(Quebec) The political battle shifts to legal terrain: McGill and Concordia universities are contesting before the Superior Court of Quebec the Legault government’s new policy relating to tuition fees imposed on students from other Canadian provinces and abroad.
In separate but similar appeals filed Friday, the two English-speaking institutions in Montreal ask the court to suspend the application of this policy and then to rule on the merits of the question.
McGill and Concordia invoke the Canadian and Quebec charters of rights and freedoms, alleging that the new policy is discriminatory. The government is violating equality between French and English speakers and ignoring its responsibility to protect Quebec’s English minority, according to the two universities.
McGill argues that the new policy results from “an unreasonable exercise of the power conferred on the Minister of Higher Education,” Pascale Déry. The measures announced in December are, according to her, “incompatible with the mission entrusted to the minister under the Higher Education Act”. They were adopted “without proper consultation and following an unfair process,” she maintains.
She adds that the new tuition fees constitute “a disguised and illegal tax, imposed without the authorization of the National Assembly”. They also create “unconstitutional obstacles to interprovincial trade, thereby limiting the mobility of students, the choice of their university and access to education.”
Concordia also notes “numerous aspects of the policy which violate fundamental principles of administrative law as well as the Canadian and Quebec charters”.
“The government has considerably increased tuition fees, but only for students from other provinces who attend an English-speaking university, and it imposed a new fee structure on foreign students, which will have harmful financial and disproportionate for English-speaking universities,” writes rector Graham Carr in a message sent to the Concordia community.
“The government is destabilizing our recruitment plan, is weakening our university and reducing our revenues, which will put us in a precarious financial situation,” Mr. Carr said in an interview. I tried to do something about it, but without much success. So now we are at a place where it seems like legal recourse is our last resort. »
He said he was disappointed to have had to come to this and said the decision was “not taken lightly”.
“As an English-speaking university, a university of a minority community, the government has a responsibility to take into account and take into consideration the values of our establishment and to be able to ensure that when it makes new policies, it causes the least disruption. possible harm to our establishments and institutions. Unfortunately, we have the impression that he tried to do just the opposite with the policy that was announced. »
Minister Pascale Déry decided in December that tuition fees will increase from $9,000 to $12,000 per year for Canadian students not residing in Quebec, starting next fall. This is an increase of 33%, lower than that initially envisaged by Quebec. This measure affects McGill and Concordia – Bishop’s benefits from a form of exemption. Students from the rest of Canada who study at a French-speaking university will continue to pay $9,000.
The additional money collected from this clientele of McGill and Concordia will be used to better finance French-speaking universities.
For foreign students, Quebec has decided to set a floor rate of $20,000, an amount from which it will receive approximately $3,000. Here again, the prize pool will be redistributed to French-speaking universities.
A government advisory committee issued an unfavorable opinion regarding this new pricing policy.
The Legault government justified its new policy by saying that it is necessary to rebalance the funding of French-speaking and English-speaking universities and that it is necessary to slow the decline of French in Montreal. “When I look at the number of English-speaking students in Quebec, it threatens the survival of French,” said Prime Minister François Legault last fall. “There is a question of fairness,” he added. Quebec taxpayers do not have to pay for the training of students outside Quebec. »