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CAUT Policies

Policy Statement on Openness and Transparency in Post-Secondary Institutions

1
Universities and colleges that receive public funds either from provincial governments or the Government of Canada through direct grants, student loans, scholarship programs, or other means of direct or indirect transfers have an obligation to use those funds in a responsible way. Universities and colleges must be accountable for their trusteeship of these public monies. Accountability demands openness and transparency. Universities and colleges must be open to public scrutiny, open in their accounts, open in their governance, policies and administration, open in their debates, and open in their decision-making processes. Openness and transparency must be the normal operating procedure for universities and colleges.

2
The decision-making structure and the financial operations of universities and colleges, as well as all of their governing boards, constituent bodies and committees, should be open and transparent. Meetings of such bodies may only be closed temporarily to deal with personnel or individual student issues, or the negotiation of contracts.¹ Academic staff involved in closed meetings or closed portions of meetings have a responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of these deliberations. The results of such closed deliberations should normally be reported in a public session as soon as possible.

3
Openness and transparency is a fundamental principle of research at universities and colleges. This precludes contractual relationships with corporate or other research partnerships that seek to impose secrecy on the research funded through such relationships, except where contracts require a limited waiting time (no more than 60 days) prior to publication in order to secure patent protection. Research results must be open and publishable as quickly as possible. To ensure such openness and transparency all research contracts should be reviewed by an independent committee such as the university or college’s Research Ethics Board.

4
Notwithstanding Article 3, all contracts, protocols and investigator agreements for sponsored research or clinical trials should expressly provide that the investigators shall not be prevented by the sponsor, or anyone, from informing research participants, co-investigators, research ethics boards, regulatory agencies, and the scientific community of risks to participants that the investigators identify during the research study or clinical trials or after the completion of the study or trials.

5
The principle of openness and transparency must also apply to all contractual/business relationships that are entered into by the university or college. In cases where entering into the contractual relationship is likely to raise ethical concerns or controversy, details of the proposed contractual relationships should be made public prior to their finalization.

6
Academic staff, support staff and students elected to decision-making bodies are expected to report to their constituents and should not be prevented from doing so by any rules of secrecy that may be enacted by the decision-making body.

7
The principle that openness and transparency is necessary for accountability also applies to government departments responsible for the direct or indirect funding of postsecondary education. These departments must also operate according to a policy of openness and transparency. This means that these departments should go beyond the minimum standard of openness and transparency offered in freedom of information legislation. Faculty Associations should also call upon their legislatures to develop policies on openness and transparency for all government departments.

8
Privacy legislation applies in whole or in part to postsecondary educational institutions. Governments and universities should not use either freedom of information or privacy legislation as a cloak of secrecy in which to shroud government and university policies. Where such legislation makes it impossible to adhere to the fundamental principle of openness and transparency, faculty associations should petition their legislature for amendments to remove such restrictions.

9
Information in personnel files must be labelled confidential and remain as such.  Such confidential information will be available only on a 'need to know' basis.  This means that such information will be available to all persons or committees charged with making personnel recommendations or decisions, and those making such recommendations or decisions are in turn obligated to respect the confidentiality of individuals.  All confidential information in turn is compellable should such recommendations or decisions become subject to disagreement and subsequently referred to a grievance/arbitration or other dispute resolution process.



Endnote
1. It being understood that “performance contracts” in the province of Quebec between a university and the Ministry are, like mission statements, public documents dealt with in an open and transparent fashion.