MaKami College is now a nonprofit, removing a major barrier to public funding
The private vocational school has hired multiple UCP-connected lobbyists since the party came to power and directly employs one of the premier's former staffers.
In March 2023, MaKami College, whose board of directors has donated more than $17,000 to Premier Danielle Smith and the UCP, became the first for-profit school to be listed as an Independent Academic Institution (IAI) in Alberta.
Two years later, the college is now registered as a not-for-profit, removing a crucial barrier to it receiving public funding, a prospect which the provincial government has previously insisted wasn’t going to happen.
IAIs are essentially the post-secondary equivalent of charter schools. Their boards of governors aren’t appointed by the government, nor do their mandates require government approval.
The five other schools on the IAI list—Ambrose University, Burman University, Concordia University of Edmonton, the King’s University and St. Mary’s University—receive operational but not capital funding.
Since it was quietly added to the IAI list, an asterisk appears beside MaKami’s name indicating that it doesn’t receive public funds.
That might not be for much longer.
On Feb. 6, MaKami announced it “has successfully completed the final phase of its transition to becoming a public post-secondary institution by becoming a not-for-profit college.”
“Transitioning to a not-for-profit institution has always been part of our vision for establishing a lasting legacy as a college,” CEO Marija Pavkovic-Tovissi said in a news release that appears to be a slightly rewritten version of one that was posted on MaKami’s website on Jan. 8.
MaKami spokesperson Erika Barootes, Premier Danielle Smith’s former principal secretary and the director of issues management for the 2023 UCP campaign, posted the more recent release on LinkedIn.
“Today marked a major achievement for MaKami College,” wrote Barootes.
According to the provincial non-profits listing, however, MaKami was registered as an extra-provincial non-profit, meaning it has the option of setting up shop outside Alberta, on Aug. 26, 2024
UCP-connected lobbyists have repeatedly registered on MaKami’s behalf to make its case to the government since the UCP came to power.
Most recently, Enterprise Canada (not to be confused with the rental car company) registered to lobby the provincial government on MaKami’s behalf in December 2024, as well as July 2024, March 2024 and September 2023.
The designated lobbyists for MaKami are Colin Aitchison, who worked as a UCP communications staffer until June 2023, and Steve McLelan, who served as the director of research and policy for the UCP caucus until October 2020.
According to the registry, Aitchison and McLelan spoke to 18 governmental bodies, including the Premier’s Office, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Advanced Education, to “identify opportunities for MaKami College to continue to grow in Albertas [sic] post-secondary system.”
Prior to its IAI designation, MaKami hired New West Public Affairs, a firm founded by former Conservative MP Monte Solberg, to lobby the government.
Another New West lobbyist listed as having worked on the MaKami file is Sonia Kont, the UCP’s VP of fundraising.
New West registered to lobby the government on MaKami’s behalf on Oct. 11, 2022, the day Smith was sworn in as premier, after registering four times during Jason Kenney’s premiership.
That very day, Smith referenced Alberta’s “wonderful colleges, like MaKami College” during her first press conference as premier.
CEO Pavkovic-Tovissi, her husband and siblings, all of whom sit on the corporation’s board of directors, donated more than $15,000 to Premier Smith’s 2022 leadership campaign and the UCP, as reported exclusively by this newsletter in May 2023.
At the time, MaKami College spokesperson Kamea Stacey said that any suggestion of the college receiving preferential treatment because of its founding family’s political donations or well-connected lobbyists is “not based in facts.”
“MaKami College employs hundreds of people and has thousands of students annually. We are a non-partisan, educational institution. Suggesting otherwise would be false,” wrote Stacey.
Ministry of Advanced Education spokesperson Sam Blackett told this newsletter that MaKami “will not receive provincial grant funding nor are they being considered for grant funding.”
Since then, this outlet revealed that Pavkovic-Tovissi’s brother, Vladimir Pavkovic, donated an additional $2,000 to the UCP during the first half of 2023. It’s unclear whether this came before or after it received IAI designation.
In July 2023, MaKami hired Barootes as its director of external relations “to help Makami College transition from a private to public IAI college in Alberta,” according to Barootes’ LinkedIn.
That same month, the premier instructed Advanced Education Minister Rajan Sawhney to begin the process of allowing private vocational schools to confer diplomas and degrees, rather than just certificates.
"We are not going to be providing public funds to private colleges any time soon," Advanced Education Minister Rajan Sawhney assured the CBC before adding a crucial caveat. “Unless there is a compelling economic reason that's outlined very clearly.”
In May 2024, Barootes was tapped to lead a new Applied Politics and Public Affairs diploma program at MaKami, which the college advertised at a table at the September 2024 Canada Strong and Free Network regional conference in Red Deer.
The establishment of an Applied Politics and Public Affairs diploma, which the college bills as the “only program of its kind in Canada,” is a symbol of how much the college has grown since it opened in 2021 as a massage therapy school at Edmonton’s Capilano Mall.
In 2019, the college moved to the site of a former Sears department store in Bonnie Doon Mall, doubling in size. In 2021, it opened a second campus at Calgary’s Marlborough Mall.
In addition to its massage therapy and applied politics programs, MaKami offers early childhood education, personal training, health-care aide and basic security training certificates.
Now, with non-profit status, the college can be integrated seamlessly into Alberta’s partially publicly funded post-secondary system.
A request for comment sent to Barootes’s email listed on the Feb. 6 MaKami news release bounced back, with a message from Microsoft Office 365 saying it couldn’t be delivered to a different email with a MaKami College domain. This piece will be updated if Barootes replies.
An email to a Ministry of Advanced Education spokesperson went unacknowledged.