Thousands of Canadians across the country gathered earlier this month in a national day of protest against the federal government’s proposed national security legislation.

March marks both International Francophonie Month, and Aboriginal Languages Month and this seems as good a time as any to reflect on the linguistic and cultural diversity that enriches academic life in this country.

While BC Finance Minister Mike de Jong may have characterized his Feb. 17 budget as having scored a “fiscal hat trick,” for the third consecutive set of balanced books from the governing Liberals, he’s acquired plenty of detractors quick to condemn the plan as a mirage of user fee hikes in post-secondary education.

CAUT’s new equity committee met for the first time in August 2014, with attendance from two representatives of each of the five equity-seeking groups: Aboriginal academic staff, academic staff with disabilities, LGBTQ2S academic staff, racialized academic staff and women academic staff.

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Jan. 30 that the right to strike is constitutionally protected. The 5–2 decision in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan found that the Public Service Essential Services Act infringed on protected charter rights.

It’s now even harder for qualified Canadians to be hired into scarce full-time academic positions in their own country. That’s the fallout of a February agreement between the federal government and post-secondary institutions that outlines special exemptions from the temporary foreign worker rules.

A committee ap­pointed by CAUT in March 2014 to investi­gate alleged inappropriate conduct in the faculty of archi­tecture at the University of Manitoba has uncovered violations of acade­­mic freedom and interfer­ence in the work of acade­mic staff.