While many celebrate, student group CLASSE says they will now fight for free education
Melissa Sundardas
News Editor
After months of facing off with their government, Québec students have stopped the proposed tuition fee hike in its tracks. A summit on education will be held before December to host negotiations regarding the financing of Québec universities.
Within its first 24 hours in office, the new Parti Québecois government repealed the Liberal government policy regarding university tuition fee hikes.
According to Premier Pauline Marois, in a statement made to the Canadian Press, tuition will go back to $2,168, giving Québec students the lowest tuition fees in Canada. With the previously planned increases, tuition in Québec this year would have gone up by $600, and would have continued to increase in the years to follow.
“Although I was barely involved in the movement, I felt incredibly proud of my generation and what we accomplished,” says Laurence Pettigrew, first-year student at Laval University. “It was a long fight, and victory often seemed so distant, but so many people pushed through. It was unbelievable to watch.”
Alastair Woods, vp campaigns and advocacy for the York Federation of Students, says he thinks the government decision to halt the tuition hike is a tremendous victory for student action in Québec.
“It shows that with patience and persistence, students can meaningfully change public policy,” he says.
While this has been hailed as a triumph by students in the province, Québec student group CLASSE says they will continue to pressure the government to make post-secondary education free.
“We’re happy the tuition hike got cancelled, and that the new government decided to cancel
that measure, but at the same time, we’re still on our guards,” says Hugo Bonin, CLASSE spokesperson.
Maud Brunet Fontaine, a first-year student at Laval University, says she is satisfied with the
outcome of the student protests, and, has reservations about continuing to lobby for free tuition.
“Unlike many students, I think the strike should end now. We should be satisfied with what we got, and not try to fight for free tuition,” says Fontaine, who, despite being in her second year of university, has to complete her first-year requirements due to time lost during the student strike.
“They want to propose the indexation of future tuition fees and that would increase tuition fees by around one or three per cent,” says Bonin. “We’re against that because we are in favour of free tuition, so we’re waiting for the summit, and we’ll mobilize, and we’ll be present to defend the freeze in tuition.”
Pettigrew thinks the decision to stop tuition fee hikes is a temporary solution to a permanent problem, but disagrees with CLASSE’s stance on the topic.
“Although the originally planned raise was a little extreme, no raise whatsoever seems unrealistic,” she says.
Bonin says members of CLASSE believe that “mis-funding,” rather than underfunding, is the problem universities are facing.
“The universities in Québec receive more money than the universities in Ontario, and a lot of money in Québec is being poured into commercial research. It’s not really going into classrooms or teaching,” he says.
It’s important for students in Québec to remind themselves that it’s because of their mobilization that tuition fee freezes have been achieved, Bonin says.
With files from Munirul-Haq Raza, Ana Rancourt, and the Canadian Press
