A Judge of the Superior Court of Quebec annulled on Thursday a walking walk for Canadian university students outside the province in Quebec and the French language requirements that the province had tried to impose them.
In his decision of 82 pages, Judge Éric Dufour granted the universities of McGill and concord a partial victory.
He invalidated the changes that the Ministry of Higher Education made to its budgetary rules. These changes increased enrollment rates for students outside the province by 33 percent and said 80 percent of them needed to learn French when graduating. The changes also affected international students, establishing their minimum registration rates at approximately $ 20,000.
Dufour annulled the rules that affected Canadian students outside the province, saying that the Ministry lacked data to support their statements that they were not integrating in the Quebec society.
“The evidence shows that the Ministry has absolutely no data on this issue, or only fragile information to support it,” Dufour wrote.
He also said that the requirement that 80 percent of undergraduate students outside the province in universities in English reach an intermediate level of French competition for graduation was “unreasonable given the almost safe impossibility of achievement.”
Dufour gave the ministry a nine -month timeline to review the tariff structure. For now, the current rules will remain, he wrote. However, language requirements are immediately invalidated, according to the failure.
But he left the international increases in the student’s rate without changes. He said it was reasonable that the government would like to rebalance the financing that English and French universities receive. English universities tend to attract more international students, who pay higher enrollment rates. The Ministry of Higher Education has said that the highest rate structure for international students would allow them to redistribute money to French Quebec universities.
While the province is reducing its registration walk for Canadian students outside the province, it is adding a French requirement that a university calls ‘devastating’.
Initially, Quebec had doubled the registration fees for students outside the province, then returning that number to a 33 percent increase but imposing the French language requirement.
The increase increased registration rates for Canadian students outside the province of approximately $ 9,000 to $ 12,000.
Prime Minister François Legault had said that the presence of English -speaking students hurt the future of French in Quebec.
The chiefs of Quebec English universities had criticized the measure, saying that the increase in registration rates made their programs not attractive to students throughout the country. Both McGill and Concordia had said that registration walks had led to a registration drop and made their budgets tighten.
The requirement to teach French to 80 percent of its students was “totally unrealistic, both technically and academically,” said Deep Saini, president and vice chancellor of the University of McGill, in December 2023, when the Ministry of Higher Education announced the changes.
McGill and Concordia filed a lawsuit against the Ministry, disputing registration changes, in 2024.
It was not clear immediately if the Ministry would dispute Dufour’s decision. The Office of the Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Dery, said they would take note of the sentence, but did not issue more comments.
CBC has communicated with McGill and Concordia.
