Following the Quebec government’s decision to maintain a tuition hike for out-of-province students, alongside McGill’s faculty and staff unionization efforts, the university is implementing a $45 million CAD budget cut for the 2025-2026 fiscal year (FY2025-26). This measure coincides with the administration’s intensified anti-union stance: McGill has spent over $1 million CAD in the past five years alone fighting unions.
Despite having its own in-house legal counsel, McGill has retained an external legal counsel for negotiations with faculty unions. Documents obtained by The Rover indicate that Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG), the external law firm McGill employs in discussions with unions, costs the university approximately $400,000 CAD annually.
In an interview with The Tribune, Barry Eidlin, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and second vice-president (VP) of the Association of McGill Professors of the Faculty of Arts (AMPFA), explained that McGill’s retention of BLG sends a strong signal to the faculty unions at the bargaining table.
“This [legal] counsel suggests that they are taking a very hard-nosed approach,” Eidlin said. “The reason that they’re going to outside counsel is precisely because they want the special expertise in avoidance. Or at least, if not avoidance, mitigation.”
McGill’s decision to hire BLG, who has previously been involved in other major labour disputes, has prompted criticism from some faculty representatives, including Jonathan Nehme, president of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE).
“That decision is well-reflective of the way McGill acts as an employer,” Nehme explained in an interview with The Tribune. “Their representatives are very hostile to unionization efforts and actively act against union members being made aware of the fact that their union exists. McGill hiring professional mercenary union busters fits with that.”
In a written statement to The Tribune, McGill’s Media Relations Office (MRO) maintained that the university is open to negotiation.
“The legal fees incurred by McGill for labour relation matters are related to various files,” the MRO wrote. “McGill welcomes discussions with all its association and union partners and appreciates the time they dedicate to negotiating. We firmly believe that the best agreements are reached at the bargaining table.”
Retaining external legal counsel during a period of budgetary reductions has drawn scrutiny from some faculty representatives, who have questioned whether academic cuts are occurring alongside sustained legal expenditures. The McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT) President Steve Jordan and President-Elect Reghan James Hill have filed an access to information and privacy (ATIP) request regarding the university’s expenditures.
“In 2026, I would encourage the Vice-President (Administration and Finance) to disclose the amounts McGill University has paid to other law firms in connection with this matter,” wrote Jordan and James Hill in a joint statement to The Tribune. “The lack of transparency also raises legitimate questions about how much the university might spend each year on litigation aimed at preventing or impeding reasonable [ATIP] requests.”
Eidlin argued that these developments reflect what he describes as a broader corporatization of the university.
“With the change and structure of the university toward this more corporate model, it became increasingly clear that you had this administrative layer that had developed into a separate form, separate from the faculty and the rest of the university,” said Eidlin.
Eidlin also highlighted that administrative roles have become professionalized career tracks rather than temporary service roles undertaken by faculty, likening the process to “the academic version of climbing the corporate ladder.”
Nehme emphasized some of the university’s choices that push this corporate image.
“The way [the university has been] restructuring [its] budget, the way they treat labour disputes et cetera, to even the fact that they renamed the Principal to President is extremely characteristic of McGill choosing to move forward with running itself as a for-profit corporation instead of a public academic institution,” Nehme said.
In the Department of Sociology, Eidlin mentioned that the number of faculty members has declined by approximately 40 per cent over the past decade. Graduate student representatives describe similar pressures. Dallas Jokic, president of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), said that 21 per cent of teaching assistant (TA) positions in the Department of English were cut between Fall 2024 and Fall 2025. Eidlin suggested that the upper administration has split off from the rest of the university.
“It is like this bifurcation where the segment of the university is not experiencing austerity,” he said.
Jokic also pointed out that cuts to TA hours degrade the quality of education at McGill.
“Cuts tend to make professors turn away from qualitative learning and assessments and towards those which are easier to grade,” Jokic said. “That means less personalized feedback on essays and more multiple-choice tests.”
Faculty representatives also pointed to a widening pay gap between academic staff and senior administration. A report by the Association of McGill Professors of Science (AMPS) found that expenditures on director and manager salaries from operating funds increased by 118 per cent over the past decade, adjusted for inflation. Contrastingly, the salary mass for full-time academic staff rose by six per cent.
“Professors’ salaries are not keeping pace with inflation, even when professors’ performance evaluations are formally rated as exceptional,” noted Jordan and James Hill. “These concerns have led MAUT, for the first time in its history, to formally reject the administration’s proposed (2026) salary policy.”
Eidlin and Jokic both emphasized that the growing administrative share of operating funds signals a shift from collegial governance toward more centralized, managerial modes. In a written statement to The Tribune, MAUT revealed that it is currently conducting a survey which suggests that concerns about centralization are widespread among academic staff.
“A recurring theme among academic staff was concern about what our members describe as increasing centralization or decision-making and, in some cases, shifts toward managerial or corporate modes of governance.”
These concerns have coincided with unionization efforts across McGill’s faculties. The Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) received union certification in late 2022. AMPFA and the Association of McGill Professors of Education (AMPE) followed. In 2024, AMPL voted to strike in August, going into the start of the fall semester. Days before the vote, McGill Provost Christopher Manfredi and VP Administration & Finance Fabrice Labeau sent emails to AMPL members addressing the potential strike. Later that year, the Tribunal administratif du travail found that McGill had violated the Quebec Labour Code by interfering in the unionization process. Global News reported that the university defended its actions by insisting that it had followed all procedures.
The disparity between fiscal restraint and administrative growth has intensified scrutiny over how authority and resources are distributed within the university. For representatives of faculty unions, unionization is a mechanism to formalize bargaining power. For the administration, it remains part of routine labour relations within a complex financial environment. Eidlin highlighted this as the most complex part of labour matters.
“One of the things that I’ve spent a lot of my time as a labour researcher, getting my head around, is the degree to which employers attach an extremely high value to retaining control of the workplace,” Eidlin concluded. “It is a very high price that they are willing to pay. I think that’s also part of the dynamic that we’re seeing here, is what premium management places on retaining control of the workplace.”
