![]() He said Peter Scott and his executive team had recently met with the town about a proposal to establish a research centre for boreal forests and water in the university’s under-utilized Athabasca Research Centre. Inside the Kenney Government’s University Debacleĭaniel said the minister’s board cleansing makes even less sense given that the board had produced a workable solution that could satisfy the economic development objectives of the town and Nicolaides.“And so we are electing to place some more individuals on the board who have strong, really deep connections to the town and the region to be able to offer more insight to help the executive team deliver on the government’s directives.” “We haven’t, to date, received detailed strategies or concrete commitments that work is being undertaken to achieve those goals,” Nicolaides told Global News. But he told other media outlets last week he cleaned house to make the board get on with forcing the implementation of his decree. Nicolaides did not respond to a Tyee interview request. But we have solid proposals in place for how we're going to increase our contribution to the town and the region.’” Instead, Daniel said, the board “sent him a letter saying, ‘We're not going to do that. 30 deadline imposed by Nicolaides to accede to his directive. But Nicolaides has threatened to cut off the university’s $3.4 million monthly grant if the board of governors doesn’t produce an implementation plan to meet his relocation directive.ĭaniel said the board met before a Sept. University president Peter Scott has argued it’s not the school’s role to act as an economic driver for the town. (Nicolaides subsequently claimed the 500-employee number was only a suggestion, an opening position in negotiations with the university.) That is about 500 employees, including senior executives, and their spouses and children, who are expected to move to the town within two years to bolster the region’s economic development. Through this wholesale razing and subsequent stacking of the board, Nicolaides is strengthened in his ability to achieve his stated goal of forcing the relocation of 65 per cent of the university’s staff to the town of 2,800, about 150 kilometres north of Edmonton. “I'm guessing we were seen as inconvenient people whose main commitment was to the success and future of the university and not to rural development in Alberta,” Daniel said. Nicolaides immediately replaced them with seven handpicked members to restock the 17-member board. The firing last week of the four members, including Andrew Ko, a world-recognized expert in distance-learning technology, follows the recent resignation of three other board members. Nelson ran unsuccessfully against Nicolaides for the United Conservative Party nomination in Calgary-Bow. In May, Nicolaides fired board chair Nancy Laird and replaced her with Byron Nelson, a Calgary lawyer. Like three other members of Athabasca’s board, Daniel officially learned he had been sacked not from the minister but when he saw the order in council rescinding his appointment. Please enable JavaScript before you proceed. Your browser either doesn't support JavaScript or you have it turned off. Shubh Patil, Audience Development Analyst, The Tyee If you’re in, click here to start your Tyee Builder membership. This is all in service of putting resources into the hands of our talented, independent journalists and publishing their work for all to read, without locking articles behind a paywall. I spend all of my time finding the best possible ways to ask our readers this: If you find value in what The Tyee publishes, if you want us to be able to do it today and long into the future, will you consider signing up to be a Tyee Builder? You can give one-time, monthly, or annually at a level that works for you, and you can cancel any time. And even to maintain our membership levels, we must continually sign up new supporters as a small number of our recurring supporters’ payments lapse each month. ![]() ![]() Keeping up with our membership goals means the difference between us growing our newsroom or not. These readers, a few thousand of them, are the only reason why we can publish multiple original stories per day, and pour resources into investigative reporting, which is expensive and very difficult to fund on a local scale. Right now, the percentage of readers who choose to do so hovers between 1 to 2 percent. Our business model relies on a certain number of readers agreeing to financially support our editorial budget. You see, The Tyee is a non-profit, reader-supported publication. I don’t write or edit articles, but I play a key role in making sure The Tyee can do its work. If you’re a regular reader of The Tyee, you probably haven’t come across my name before. The Tyee works because of reader support.
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