The province of Quebec has made news again by drastically increasing out-of-province university tuition fees for the province's three English language universities, McGill, Concordia and Bishops
Premier François Legault says this will help protect the French language by limiting the number of anglophones studying in Quebec. "It's nothing against anglophones", he assures us, "it's a question of equality for French universities". Equality? Right. Quebec's Minister of Higher Education says that it will "balance" the funding of the English and French universities in the province (in some way).
Tuition fees for these universities will nearly double, from $9,000 to $17,000, for out-of-province students, while overseas students will pay at least $20,000. (For reference, in-province fees for Quebeckers are just $3,000.) This will seriously disincentivize the English universities, which are much more popular with out-of-province and overseas students, as well as much more successful and renowned. It is a tax on language pollution, but it will have much more far-reaching effects than just reducing demand for a few English language universities. The amounts of money involved aren't that large in the context of the provincial budget, but this is a matter of principle for Legault and the CAQ.
In his crusade to boost French in Quebec at the expense of English, Legault seems happy to throw the province's best universities under the proverbial bus. Student unions are calling the move discriminatory and elitist, and are considering more robust opposition. At the very least, it taints the universities' - and Montréal's, and the province in general's - international reputation. Bishop's, by far the smallest of the three, and the most reliant on out-of-province fees, may see its whole business model upended and its very existence may be imperilled, according to its principal.
But, for the CAQ, the French language is paramount, common sense be damned.
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