When the Quebec government announced that it would mandate tuition hikes for out-of-province students attending Quebec universities, one group was exempt: international students from France and francophone Belgians. It’s now cheaper to attend McGill if you’re an international student from France than it is if you come from Ottawa or Toronto. If the goal of the new policy is to attract francophones to Quebec and make studying in the province less appealing for anglophone Canadians, the plan will likely work.
Putting aside the damage this policy might do to the province’s English universities and the harm the bunker mentality might have on the province in the long run, it also penalizes one group you might think Quebec’s language warriors would want to attract: Franco-Ontarians. There are now more than 600,000 francophones in Ontario who now find themselves lumped in with anglophones and charged a tuition premium.
Joël Louiseize is one such Franco-Ontarian who moved to Quebec to study at Concordia, but he’s still considered an out-of-province student since he hasn't received official Quebec residency status. He writes in Maclean’s about his experience living in Quebec over the last few months, cataloguing a series of affronts—micro- and macro-aggressions alike—that have made him and his Anglo girlfriend feel unwelcome. “We felt like outsiders,” he says, “unappreciated and unwanted, no matter how hard we tried to fit in.”
—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief
