It was with disbelief, not to say amazement, that we learned of the call for “research” on secularism, launched by the Secretariat for the Reform of Democratic Institutions, Access to Information and to secularism.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
As explained The Press in editorial1, researchers and non-profit organizations are invited to propose government-funded initiatives for research whose results should make it possible to “promote the Quebec model defined by the State Secularism Act “, with the requirement to publish the results “to a wide audience through various means of communication whose credibility is established”. We dare to believe that scientific colleagues will refuse to respond to such a political order where the conclusions are known in advance.
Let’s be clear, state interference in scientific research is a very serious attack on academic freedom. How not to fuel cynicism when this same government has positioned itself as a “great defender” of this freedom for a year?
How not to remain perplexed when the Cloutier commission, whose report on academic freedom was published last month, exposes the urgency of strengthening legal guidelines to better protect it?
The government can only be credible in its desire to support and defend academic freedom if it immediately withdraws this call for directed research.
Scholarships: another example of the CAQ’s harmful dirigisme
The announcement of the Perspectives scholarships last December, scholarships awarded to students who enroll in study programs identified as priorities by the government because of the needs of the labor market, is also proving to be a very worrying drift in higher education. This state interventionism towards certain college and university programs is a “false good idea”, likely to destabilize the education system and harm all study programs.
In addition, the government is offering an individual solution – direct scholarships to individuals – to a collective problem, that of the underfunding of public services for decades, which has led to poor working conditions and a shortage of labour. Instead, the government should improve student study conditions through universal measures affecting tuition fees and the current system of loans and bursaries.
Follow up on the report of the Cloutier commission
With only a few months left in the legislature, Minister of Higher Education Danielle McCann must recognize the problems affecting academic freedom and act quickly to implement the flagship recommendations of the Cloutier commission. In all respect for collegiality, it must work with the various actors and actresses of higher education in order to establish, in each college and university, better protections of academic freedom, in particular against threats from its own government.
Need we remind you that the higher education network should never be an instrument at the service of the government? The narrow vision of education proposed by the CAQ government – that of an education in the service of a political ideology and the economy – not only flouts academic freedom, but goes against a society inclusive, democratic and open to the world.