(Quebec) According to Parti Québécois (PQ), English-language universities will receive the lion’s share of infrastructure funding from Quebec.
Posted at 5:38pm
Patrice Bergeron The Canadian Press
McGill and Concordia universities alone will receive a total of 622 million of the 1.04 billion that the government of Quebec will grant in the long term to all universities in the list of ongoing projects, we can read in Quebec Plan Infrastructure 2023-2033 presented with budget on Tuesday.
“Can the Prime Minister admit that his higher education budget is directly funding the Anglicization of Quebec? PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon asked Prime Minister François Legault during Thursday’s Question Time.
The Separatist leader has calculated that, for example, if we report infrastructure investment in Quebec by the number of students enrolled, it is $28,500 per student at McGill and $357 per student at UQAM.
All French-speaking universities shared “a meager 40%,” he criticized, noting that members of the University of Quebec “get 5% of the pie”.
The Obercaquiste dodged the question. However, he argued that his government had limited places in English-language CEGEPs to 17% of the college population. He also accused the PQ of wanting to close half of the English-speaking CEGEPs.
Mr St-Pierre Plamondon even took the opportunity to joke about the government’s current advertising campaign in favor of using French, where we see an endangered species, the falcon, in a re-enacted wildlife documentary, with a voice-over narration full of Anglicisms.
“While the CAQ is putting all its effort into peregrine falconry to persuade a population already convinced of the urgency of acting in French, we are missing key issues such as disproportionate funding for English-speaking universities. »
The PQ leader also criticized the government for spending $200 million a year to fund university education for Canadian and international students enrolled in English-speaking institutions.
He asked the head of the CAQ to take up the PQ’s proposal to impose a maximum quota of 20% English-speaking foreign students out of the total number of admitted students.
Mr. Legault responded by criticizing the PQ for betraying the legacy of René Lévesque’s Bill 101, which provided that English speakers from the rest of Canada enrolled in English-speaking universities here would pay the same tuition as Quebecers.