CAUT has created an independent commission on the governance of the Royal Military College of Canada.

The distinguished members of the commission are Robin Boadway, the David Chadwick Smith Chair in Economics at Queen’s University; retired Canadian Forces Lt.-Col. Steve Nash, a former commander of the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit and operations officer and deputy commander Joint Task Force 2; and Elinor Sloan, a professor of international relations at Carleton University and a former defence analyst with the Department of National Defence.

All three are graduates of RMC.

The commission has been asked to examine the governance structure of RMC, consi­der al­ternative models of military college governance, and make recommendations about the preferred governance structure for the college.

“At the best of times, it is a challenge to have a governance structure for a military college that allows it — as RMC has been historically — to be both an excellent university and a first-class institution for training military officers,” said CAUT executive director James Turk. “The significant cuts being made by the fed­e­ral government to RMC’s budget are bringing to the surface questions about how the college is governed.”

Turk is confident the commission can provide useful advice to the parties involved in the governance of RMC — the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Forces and the RMC board of governors and academic staff.

While CAUT has created the commission and is covering costs for its operation, it will be fully independent have sole control over the content of its report, which CAUT will publish as submitted. There is no pay involved with serving on the commission.