Over a thousand Quebec students will rally to protest tuition hikes Dec. 6 despite exam season, thwarting what they see as a Ministry of Education plan to discourage student attendance, said Leo Bureau-Bloin, the president of the Quebec Federation of College Students (FECQ).  

The protest will start in front of the National Assembly in Quebec City and work its way down to the Hilton Hotel, where Quebec’s ministry of education will discuss raising tuition fees at a meeting, he said in French.

Dave Leclerc, press attaché for Minister of Education, Leisure and Sport Line Beauchamp, said the government chose to hold the meeting in December only because it is a convenient time for most of the people involved.

Many students are angry because the meeting is in December, Bureau-Bloin said.
  
“This date wasn’t chosen randomly,” Bureau-Bloin said.  

He said he thinks the ministry deliberately scheduled the meeting during end-of-semester exams to discourage protesters.

However, he said he still expects a strong turnout that will get the attention of the ministry.

According to Statistics Canada, Quebec’s tuition fees are the lowest in the country. In 2010-11, Quebec residents paid on average $2,415 to go to university. Quebec has kept the lowest tuition fees in Canada for years, since a tuition fee freeze put into place in the mid-‘90s, but the fee freeze was lifted in 2007.

Over the past year, prominent Quebecers, including McGill University principal Heather Munroe-Blum, finance minister Raymond Bachand and former Bloc Québécois leader Lucien Bouchard have spoken in favour of a fee raise.

Right now, 80 per cent of funding for Quebec universities comes from taxpayers, according to the Montreal Gazette, but every year the government gives a little less to universities, and students have to pay the difference.   

Bureau-Bloin said tuition fees have increased 6 per cent per year. He said the government will continue to do so until Quebec’s tuition fees equal those of the other provinces.

“Ninety per cent of Quebec students fund their studies without any problems,” Leclerc said in French.

While the tuition hike is the meeting’s biggest priority, representatives will also discuss other aspects of university finances, like scholarships, bursaries and universities’ dealings with corporations. Leclerc said the government will spend lots of time discussing how to make university accessible for students, despite the tuition raise.

“Most of Quebec’s student organizations are invited to the meeting” said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, a member of ASSE, a left-wing coalition of student associations that aims to freeze tuition rates.  

He said the group refuses to attend the meeting, because it is against their ideology. Instead, they will be part of the protest.

“[The ministry] are trying to obstruct student participation,”  Nadeau-Dubois said in French. He added that he thinks the government has no interest in students’ opinions.

Nadeau-Dubois said 10 other student organizations will be part of the demonstration.

He said students only found out the time and location of the meeting when the ministry issued a press release on Nov 4.   

Members of the fédération des etudiant(e)s universitaires du québec (FEUQ), Quebec’s largest student group, will join FECQ students at the protest, according to FEUQ president Louis-Philippe Savoie. Together, the groups represent 180,000 students in Quebec.

Savoie said at the meeting he hopes “to remind the government that it’s hard to be a university student in Quebec.”

“Most graduate with a $15,000 debt and struggle to find work. The ministry shouldn’t be making it even more difficult for them,” Savoie said.

Savoie said although he disapproves of the timing of the meeting, FEUQ members feel they were given enough time to prepare. “It was a little short notice, but we’ll be ready.” He said the ministry never explained to him why they decided to hold the meeting in December.

He thinks that instead of increasing tuition fees, the Quebec government should work towards a publicly funded system. “University is a necessary service.  The state should be in charge of it,” Savoie said in French.  

The FEUQ is circulating a petition protesting the tuition hike. Currently, the petition has over 15,000 signatures.