It Is Their Unequivocal Due

Quebec college and university students are raging; they will not take the abuse aimed at them any longer.  And they want everyone to know that however determined the government of Premier Jean Charest may be about imposing the insulting, demeaning, impossibility of tuition hikes in the province may be, they are even more determined to ensure it will not happen.  Not to them. 

As a matter of fact, they have taken their government's decision to impose higher tuition fees on their poor broken backs, and turned it around, now demanding that Quebec offer all its enterprising youth free tuition for higher education.

Exactly, who, what, why, when, where does this government think it is, and can accomplish by shoving this edict at the hard-working students of the Province of Quebec?  They are the future of the province, they await the respect due them, and it is not forthcoming and this alone, is unacceptable. 

A fee increase of $325 annually for the next five years would raise tuition to an impossible $3,793 by 2016-2017.  Leaving Quebec students with an unacceptable burden of debt.  And this is not to be countenanced.  Nor will it be.

The student activists who have been enraged at their government's attempt to bring student tuition somewhat in line with that paid elsewhere within Canada is destined to fail because the students deem that it will. 

Should the Charest government be successful in this imposition it can be assured that low-income students will be effectively shut out of university.  And was not the province's implementation to begin with of low tuition for the purpose of encouraging low-income students to invade academia in the interests of social justice?

Now that is the policy that appears to have failed, as the universities remain the precinct of the middle class, those who can afford tuition.  A reality that appears to have evaded the consciousness of the protesting students who have even ignored a court ruling that they restrict protests on campus.  They will have their way, they vow furiously. 

The total of $3,793 per year to take full effect in 2016-17 would still leave Quebec with the lowest tuition rate in the country, but no matter.  It is the principle that counts here.  The principle being that Quebec is special and its university students even more special.

That Quebec's universities have a whopping deficit is of no matter to them; they did not manufacture the university financing crisis.  And it is unsupportable that Quebec universities have less to spend on operations in their budgets than those of any other province. 

As it is, 12.7% of university revenues were derived from tuition fees; with the additional $325 tuition to be imposed per student this year that would bring university revenues from tuition fees up to a munificent 16.9%

It is also totally irrelevant that transfer payments from Canada's wealthier provinces to poor little Quebec, which is to say taxes collected from around Canada, including from those whose income bracket excludes their own offspring from attending universities, aid Quebec students by supporting their universities. 

Nova Scotia, which has the highest tuition rate in the country, also has the highest rate of university participation.  But what isn't seen as a financial handicap for Nova Scotian students obviously is an insult to Quebec students from middle-class backgrounds.

On the other hand why should it be surprising that Quebec students are so militantly opposed to paying their fair share of their own education costs?  The Province of Quebec has long been accustomed to shrilly demanding its 'fair share' and more of Canada's wealth to enable it to offer social programs to its residents far in excess of what other Canadians can afford.

This is just an example of squawking chickens roosting in the living room.