A man who formerly served as an education advisor and who worked on the Education Accord before stepping away from the process is dismayed to hear that the weighty document contains fictitious citations.

Josh Lepawsky was responding to a CBC Investigates report that indicates the massive 10-year plan cites numerous sources that don’t exist.

Lepawsky told VOCM Open Line with Paddy Daly that his concerns were piqued with the impression that many of the outcomes outlined in the report were ” pre-determined.” He was also concerned about the “top-down” nature of the process.

“There were things that government wanted to have said in terms of orienting things around the education system that were more or less decided in advance of the process. And as a representative of the faculty union at the time, as those problems became more apparent, we were just unwilling to lend our credibility to the process any longer.”

According to CBC, the report includes references to 15 sources that don’t exist. Lepawsky says the only reason for citations is to bolster the trustworthiness of the claims made in a report. If those references don’t exist, it undermines the report as a whole.

“You’re crafting a document that has the semblance of a ‘scientific,’ if you want to use that word, kind of analysis. It has the trappings of it, the appearance of it, but no actual substance.”

VOCM News has reached out to the Department of Education for a response.