I'm just back as a medic from the large student strike and anti-police brutality demonstration in Montreal where the cops were shooting exploding tear gas canisters and flash-bang grenades into crowds of people -- really irresponsible, criminal and injurious.

We know that protesters in the West Bank and Gaza have been killed and seriously injured after being hit by tear gas canisters and so-called crowd control projectiles -- so this alarm is not just about the chemical effects, but also the kinetic trauma cause by the shooting projectile or explosion.

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.

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.

Last March, Keith Dunne and I wrote an opinion piece on Danny Williams' post-secondary education (PSE) legacy in Newfoundland and Labrador. Among other things, we pointed out that average undergraduate tuition fees (for domestic students) in Newfoundland and Labrador are $2,624/yr., compared with $5,138 for Canada as a whole and $6,307 in Ontario.

With a provincial election slated to take place in Newfoundland and Labrador on October 11, Newfoundland and Labrador's NDP is proposing to take the province even further down the path of PSE affordability.

Last week, the CCPA released a paper by David Macdonald and Erika Shaker entitled Under Pressure: The Impact of Rising Tuition Fees on Ontario Families.

The paper does a good job of explaining which households have been most impacted by rising tuition fees in Ontario. Points made in the paper include the following:

- In light of rising levels of household debt, Canadian households are not in the same position to take on new debt today as they were 20 years ago.

As I've blogged about here, federal funding for post-secondary education (PSE) in Canada is decreasing. Between 1985-1986 and 2007-2008, annual federal cash transfers to Ontario for PSE (in constant 2007 dollars) decreased from roughly $1.4 billion to just under $1 billion. (Yet, during that same period, PSE enrolment in Ontario increased by more than 60 per cent).

Ensuring the future of the province’s creative economy will require a serious, well-planned and well-delivered investment in post-secondary education by the Ontario government, according to a new report on higher education.

The report released Monday by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) said that in order for Ontario to play a leading role in the knowledge economy, the government must first create an affordable, accessible, post secondary education system.

College and university students held a mock coroner’s inquest Thursday outside provincial government offices at 900 Bay Street in Toronto to bring attention to the “death” of social services by the McGuinty government.

“Finance minister Dwight Duncan recently foreshadowed budgetary cuts and we’re here to say that Ontarians need help through this recession, we need social supports and services,” said Shelley Melanson, Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario, organizers of today’s event held to raise awareness of events taking place across Ontario on the November 5 Day of Action.