UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS
Ontario: The new pragmatism

They threw a party for Laurentian University last June.  

About 200 academic, business and political VIPs from the northern Ontario city of Sudbury raised glasses at the local reception, held in the industrial-chic headquarters of the homegrown Technica Mining company, where gold-and-white balloons rose toward the rafters. Hosted by the company's founder and CEO, Mario Grossi, and by Michael Di Brina, co-founder and president of the financial planning company Gold Leaf (both Laurentian alumni), the glittery event was a "gesture of confidence in Laurentian's future, in its leadership and its profound value to our community," said master of ceremonies David Di Brina, a managing partner at Gold Leaf and Michael's son. 

The celebratory mood was a welcome change from the aura of despair that enveloped Laurentian in February 2021, when it became the first and only public university in Canada to declare insolvency under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act. The university abruptly cancelled dozens of programs, eliminated nearly a quarter of its faculty and staff, and discontinued its federation with three smaller universities, Huntington, Thornloe and Université de Sudbury. The action also led to a plunge in enrolment and a hard look not only at what had gone wrong at Laurentian Ontario's auditor general found that ill-advised capital expansion and weak governance were mostly to blame, exacerbated by provincially mandated tuition cuts but also what might go wrong at other universities.  

Four years of painful restructuring, government intervention and leadership change later, things are turning around for the mid-sized, bilingual university. Admission confirmations from Ontario high school students in June 2025 were up more than 23 percent over the previous year, though still lower than numbers in the late 2010s. And while Laurentian formally exited bankruptcy protection in late 2022, it was still wrapping up sales of some of its real estate to the province this past summer, intended to help pay off its creditors. Billing itself "Canada's mining university" in a city built on mineral extraction, Laurentian aims to be part of the Ontario government's ambitions to develop the province's critical minerals industry.

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