Letters: Gazette readers decry CAQ authorities's tuition hike

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For the previous week, readers have flooded the Gazette with commentary blasting the CAQ authorities for its determination to dramatically improve tuition charges for out-of-province college students at English universities. Here’s a collection of these letters.

Daughter’s McGill hopes dashed

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I’m outraged the Quebec authorities plans to double charges for college students from different provinces. That is unacceptable in Canada. Leaders ought to encourage youth to discover alternatives throughout the nation and make it equally potential for all.

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Our daughter was so excited to just accept McGill’s supply final spring from a number of throughout Canada. She utilized for a one-year deferral to work and acquire life expertise. Now, our household’s monetary planning is meaningless — we will’t afford McGill, and different presents have been declined.

We’ll lose our deposits and should quickly do new purposes with extra prices and uncertainty.

Everybody must help Canada’s youth to turn into constructive members of society. As an alternative, it appears the Quebec authorities manipulates younger adults and their households for partisan functions, instructing precisely the behaviour we desperately have to get previous.

For everybody’s sake, this coverage must be reversed.

— Jay Ritchlin, Gibsons, B.C.

What if the tables have been turned?

I’m wondering how humiliated Premier François Legault would really feel if the remainder of Canada doubled tuition charges for these from Quebec who want to research in one other province.

Little question it could be thought of egregious and discriminatory.

— Judy Kolonics, N.D.G.

GND set to make some noise (once more)

Québec solidaire’s co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois instructed reporters that rising tuition charges is a “unhealthy answer to an actual drawback,” citing an imbalance between the funding of anglo and francophone universities. He mentioned his celebration will quickly current its personal answer. Great. Let’s hear it.

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Who higher to deal with the difficulty of elevated tuition charges than Nadeau-Dubois? In 2012, whereas having fun with the bottom charges in Canada, he and his cohort took to banging pots and pans within the streets to protest the then Liberal authorities’s proposed hike in charges, which amounted to lower than a greenback a day.

That was deemed an excessive amount of by these college students. They needed larger training to be “free.” Such nerve.

The Liberals finally scrapped the proposal. If college students had accepted the rise, it’s potential francophone universities could be in higher form financially at present.

— Elizabeth Cuthill, Côte-des-Neiges

Harvard of the north feels the warmth

McGill College has been known as the Harvard of the north. This unbelievable establishment is understood internationally, and has a stellar worldwide educational fame. Hikes in tuition danger turning it will definitely right into a Final Probability U.

How does this assist Quebec?

Destroy it they usually gained’t come.

— Douglas Cornish, Ottawa

Emotion trumps logic in politics

It’s illogical to argue, because the CAQ has accomplished, that lowering the variety of college students from the remainder of Canada at Quebec’s English-language universities will someway assist French-language universities.

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It’s not not like the logic of the poultry farmer who killed a wholesome hen to make hen soup for a sick one.

Sadly, when a logical argument is up towards an emotional one, the latter will possible prevail, significantly in politics.

— John Corridor, Montreal

Actual-life Montreal escapes the CAQ

As a professor (artwork historical past) at UQAM, I’d prefer to share my commentary on the CAQ authorities’s announcement to dramatically improve tuition charges for out-of-province college students at English universities.

French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge and Increased Training Minister Pascale Déry appear to be unaware of the extent to which college students from the remainder of Canada fall in love with Montreal, settle right here, begin households, study French and ship their youngsters to highschool in French.

It seems the realities on the bottom in Montreal escape a celebration that has proven itself to be uninterested on this metropolis, apart from to make it the motive of a symbolic, penalizing coverage that may fulfill above all of the voters of the Quebec Metropolis area. 

— Dominic Hardy, N.D.G.

A blow to the town’s workforce, tradition 

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I’m now retired from Concordia College the place, in my 40-odd years there, I encountered many college students from throughout Canada and the world.

It was enriching for everybody to find out about their experiences and cultures, whether or not they have been from Canada or overseas. A big portion of them remained in Quebec after graduating.

The CAQ’s plan to lower enrolment in English universities by elevating tuition for out-of-province college students after which switch these funds to French-language universities will for my part damage the workforce and tradition of Montreal.

— Joyce Stempkowsky, Montcalm

A number of-choice check for college students

Would a potential pupil from one other province or territory come to Montreal to check, having acquired the next messages: a) we don’t need English spoken in Montreal, and b) we would like your cash for francophone universities?

I feel not.

— W.A. Thomas, N.D.G.

A choice rooted in resentment

The Legault authorities’s alarming assault on the enrolment prospects for out-of-province college students at Quebec’s three English universities is surprising.

The CAQ’s callous calculation is that payment discrimination will freeze the way forward for McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s and cleanse the streets of Montreal of hundreds of English-speaking college students. I don’t see how this can do something to raise French — however it should most likely do rather a lot to harm the downtown financial system.

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The deplorable determination to successfully slash the coed our bodies of our English universities is, in my view, rooted in resentment over the standing of those institutions.

The federal government’s willpower to decrease the province’s notably profitable English-language higher-education establishments (together with CEGEPs) appears a basic case of Quebec slicing off its nostril to spite its face.

The truth is that the English-speaking neighborhood has been an necessary a part of Quebec for hundreds of years and deserves to be an integral half within the twenty first century as properly.

The issue for anglophones as I see it’s that efforts to erode English in Montreal are politically standard within the province as a complete. However sufficient is sufficient. We should resist these efforts and defend our English universities.

— George McArthur, Montreal

Extra of the identical from the CAQ

One other day, one other assault by the Legault authorities on the usage of English in Montreal (and Quebec). It simply appears par for the course. It’s laborious to see the CAQ’s insurance policies throughout its 5 years in energy as something apart from a elementary assault on the anglophone minority of Quebec.

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It would sound counterintuitive, however Concordia and McGill might be seen as contributing to the promotion of the French language. Out-of-province college students acquire an appreciation for Quebec tradition and, throughout their time in Montreal, enhance their information of French.

If the CAQ genuinely needed to guard French, it could see these faculties as belongings. As an alternative, simply as with Invoice 96, the message of the Legault authorities appears clear: “English just isn’t welcome in Quebec!”

— Ian McKenzie, Ottawa

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