Point: Why Quebec Students are Right to Protest

Last week in the continuing saga that has become the Quebec student strike: Student leaders and the provincial government reached an agreement that was immediately rejected by a majority of students.

According to the terms of the agreement, tuition would still increase at the same rate but there would be an investigation in university spending to reduce ancillary fees. In essence, the agreement allowed the government to do as they pleased while placing the burden of trying to decrease fees on to the universities.

With the rejection of this agreement, Quebec’s three-month long student strike has reached an impasse. The provincial government is neither backing down nor changing its position (as governments are wont to). The students are neither giving up nor losing interest (as students are wont to). And thus, a stalemate has been reached.

But stalemates provide a perfect opportunity to look back and re-examine a student movement that will undoubtedly go down in Canadian history. I have been following this strike closely since its inception and have watched it grow from a protest on tuition increases to a movement about so much more. No longer just a battle of students vs. tuition, it’s become a clash of generations, economic classes and political ideologies. The movement now stands for students vs. governments, young vs. old, conservatives vs. liberals, capitalists vs. socialists, the 1% vs. the 99%…..need I go on?

But as I have followed the strike, I have found myself asking the same question too often. Why Quebec? Why are the students in Quebec protesting? I am far from the first person to ask this. After all, Quebec students pay the lowest tuition in the country. In fact, the average Quebec student pays $2,5191 a year for tuition. That’s less than half what the average Canadian student pays at $5,3661. These numbers have been thrown around a lot over the past few months immediately followed by a rhetorical “so what do they have to complain about?” Indeed, what do Quebec students have to complain about? The question always goes unanswered.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Maybe we need to stop wondering why Quebec students are protesting and start questioning why the rest of us aren’t.
Why are students in Quebec so willing to speak up, when the rest of Canada isn’t? Unlike Quebec, Ontario has the highest tuition rates in the country. So why aren’t we complaining? Why are we complacently paying our tuition with no complaints? And it continues to rise. (In case any UW engineers missed it, spring term tuition was almost $200 higher than the fall). Yet, I don’t see us out on the streets, organizing en masse to voice our discontent. Why not?
While the Quebec protests now stand for so much more, let’s try to remember what these students are actually fighting for: accessible education. Students in Quebec are fighting for the right to keep their education accessible to everyone. But shouldn’t accessible education be a nationwide goal? Shouldn’t it be something that students across Canada are fighting for?

Maybe, it’s already too late for the rest of Canada. Remember, the average Canadian student pays $5,366 for tuition. That’s just tuition and does not include housing, and living expenses. Can students from a low-income family afford to pay this amount? In a recent survey, 70% of UW engineers in a co-op program said they receive financial support from family members.

But what about students who don’t have that support? Would they be able to afford tuition? Not without significant loans. In the same survey 18% of respondents said that they expect to be between $10,000 to $20,000 in debt upon graduation.

That’s a significant debt load. Education is meant to be an investment in our future. But how much should we invest? There was a time when entering university was a no-brainer. Tuition was low, employment rates were high and student debt was all but non-existent. Not anymore. Tuition rates have skyrocketed, at a rate that has no correlation with the rate of inflation and employment rates, especially for new graduates, are at their lowest. The decision to enter university is no longer just a question of pursuing higher education. Students must question if it will lead them to valuable careers or will it merely leave them as a debt-ridden burden on society?

How many possible teachers, philosophers, professors, and engineers, have we lost because they couldn’t afford university tuition? How many more will we lose, if tuition continues to rise? Quebec students are not simply fighting for lower tuition. They are fighting for the future. Students in university may be nothing more than students right now but we are the future as well. We are future doctors, engineers, lawyers. Some of us may even be future politicians. And Quebec students are fighting for these futures. They are sending their government a message: it’s time the burden of funding universities was shifted away from students and back where it belongs. On to the government. Because in case we have forgotten, universities are public institutions.

These students are brave, stubborn, outspoken but above all they are tired. Tired of being ignored, tired of being told their voices don’t matter, tired of being told that they are too young. So they have decided to speak out. In massive numbers they have taken to the streets to accomplish what no election ever could. They have sacrificed their winter semester, which they had already paid for, to make their discontent heard. And most importantly they are not backing down. Despite being labelled as criminals by the government, and lazy and entitled by much of the public they have not wavered.

It is my fervent hope that these students continue to stand strong and achieve their goal. But regardless of the ultimate result in Quebec, the rest of Canada can learn a lot from these students in Quebec. They have already accomplished so much, simply by speaking out. No longer will the student population in Quebec be ignored by their government. Contrast the student numbers in Quebec to that of Ontario. Imagine if we took to the streets, even for a day. Imagine if we spoke up, whether to protest our own ridiculously high tuition or merely in a show of solidarity for our Quebec counterparts. There’s no question about it. Quebec is the Canada we all need to be.

For now, I anxiously await the results of the Quebec protests. They will truly prove what students, or average citizens, are capable of if they only speak up. And although the government does not show any signs of backing down, I will remind you of the famous words of a French author, Victor Hugo. “Never doubt the power of an idea whose time has come.” For students in Quebec that time is now. Vive la Quebec!