Commentary by Kevin Paul, McGill law student on the current conjuncture. First published in McGill Daily on 30th August, 2012

“First, if the September 4 election indeed leads to major concessions on student demands by the newly elected party, it is the rapport de force that we have created with the state, and not our engagement in the electoral process, that will be responsible for our gains. The Parti Québecois (PQ), which leads in the polls, has promised a temporary tuition freeze, but not out of any genuine commitment to accessible education: in 1996, then-Education Minister, now-PQ leader, Pauline Marois presided over an attempt to raise fees by 30 per cent (a strike put an end to the plan).

It was the crisis generated this past spring, not the lobbying of political parties or scripted appeals to the electorate, that made it politically opportune for the PQ to oppose the Liberals’ plan to raise tuition at all costs. It was massive student mobilization that ultimately forced the election call and made the tuition hike an election issue. And it was sustained economic disruption that triggered the more visibly repressive measures that have cost Charest support from the segment of his base that favors a veneer of social peace above the machinations of accelerating neoliberal exploitation. Finally, it will be continued mobilization, through strikes, mass demonstrations, and economic disruption, that will force a PQ government to keep its promises.”

The entire commentary is published on McGill Daily, 30th August, 2012 http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2012/08/elections-are-not-a-solution/

Elections are not a solution

Out of the voting booths, into the streets

Written by Kevin Paul

In mid-summer, almost four months after the Quebec student strike of 2012 had entered uncharted territory as the longest in the province’s history, Premier Jean Charest played his final card. With CEGEP students prepared to renew strike mandates despite threats of a lost semester, and the Special Law lying in shreds under the feet of a hundred thousand illegal demonstrators, Charest called a provincial election, over a year before his term was set to expire. On September 4, Quebec residents will enter voting booths. Read more »

By Sam Bick and Rushdia Mehreen

First published in Our Times’ 2012 Summer Issue, Vol. 31 No.3.

After 120 days, the Quebec student strike that started in February is no longer focussed solely on accessible education. More than 150,000 students from over 60 associations from universities and CEGEPs (colleges) across Quebec remain on strike. But what began as an uprising of students, symbolized by the “carré rouge” or red square (referencing squarely in the red, for those crushed by debt), has grown into a popular movement, building solidarity against the austerity agenda.

Despite what Jean Charest’s Parti Libéral du Québec (PLQ) government contends, the tuition fee increase of 75 per cent (or $1,625 over five years) is not a “necessary measure,” but just one part of a strategy to undermine the possibility of supporting public services in Quebec. For instance, since taking power in 2003, the PLQ has imposed user fees on public services, phased out capital tax, and reduced tax rates. The tuition increase was part of a broader austerity budget announced by Finance Minister Raymond Bachand in the spring of 2011 that included a health tax (read: cuts to health care) and an increase in hydro-electricity billing rates.

Over the last four months, the government has refused to produce a single offer responding directly to students’ demands for a freeze on tuition fees, and has spent millions of dollars on police overtime in an attempt to quash what has become a popular resistance.

Quebec’s ninth student strike was initiated on February 13, 2012 by the members of the leading national association CLASSE (Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante – the Broad Coalition of Association for Solidarity among Student Unions). Approximately half of the associations on strike are members of this coalition. The other two major umbrella associations are FEUQ (the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec), and FECQ (the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec).

The tuition fee increase is
just one part of a broader
austerity agenda in Quebec

The government’s outright refusal to acknowledge or respond to the demands of striking students resulted in what was the largest demonstration in Canadian history on March 22, with more than 300,000 gathering in Montreal. Following this major action, students turned to economic disruption. This included targeted blockades of banks, bridges and the Port of Montreal, as well as a disruption in late April of Salon Plan Nord, a job fair for the government’s multi-billion-dollar plan to extract natural resources from northern Quebec and perpetuate the theft of indigenous land and resources. Read more »

By Maureen Tkacik | 15 August 2012

(The views and opinions expressed here are the author’s own and not those of Reuters.)

You have probably mentally cataloged the student loan crisis alongside all the other looming trillion-dollar crises busy imperiling civilization but also enrich the already rich.

But it is different from those crises in a few significant ways, starting with the fact that the entire loan business is arguably unconstitutional. You don’t have to take it from me: A pre-eminent bankruptcy scholar made precisely this argument under oath before Congress. In December 1975, when Congress was debating the first law that made student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, University of Connecticut law professor Philip Shuchman testified that students:

“should not be singled out for special and discriminatory treatment. I have the further very literal feeling that this is almost a denial of their right to equal protection of the laws … Nor do I think has any evidence been presented that these people, these young people just beginning their years on the whole should be singled out for special and as I view it discriminatory treatment. I suggest to you that this may at least in spirit be a denial of their right to equal protection with the virtual pole star of our constitutional ambit.”

The thing is, though, discrimination was kind of the whole idea. Stagflation was sending an unprecedented number of Silent Majority members into bankruptcy, and the bank lobby was fighting back with a propaganda assault that scapegoated counterculture student delinquents who were allegedly taking loans with no goal of paying them. As Shuchman and others explained in hearings, only about 4 percent of people who filed for bankruptcy protection in 1975 had student loans on their balance sheets, and of those, fewer than one-fifth did not have substantial other debts motivating them to file.

Read more »

By Roland Li | 3 August 2012

The pressures on the Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO), the sixth-largest U.S. newspaper group by circulation, are twofold: the erosion in advertising and circulation revenue of its print properties, and the plunging profit of Kaplan, its for-profit education division, as the federal government enacts more regulations.

Read more »

by Free Education Montreal

Despite its claim to multiculturalism, Quebec is becoming an increasingly hostile environment for international students. Since 2008, the provincial government has been allowing universities to increase international tuition fees by 10 per cent per year. The worst of these hikes came in the 2008-2009 school year, when Quebec completely deregulated international tuition fees in six programs – meaning universities could increase fees for these students as high as they please.

Some universities did not have the basic decency to warn international students of increases as high as 50 per cent, with serious consequences.

Concordia University MBA student Mahmood Salehi came here two years ago from Iran with his life savings. The April 2009 acceptance letter from Concordia stated that “the fees for the John Molson MBA Program for the academic year 2009-2010 are approximately $13,700.” He planned accordingly. It was tight, but he could just make it.

Yet when he arrived in Canada in August 2009, he was charged $19,676.98 – an increase of around 50 per cent. Concordia University had given him no warning. Since then, Salehi has suffered from extreme stress, health problems, depression, homesickness, low grades and thus difficulties in obtaining a work visa. He obtained a $2,000 remission from Concordia, but the greatest damage had already been done.

“I hadn’t bought a winter jacket, I was waiting until January trembling to buy a cheaper one.”

This experience also affected his view of Canada’s respect for human rights. “If a Canadian consumer that is overcharged by any company can take legal actions against them and the media and consumers’ rights associations would support him or her, it is painful to see that Canadian universities have found international students as their best so-called ‘development’ and nobody is there to listen to overcharged and helpless students.”

Another student in Salehi’s program returned to India because he couldn’t pay the increase, even with a scholarship from TD Bank.

The six programs that the Quebec government deregulated for undergraduate international students in 2009 were administration, law, computer science, engineering, mathematics and the pure sciences. Yet the government is continuously increasing the differential fees for international students, not to mention the 10% increase allowance to the international tuition fee granted to universities in 2008. International students are starting to wonder whether it is worth it for them to come study here any more.

“Even though I love Montreal and Quebec,” says Concordia international graduate student Doug Smith, “I tell my friends at home not to come here. It’s just too unpredictable. I never know from one year to the next whether or not I’ll be able to stay in school.”

According to Statistics Canada, Quebec’s share of international students among Canadian provinces dropped from 37% in 1999 to 26% in 2008.

The reputation that Quebec universities are developing among international students may not please Quebec’s Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities, whose report refers to international student graduates as bringing a “beneficial contribution to Quebec society” because they have “already lived on the territory for a while, they know and share the values of Quebec.”

Though difficult to calculate, in a recent interview with le Devoir, Daniel Zizian, head of the Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec (CREPUQ), estimated that 10 per cent of international students end up staying in the province. Across the country, according to a study by the Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE), 51 per cent of university international students and 57 per cent of international college students foresee applying for permanent residency, while 52 per cent and 71 per cent, respectively, plan to stay to work for up to three years after receiving their diploma.

Even if they do return to their home countries, international students generate around $1 billion in revenue in Quebec while they are here. Despite their active contribution to Quebec’s economic development through taxes and as consumers and future residents, they are faced with various challenges to their livelihood in Quebec beyond tuition, such as off-campus work restrictions while studying, insufficient on-campus job opportunities and high health insurance costs.

It may come as no surprise that 40 per cent of international students in Canada face difficulties meeting their basic needs, and that the number of international students from low-income families decreased, reports the study from the CBIE.

“I was constantly living with the uncertainty that I wouldn’t be able to pay the semester or eat that night,” said engineering student Diego Eibar. “And in those days it wasn’t even as bad as today, now that universities can raise the fees more frequently.” Eibar returned to his home-country of Argentina as the costs and stress were too high, only returning to study in Quebec recently because he succeeded in receiving permanent residency status.

Out-of-province students also face obstacles. With some exceptions, Canadian students studying in Quebec pay supplementary fees that put their annual tuition at close to $6000 per year – indexed to tuition rates in the rest of the country and therefore increasing every year. In order to be considered eligible for permanent residence in Quebec, and therefore avoid the ever-burgeoning differential fee hikes, out-of-province students must reside in Quebec for a year without being as a full-time student.

“I couldn’t afford out-of-province tuition,” says McGill University graduate Fred Burrill, “but as a part-time student I wasn’t eligible for any bursaries or scholarships. So I ended up working two jobs while going to school and unfortunately had very little money or time for my studies that year.”

All of this stands in contravention of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which states “higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.” Education is a right, regardless of one’s nationality or place of birth. While the Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities advertises that Quebec society’s “well-developed health, education and social security services ensure the well-being of the entire population,” this does not seem to be the case for international students.

Furthermore, by charging such high fees to students often coming from countries with a significantly lower income-per-capita than Canada, Quebec is in effect perpetuating the cycle of wealth transfer from the Global South to high-income western countries.

The fee differences between international and out-of-province students and students from Quebec can make it difficult to forge a united movement for accessible education – a fact not lost on the Quebec government. Often concerned about their immigration status, international students have been hesitant to take to the streets. However, things are changing. For example, in 2010, a campaign led by international students and their allies at Concordia University students resulted in “Angry Week.” This forced the university to negotiate and partially modify their plans.

And international students are increasingly aware that universities may obscure the truth about their legal right to protest. Concordia University sent an official message to students on March 20^th stating “international students arrested while protesting could face deportation and be denied future re-entry.” The letter conveniently omits that the Constitution of Rights and Freedoms, including the right to peacefully protest, applies to anyone on Canadian soil and that the most common offense for peacefully protesting (‘unlawful assembly’) does not affect a person’s admissibility to immigration in Canada.

International and out-of-province students have the right to speak up about the difficulties they face and they are an asset to the student movement. They bring their own experiences and new frustrations and energy to the Quebec student movement. From Indonesia to Nova Scotia to Chile, the move to privatize education is a worldwide trend, and we are stronger when we unite. Just as we reject the dominance of market logic in the education system, we cannot and must not allow students from outside Quebec to be treated like market commodities.

With contributions from Nadia Hausfather, Rushdia Mehreen, and Raul Chacon.

A first version of this article was published in French in the Ultimatum, issue Winter 2012.

The English version was published in the ASSÉ/CLASSE’s English Ultimatum Newspaper, May 2012

For all students to be empowered and have a voice.

A general assembly allows for:

-> direct democracy – everyone can express themselves and have an equal say

-> local sovereignty within the association

-> Space for discussion and debate – everyone can propose and amend motions. Thus all students get to make collective decisions.

-> A few people (executives or council members) don’t decide on behalf of others. Those elected are accountable to the students; the General Assembly is the most democratic body that allows this in a transparent manner.

A general assembly (GA) is democratic because it can be called at any time by the student association whether departmental or faculty-level, as well as by any member who collects the minimum amount of signatures required by the association’s by-laws (regulations).

A general assembly is also important because there is room for discussion and debate, for students to consider new opinions and solutions, and together decide what can be done collectively.

Article extracted from ASSÉ/CLASSE’s Ultimatum Newspaper, May 2012