Tuition hike 'a frontal assault' on Bishop's University: Jean Charest

“Does anyone, honestly, think the future of the French language is threatened on the streets of Sherbrooke by the presence of Bishop’s University students?”

Published Oct 21, 2023 • Last updated 7 hours ago • 3 minute read

Jean Charest greets supporters at the Conservative Party of Canada leadership vote in Ottawa on Sept. 10, 2022. A former longtime Liberal MNA for the Sherbrooke riding that serves Bishop’s University, Charest excoriated the government of Premier François Legault on Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023, for forging ahead with a tuition hike for out-of-province students. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press

Former Quebec premier Jean Charest has joined the surging opposition to the government’s plan to nearly double tuition fees for out-of-province students, describing it as a “frontal assault” not only on Bishop’s University, but the whole Eastern Townships region.

A longtime Liberal ex-MNA for the Sherbrooke riding that serves Bishop’s, Charest gave an interview to that city’s French-language newspaper, La Tribune, excoriating the government of Premier François Legault for forging ahead with the tuition hike.

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“Does anyone, honestly, think the future of the French language is threatened on the streets of Sherbrooke by the presence of Bishop’s University students?” he asked rhetorically, alluding to Legault’s remarks earlier this week that “when I see the number of anglophone students in Quebec, it threatens the survival of French.”

(It was a little over a week ago that Legault and Charest engaged in a love-in of sorts, when the premier rolled out the red carpet for him at the inauguration of Hydro-Québec’s Romaine dam in Havre-St-Pierre. Legault praised Charest for having launched construction of the hydro complex in 2009, while Charest responded that Legault’s invitation was “very generous.”)

Charest noted Bishop’s was founded in 1843 and forms part of the “historical, cultural, social and economic fabric” of the Eastern Townships.

“But what concerns me deeply (about this measure) is it’s a frontal assault on one of the region’s institutions,” he said. “But all our institutions are important. Whether it’s Bishop’s University, the Université de Sherbrooke, our colleges, our hospitals, these are the institutions that define our region.”

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La hausse des droits de scolarité des étudiants hors Québec constitue une attaque frontale contre l’université Bishop et les Cantons-de-l’Est.

Les députés devront choisir entre leur comté et les intérêts de ceux qui les ont élus. #polqchttps://t.co/K265KXPjA5

— Jean Charest (@JeanCharest_) October 21, 2023

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Charest’s comments follow those by the mayor of Sherbrooke, Évelyne Beaudin, who urged the Legault government to reassess Bishop’s “alarming” hike. Bishop’s is the smallest of Quebec’s three English-language universities, with 2,650 students. Fifty-five per cent are from Quebec, with 30 per cent from the rest of Canada and 15 per cent from other countries.

(Ironically, it was Charest’s plan to boost tuition fees for all Quebec students in 2011 that led to the massive “carré rouge” protests by students, contributing to his government’s defeat a year later.)

Responding to the outcry over Bishop’s — but not over Concordia or McGill universities in Montreal — a Coalition Avenir Québec MNA in the region, Geneviève Hébert, floated the idea of a possible subsidy for the Lennoxville institution.

“I’m sensitive, and so is Minister (of Higher Education Pascale) Déry, to the particular reality of Bishop’s, which is a small regional university with mostly undergraduate students, 90 per cent of whom live on the Lennoxville campus,” she told TVA Nouvelles. “It’s really a different reality than at other universities. It’s my role to make sure that this reality is well understood and that we propose alternative ways to help Bishop’s.”

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Criticism of the plan to boost tuition fees to about $17,000 from $8,992 next fall for Canadian students outside of Quebec is spreading beyond the anglo community. In Saturday’s La Presse, columnist Paul Journet noted Quebec “will become the first province to refuse to pay part of the tuition fees of applicants from the rest of the country.”

“We could have focused more on francization,” Journet wrote. “Instead, the Caquist approach is creating a diplomatic incident with the other provinces and posing an existential threat to the small Bishop’s University.”

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