Are a student’s learning conditions optimal when his desk is next to a boiler collecting water leaks from the broken roof? This absurd question apparently arises in many educational establishments in Quebec which are struggling with such deterioration of their infrastructure that they are sometimes reduced to condemning spaces.
Since December, this has been the case at Cégep de Saint-Laurent. The duty We recently learned that it had to extend the closure of its Pavilion B, closed since last December due to problems so serious that they threatened security. The situation worries and revolts staff and students, who will suffer the repercussions of this emergency closure for a long time to come, because the repair work on the heritage building is not light.
This kind of everyday scene has become common in the vast construction site called Quebec. From its roads to its schools, including its hospitals, CEGEPs and universities, our beautiful nation has neglected the maintenance of its infrastructures to the point where today they are deteriorating at high speed. Leaking roofs, windows replace, heating and ventilation systems to be redone: these are just some of the flaws identified. The fact of having skimped on maintenance is now resulting in accelerated decline. This all comes at a time when the construction sector is overheating, which will neither reduce the bill nor the repair times.
In this Quebec with shaky foundations, a network is trying to get out of the game. Discreet, stuck between the demands of universities and schools, the college network also sees its buildings and equipment deteriorate from year to year, the funding obtained not enough. According to the latest data revealed on the sidelines of the tabling of the Quebec budget, the 48 CEGEPs in Quebec have seen the sum of their building maintenance needs literally double in the space of three years, to now reach 700 million of dollars.
The document Annual public infrastructure investment management plans, linked to the 2024-2025 expenditure budget, depicts a college network deteriorating slowly, but surely, due only to “normal wear and tear of equipment that has reached the end of its useful life”. 65% of the network’s 995 buildings receive D and E ratings, which qualify dilapidated equipment. The remaining 35% have grades A, B or C, considered satisfactory. The number of buildings in these groups fell by a further 14% in the space of a year.
The Quebec government is not insensitive to the problem, since year after year, it continues to inject huge sums into the Quebec Infrastructure Plan. The 2024-2034 PQI provides that Quebec will invest $153 billion, 62% of which will be allocated to work aimed at ensuring the sustainability of public infrastructure. But the budgets seem destined to be insufficient, because the problems of deterioration of buildings are such that they have reached what experts call a contagion phase, that is to say that one problem immediately leads to another, each one as serious and urgent as the last.
Last year, Prime Minister François Legault and his Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, created quite a stir by daring to question the calculation method used by school service centers to assess the dilapidation of their buildings. Perhaps panicked by the galloping bill and the infinite scale of the building maintenance deficit, elected officials did not gain many points by so openly criticizing this evaluation. They had perhaps forgotten that the disintegration of infrastructure is no secret since this dilapidation takes place in the open. In 2019, the Auditor General (AG) of Quebec made serious criticisms of the government for its management and maintenance planning of school equipment. This spring, the VG is launching an audit on the management of the college network’s real estate portfolio, the conclusions of which we will impatiently await.
All these recriminations and disappointments only concern the “maintenance” aspect of the equipment, which takes no account of what the college network would need to develop new infrastructures intended to guarantee the success of its future college education. Disappointed by the “insufficient measures” contained in the last budget, the Fédération des cégeps wants more to also improve the reception capacity of its establishments. She hopes to build, not just maintain! Success continues to be the network’s primary goal, but as we see, there are bumps in the road. When the roof leaks, learning conditions cannot be optimal.