I've written before about attempts in Canada to create more separation between university teaching, on the one hand, and university research, on the other. In 2009, I wrote this opinion piece about an attempt by five university presidents to each acquire a larger share of university research dollars. And last year, I blogged about a proposal for the Ontario government to create more separation between teaching and research within the university sector.

In the context of student protests over Quebec tuition fees, my friend Luan Ngo has just written a very informative blog post on Quebec's fiscal situation.

While I encourage readers to read his full post, I do want to use the present space to make mention of three important points he makes:

- On a per capita basis, Quebec spends more on government programs than most other Canadian provinces.

- Residents of Quebec pay more personal incomes taxes than any other province.

- Quebec's debt-to-GDP ratio is significantly higher than that any other Canadian province.

On CBC's The National last week, Rex Murphy weighed in on Quebec's student protests; the transcript can be found here, and the three-minute video here. He calls the protests "short sighted," points out that Quebec already has the lowest tuition fees in Canada, and suggests the students' actions are "crude attempts at precipitating a crisis." He says they are the "actions of a mob," are "simply wrong," and should be "condemned."

December marked the three-year anniversary of Ontario's Poverty Reduction Strategy. While I believe there is much to celebrate, much remains to be done.

The Strategy surprised a lot of observers, especially in light of the fact that it was announced in December 2008, just as Ontario was entering a recession. Its focus was almost exclusively child poverty, and at full implementation (i.e. 2013), it will result in $300 million in new annual spending. This is equivalent to 0.3 per cent of total provincial spending in Ontario, which is roughly $100 billion.

Last week, I was in Yellowknife, where I released results of new research on affordable housing in the Northwest Territories (NWT). The research project was sponsored by the Social Economy Research Network of Northern Canada, and was a collaboration with the Centre for Northern Families.

Research findings include the following:

Last month, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) released a document entitled Public Education for the Public Good: A National Vision for Canada's Post-Secondary Education System. I found the document to be quite informative, filled with a lot of useful statistics. For example:

- Enrolment is rising in colleges and universities across Canada. Since the late 1990s, full-time enrolment has increased by 25 per cent. Enrolment in graduate studies (i.e. master's and PhD programs) alone increased by a whopping 42 per cent between 1998 and 2008.

Last weekend, I spoke on a panel at the annual conference of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association. The panel was inspired in large part by the recent debate in Toronto over Mayor Rob Ford's attempt to sell social housing units to private buyers. The panel, entitled "To Privatize or Not to Privatize?

In August, I blogged about controversy surrounding Concordia University's Board of Governors. A report co-authored by Bernard J. Shapiro (Canada's first Ethics Commissioner) had concluded that an unofficial, inner circle of board members had been micromanaging some of the university's day-to-day operations, and undermining the president. This had apparently prompted the resignation of the previous two presidents before the midway points of their respective terms in office. It had also caused a public-relations disaster and "culture of contempt" on campus. The report in question had recommended, among other things, that the board be reduced in size from 40 to 25 members.

On Wednesday, William Watson wrote a comment piece in the Financial Post in which he was critical of Armine Yalnizyan's recent essay on inequality. In his piece, Mr. Watson alleges that Armine "is guilty of fantastical reminiscence," particularly with respect to her take on post-secondary education (PSE). Among other things, Mr. Watson points to the fact that PSE enrolment has increased very substantially over the past half-century in Canada.

Pollsters tell us that Ontario's New Democrats may double their seat total in next month's provincial election. It's also entirely conceivable that they could be part of a coalition government at Queen's Park. But what's actually in the party's election platform?

One central feature of the NDP's proposals is to implement a tax credit for companies that hire new workers. The tax credits would be valued at 20 per cent of wages to a maximum of $5,000 per worker. This only applies to the creation of full-time, permanent jobs.