Daily Bulletin, Monday, February 27, 1995

FREEZING RAIN and snow have not shut the university today, although
some callers are clearly hoping UW would be closed.  Reminder: the
longstanding policy is that the university closes for the day if, and only
if, the Waterloo County Board of Education closes all its schools.  (Today
the board closed some rural schools, but not the city ones.)  The full
text of the current storm closing procedure can be found on UWinfo under
"Documents of Current Interest".

NOTE FROM CO-OP:  A memo of apology has arrived from the co-op education
department:

     The long line-up of co-op students in Needles Hall on Friday was
     due to an hour delay in the receipt of student ranking forms
     from the Data Processing Department.

     Co-op Education is sensitive to the inconvenience that this delay
     caused for students, some of whom arrived on campus specifically
     to pick up their ranking form.  The department is investigating the
     cause of problems like this in hopes that such trouble can be
     avoided in the future.

     In the meantime, sincere apologies are extended to all students who
     were faced with having to wait until the ranking forms were finally
     available.

TWO SHOVELS will be needed to accommodate all the VIP's, when the
groundbreaking ceremony is held Wednesday for the planned addition to
UW's Optometry building.  Expected are at least one Member of Parliament
and one Ontario legislator, representing the two levels of government that
are providing much of the money for the project.  The ground-breaking
will happen at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday, March 1, following a 2:15 ceremony
inside the building (in the third-floor faculty and staff lounge).

HEAVY SMOKERS don't find it easy to quit, even with the help of "community
intervention" programs.  That's the most prominent finding of a big 
international study that involved UW health studies researchers as well 
as people at McMaster University and several American institutions.  
Stretching over nine years, it was largely funded by the National Cancer 
Institute in the United States, to the tune of $45 million.  The results 
are front-page news in today's Toronto Star, after being published formally 
in the American Journal of Public Health.  UW's share of the work, through 
the Waterloo Smoking Projects group, involved stop-smoking programs in 
Brantford, Ontario.

SPORTS NOTES:  The hockey Warriors lost to Western 3-1 yesterday; that's
two losses in a row in the playoffs, and their season is over.  The
volleyball Warriors have had a reprieve, however, despite losing to
Toronto last week in the Ontario championships.  They'll get a bye into
the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union playoffs, to be held this
coming weekend, the athletics department confirmed this morning.  One other
score from the weekend: the basketball Warriors edged Guelph 67-65.

QUEBEC SUMMER:  The French departments of UW and Wilfrid Laurier University
will hold an "information evening" tonight about summer language programs
at the Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi.  It starts at 7 p.m. in the
faculty lounge, off the concourse at WLU.  Information: 884-1970 ext. 2396.

IT'S BUDGET DAY in Ottawa, as civil servants tremble with the expectation of
losing their traditional job security; 45,000 lost jobs are being rumoured.
The finance minister, Paul Martin, will speak in the House of Commons at
4:30, and by 5:30 his budget is expected to be available through, among
other media, the Internet.

Universities are breathing a trifle easier since Martin assured provincial
treasurers last week that he won't be making big cuts this year to transfer
payments for higher education and health.  Next year, yes, but not this year.
Still, changes to the amount of the transfers, and the rules that govern
them, are quite possible.  One proposal has been to lump all "Established
Programs Financing" transfers into a single cheque, dubbed "the mother of
all transfers".  That change would give the provinces more discretion over
how the money is spent.

Also of interest is the funding for research granting councils -- likely to
be reduced along with the budgets for most other federal agencies and
departments.  And Martin may say what the government intends to do about
supporting Canadian research and development through industry, the National
Research Council and other agencies.  A national "science and technology
review", begun last year, has not yet reported, but the budget may indicate
how much the government is willing to spend to implement whatever the
review does recommend.

And watch for news about taxes; tax credits (including those for tuition 
fees and education costs); support for international programs and cultural
agencies; and everything else on which the government spends money.

Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
888-4567 ext. 3004      credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca