Voting method, tuition fees for foreign students, salaries of public sector employees: elected representatives of the National Assembly brought a multitude of files to the Salon Bleu using petitions this year. Overview.
No petition has received more attention this year than the one filed by Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy at the end of November to ask “to cancel the increase in tuition fees imposed on international and non-resident Canadian students.” of Quebec for the academic year beginning in September 2024.”
This measure was the subject of an announcement by the Minister of Higher Education, Pascal Déry, in October. Quebec intends to impose a minimum university rate of $17,000 on all students from the rest of Canada and $20,000 on those from abroad.
The petition sponsored by Mme Rizqy, who obtained 33,342 signatures, deplores that the increase was “made without consent or consultation of student associations” and warns of the “devastating financial repercussions” that it could have on small English-speaking universities, like Bishop’s.
English-speaking universities also made a new offer to François Legault’s government this weekend to try to lessen the impact of his decision. An announcement from Quebec on this subject should take place this week.
In third place among the petitions presented in the House this year is a document once again requesting a reform of the voting system, two years after its abandonment by the Legault government.
The petition, filed last week by PQ MP Pascal Bérubé, collected 21,844 signatures. She calls for the establishment of a compensatory mixed proportional voting system with regional lists. This is specifically what Prime Minister Legault was committed to putting in place when he was in opposition.
Launched by the New Democracy Movement, the petition denounces the “distortion” of the vote in the last elections. Four parties having amassed 60% of the vote then obtained less than 30% of the seats in Parliament. The Conservative Party of Quebec, which also positioned itself in favor of reform at its November convention, did not have the right to a single deputy despite the 13% collected.
A petition sponsored by the Coalition Avenir Québec managed to accumulate 23,650 signatures this year. Submitted in May 2023 by MP Simon Allaire, in the wake of the death of a Sûreté du Québec police officer at the hands of a man with a psychiatric history, it demands “better supervision of people whose mental state is disturbed “.
Petitions brought by Québec solidaire follow to demand “fair wage increases in the public sector” (12,138 signatures) and to “invest in public health care and services and reduce recourse to the private sector” (8,952 signatures).