The University of Ottawa (U of O) annually contributed $7.4 billion to the Canadian economy, according to a report conducted by the Conference Board of Canada, a non-partisan think tank.
Much of U of O’s economic contribution is a result of research and development, which has increased by 75 per cent since 2003, according to the report. Other areas researchers looked at were operational spending, earning premiums of its graduates, and the school’s efforts to expand bilingual education.
The economic impact assessment found U of O spent $324 million in 2013 on research, which is third highest among Ontario universities.
Researchers pegged the total annual contribution to Canada’s GDP to be around $1.5 billion—less than one per cent. The report also claimed the school has generated 29,500 jobs in Canada, with 24,000 of them in the Ottawa-Gatineau area.
The last time an impact assessment was done at U of O was in 2012, when it found the school to have contributed $4.12 billion annually to the Canadian economy.
“It confirmed that the University of Ottawa has a very significant economic impact on the region and also the country. It confirms that, but it puts some figures behind our intuition,” said Serge Nadeau, the associate vice-president of U of O’s Institutional Research and Planning.
Economic impact assessments are often done by institutions, bodies of government, sports teams, and businesses to measure economic performance and the effects of macro and micro economic changes. Methodology has been a primary source of controversy in economic circles.
Carleton University economics professor Nicholas Rowe said he’s deeply suspicious of impact assessments as poor measurements that treat all costs as benefits to the economy.
“Let me tell you about normal simple economic impact assessments—it’s really, really, crude,” he said. “Basically what they do is add up all the costs of doing something and multiply it by two, and say that’s the economic impact of our university, or sport team, or whatever. It makes a nice living for economists.”
Nadeau said, however, this particular report was done well.
“I’m an economist, so I would be the first one to say that economics is an inexact science,” he said. “We looked at the study and thought it was quite well done. However, if some economist would disagree with us, that’s fine.”
The study cost U of O $65,000 to $70,000 to conduct.
“One thing is for sure, we want the public to acknowledge the university as an agent of economic growth,” Nadeau said. “From a social point of view, this is important.”
