As far as budgets go, Paul Martin's 1999 version was a yawner. Most of the details were carefully leaked to the media and widely known weeks before the Finance Minister even picked out his new shoes.

Hard on the heels of the federal budget, the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (CMEC) has just released its "Report on Public Expectations of Postsecondary Education in Canada." Two years in the making, it is the first time the education ministers have agreed on a uniform set of principles for post-secondary education across Canada.

I wish to express my deepest appreciation to the University of Toronto Faculty Association, and the Canadian Association of University Teachers, first for having voted me in as a full member of the association and second for making it possible for me to continue my work at the University of Toronto.

After 26 days on strike, members of the Mount Allison Faculty Association (MAFA) returned to work on Feb. 15, as a result of a mediated settlement.

When McMaster University's faculty of health sciences slashed noted pediatrician Dr. José Venturelli's salary, he didn't get mad, he filed a grievance. Dr. Venturelli claimed that the combination of a cut to his base salary and an imposed increase in clinical work undermined his ability to engage in teaching and research, the core functions of an academic.

Most educators in British Columbia's colleges, university-colleges and institutes now have new contract language to help them deal with harassment issues.

The next few months will see a flurry of collective bargaining as more than a dozen agreements expire in the spring and summer.

On Mar. 9 Canada Post issued a commemorative stamp to mark the 50-year anniversary of the establishment of the University of British Columbia's Museum of Anthropology. The six colour stamp shows The Raven and the First Men by Haida artist Bill Reid and an exterior shot of the spectacular museum building by UBC alumni and award-winning Canadian architect Arthur Erickson.

The Acadia University Faculty Association (AUFA) has expressed serious concern about language in new contracts for faculty teaching distance education courses.

CAUT's Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee has composed a Committee of Inquiry to investigate the Thorpe case at Mount Allison University. The committee members are Bernice Schrank from Memorial and Roger Gannon, recently retired from York. Both are former chairs of the AF&T Committee. They will look into the treatment of Professor Thorpe by the administration at Mount Allison after his retirement.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) is launching a pilot program to help organizations within communities and university institutions combine forces and tackle issues they have identified as being of common, priority concern. SSHRC will provide core funding for a limited number of Community-University Research Alliances (CURAs) to support a diverse range of innovative research, training and related activities that will:

The Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada has begun an 18-month project on the role of "performance indicators" (PIs) in the humanities and social sciences.

University of Alberta President Rod Fraser said he would not stop debate on controversial issues because of criticism from Alberta Premier Ralph Klein.

Students across the country are participating in sit-ins, strikes, and petition campaigns in opposition to rising tuition fees and soaring student debt.

Performance indicators have, of course, been with us for decades. Before the 1980s, they took the form of detailed statistics on finance and enrolment in the nation's universities. Somewhere in government (usually this meant the provincial government), someone read "the numbers," and public funding was eventually released.

In budget speech 1999 the federal government announced it will spend a small amount on health, including a modest amount on research (mainly health research), but little else. There is no new funding for post-secondary education or social services under the Canada Health and Social Transfer -- not one thin dime.