Groups reject Quebec’s ‘50-cents-a-day’ claim

‘THEY DON’T CONSIDER US CREDIBLE’

Premier Jean

QUEBEC – Charest and Education Minister Line Beauchamp summoned reporters Friday morning to present their six-point plan to end an 11-week student strike that has imperilled the academic year of about 180,000 Quebec students.

But the student associations that have led the strike were unimpressed with Charest’s call for them to end their “boycott” and get back to their classrooms, saying the government continues to ignore their chief demand – that Quebec tuition fees remain frozen at $2,168 a year.

“There is an increase in the tuition fees,” Charest said.

“Let’s not pretend it isn’t there.”

Quebec’s proposal to end the impasse calls for spreading the proposed five-year, $1,625 increase over seven years.

Because indexing of 2.1 per cent a year would begin with the sixth and seventh years, the total amount would come to $1,778 in 2018-2019, after seven annual increases of $254.

Beauchamp told reporters, after factoring in the incometax credit on tuition fees, the increase is $177 a year, or 50 cents a day.

“For an effort of 50 cents a day,” Beauchamp said, was the strike worth compromising students’ academic year?

“I invite the students to go to their courses because the solution proposed by the government is a just and equitable solution which ensures better financing of our universities, which ensures a fair share from students, which also ensures access to university and ensures better management of our universities.”

The government would add $39 million in bursaries, promising students now receiving the grants that they would be topped off to cover the fee increase.

Eligibility to receive a student bursary, now available to students whose family income is less than $30,000, would start with family income of $45,000, and students whose family income was up to $100,000 could apply for low-interest student loans.

As well, repayment of student loans would be proportionate to a graduate’s income.

Beauchamp said the whole package would cost $51.4 million, with additional money coming from reductions in tuition-fee tax credits and from university budgets.

Quebec also would create a new council to ensure better management of Quebec’s universities.

Beauchamp noted this was a proposal of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, representing striking university students.

And there would also be periodic evaluations of the impact of the higher fees on access to university education.

FEUQ president Martine Desjardins called Beauchamp’s “50-cents-a-day” argument “very clever,” but said, “It does not touch the nub of the question.”

Desjardins said the point of the strike was to keep fees frozen, explaining that 65 per cent of Quebec graduates now have debt of over $14,000 when they complete their studies and the fee hike, which is actually higher with Friday’s announcement, would increase the debt burden. “Quebec families are already heavily indebted,” she said.

FEUQ will submit the gov- ernment’s proposals to a vote of its membership, but she said that would take a week to organize and the executive is making no recommendation regarding acceptance or rejection.

“They don’t consider us credible,” Desjardins lamented. “It’s a shame.”

Beauchamp said that Quebec named Pierre Pilote, a Montreal lawyer who successfully negotiated the last collective agreement with about 500,000 public sector employees in Quebec, as its negotiator during the two days of negotiations this week.

The student leaders said Pilote did not have a mandate to discuss a tuition freeze.