When Quebec’s ruling CAQ party lost a by-election to the separatist Parti Québécois on October 2, a chastened Premier Francois Legault did the best he could and he went to find a new windmill to tilt. He found one of the three English-speaking universities in the province.
Last Friday, his government unveiled changes to university tuition policy that will have a surprising effect: Starting in the fall of 2024, annual tuition for new out-of-province undergraduates enrolling at McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s universities will nearly double. to $17,000 from about $9,000 (tuition for Quebec residents is unchanged).
These additional funds will be collected by the government. The government is also reversing a previous policy and will now collect about $17,000 of the much higher fees paid by international students, who are far more likely to attend an English-language university in Quebec than a French-language one.
The government says these extra dollars will be used to fund French-speaking universities to the tune of about $100 million a year.
The new policy is a disaster for Quebec’s three English-speaking universities. A look at the undergraduate tuition fees for out-of-province Canadians at universities across the country – which top $9,000 a year – makes it clear that the three universities will be out of reach for all but the wealthiest non-Quebecers. and will deprive them of tens of millions in tuition revenue.
Although the policy will affect both French-speakers living outside Quebec and English-speakers, that is irrelevant to the debate. The politics stated objectives are two-fold: to stop subsidizing the university education of “English-speaking Canadians” who do not live in Quebec after they graduate. and discourage them from coming in the first place, because their monolingual presence in Montreal threatens the French language.
This is an obvious attempt by the Legault government to demonize English-speaking universities in the eyes of the public and justify any damage to their finances.
It takes a small mind to believe that one part of the country contributing to the cost of educating students from another part of the country is somehow unfair – especially in light of the fact that Quebec will receive $28.7 billion in balancing and transfer payments in the 2023-24 fiscal year. There are better ways for Mr Legault to fund French universities than to blow up McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s.
But then the opportunistic focus on identity politics is Mr. Legault’s specialty. He was elected premier in 2018 promising to reduce immigration rates in Quebec and introduce a values test for newcomers. Once in office, his government banned some provincial employees from wearing religious symbols at work, a draconian law that survives only thanks to the Constitution’s illegal clause.
It is self-serving for his government to suddenly focus on students who order pitchers of beer in English on Boulevard Saint-Laurent for three years and then leave the province for good, when in fact the 2021 census data showed that its population share Quebecers who can converse in French rose to 93.7%.
There is also a contradiction between not wanting English-speaking undergraduates to come to Quebec at all, in order to keep the streets of Montreal safe from the English, while also relying on the higher tuition fees to fund French-speaking universities. How does this work? Is it now okay to harm the French language as long as the government can make money from it?
Finally, there is the reality that Quebec is competing for talent and investment on a global scale, or should be. But between restrictive new language rules for new entrants and businesses that came into force last year, and now an all-out war at the province’s English-speaking universities – including McGill, one of leading in the world – The province’s messages to the international community will require some detail.
The rest of Canada, too, will have questions. If Quebec is going to rely on a principle that says it should not subsidize the education of students from other provinces, isn’t there a risk that they will respond in kind?
It is too sad for words. Mr. Legault lost a seat in the National Assembly, and his instinctive response was to trap Quebecers behind an ever-higher wall.