All Posts Tagged With: "quebec"

Student groups reject gov’t offers as deadline approaches

Photo by Jacob Serebrin

The student strike in Quebec, ignited by a $1,625 tuition increase over the next five years, is now the longest in provincial history—and participants may soon pass a point of no return.

Professors’ contracts require the semester to end by June 15 and some universities are hinting that the entire semester will be in jeopardy for students who don’t go back in time to meet that deadline.

The Université de Montréal, Quebec’s largest, announced Wednesday that it will extend the term into May for students who have already returned to class.

At the same time, it said it can no longer guarantee students who haven’t returned that they will be able to finish their semesters. Groups representing around 25 per cent of U de M are still on strike.

Continue reading Quebec strikers may cross point of no return

This is what a really big protest looks like

On March 22, tens of thousands of Quebec students skipped classes to march in Montreal against a tuition fee hike of $1,625 over five years. Blogger Jacob Serebrin was there on the street. Check out the photos he snapped below, then read his take on what’s next for the student movement.

Arts and business students will attend classes

Photo by Francis Bourgouin on Flickr

Two of Quebec’s largest English-language student associations have decided against joining the widespread student strikes in Quebec.

Many associations have held votes to decide whether members should jointly skip classes to protest a tuition hike of $1,625 over five years.

After a bit of a delay, members of The Arts Undergraduate Society of McGill University voted against striking on Tuesday: 609 were opposed, 495 were in favour and 16 abstained.

The vote was delayed, according to the Montreal Gazette, because more people than expected showed up—about 1,100 of the 7,100-strong faculty. As a result, some voting took place via Skype connections.

Continue reading Two of Quebec’s biggest faculties opt out of strike

Thousands of students on strike

Photo of Nov. 2011 protest by shahk on Flickr.

Montreal police arrested 37 protesters early Friday morning after they broke into and vandalized a college, the CEGEP du Vieux-Montréal.

“These people may face charges of mischief, assault, and armed aggression against a police officer,” Montreal police spokesperson Daniel Lacoursière told CBC News.

The late-night vandalism came after four arrests and the release of pepper spray on Thursday as protesters blocked access to the Montreal stock exchange and a nearby hotel, reports 680 News.

Thousands of post-secondary students are striking in Quebec. They’re skipping classes in order to protest a tuition hike of $1,625 over five years that begins this fall.

Continue reading At least 41 arrests in Montreal protests

New report shows surprising trends in Quebec

A long night at work. By star5112 on Flickr.

More than half of full-time university students in Quebec work while attending school and more than 40 per cent of all undergraduates work more than 20 hours weekly says a new study by the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, a provincial lobby group that wants lower tuition.

On top of that, more than twice as many full-time students aged 20 to 24 in the province work part-time jobs than students did in the 1970s.

The workloads are hurting their educations: 43 per cent of full-time undergraduates say that their jobs have negatively affected their studies and 30 per cent say their jobs mean they’ll take longer to finish. It’s worst for PhD students—six in 10 say work forced them to prolong their studies.

Continue reading More students balance school with jobs

Students react swiftly with copycat site

Minister Line Beauchamp from Quebec Gov. Video

Quebec’s Liberal government has launched a new website to convince students of the fairness of the annual $325 tuition fee increase that will bring tuition to $3,793 in 2016-17.

But a coalition of student groups quickly launched their own anti-tuition website, which looks almost exactly the same as the government’s.

Student groups cried foul last week when they learned that Quebec had budgeted $50,000 for Internet advertising, including some that attempts to re-route Internet users to the governments’ site whenever they search the names of activist organizations on Google, reported La Presse.

Tens of thousands of students protested the Charest governments’ increase last week, despite the fact that Quebec will continue to have some of the lowest fees in North America even after the rise.

Continue reading Quebec launches site to sell tuition increase

Tuition fees rising $325 per year

Photo by shahk on Flickr

Unlike in London, U.K., where a planned protest fizzled earlier this week, Quebec students skipped classes en masse Thursday to demonstrate against tuition fee hikes. Some estimate tens of thousands rallied province-wide.* Tens of thousands marched in Montreal alone. The protests were peaceful.

The students are opposed to tuition fee hikes of $325 per year for five years, which will lead to tuition bills of $3,793 by 2017. Quebec students currently pay $2,415—less than half the average in Canada, which is $5,138. Still, they worry about the debt that higher tuition fees will bring.

But Premier Jean Charest is unlikely to back down. His decision in March to raise tuition is supported by university administrators, as they will get $850 million more collectively to operate schools each year after 2017, according to CTV News. The Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities argues that quality is at risk without more money injected the system. Considering that Quebec’s gross provincial debt was $173-billion at budget time in March, the government is unable to provide more cash. As in most provinces, the majority of increases in revenue will be eaten up by growing health care costs.

*It was reported by many news agencies, including us, that 200,000 students protested. In fact, the Quebec Federation of University Students reports that the figure was closer to 20,000. We regret the error.

Concordia’s new degree will be the first of its kind

Photo courtesy of tiagonicastro on Flickr

Only a tenth of Canada’s 4.4 million Canadians of Irish ancestry call Quebec home. And yet, it’s the epicentre of research on the Emerald Isle.

Concordia University’s School of Canadian Irish Studies—the only one of its kind in Canada—will have more than 700 students enrolled this fall, studying everything from the Great Famine to James Joyce. The first ever bachelor of arts in Canadian Irish studies will begin in January. “The success of Irish studies at Concordia is quite striking,” says Will Straw, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, “particularly since these kinds of ‘area’ studies programs are having difficulty in other universities.”

Interest in Ireland is especially high in Quebec, says Michael Kenneally, principal of the Concordia school. “Here in Quebec, if you’re interested in cultural nationalism, colonialism, post-imperial identities, partition and decolonization, rebellion and independence, Ireland is a case study for all of that.” And, he adds, “preserving the Irish language has a lot of resonance in Quebec.”

And, it seems, for the government of Jean Charest, who claims Irish ancestry through his late mother; it gave $2.5 mill­ion to the Canadian Irish Studies Foundation, which gives all of its money to Concordia. Brian Gallery, former Westmount mayor and chief fundraiser, helped add nearly $7 million to the foundation’s pot of gold.

While no one knows why exactly La Belle Province is so enthusiastic about Ireland, surely their shared history tells part of the story. Both Quebec and Ireland have had secession movements, a history of Catholic-Protestant tensions, and share the same former colonial master.

“If you do nothing illegal, we won’t bother you,” say police.

Photo courtesy of Yannick Gingras on Flickr

A Quebec student lobby group claims that a Montreal police squad, which monitors anarchists and “marginal political groups,” has violated the province’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

Now, they’re going to file a human rights complaint.

Four members of  L’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante, including three of the group’s executives, were arrested in connection with several protests in late March against higher tuition fees. Some of those protests turned violent.

The group claims that those arrested were targeted because of their political views. ”There is no doubt about the political nature of these arrests,” ASSÉ spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said in a press release. “This is clearly an attempt by the [Montreal police] to decapitate the Quebec student movement on the eve of one of its historical struggles.”

Montreal police deny that the arrests were politically motivated. ”When you occupy an office and someone gets a broken wrist and there’s a broken window, that’s not a peaceful demonstration,” spokesperson Ian Lafrenière told the Montreal Gazette. “I agree that people should be allowed to demonstrate. If you do nothing illegal, we won’t bother you.”

The human rights complaint focuses on the police’s Guet des activites des mouvements marginaux et anarchistes (surveillance of the activities of marginal movements and anarchists) or GAMMA squad, which ASSÉ claims conducted the arrests. Police said GAMMA did not make the arrests in question and that the squad was formed as a reaction to increasing levels of violence at protests.

Another activist group, the Coalition Against Repression and Police Brutality, has also filed a complaint accusing the squad of discriminating against people based on their political views.

ASSÉ says it represents more than 40,000 students across Quebec.

Montreal university needs to clarify its mission

Concordia photo courtesy of Foxtongue on Flickr

Concordia University needs to make major changes to how it’s run, according to a new report on the university’s governance.

The report, released on June 15, says that the university suffers from a “substantial degree of misunderstanding, blatantly deficient internal communications and a lot of distrust, often bordering on mutual contempt, between the various communities of the university.”

The report was written by three outside experts who were brought in after the sudden departure of president Judith Woodsworth over the Christmas break exposed deep divisions between students, faculty and outsiders on the board of governors. Woodsworth’s immediate predecessor, Claude Lajeunesse, was also forced to resign by the board in 2007. As well, the university has seen the departure of a number of vice-presidents.

According to the report, efforts to solicit the opinions of community members found that “everyone seemed quite willing, in some cases even anxious, to think the worst of someone – in some cases, everyone – else.”

While the report acknowledges that the circumstances surrounding Woodsworth’s departure contributed to the “chorus of negative response,” it says that the problems within the university go deeper.

“The depth and even the fury of that response could only have arisen in a context where long simmering governance and internal communication problems between the board and the university community… had neither been addressed nor resolved.”

Part of the problem, according to the report, is the school’s lack of direction which has led to “tension between those who uphold its tradition of accessibility and openness as opposed to those who place greater value on a development model which features research and graduate studies.”

The report recommends that the university deal with this by updating its charter to include a clear mission statement and by developing an academic plan.

The report also recommends reducing the size of the board from 40 members to 25. The smaller board would maintain the current ratio of outsiders to insiders, but it would no longer include representatives from alumni associations. As well, the percentage of faculty on the board would increase while student representation would decrease slightly.

According to the report, “the committee saw no evidence, although there were rumours, accusations and insinuations … that the Concordia board has systematically interfered with core academic or curriculum decision making.”

However, the committee did find evidence that board members had worked “directly with members of the administration in such a way as to bypass and, therefore, weaken the function of the President.” As a result, the report recommends making the president the only point of contact between the board and the administration.

Other recommendations include formalizing the powers of the university senate and enforcing term-limits for board and senate members. The recommendations for a smaller board and firm term-limits are in line with a university governance bill currently before Quebec’s National Assembly.

Despite the problems, the report suggests the university is doing some things right. “What is remarkable… is that under these difficult and adverse circumstances, the core activities of the university, its teaching and research, appeared relatively unaffected,” it says.

The university will hold an open meeting on the report on June 28.