being heard, but this isn't an education budget -- that's a joke! This is the federal government handing out bandaids and trying to appease people without really fixing the problem."

Someone else who has worked to make his voice heard by the government is Dr. Richard Murphy, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute. Over the last few years in speeches, letters and editorials, Murphy urged the government to stop cuts to granting agencies -- and called on fellow scientists to join the fight. Martin's budget restores research funding to the higher levels of 1994-95.

"I think it's a great beginning," says Murphy. "I think we're on the road to not only filling the holes that were created over the last several years as a result of cuts, but finally making a real investment in science in this country.

Murphy says he watched in alarm as "other countries have been making major investments in scientific research while our government was going in the opposite direction. Canada was beginning to lose its credibility. This is a clear indication that the government has been listening to what Canadians have been saying and that it does respect what science can do for this country."

Dr. Thomas Brzustowski, president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, has already written a letter to Martin, this time thanking him for the $60 million boost in support for NSERC. He asks fellow researchers to get busy "writing their own individual letters of appreciation, and writing them promptly." Meanwhile, he says he and his staff will begin the happy task of revising the NSERC budget "in light of the new allocation."