February’s Town Hall meeting introduced severe budget cuts for the coming years. The Daily reported on President Deep Saini’s, alongside Vice-President Fabrice Labeau and Provost Christopher Manfredi, plan to undergo a $45 million budget cut for the 2025-2026 Academic year. Pressures from the Quebec government put McGill in a $15 million deficit last year, due to the tuition increase for non-Quebec Canadian students, cuts in provincial funding from the Quebec government on anglophone Universities, and federal caps on international students.
This budget cut will have drastic impacts on McGill employment. Staff, whether it be teaching, researching, or maintenance, represent 80% of McGill’s operating expenses, as declared by Christopher Manfredi. That would lead, according to the Montreal Gazette, to about 250-500 jobs being cut. Furthermore, McGill confirmed in the May 16 town hall that it intends to continue its hiring freeze. Christopher Manfredi and Fabrice Labeau, while declaring that the university had to lay off 60 employees in April alone, said this relief was temporary.
In fact, the next few years will prove even more challenging for McGill. The full extent of these government decisions will be felt even more harshly in the next four years, which will be critical for McGill’s survival. “Because we have thrived for 200 years, it may be tempting to assume that no matter what happens, we’ll continue thriving for 200 more,” Provost Manfredi and VP Labreau declared during the May town hall. “But if our deficits mount, McGill’s core academic mission will eventually become untenable.”
Despite the gravity of McGill’s financial situation, the May 16 town hall provided more details on the solutions evoked in February. McGill administratives recognised that cuts and layoffs were needed in the short term, but that it was not a sustainable solution in dealing with the university’s financial difficulties. Thus they introduced the Horizon Plan, a wide initiative to reduce and optimise expenses while salvaging McGill’s finances.
According to the Town Hall meeting, the objective of the Horizon Plan is twofold: finding new sources for funding while using current funds more effectively. This plan poses a number of questions that remain to be answered, notably concerns about the raising of new funds. Focusing on how to most effectively utilize current funds, the town hall brought more insight on the actions McGill plans to take within the next year. Another large part of the Horizon plan is to find ways to streamline the process; to simplify, rationalise, and make more effective McGill’s spending while also avoiding unnecessary expenses.
McGill will be joining Uniforum, a benchmarking platform where universities can compare their service performances with each other. Featuring Australian, British, and Canadian universities, Uniforum will give McGill data to optimize its use of its current expenses. Fabrice Labreau explains that Uniforum will enable McGill to reinvest resources and ultimately improve their services. Last February, McGill started gathering information and data for Uniforum, asking employees of over six months about their experience with its services, prior to looking at “resource allocation” over the spring and summer. This will build a “clear picture of McGill’s resource usage” before the “first results on satisfaction and resource allocation” are published with Uniforum in Fall; upon which McGill will be able to make decisions regarding budget and finances.
McGill’s goal is to make its core academic mission tenable again, and to make the university sustainable enough to thrive for many years to come. By “reinvesting,” the university will shift money from one place to another—in other words, key groups will suffer from this financial plan, even though Fabrice Labreau remained evasive about such consequences in his interview with the McGill Reporter. He claimed we will know the first results heeding from McGill’s inscription to Uniforum in Fall 2025.
For now, it remains unclear whether some departments, services and staff will be durably cut or laid off in McGill’s future years – including student TAs and academic advisors. Yet Labreau remains optimistic despite current challenges. He stresses to students that generating spending efficiencies through the Horizon plan will free up resources to be reinvested into education and research.
If the economic relief from staff layoffs turns out to be more than “temporary,” the loss of these jobs will durably affect the McGill staff laid off in the past six months. For now, the 60 people who lost their jobs in April will not be the last. While it is unclear how the Horizon Plan will affect student life, the new budget plan will certainly impact academic life for McGill students.