Alain Paquet

Alain Paquet is the Liberal Party candidate for Laval-des-Rapides.

Tuition Fees

"Currently the hike is $254 for 7 years, starting this year," said Paquet. Taking into account the student tax credit, Paquet says the hike will only amount to $167 per year. For Paquet, there is no relationship between tuition fees and accessibility. "In Ontario, tuition fees increased considerably, [yet] the university attendance rate increased."

"In seven years, the Quebec tuition fees will be quite lower than the Canadian average," said Paquet.

University Fiscal Management

The PLQ's main justification for the hike is that Quebec's universities are under-funded. "Other universities in North America and in the world keep investing. If we don't move, the quality of our degrees and the availability of professors will be directly impacted," said Paquet.

Paquet recognizes some problems in the fiscal management of universities. "There were cases of abuse or poor fiscal management," said Paquet. "Cases like that are not acceptable." While the topic was on the table during the negotiations between the government and the student associations, all the offers made by the government were turned down by the associations.

"We [...] were ready to create a council of universities that could have analyzed these elements of [fiscal] management," said Paquet. "Unfortunately, the student associations started saying [the agreement] was a moratorium, that, '[The government had] won,' and so the agreement was not respected." However, the current hike will go directly to services related to education and research for students, says Paquet.

Financial Aid

All students who currently have a bursary will see their bursaries increase by an amount equivalent to or greater than that of the hike, Paquet said.

"[There are] 67,000 students that receive a bursary equal or higher than the tuition fee hike." Any student whose family earns less than $100,000 will be eligible for financial aid. "Students from low-income families and the middle class are spared," said Paquet. The tax credit could be postponed if the student's income isn't high enough to be taxed, said Paquet.

Youth Unemployment

"In 2013, a system of reimbursement proportional to income will be set up," said Paquet. Under this new system, a student who doesn't find a job within a year after graduating will be able to postpone loan payments or to make smaller payments proportional to his or her income.

Youth Vote

"I want everyone, no matter their age, to vote," said Paquet, who recognizes that turnout rate for young people has been historically low compared to the Quebec average. He says he wants all students—the ones who blocked class and the ones who were prevented from attending their classes—to go vote on September 4.

"We have a privilege in Quebec and in Canada. It's a right to vote, to express yourself."

Plan Nord

"In 2010, we changed the royalties system in Quebec," said Paquet. "[Parti Québécois leader Pauline] Marois decreased royalties to 12% when she was finance minister. We increased it to 16%," he explained. "This year we got more money than in the last 10 years combined," said Paquet, referring to royalties on natural resources extraction in Quebec.

"Without taking into account newly-announced projects, we're talking about $4 billion in royalties for the next 10 years," said Paquet. "It's 14 times what was earned from 2000 to 2010."

Paquet says the PLQ is committed to having more transformation of natural resources done in Quebec. "We invested $1.2 billion in capital into mining projects," said Paquet, but noted that out of thousands of explorations, only a handful of projects will result in actual mines. "Currently there are 36 mines in operation in Quebec," said Paquet.

Paquet also says that the companies performing the extraction are not necessarily the same as the ones processing the materials, making it difficult to force all companies to process their materials domestically.