Deadline day for Laurentian University for documents ordered by province under Speaker's warrant

Laurentian University has a deadline to meet on Tuesday. 

This is the date set by the Ontario legislature specified in a rarely-used Speaker's Warrant in December to compel the university to hand over certain documents that Laurentian had refused to disclose to the auditor general, who is investigating what led to the university's insolvency. 

Laurentian responded by challenging the warrant in court, but last week a judge sided with the province, except for a small number of documents covered by pre-existing court orders.

With the Feb. 1 deadline approaching, Laurentian University did not reply to requests for comment on Monday, but said in a statement last week that it will "comply with all of its legal obligations."

Tom Fenske, the president of the Laurentian University Staff Union, says some of his 200 members are among the university employees who have been busy compiling the documents to send to Queen's Park. 

He is hopeful the end of this argument over the information will mark a "tide change" in the financial crisis at the Sudbury school.

"To see everything and I mean everything at how we got here will help us determine what's happened here? Who did it? What were the decisions? Because that's still all very unsure," said Fenske. 

"These are public dollars. And we should mirror that with public access to information and when that's not happening you start ask a question like 'What is going on?'"

The documents are not being made public, but will be provided to the legislature and the auditor general to help inform their conclusions about the roots of the financial crisis at Laurentian. 

Tuesday also marks the one year anniversary of Laurentian University declaring insolvency and becoming the first public institution to seek creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).

That process was recently extended until May 31. 

Adam Kirkwood, a graduate biology student, remembers being shocked a year ago when he first heard about the insolvency through news reports.

He says conducting his research has been "very, very difficult" with much of the funding still "locked down" and paying for some expenses out of his own pocket and waiting months to be reimbursed.

Kirkwood says when he tells a colleague he's from Laurentian, the conversation turns from his research and "it immediately shifts to talking about the university and it being the first to declare insolvency and asking what that's like."

"I wonder how that's going to follow me in my career. And I really just hope that people can look past the fact that I'm a graduate of Laurentian University and that I was trained by amazing professors," he said.

Simon Laflamme, who has worked at Laurentian for 38 years and is now the chair of the school of liberal studies, says the past year has gone "pretty well" but says it's hard not to be angry about what's happening to Laurentian.

"We almost all of us feel that, but we are focusing on what we have to do to rebuild the university," he said.