By Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative

Bishop’s University has received a show of support from one of its English counterparts after it was given a partial exemption to the CAQ government’s planned fee hike and language strategy affecting English-language universities.

In October, Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry announced plans to double tuition for out-of-province Canadian students enrolled in undergraduate programs and certain masters’ programs and introduce a minimum tuition rate for international students. At the time, she argued that the measure would help counter the perceived anglicization of Montreal and keep Quebec taxpayers from subsidizing out-of-province students who took advantage of Quebec’s relatively low tuition fees and then returned home to work. Bishop’s is the smallest English-language university in the province, which receives 30 per cent of its students from the rest of Canada. After Bishop’s argued that the fee increase posed an “existential threat,” Déry indicated she was willing to relax some aspects of the policy for them. The opposition Liberals have called for it to be scrapped entirely.

In a Dec. 14 directive, Déry partially walked back the tuition increase, reducing the total base rate from $17,000 to $12,000 (The base rate for Quebec resident undergraduates at Bishop’s is just under $3000). The policy allows Bishop’s to enroll up to 825 Canadian out-of-province students at the current out-of-province base rate of just under $9,000. Funding for Bishop’s, unlike for McGill and Concordia, will not be tied to reaching French-language proficiency targets, although it will still be expected to aim for 80 per cent of their non-Quebec undergraduate students to reach intermediate French proficiency by the end of their studies.

Vannina Maestracci, a media relations officer for Concordia University, said Concordia supported the exemption for Bishop’s. “We are relieved to see that Bishop’s particular circumstances were taken into account by the government. The support provided by the community around Bishop’s also demonstrated how important this institution is for the Townships,” Maestracci told the BCN.

Echoing comments made by Bishop’s principal Sébastien Lebel-Grenier, Maestracci noted that despite the softened measures, the damage may have already been done to out-of-province enrolment, at least for this year. “Following the negative message sent to prospective students from outside Quebec over the last two months as well as the confusion surrounding tuition fees, we have already seen a decrease in applications of around 20 per cent for out-of-province students and 30 per cent for international students. Given this, despite tuition fees for out-of-province students now having been set at $12,000 rather than $17,000, we believe that the assessment of anticipated financial impact we did in late October still holds and that the new measures will result in a loss of about 10 per cent of our budget,” she said.

McGill University officials said in a statement that McGill “is very happy that Bishop’s University will largely escape the targeted, punitive measures that the Quebec government is inflicting on Concordia and McGill, Quebec’s other anglophone universities. We will not congratulate the government for limiting the damage to Bishop’s that the government has itself caused. The incoherent policies will have a devastating effect on the Quebec economy and on the Quebec university network in general.”