Quebec student group presents demands to end protests.

By Rene Bruemmer and Kevin Dougherty

Postmedia News

MONTREAL — The largest and most militant of the three main student groups organizing the Quebec student strike presented the latest demands Thursday morning to end the boycott — demands not likely to lift the current impasse.

Calling the Liberal government’s offer last Friday to students a non-compromise, CLASSE spokespeople called for the following changes in university governance:

• Claiming 26.2 per cent of university funding goes toward research, much of which they say profits private enterprise, CLASSE called for that percentage to be cut, saving between $142 million and $280 million a year that could go toward funding teaching.

• Cut the practice of universities advertising to attract students, saving $18 million a year.

• An immediate freeze on the wages and hiring of university administrators, both of which they say have exploded in recent years.

• A moratorium on the construction of satellite campuses far from university home sites, which CLASSE says only results in schools stealing students from each other.

In the long term, CLASSE wants the government to arrange a public forum on education in Quebec, and the gradual insertion of a capital tax on banks and financial institutions, raising to 0.7 per cent by 2016. This would raise $400 million a year, allowing, with the other measures, university tuition to be free.

If the government does not budge, the strike will continue, CLASSE said.

Meanwhile Education Minister Line Beauchamp said that her officials have contacted the two other striking student federations in the province to discuss their proposal for a council on university management.

Beauchamp said students alone would not be part of the council, which would include others in the university community.

The Federation etudiante universitaire du Quebec, representing university students, and the Federation etudiante collegiale du Quebec, have proposed better university management, rather than a tuition hike, to finance Quebec’s universities.

FEUQ and FECQ contacted Beauchamp’s office on Tuesday when they made a counter-proposal to the $1,778 tuition increase the government has offered to phase in over seven years, with $39 million more for bursaries, cancelling the impact of the increase on low-income students.

The two federations proposed a two-year freeze on the hike and a two-year freeze on new investment in Quebec’s universities, a proposal Beauchamp described as puzzling.

The minister also appealed to students blocking others who want to return to class to let them enter their colleges and universities.

Montreal Gazette

rbruemmer@montrealgazette.com

kdougherty@montrealgazette.com

PN 5/03/12 13:27:37