Memorial University’s estimated $481-million deferred maintenance backlog is likely to expand further before a newly promised pot of ameliorating funds is fully delivered. The 2025 Newfoundland and Labrador budget earmarks $70 million to help catch up to a state of good repair, which is to be dispersed over an eight-year period.
That will cover about 14.5 per cent of the current backlog if it grows no larger before 2033. This comes after the provincial Auditor General, Denise Hanrahan, issued a scathing critique of Memorial’s facilities management practices earlier this year.
Her report highlighted the large gap between recognized good practices for asset upkeep, based on investing roughly 2 per cent of portfolio value annually, with the university’s average maintenance and renewal expenditure of 0.26 of portfolio value. Furthermore, students are directly tapped to cover these costs through a campus renewal fee that raises approximately $7.8 million annually.
The Newfoundland and Labrador government has now pledged to offset that amount, which is expected to save undergraduate students $500 per year. It will also kick in an additional $13.7 million for Memorial’s operating budget this year.
“Our annual investment in Memorial University represents more than 70 per cent of the university’s operating budget. This is one of the largest provincial investments in a public university in Canada,” Finance Minister Siobhan Coady said in her budget speech. “We are all aware of Memorial’s challenge to improve its infrastructure.”
The 2025 budget also includes funds for physical plant upgrades at the Prince Philip Drive campus of the College of the North Atlantic in St. John’s, where more than $3 million has been allocated for a new electric boiler.
