Montreal’s McGill University is delaying a $50-million investment to help its community “learn or improve their French” as Quebec plans to nearly double tuition for out-of-province students.
The university confirmed in an email Thursday that the funding was going to be used for additional programs and services over a five-year period.
“The larger goal of the program was to help students, faculty and staff integrate more fully into Quebec society, broadening the already extensive impact of our talent and expertise across Quebec,” McGill’s media relations office said.
“Finding the initial funding for McGill’s investment in the promotion of the French language was extremely difficult.”
Last week, the province announced that tuition for undergraduate students from other provinces will rise to $17,000 from $8,992 starting next year. The government will also collect a first $20,000 paid by international students and reinvest that money in French-language universities.
Aside from rising tuition rates to help offset the costs covered by the government, the Legault government also claimed the changes will help counter the decline of the French language in Montreal.
The plan has triggered a wave of reaction since it would disproportionately affect Quebec’s three English-language universities. They attract more students from outside from province than their francophone counterparts — and more money.
All three English universities — McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s University — have publicly voiced concerns about the tuition hike. The principal of McGill has warned of “serious consequences” for the university, which gets about 20 per cent of its students from other parts of Canada.
Before the plan was announced, McGill says it was told by the Legault government that changes that could affect its financial situation were coming — but it was “not provided with any details of the changes.”
“We are currently examining the potential financial impact that these might have on the university,” it said.
Quebec Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry spoke of McGill’s decision to suspend measures to bolster French on Thursday.
“This specific initiative (McGill’s investment) doesn’t answer to the fact that we are living an inequity, an imbalance in the whole system between the anglophones and francophones and these are based on numbers and I’ve been mentioning it all along these numbers,” Déry said in the provincial legislature.
Déry says international students bring in $407 million, but the majority of that money benefits English universities.
“So for me as a minister of higher education I have the responsibility to make sure that the system and the whole network is equitable for everybody and that’s why we’ve announced those two measures,” she said.
Earlier this week, Premier François Legault also defended his government’s plan. He argues taxpayers should not subsidize out-of-province students and called the influx of anglophone students a threat to the survival of the French language.
— with files from Global’s Felicia Parrillo, Franca Mignacca and The Canadian Press
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