Maggie Macintosh, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Winnipeg Free Press

A University of Winnipeg employee has filed a whistleblower report that calls for a probe into overall operations at the post-secondary institution amid mounting concerns about its leadership.

The Free Press obtained a six-page submission to the Manitoba ombudsman about the publicly funded institution under president Todd Mondor.

It echoes concerns on campus about employee turnover, transparency about recent cost-cutting measures and new rules that censor protests and other activities at U of W.

The complaint was filed late last month. The ombudsman is assessing whether it requires further investigation.

“It might be unusual to have a whistleblower complaint, but that may be more reflective of the person who filed it rather than the culture at the U of W,” Mondor told the Free Press Monday in a rare interview.

Manitoba’s whistleblower protection legislation facilitates the disclosure and investigation of significant and serious wrongdoing within public bodies.

It was created to protect employees who have evidence of unethical or illegal activities.

U of W’s president defended his track record over the last three years — his five-year term began in April 2022 — at the helm of the school, saying he’s tried to be as transparent and collaborative as possible.

Mondor said that ethos is why he has organized seven town halls during his tenure and made it well known the university is projecting a significant deficit for 2025-2026.

Senior administration has primarily attributed the financial crunch to an unfair provincial funding formula and a drop in first-year international student enrolment.

Mondor said the number of new international students this year dropped by 10 per cent compared to 2023-2024.

While he said that percentage is expected to triple next year, he did not have a rough estimate of how much U of W expects to be in the red in a year’s time.

Public meeting minutes show he has told senate the shortfall could be between $4 million and $18 million.

The administration has announced numerous reductions to find cost savings.

Since the fall, they have included a hiring freeze, reduced discretionary spending and cancelling both an English-language program and the 2025 women’s soccer season.

The university has not revealed how much each measure has saved, but it did not end the recent fiscal year with a deficit.

The whistleblower is calling for an investigation into spending on external consultants and management positions.

U of W recently contracted Higher Education Strategy Associates, a Toronto-based consulting firm, to study Manitoba’s funding model for post-secondary education, conduct a campus space audit and develop its new strategic plan.

Mondor’s administration has also hired Show and Tell Agency, a marketing firm headquartered in the Exchange District, to create a brand strategy.

“A university that is financially challenged should be very careful about which consultants it hires for anything — for strategic plans and, certainly, for branding exercises,” said Peter Miller, president of the faculty association, echoing the whistleblower’s concerns about frivolous spending.

Miller said morale among his members is low and budget pressures are only one contributing factor. There has been a “fundamental shift” in how his employer of nearly a decade operates, said the associate professor and chair of the classics department.

“Faculty are being consulted less and are playing a less-central role in the governance of the institution,” he said.

One example is the administration updating a policy on accessing buildings and posting it online without consulting academics who are contractually entitled to have input on changes to their workplace, Miller noted.

The changes require outdoor event organizers to obtain explicit pre-approval from the administration and ban visitors outside regular school hours “unless authorized by security.” The updated policy explicitly prohibits camping on university grounds.

Those updates, as well as the drafting of an entirely new convocation policy that polices attire and activities, appear to respond to a recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests at universities in Winnipeg and across the country.

Protesters set up encampments both at the U of W and University of Manitoba, Mondor’s previous employer, last spring. A medical school valedictorian at the U of M made headlines after he urged fellow graduates to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Kelly Gorkoff, a researcher who has worked at U of W for 18 years, said a lot of her colleagues are concerned about the state of transparency and “the direction of the university.”

“I understand it’s tough to be an administrator. I wouldn’t want to do it, but I think they really need to consider what kind of university culture they want to manifest and to nurture. Universities have always been places of freedom of thinking, freedom of debate,” said the associate professor and chair of the criminal justice department.

Gorkoff said there is a disconnect between U of W leadership’s concerns about the suppression of academic freedom south of the border and its actions.

As far as Miller is concerned, convocation is an extension of what happens in the classroom, so it should be a place for debate, discussion and dissent.

He called it striking that U of W administration has written a graduation policy that would bar an attendee from holding up a sign that says “land back” or wearing a keffiyeh, a black-and-white headdress that is a symbol of the Palestinian liberation movement.

Asked about community concerns related to policy-making, Mondor said the university is formalizing existing practices and takes faculty input into consideration.

While indicating he is not leading the convocation policy process, the president said, “We don’t want to suppress anyone’s individual right to do whatever the heck they want.”

“That’s why it’s not live,” he said, adding the draft may not be approved and not go into effect, after all.

Mondor was asked for but did not provide the total cost of recent external contracts. He did, however, defend them as one-off expenses that drew on administrative budgets.

U of W originally planned a public budget town hall this month. The university now plans to table its fiscal blueprint in early June.

The Manitoba government did not directly respond to a question about whether it was aware of a whistleblower report involving the school.

“The ombudsman is the appropriate channel to deal with and investigate these matters,” a spokesperson for the department of advanced education said in a statement.

The ombudsman’s office indicated it cannot discuss specific inquiries or disclosures as they are treated confidentially.

The time it takes to assess disclosures and conduct investigations varies based on available information and the volume of inquiries, said Amie Lesyk, communications officer for the ombudsman.

Jill Perron has been Manitoba’s ombudsman since 2019.

Lesyk said the ombudsman receives an average of 25 whistleblower disclosures under Manitoba’s Public Interest Disclosure (Whistleblower Protection) Act annually.

A report on 2023-2024 activity shows 23 disclosures of wrongdoing were submitted; 16 of them, two of which were acted on, were closed.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

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