Criticism
Rae's appointment was opposed by many students, who had seen his government permit a 57% increase in tuition fees and the elimination of need-based grants. (The Rae administration cut back on social services as a whole in the early nineties to reduce the deficit caused by the recession.) The composition of the advisory panel also came under fire as none of its members had a record of support for reduced or frozen tuition fees.
Rae was also criticized for having drawn conclusions prior to the consultation phase of the review. In May 2004, Rae speculated about the possibility of an outright deregulation of tuition fees - to the outrage of student advocacy groups.
Upon its release the report was criticized by Howard Hampton, Rae's former cabinet minister and successor as Ontario NDP leader. This is not surprising, as both had a tenuous relationship during the 1990-95 NDP government; the left-wing Hampton had disapproved of many of Rae's centrist policies. The report was also criticized by the Canadian Federation of Students who had always lobbied for a tuition freeze/lowering.
Rae defended his report, arguing that low income non-university individuals would not benefit from a tuition freeze/lowering. He stated that a reduced tuition would make little impact on a student's decision between university and entering the workforce. Rae also said that non-university individuals would be forced to bear the tax burden needed to sustain a freeze/lowering. Supporters also asserted that a university education would primarily benefit the individual rather than being a public good.
Read more about this topic: Rae Report
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)