Quebec won't appeal court ruling blocking 33% tuition hike for out-of-province students
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Quebec will not appeal a court ruling that ordered it to scrap controversial measures targeting Concordia and McGill universities: a 33-per-cent tuition hike for out-of-province students and French proficiency requirements for non-Quebec applicants.
A spokesperson for Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry confirmed the decision in an email to The Gazette on Monday, the last day an appeal could be filed.
Déry is expected to comment on the matter at a later time.
In an April 24 ruling, Quebec Superior Court Justice Éric Dufour largely sided with Concordia and McGill, which had filed lawsuits arguing the Coalition Avenir Québec government's education reforms, announced in the fall of 2023, were illegal.
The tuition hike, which made headlines across Canada and the world, led to a drop in applications from the rest of Canada, with the universities offering scholarships to lure out-of-province students. Concordia and McGill have partially blamed the measures for deep budget cuts.
The Legault government said the changes would protect the French language and reduce the number of non-French-speaking students in Quebec.
In his ruling, Dufour called some of the CAQ's measures 'unreasonable.'
The tuition hike, introduced in fall 2024, raised fees for out-of-province undergraduates and non-thesis master's students from about $9,000 to $12,000. Quebec students continued to pay around $3,000.
Dufour gave the government nine months to revise the fee structure.
He criticized the government's rationale, finding the decision was not supported by solid data and was enacted before receiving advice from an advisory committee, which later urged Déry to scrap the hike.
The judge also struck down, effective immediately, a planned French-language rule, which would have required 80 per cent of newly enrolled non-Quebec undergraduates at Concordia and McGill to attain intermediate oral French proficiency by graduation.
Dufour found the target virtually impossible to achieve and the penalties for non-compliance — including the possible retroactive withdrawal of subsidies — were unclear.
However, Dufour upheld the CAQ government's new rules for international students, including a $20,000 minimum tuition rate and changes to the funding formula.
When his government announced the changes in 2023, Premier François Legault said it was part of a plan to 'reduce the number of anglophone students' in Quebec.
He said English-speaking students from other provinces 'threaten the survival of French.'
McGill laid off 60 workers in March as it grappled with a large deficit that it partly blamed on CAQ government policies.
Last month, Concordia announced it may also have to lay off employees as it works to slash tens of millions of dollars from its budget.
At the time, Concordia president Graham Carr said the legal victory 'is ultimately a moral, not a material win for Concordia. The damage from those policies has already been done. '
He added: 'Furthermore, the negative impact has been compounded by stringent immigration policies that have caused international applications to plummet, weakening the reputation and financial position of universities across Quebec for years to come.'
Carr has previously said he hoped the CAQ government would 'look at this judgment and the larger context and (decide) we can hit reset and take a genuinely collaborative approach to supporting a higher education system that is world-class.'
In their lawsuits, Concordia and McGill argued that the reform violated equality and language rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
McGill also claimed the measures contravened anti-discrimination provisions of Quebec's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, particularly regarding harm to its reputation and academic freedom.
However, the judge did not rule on charter issues, saying the matter could be resolved on administrative law grounds.
Jeffery Vacante, an assistant history professor at the University of Western Ontario, has argued the court ruling offers a short-term reprieve but is 'a less resounding victory for McGill and Concordia than one might assume.'
'The judge is not pushing back against the idea that McGill and Concordia are contributing to the decline of the French language, nor is he suggesting that tuition increases or language requirements for students cannot be imposed,' Vacante argued in an op-ed submitted to The Gazette in April.
The judge is 'suggesting, rather, that the government can impose such policies only after it has offered compelling data to justify their necessity,' wrote Vacante, author of a National Manhood and the Creation of Modern Quebec.
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