April 20, 2026

Oulton College opened its expanded Elmwood Health Campus in Moncton last week. The $3M expansion began in 2025 with the goal of adding 300 new health-care program seats. The expanded facilities include simulation labs and modern clinical training spaces. “By expanding our nursing and allied health programs, we are increasing access to high-quality education and preparing more graduates to step directly into critical roles across the province,” explained Oulton President Darcie Reidpath.

McGill University has begun the implementation phase of its McGill Accessibility Strategy. The strategy was proposed to the university’s senate in 2025 in order to improve accessibility across the university community. Implementation will be led by the Accessibility Strategy Implementation Committee and will involve consultation with members of disability communities. Work will also be supported by five subcommittees dedicated to specific areas: Student Experience, Workforce, Spaces, Outreach, and Research and Knowledge. McGill Accessibility Advisor Catherine Roy said that coordination across units has been promising in the early phases of implementation. “Units are not just participating, they’re taking ownership of different pieces of the work,” said Roy.

Natasha Mrkic-Subotic (Capilano University) argues that the British Columbia postsecondary system needs to change its response to the technological shifts affecting the workforce. The issue, she says, is the time it takes for decisions to be made compared to the speed of change in the labour market, which increasingly relies on AI. Mrkic-Subotic makes several suggestions to mitigate these issues, including clearer institutional mandates, strategies for reading labour market signals and investment in employees. “None of this requires dismantling shared governance,” said Mrkic-Subotic. “It requires distinguishing between the decisions that genuinely need broad deliberation and the ones that have been caught in that process because no one built a faster lane.”

George Brown Polytechnic, Saskatchewan Polytechnic, and the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology have announced layoffs in response to declining enrolment and financial considerations. Sask Polytech shared that it had laid off 30 full-time and part-time employees in April, while SAIT is reportedly cutting more than 30 positions across multiple departments and programs. George Brown is reportedly planning to lay off 82 workers this summer and has submitted a Notice of Termination of Employment to the Government of Ontario’s Ministry of Labour. All three institutions cited changing international student policies and decreased enrolment when explaining the cuts.

Collège Ahuntsic, Redeemer University, and Tyndale University have recently announced changes to their programs. Ahuntsic is teaming up with several architecture and construction organizations to develop a training program focused on flood-resilient construction. Redeemer has added a new finance option to its Bachelor of Business Administration program, which will include learning opportunities such as student-managed investment funds, paid co-ops, and student exchanges. Finally, Tyndale’s Bachelor of Education program will be condensed to one year in keeping with recent provincial policy changes. This will allow students who have completed half of their teaching education requirements to start teaching in classroom settings while they finish their programs.

In a recent article for Inside Higher Ed, reporter Joshua Bay discusses Soka University of America’s compensation of undergraduate students involved in research and how this contributes to career preparedness. Bay writes that undergraduates can choose to complete a fully paid research assistantship program where they work with faculty on projects in a variety of disciplines. Soka Dean of Faculty Robert Hamersley said that the program focuses on engaging students in the research rather than putting them in clerical or support roles. “When you’re thinking about how to encourage student success, getting involved in research—and especially being able to present that research at conferences—is a really key thing,” said Hamersley.

Cégep de la Gaspésie et des Îles has begun construction on a multisport dojo. The cegep says that the new space, which will be located in the Marcel-Bujold pavilion, is the first-ever multisport dojo in Côte-de-Gaspé. It will provide a dedicated space for police technology program students. It will also be capable of offering space for training, events, and competitions for gymnastics, acrobatics, martial arts, and other activities. The space is expected to be completed in Fall 2026.

The Court of King’s Bench of Alberta recently heard arguments in speaker Frances Widdowson’s and former student Jonah Pickle’s legal challenge against the University of Lethbridge. In 2023, the lecture on academic freedom faced pushback from the community due to past statements by Widdowson. The talk was ultimately cancelled by ULethbridge. Widdowson and Pickle asserted that ULethbridge’s cancellation of the planned lecture was a violation of their Charter rights, while ULethbridge Lawyer Matthew Woodley argued that the decision was a result of genuine security concerns, and that the Charter largely did not apply to the case. The judge reviewing the case reserved his decision and will rule at a later date.

The Government of Canada has made an $815K investment into the Institut du Savoir Montfort, which will expand the Montfort Innovation Lab’s capacity. The lab will work with Collège La Cité, the University of Ottawa, and other regional and clinical partners to strengthen access to resources and support entrepreneurship within a Francophone and bilingual environment. This lab also supports businesses that are developing and commercializing digital health sector technologies. “We are strengthening collaboration between entrepreneurs, clinicians and researchers, while ensuring that our Francophone communities are participating in the innovation economy and influencing the development of health technologies that will deliver better outcomes and opportunities for patients,” said Canada’s Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mona Fortier.

The University of British Columbia has shared their sustainability achievements through the eyes of a single-use coffee cup. The “retiring” coffee cup shares the story of its decline toward obsolescence, beginning with UBC’s Zero Waste Food Ware Strategy in 2020 and continuing through the university’s Friendlier reusable container program and several faculty and staff sustainability programs. These programs, the cup says, diverted tens of thousands of kilograms of waste from landfills. The cup concludes that it is happy to make room for more sustainable approaches as the university works towards its Climate Action Plan 2030, saying, “I might be an endangered species, but I’m not bitter.”