Quebec goes to the polls next Monday, and while I do election manifesto analysis for all provinces, the one for Quebec is a bit extra special, both because of the sheer number of parties and because Quebec’s one of the few places in the country where we have seen consistent increases in investment, even if the current government does have some funny ideas about things like “academic freedom”. 

In reverse order of current polling results:

Parti québécois.  Remember when they were scary?  Well, they are polling under 10% now and may leave the assembly altogether in this election.  As a result, their manifesto isn’t as comprehensive as it used to be.  There’s stuff on childcare (which is the one piece of social policy from their long stint in government in the 90s that remains), climate change, assistance for the elderly (possibly the largest remaining chunk of their voting basis), and protection of the French language.  That last one is the only place you’ll see any PSE-related content: the PQ would like to bar non-anglophones from going to anglophone cégeps, apply a uniform French-language test at both English and French cégeps, and – this one is a bit weird – reverse the transfer of the old Royal Victoria Hospital to McGill and give it to one or more francophone universities (who would want it?  The thing is vast, windowless money pit almost completely unsuited to use by a university). 

Québec solidaire.  QS might be the most left-wing party in Canada that has a seat in the legislature.  It’s co-led by Manon Massé and former hero of the Printemps Érable, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.  Surprisingly (for me, anyway) QS’ attitude to free tuition in its platform is a little like the PQ’s towards sovereignty: one day, but not now.  Instead, they promise an unspecified lowering of tuition as a kind of down payment.  They don’t even promise better funding for higher education, instead offering a boost to institutions which are “en région” (which is Québécois for “not in Montreal or Québec City”), and even – good luck with this one – taking students out of the cities and getting them to go to smaller regional universities.  It’s not clear how much any of this will cost because costing is bourgeois, or something.

Parti libéral du Québec.  The Liberals have, by some distance, the most detailed platform on post-secondary education, though their costing document, as far as I can tell, does not appear to envisage any net new spending in the area.   The party have adopted the same policy as QS on more money for regional cégeps and universities, which is wild since neither party has a hope of a seat in the regions; It has also said it will top up FRSC graduate student bursaries, offer free menstrual products on all university/college campuses, “work with universities and colleges on better funding solutions”  (which as near as I can tell is about campus infrastructure more than anything else), ensure that cégep students can pick whichever institution they want, regardless of languages (a direct rebuttal to the PQ’s position), and “re-think” the Bourses Perspective Québec. 

At this point I am going to need to do a quick aside as I realize (to my significant embarrassment) that I never wrote about this new grant system in Quebec when it was first announced in the provincial budget earlier this year.  The Bourses Perspective Québec is the Coalition Avenir Québec’s attempt to do one of those “let’s use financial assistance to try to affect labour market outcomes” efforts by giving $2500 per term ($1500 per term in the cégeps) to students in undergraduate fields deemed to be “economically strategic” by the government.  That partly means engineering, but also includes a number of fields in health, social service and education as well (you can see the full list of programs by institution here).  It’s a big program – something on the order of $425 million dollars, which increases the total amount of grant aid in Quebec by about 75%.  Anyways, it’s not clear what the Liberals want to re-think (there is some wording about developing “a more consensual formula”) which I suspect means they want to loosen the eligibility criteria or maybe even just fold the whole thing into need-based aid. 

Parti conservateur du Québec.  This one is as dismal as you might imagine from a Party largely driven by anti-mandate rage.  The post-secondary education platform consists of exactly two items.  One: supporting the truly dreadful Loi 32 which was introduced but not passed (died on the order paper) by the CAQ last spring.  Two: pledging to get make it tougher for student unions to call strikes.  That’s it.  That’s the whole platform.

Coalition avenir Québec.  So, although you have to dig around on its website a bit, the Party does have a platform and it does contains some generous text about the value of universities to Quebec society.  But look, when you’re an incumbent government with a 20-point lead in the polls, you don’t need to promise all that much.  Especially when you’ve presided over the strongest growth in public spending of any province over the last four years and you’ve nearly doubled the number of bursaries going to students (albeit not on the basis of need), there’s no real need to do anything but run on your record.  Which is precisely want the CAQ are doing, albeit with an additional promise to “support” researchers by re-introducing their academic freedom legislation, some vague but potentially menacing language about imposing “greater co-ordination” on the system and a commitment to boost funding for Quebec studies. 

There you have it: depending on which party you favour, higher education is to a considerable extent just a canvas on which other social pre-occupations are projected: fears of “cancel culture”, concerns about the fate of the French language, the decline of the regions – you name it.  Anything but seeing either the intrinsic or the economic benefits of higher education in and of itself.  Maybe that doesn’t matter as long as Governments keep pumping money into the sector: but I for one find it a bit depressing, nonetheless.