Legault defends tuition hike for out-of-province students as means to protect French

Premier François Legault says increasing university tuition for out-of-province students will help protect the French language by limiting the number of anglophones studying in Quebec.

"It's nothing against anglophones," Legault told reporters Tuesday. "This is to protect French."

Legault said this while providing further insight into his government's decision to hike tuition for students coming to Quebec from across Canada or abroad.

Quebec's minister of higher education, Pascale Déry, announced Friday that new, out-of-province Canadian students will see tuition fees double next year. For most, that means costs will jump from $9,000 to more than $17,000.

International student tuition will also rise to a minimum of $20,000 per year. Déry framed the increase, the proceeds of which will go into government coffers, as a way to balance the funding of English and French universities in the province. 

Montreal's two English universities, Concordia and McGill, are more popular with international and out-of-province students than Quebec's French universities. As a result, they make more money from tuition from those students. 

This is why Legault wants to ensure those coming in from abroad are paying more and that wealth is redistributed equally among French-language universities, the premier explained Tuesday. 

"It's a question of equality for French universities," he said, and it will help protect the French language.

"Year after year, we have a decline in French, and I am determined to reverse that trend."

Citing the 2022 French-language law reform, Legault said his government has always strived to protect the French language.

He said taking these steps was not an easy decision to make, but it is necessary as having so many anglophone students in Quebec threatens the survival of the French language.

Legault said he refuses to believe the future of universities like McGill and Concordia could depend on students coming from out of province.

But nearly a third of the students who attend Bishop's University in Sherbrooke, Que., are from outside the province, the university's principal and vice-chancellor, Sébastien Lebel-Grenier, said.

He said the university would be in dire financial straits if students from the rest of Canada couldn't afford the higher tuition cost.