 (FC075) 
August 29, 2012
Quebec Tuition Fee Dispute - The Stats
Figures from Statistics Canada show that, for the 2011/2012 year, undergraduate students in Quebec paid an average of just $2,519 a year for their education. Meanwhile, students in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Ontario paid $5,601, $5,662 and $6,640 a year, while the Canadian average was $5,366 a year.
Charest’s tuition proposal would have seen Quebec students still paying thousands of dollars less for their tuition in 2017 than students in several other provinces are paying right now. Yet Charest was forced to water down his proposal, spreading the proposed tuition increase out over an extended seven-year period instead of five. The new proposal barely covered the cost of inflation over the 2012 to 2019 period, but was still rejected by student groups as unfair.
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is a policy analyst and the Saskatchewan Office Director for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Based in Regina, he conducts research on a wide variety of municipal, provincial and federal public policy from education to the economy, civil liberties to technology. Peter is regularly interviewed on nationwide and local TV and has appeared on dozens of radio stations across the country. He has had columns published in nationwide newspapers, is often quoted in news articles and is also an official contributor to the Huffington Post blog. Most recently, Peter has coordinated the Frontier Centre’s Local Government Performance Index project, a study in to the financial performance and transparency of Canada’s top 100 cities. The influential project has garnered substantial media exposure and has encouraged meaningful improvements in accountability in municipal financial departments across the country Before coming to Canada, Peter was based in New Zealand where he had significant experience in leading issue campaigns, in political campaign management and twice stood for Parliament. |
It’s easy to think that provincial matters don’t affect the rest of the country but all Canadians should keep a close eye on the Quebec election. There’s no such thing as a free lunch - someone always has to pay the bill. In this case, thanks to equalisation transfers, taxpayers all across Canada will be forced to pick up part of the tab.
Peter McCaffrey 
