Concordia, McGill to take Quebec to court over tuition hikes for out-of-province students

Two English universities in Montreal are launching separate lawsuits against the Quebec government over tuition hikes for out-of-province students. 

“I am really unhappy that we have come to this point. This is really the last resort for us,”  said Graham Carr, president and vice-chancellor of Concordia University.

“We are taking this action to defend our institution and we are taking this action to uphold the values that are integral to who we are as Concordia.”

McGill University and Concordia are both taking legal action as the two schools have seen a significant drop in applicants. Reducing the number of students coming from the rest of Canada and abroad also limits diversity, said Carr, which is something Concordia values. 

Concordia is currently seeing a 27 percent decline in applicants from the rest of Canada and a 12 percent decline in the number of students coming from abroad, he said. Back in December, McGill announced it was seeing a 20 percent drop in out-of-province applicants.

Concordia’s application for judicial review, filed in Quebec Superior Court on Friday morning, asks the court to quash the tuition hikes, arguing that its purpose is to weaken English-language universities and is based on “stereotypes and false assumptions about the English-speaking community of Quebec.”

In a news release, a McGill spokesperson said the university is asking the court to suspend the application of the tuition increases temporarily, while it considers the case.

McGill and Concordia’s lawsuits both argue that the government’s measures constitute discrimination under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

They also argue the tuition hikes were unreasonable and were adopted following an inadequate consultation process.

“We are undertaking this legal action because we believe that these measures are illegal and if upheld, will threaten McGill’s mission, its place as one of the world’s top universities and its vital role in Quebec,” said Deep Saini, president and vice-chancellor of McGill.

The lawsuits come after the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government announced in October that it intended to nearly double tuition fees from about $9,000 to $17,000 for undergraduate students and non-research graduate students from other provinces. 

The government later rolled back the tuition for Canadian out-of-province students to $12,000, but it added a requirement that 80 percent of them learn conversational French during their studies.

A McGill spokesperson said the university was not contesting the new French requirements, just the tuition hikes. Concordia, however, is contesting them. 

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Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry said Quebecers had no obligation to subsidize the education of students from the rest of Canada. Premier François Legault said those students were coming to Montreal and contributing to the decline of French in the city. 

The government says the extra funds coming in — estimated to be about $110 million a year — will be used to bolster French-language institutions.

The province’s English universities tried to get the government to change its course throughout the fall, Carr said, but the politicians pushed forward with policies that are “clearly designed to shrink the number of students who are coming to Concordia from traditional markets.”

Carr said the Quebec government is failing to assume its legal responsibility to do as little harm as possible to English institutions, which are protected under the Charter. Instead, these policies are deliberately designed to inflict harm, he said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Déry said the minister would not comment on the lawsuits as they are before the court.