The Militant - November 28, 2011 -- Quebec students reject steep increase in tuition

Vol. 75/No. 43 November 28, 2011

Quebec students reject
steep increase in tuition

BY BEVERLY BERNARDO
MONTREAL—Chanting, “We want education; we don’t want to be indebted,” more than 20,000 students and their supporters from across Quebec marched downtown through the rain here November 10 to protest the Quebec government’s plan to raise tuition fees by $325 each year for the next five years.

The demonstration was part of a one-day boycott of classes voted on by some 200,000 university and cegep students. Widely referred to as colleges, cegeps provide pre-university public education in Quebec. On many campuses students picketed and rallied before getting on buses to come to the Quebec-wide protest here.

“We organized three buses to come,” Antoine Rail, an executive member of the cegep student association in Jonquière, told the Militant.

“Vanier College and Collège St-Laurent put our differences aside to fight for the same cause,” said Deborah Otter, a second year student at Vanier, an English-language cegep. St-Laurent is a French-language one next to it.

“I came out of solidarity and also because I have a son who will soon be starting university and these tuition fee hikes will be an issue for him too,” said Marie-Claude Bélanger, who marched with her daughter, a student at the University of Montreal.

Although the marchers were overwhelmingly students, there were placards from the Quebec Federation of Labor and the Confederation of National Trade Unions. About a dozen members of Parti Québécois in the National Assembly attended the action as did Amir Khadir, Québec Solidaire’s member of the legislature.

Many members of the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association on strike since September 1, took part. “The students have supported us,” said MUNACA striker Tara Alward. “We were students and we know what it’s like.”

Jean-Luc Arseneau, vice-president of the Alliance of Montreal Teachers, was there as part of his union’s contingent. “I don’t like the government’s position that the user should pay. It turns education into a commodity like any other,” he said.

On the eve of the action Quebec Prime Minister Jean Charest said he won’t back down and will raise average annual tuition to $3,793 by 2016, up from the current average of about $2,168. Even with the increase, he argued, Quebec students would still be paying the lowest fees in Canada. Average tuition fees in the country are $5,138.

Katy LeRougetel and John Steele contributed to this article

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