![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Save Quebec's Universities!
Nov. 28th, 2023 03:23 pmI don't usually pay much attention to these manufactured occasions like Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Giving Tuesday. And incidentally, I haven't heard a word this year about Buy Nothing Day.
Anyway, today, Giving Tuesday, with my e-mail box overflowing with beg-messages from organizations I've donated to in the past - and several more that I don't recall EVER donating to - I File-13'd the lot of them and made a donation elsewhere: the Schulich School of Music at McGill University:
https://giving.mcgill.ca/make-impact/faculties-schools-and-units/schulich-school-music
Quebec's decision to double tuition fees for out-of-province students is one that's deeply personal for me. While I've never actually lived in the province of Quebec, I did work in Gatineau for about 12 years out of my 33+ year career in the federal public service. My daughter, now in her early 40s, has been a Quebec resident since she was 18 and got all of her postsecondary education in Montreal.
Montreal used to be a wonderfully vibrant, international city. When it hosted Expo '67, it managed to construct a subway system and underground city in record time (Is there a lesson there for our beleaguered LRT?) In my late teens and early twenties, I took numerous day trips to Montreal, both to shop at their quirky boutiques and soak up the language and culture. Voyageur offered buses every hour on the hour, from 6AM to midnight, at an economical same-day-return rate. Mind you, I recall one occasion where I had to forgo the cheaper rate after spending an uncomfortable night in the Montreal bus station, the result of attending a Joni Mitchell concert that both started and finished late.
My daughter passed up scholarship opportunities at Carleton and uOttawa to attend McGill, and I think it was a good decision for her. At the time, rents in Montreal were reasonable and tuition expenses affordable. But over the years, housing and tuition expenses have gone up at a much faster rate than overall cost-of-living expenses. That's true in all provinces, of course, but when all Canadians (not to mention people from other countries) are struggling with inflation, it seems particularly egregious for Quebec to be doubling university tuition fees for anyone living outside the province, even if it's just a few metres across a bridge!
Some programmes at English-language universities will be particularly hard-hit, including music programmes at McGill, where nearly half the students come from outside Quebec:
https://epaper.nationalpost.com/article/281736979207644
Legault insists the very survival of the French language is at stake. Like, seriously? French is already one of Canada's official languages. In Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, parents clamour to get their kids into French immersion, to the point that English-only education is rapidly becoming a poor second cousin. And unilinguals who come to Quebec to enrol in an English-language institution are definitely going to want to learn French, just to participation the social life of the city. The strength of one's loins doesn't only apply to "pure laine" Quebecers!
For many of the people enrolling in English-language programmes in Quebec, English is not even their first language. It may merely be, so to speak, a lingua franca. And if they have several languages under their belt already, learning French will likely come easily.
Anyway, I'm somewhat heartened to read that not all Quebecers support Legault:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/most-quebecers-support-english-universities-alternative-to-doubling-tuition-polls/ar-AA1klvpG
My grandchildren are already citizens of Quebec and will not greatly suffer if this tuition hike goes ahead.
Still, it feels as if, Quiet Revolution notwithstanding, the province is becoming more and more parochial.
Anyway, today, Giving Tuesday, with my e-mail box overflowing with beg-messages from organizations I've donated to in the past - and several more that I don't recall EVER donating to - I File-13'd the lot of them and made a donation elsewhere: the Schulich School of Music at McGill University:
https://giving.mcgill.ca/make-impact/faculties-schools-and-units/schulich-school-music
Quebec's decision to double tuition fees for out-of-province students is one that's deeply personal for me. While I've never actually lived in the province of Quebec, I did work in Gatineau for about 12 years out of my 33+ year career in the federal public service. My daughter, now in her early 40s, has been a Quebec resident since she was 18 and got all of her postsecondary education in Montreal.
Montreal used to be a wonderfully vibrant, international city. When it hosted Expo '67, it managed to construct a subway system and underground city in record time (Is there a lesson there for our beleaguered LRT?) In my late teens and early twenties, I took numerous day trips to Montreal, both to shop at their quirky boutiques and soak up the language and culture. Voyageur offered buses every hour on the hour, from 6AM to midnight, at an economical same-day-return rate. Mind you, I recall one occasion where I had to forgo the cheaper rate after spending an uncomfortable night in the Montreal bus station, the result of attending a Joni Mitchell concert that both started and finished late.
My daughter passed up scholarship opportunities at Carleton and uOttawa to attend McGill, and I think it was a good decision for her. At the time, rents in Montreal were reasonable and tuition expenses affordable. But over the years, housing and tuition expenses have gone up at a much faster rate than overall cost-of-living expenses. That's true in all provinces, of course, but when all Canadians (not to mention people from other countries) are struggling with inflation, it seems particularly egregious for Quebec to be doubling university tuition fees for anyone living outside the province, even if it's just a few metres across a bridge!
Some programmes at English-language universities will be particularly hard-hit, including music programmes at McGill, where nearly half the students come from outside Quebec:
https://epaper.nationalpost.com/article/281736979207644
Legault insists the very survival of the French language is at stake. Like, seriously? French is already one of Canada's official languages. In Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, parents clamour to get their kids into French immersion, to the point that English-only education is rapidly becoming a poor second cousin. And unilinguals who come to Quebec to enrol in an English-language institution are definitely going to want to learn French, just to participation the social life of the city. The strength of one's loins doesn't only apply to "pure laine" Quebecers!
For many of the people enrolling in English-language programmes in Quebec, English is not even their first language. It may merely be, so to speak, a lingua franca. And if they have several languages under their belt already, learning French will likely come easily.
Anyway, I'm somewhat heartened to read that not all Quebecers support Legault:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/most-quebecers-support-english-universities-alternative-to-doubling-tuition-polls/ar-AA1klvpG
My grandchildren are already citizens of Quebec and will not greatly suffer if this tuition hike goes ahead.
Still, it feels as if, Quiet Revolution notwithstanding, the province is becoming more and more parochial.
