FEUQ, PQ youth wing join forces
Want tuition freeze, better student aid
Just hours before Monday’s start of a two-day summit on higher education, university students joined forces with the youth wing of the Parti Québécois to issue a series of demands along with a warning that if those demands are not met the government will pay the price — at the next provincial election.
At a news conference Sunday morning, Martine Desjardins, president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ), and Frédéric St-Jean, president of Comité national des jeunes du Parti québécois (CNJPQ), restated the groups’ usual demand for a tuition freeze, then upped the ante by demanding a “real improvement” to student aid.
Desjardins told journalists it’s not enough to freeze tuition — the government must come up with measures that help reduce student debt. Students are struggling, she said, and Quebec’s student aid program is obsolete. She said the program needs to be improved, by adjusting upward the expenses students can claim and setting the earnings threshold at which parents are required to contribute at a minimum $45,000 a year.
But even if the government does improve student aid, Desjardins warned, that doesn’t mean tuition indexation is on. Students will not accept indexation, she said.
With the FEUQ and the governing party’s youth wing forming an unexpected lastminute united front against it, indexation could be in trouble. Premier Pauline Marois has been promoting indexation as the middle-ofthe-road solution to what is rapidly becoming an intractable problem of university financing and student unrest.
St-Jean reminded his party that the youth wing is in favour of the “principle of zero student debt.”
“Our government and our party has a unique opportunity with the summit to put forward concrete measures to improve access to university studies, a major worry for young Quebecers,” he said.
In a joint statement after their news conference, the two groups said young people will make the question of increased access to post-secondary students a “priority” when it’s time to “make their electoral choice.”