Dear members of the McGill community,
I wanted to update you on the status of the tuition measures impacting university financing that were announced by the Government of Quebec on October 13.
On Monday, the Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry, asked for a meeting with the three heads of Quebec’s anglophone universities to discuss the proposal that we presented to Premier François Legault and the Minister on November 6.
The meeting continued our discussion of the proposal. We reinforced to Minister Déry that our universities would lack the financial means to implement the courses and activities designed to help students learn French, as outlined in our proposal, unless the tuition measures were also rolled back.
As I described in my November 2 message to the McGill community, we estimate the financial losses to the Government’s measures to be between $42 million and $94 million, in addition to significant other negative impacts on our programs, culture and student experience. The ambitious nature of our French program will open up new opportunities for our students, but it will of course entail significant costs to the University – expenses that will not be possible if McGill is dealing with substantial cuts.
As a reminder, the proposal we presented has three parts:
- Implementing initiatives within three years to help non-francophone students from outside Quebec integrate linguistically and culturally into the workforce and society;
- maintaining current 2023 tuition rates, subject to indexation, for Canadian students from outside Quebec; and
- finding alternative ways to balance university financing with regard to international student tuition.
In the proposal, we also set an objective of ensuring at least 40 percent of non-francophone undergraduate students attain a Level 6 (intermediate) proficiency in French on the Quebec scale before graduation. In our recent meeting, the Minister and her colleagues raised some questions about this target, and we committed to providing answers as quickly as possible.
The measures that the Government announced will decrease the number of students coming here, impair Quebec’s reputation on the world stage and worsen the labour shortage already affecting employers. We strongly believe that Quebec’s three anglophone universities have put a winning proposal on the table, one that welcomes talent and provides the skills necessary to thrive in Quebec society.
We look forward to hearing back from Premier Legault.
Sincerely,
Deep Saini
Principal and Vice-Chancellor
McGill University