My friend, Ian Cumming, has a treasure trove of e-mails revealing that the University of Guelph and the Ontario government spurned Chinese proposals to educate students at Kemptville College, the college they have decided to close.
"In August 2009 Dr Y Wang and Dr Lui Yuang from the Henan Vocational College of Agriculture in Zhen Zeng City, located in China's largest agriculture province, met at Kemptville College with the Ontario Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Dr Don Mercer, who teaches at the facility," Cumming writes.
"While this exploratory meeting yielded nothing concrete, in 2010 a Hanan delegation from China, meeting at Kemptville, proposed an affiliation with the College which would provide 200 Chinese students per year for a four-year Vocational Agricultural educational training program.
"Ontario Farmer (for whom Cumming reports) has been provided details of the 2010 meeting, proposing 800 agriculture Chinese students at Kemptville. However, it was not successful nor was it made public.
"Two other subsequent Chinese groups approached soon after, interested in affiliating with Kemptville College, but these overtures failed too.
"At the moment, after the College's announced closing, the Chinese are again seriously involved in having the Kemptville facility as an agriculture college.
"A May 23rd email from an interested Chinese organization to the committee member at the forefront of facilitating the initiative states: 'Certainly we all like the facility very much, but we got to figure out how we can work together to make this school full of students to help local economy. We do have a number of Chinese agrischools to support this initiative. I guess we have to wait until the administration matter is resolved.'."
So what's the problem, UG and OMAFRA? And why have you kept this secret?
