Why Is Canada Reducing Tuition Fees for Francophone Students?

The Canadian government of Quebec will reduce school fees to attract more students, starting next season, in certain disciplines, led by information technologies, engineering, health and social services, and education.

The tuition fee reduction is related to studying in Francophone universities or the Cégep system. The government proposes reducing fees to zero for the qualifying stage and to $3,000 for university levels.

The tuition fees are currently 17,000 dollars at the qualifying level (Cégep), and 24,000 dollars at the university level, while the government is betting on reducing it to achieve stability in Quebec.

 

Need for Qualified Labor

Mustapha Khattabi the inspector of financial administrations in Morocco told Al-Estiklal: “Canada has a strong need for skilled labor, that’s why the government of Quebec has announced a program aimed at attracting foreign students by lowering the prices related to the various training courses offered by the country.”

Indeed, Jean Boulet the Minister of Labor revealed the implementation of 80 million Canadian dollars spread over four years in order to encourage international registrations and thus attract a very rare potential workforce in the region. In addition, this program promises future registrants “personalized support” so that integration takes place in the best possible way.

The number of full-time Quebec students peaked in 2017, followed by a slight decline thereafter. On the other hand, the pool of international students has exploded. It went from 15,715 in 2006 to 41,350 in 2020, all full-time cycles combined, according to Statistics Canada.

The journalist Francis Vailles explained that French, Chinese, Indians, Americans, Iranians, Moroccans, Senegalese: all these young foreign brains flock to our universities, whether at the baccalaureate or the masters or doctoral level. So much so that today, they represent 1 in 5 students, double that of 15 years ago. Meanwhile, young people from English Canada have stagnated.

The Minister of Immigration and Labor in the same government, Jean Boulet, said that the move aims to attract foreign students from Montreal to Quebec and ensure the promotion of French learning, and then discuss ways to persuade the final settlement in Quebec.

In an interview with local media, the Canadian government official promised foreign students residing in Quebec with personal support on several levels that facilitate their integration, beginning with finding housing.

 

Promoting French Culture

The expert Mustapha Khattabi stressed that: “The tuition fees reduction aims to promote French culture by allowing more French-speaking students to attend Canadian universities and to settle in Canada.”

Erin O’Toole, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and Official Opposition said: “I first want to express my pride in living in a country that adopts French as an official language. The French language is part of the identity of our country, our culture, and our heritage. It is the heart of the Quebec nation, of the Acadians, as well as of the many French-speaking communities of Canada.

For too long, the Liberals have refused to recognize that in the current Canadian context, only French is really threatened. For this reason, the Liberal government must walk the talk – something it has not done since 2018 – to modernize the Official Languages Act. This action could help maintain the vitality of the Canadian Francophonie.

Protecting the existence of the many French-speaking communities in Canada is a noble project. For me, a French-speaking Quebec is a source of pride. It is also a heritage for which we must fight. The Conservative Party will be in all the fights to protect and promote French in Quebec and elsewhere in the country. This is why we are pushing for the modernization of the Official Languages ​​Act, as well as for the extension of Bill 101 to businesses under federal jurisdiction in Quebec.

Sylvain Blais, director of the Cégep Foundation, stated that the region needs a lot of manpower and that this new development would help universities to attract French-speaking international students.

Blais stated that over the past years, many applications for study were rejected due to failure to prove means of self-support for a period ranging between three and four years, considering that the current procedure will remove great pressure on students.

 

Less Pressure

For his part, the Dean of the University of Quebec in Rimouski, Françoise Dechen, welcomed the minister's announcement, noting that he had seen many cases of leaving studies in Canada because of tuition fees, but the real challenge for the government would be to find housing.

It is expected that the government will move to find housing in the cities of Drummondville, Troyes, and Rivières for a medium as well as long-term, while looking for additional housing opportunities, according to the same official, noting that many students are severely affected by the housing problem.

On another side, the Professor of economics at UQAM, a member of the Royal Society of Canada and has chaired the Canadian Economics Association, argues that canceling the university fees for students is inequitable. Because it doesn’t make any sense for the Canadian tax-payers to finance international student studies.

He explained that removing all university tuition fees would be fundamentally inequitable. This would make the 70% of the population who do not have a university degree pay most of the cost of studies for the 30% who have one and for whom the diploma opens the way to enrichment. It would be neither more nor less than Robin Hood in reverse: we would take from the less rich to give to the richest.

He stressed that regardless of their initial social background, university students who make it through to graduation reap significant personal financial benefits. It can be calculated, using data from the Canadian Census, that a university education provides the graduate, over his or her working life, with a cumulative income that is on average $1.3 million higher than the income of a graduate from high school. For the humanities graduate, it is a little less ($1 million), for a physician, twice as much ($2.5 million).

The economic expert concluded by saying that the most elementary principle of justice requires that there be a counterpart. It is true that the progressive tax paid on their additional income by the 30% of baccalaureate graduates enriched by the diploma constitutes such a consideration. “But, if we do calculations, this is insufficient. Without the direct contribution of university students to their education, we would still leave most of the cost of their studies to the financial burden of the 70% of taxpayers who will never have a university degree.”