In Dr. Saini’s first 18 months on the job, he’s had to respond to new foreign-tuition policies, a money crunch and protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. And none of it is over yet
Deep Saini was days away from unveiling a signature initiative to boost French proficiency at McGill University when a contact in the Quebec government quietly warned the school’s new president he might not have the money for it.the government fired a policy torpedo in his direction.
McGill, like dozens of other universities, is facing a multimillion-dollar deficit and expects worse to come. The federal government’s pledge to slash the number of international study permits will cost the sectorover the next few years and make recruitment more difficult. Labour strife has brought an edge to campus relations. And the provincial government, the primary funder of universities, far from riding to the rescue, is imposing fresh, potentially unconstitutional, challenges.
Dr. Saini arrived in Quebec in the mid-1980s speaking four languages, but not French. He accepted a job teaching plant biology at the University of Montreal over suitors in other parts of Canada, baffling colleagues who wondered why he’d choose a province in the midst of a struggle over sovereignty. But he recalls being fascinated by the place and its culture. The university gave him 18 months to learn the language.
After leadership posts at the University of Waterloo, the University of Toronto Mississauga and the University of Canberra in Australia, Dr. Saini was hired in 2019 to be president of Dalhousie University. He thought he would serve two terms in Halifax and then retire. But midway through his first term, the opportunity came up at McGill. He was approached more than once about the job and pondered it carefully.
Ms. Bertrand said Dr. Saini’s approach to the political trouble has confirmed what she saw in him during the interview process. McGill also faced labour trouble last year, marked by a strike among law faculty and a unionization drive in other faculties. McGill’s administration was slow to negotiate, frustrating faculty who see unionization, very common at Canadian universities, as hardly worth fighting.
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