In Canada, students face many of the same problems as they do in the UK: rising tuition fees, high rents, the threat of climate change, and a growing commodification of education. These problems are recognisable and close to home for many Leeds students, but do students in Canada respond as we do? 

I’ve been studying in Montreal this year and just at a time when our lecturers in the UK have been striking about their pay and conditions, I was surprised to learn that my lectures were cancelled for a week, because students across many universities in the province of Quebec had declared their own strike. It’s estimated that 80,000 students have been on strike across Quebec, and thousands took to the streets of Montreal this week, in protest against tuition fees that have skyrocketed in the past few years. 

This week, ten years after the height of the months-long ‘Maple Spring’ student protests of 2012, students held a protest for free education on the 22^nd of March at the Place du Canada in Montreal. I went along to find out more – to see what Canada’s students think about the problems they’re facing, and what we can learn for our own student politics. The students I spoke to had varied opinions on the protest and what it could achieve, but all of them were unified in coming out to fight for change.

The goal of the protest was to fight for free tuition, and this was a critical issue for the students I spoke to was the cost of living. Many of them said that the repayment of student loans after graduation really threatened their future livelihoods and ability to feel secure in their degrees. Several protesters discussed the burden of having to begin life with an enormous loan to pay off.

These concerns were especially worrying for those who were studying Arts and Humanities subjects. In a move which has echoes of the UK government’s latest attacks on so-called ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’, the provincial governments, which are responsible for education in Canada, were said to underfund Arts and Humanities degrees – while simultaneously charging what were seen as extortionate rates for tuition. One student commented that “Being in literature, it’s not necessarily what’s most valued. It’s kind of seen as something that people do for fun, but it’s not really important. So that makes me wonder about my future – you know, is it viable economically?” 

Another familiar theme for us in England was the difficulty of managing work alongside studies, when money is tight and rents are high. Several students talked about how hard it is, commenting that your quality of life and your studies both severely suffer. I spoke to one student who was working a full-time job alongside their studies in order to be able to afford their rent. They said that “in many ways, my studies suffer because of that, because I can’t spend as much time concentrating on the things that I really do want to concentrate on: making good papers, or actually learning about the world around me.” The high costs of being a student in Canada means that for many, the work that it takes to pay for the privilege of being a student counteracts many of the benefits that you might hope to gain from being one. Another student, who argued that universal free education was a human right and had struggled with their own financial security, described it as: “the right not only to survive as a student, but to have the right to live – not just to eat ramen because we’re too poor”.

Across the board, protestors out in the street saw the cost of university fees as a massive obstacle to equality of opportunity. Many said it was their primary reason for protesting that day. They saw that the high price of education stopped many people from accessing it, creating an enormous loss of potential, and fuelling growing crises in our health and social care systems due to lack of doctors, nurses and social workers. If education is understood as an unequivocal right, then high fees deny that to people and threaten our way to societal improvement. Indeed, one protester strongly stated that “education is the only universal solution to all individual problems.”

The insecurities that had prompted these students to take to the are fundamentally the same in the UK and in Canada. Our governments make similar claims and policies, and we face many of the same problems. Fees in Canada vary, but according to Statistics Canada, the average for a home student is $6693 Canadian dollars – just over £4000. It might seem like a bargain to us, but it’s risen nearly 2% in just the last year, and with higher interest rates and tighter repayment requirements, the pressure is on. So what can we do? For me, the scale and organisation of this strike and protest by students really drove home the question of why we don’t organise effective protest against the problems we face as students. Where are our strikes? Where are our thousands in the streets?

The protests and student organisation I’ve witnessed in Canada have highlighted the need for us as students to step up to defend our right to education and challenge the government policies that threaten the security of our future lives. We hear people constantly complaining, “Nine grand for this?”, and sharing horror stories of housing, high rents and terrible landlords. The protests this week in Quebec have shown that the power is in our hands to do something about it. Many of the student protesters I spoke to made reference to the ‘Maple Spring’ of 2012, when students went on strike for six months against a proposed increase in fees. The plans were finally dropped after a quarter of a million came out in protest. It’s no coincidence that ten years later, facing the same problems yet again, Canadian students are calling for a return to what worked.

As our current UK government threatens yet again to undermine funding for our universities, it’s time to stand up for our education in a way that they can’t ignore. Here in Quebec, I have seen the value of taking more concrete action. The problems that Canadian students face are much the same, and maybe the solutions are too. One protestor summed it up, describing how the Canadian student movement had taken inspiration from similar movements across the globe. “Bonjour UK!” he said, “Pour moi c’est le common sense que ça se rend partout.” [For me, it’s common sense that this (protest) goes everywhere].