Editorial

Towards the Summit

Graphic Paku Daoust-Cloutier

The toughest storm that students weathered during their 100-day ordeal to halt tuition hikes probably was not Jean Charest’s strong-arm tactics.

It was the endless onslaught of subtle doublespeak used to delegitimize the entirely reasonable demand for accessible education—calling the strike a “boycott,” claims that schools were “underfunded” and calling certain demonstrators “extremists.”

As the movement picked up steam and Charest was eventually ousted, it seemed that the election of the temporarily red-square touting Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois was the end of tuition increases—at least until the next election.

But now students face the same kind of word-mincing they were subjected to during the half-year of resistance.

Ironically, the change is now coming from the very party that, to many, was a surrogate for their cause to the population at large.

The PQ has announced it will hold an education summit this February where nothing will be off the table—except free education–and one with “open negotiations” that will be driven by a clear plan by the PQ for an indexed tuition increase against organizations fractured by diverging views on education, tuition and negotiation.

With the unveiling of their plans for the February education summit, the PQ is now rearing an ugly head in their plan to raise tuition. The PQ has made it clear that they will be arguing for an indexed increase to tuition—meaning a strategy to increase tuition based on inflation.

Working under the guise of negotiation is an affront to the tens of thousands of Quebec students who took to the streets for a tuition freeze and a betrayal of the promise that “[tuition] increase is cancelled for this year, for 2012-13 and for the next years” made only a few months ago by Marois.

Using alternate language to convey a reality that will, in fact, make an affordable education unrealistic to some students is ludicrous.

While many may be satisfied by an increase that makes the cost of tuition relative to the cost of living, we are tired of bearing the brunt of universities’ financial incompetence and ineptitude.

No matter how far the student movement has come, the reality remains that asking for more money from students to fund mismanaged institutions before solving the mismanagement itself is, at its core, a counterproductive approach and unfortunately one that Quebec seems to be haunted by.

Putting more money into a broken system is not going to fix it. Making universities base their spending off budgets and studies proven to work will.

Any increase in tuition detracts from the fundamental problem with money in many universities—it’s not a shortage, but a lack of concrete ways to ensure any more money paid by students is going to be worth their while.

Before the Maple Spring, the Parti libéral du Quebec themselves funded a study that concluded that the problem was not underfunding in universities but in fact mismanagement.

Similarly, studies that corroborate this assessment find serious faults in the methodology of the study frequently used to justify the claim that underfunding is a legitimate claim.

Namely, that it is based not on what means Quebec universities have at their disposal but what the difference between their funds and the funds of universities in other provinces are.

Representatives at the education summit are going have to prepare to make sure the PQ sticks to the reasons many of the students had faith in them to begin with, the tuition freeze needs to stay a freeze—not a rewording of the initial plan.

On that note, this is the perfect time for groups representing students to show that they can do more than be seen at tuition hike protest bellowing into a megaphone and actually stand their ground to bootstrap real change that can benefit the entire province.  

The election of the PQ wasn’t supposed to be the better of two tuition-hike-evils but an end to them for any amount of time. We, as students, need to make sure that they stick to that, and have to make sure that those representing us will, too.