Prime Minister Legault was busy drowning the fish when Paul St-Pierre Plamondon asked him, in light of the information contained in the budget documents published on Tuesday, how he could accept that over the next ten years the universities of English language will share 60% of infrastructure spending on higher education.
Mr. Legault has tried to divert the subject by accusing the PQ of taking the opposite view of René Lévesque’s position on access to English CEGEP, but the fact remains that investments in infrastructure will represent $28,500 per student. at McGill and $357 at UQAM.
Historically, the resources made available to Anglo-Quebec universities have been disproportionate to the percentage of Anglophones living in Quebec, but no government has dared to tackle this inequity for fear of being accused of persecuting English-speaking community. Regardless of the party in power, the subject is taboo.
However, infrastructure is only the tip of the iceberg. In February 2013, the leader of the defunct National Option, Jean-Martin Aussant, and his ex-colleague Pierre Curzi, who had left the PQ at the same time as him, had made public a study which showed that English-speaking universities received also a disproportionate share of research funds and private donations, not to mention the large number of foreign students who attend at great expense.
In total, they accounted for 25% of all students in Quebec and nearly 30% of funding, while the Anglophone community represented 8.3% of the Quebec population.
The funding of universities was at the heart of the debate on tuition fees at the Higher Education Summit held the following week on the initiative of the Marois government, but the problem of the inequitable distribution of the sums allocated to them had not been raised.
The researcher Frédéric Lacroix devoted a chapter of his book to it. Why is Law 101 a failure? (2020), and he returned to the subject the following year in an article published in National Action under the title “In Quebec, English universities are favoured”.
The subsidies that the Government of Quebec paid in 2020-2021 for each student, more precisely the equivalent of a full-time student (EETP), totaled $7,048 on the French side and $5,453 on the English side, after adjustment according to the revenue from fees charged to international or non-resident Canadian students.
On the other hand, funds from federal agencies, particularly research grants, clearly benefit English-speaking universities. In 2017-2018, Ottawa paid them $2,663/EETP, while Francophones were entitled to $1,430/EETP.
All revenue sources combined, Mr. Lacroix calculated that Anglophone institutions received $16,095/EETP, compared to $12,507/EETP for Francophone institutions, a difference of 28.7%. “Quebec’s university funding policy does not really seek to mitigate the considerable structural disadvantage that affects French-language universities,” noted the researcher.
In addition to the natural attractiveness of English, greater funding enables English-speaking universities to offer a quality and environment that is more attractive to foreign students, even French-speaking ones, and to a good number of Quebec students. To be competitive, French-speaking establishments have developed the reflex of multiplying programs in English.
If the Université de Montréal or Laval, whose reputation is solidly established, manage to stay in the game, the various components of the Université du Québec have more difficulty in following the parade, including UQAM, whose staff have declined significantly in recent years. Francophone universities are the poor relatives of the system, but not all are equal in this poverty.
When he was Minister of Higher Education in the Marois government, Pierre Duchesne thought of modifying the funding formula to favor the universities that take in the most first-generation students, that is to say those who are first in their family to go to university.
According to a report from Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, there was the highest rate (70%) in Canada of first generation students in three of the regional components of the UQ (Abitibi, Chicoutimi, Rimouski). Not surprisingly, McGill had the lowest rate (20%). At Université de Montréal and Université Laval, it was 50%.
If Mr. Duchesne had followed through on his project, he would certainly have been accused of having found a roundabout way of penalizing English-speaking universities, whereas their French-speaking counterparts have always been penalized.
There are undoubtedly other ways of establishing a certain equalization within the Quebec university network, but it is still necessary to have the will. It’s all very well to want to reduce the wealth gap with Ontario, but there are more urgent catch-ups. This one would also greatly contribute to satisfying Mr. Legault’s obsession.