As per a recent study, one in three students suffers from food insecurity. For many, it’s impossible to find housing. Those who are able, through great effort, to make ends meet often do so by incurring years of debt. Choosing to study, to want to learn, is now choosing precarity.
This is all without taking into account those who can’t access education, maybe because their rent is too high, or they don’t have access to Aide Financière aux Études or because the program they’re interested in isn’t available in a region where they can afford to live. When studying renders our situation more precarious, there are also those who already live in precarity who can’t study at all
In the last two years, the CAQ have added a new dimension to their attacks on Education: the government has repeatedly interfered in what is taught, what can be discussed and how we discuss it. The Ministry of Higher Education intervened to restrict discussions related to Palestine on campuses, with the clear aim of political censorship. At Dawson College, for example, the Minister intervened in the content of a French class studying the theme of Palestinian identity and belonging.
Impoverishing ourselves to study in a system that functions as a propaganda tool is unacceptable.
We, collectively, have the means to create a system of free, accessible and quality education, from Primary School to University. For at least 40 years, repeated cuts to our public services have eroded this project. These austerity measures, from cuts to tuition hikes in tandem with stagnating scholarships, are the results of government after government refusing to make the rich pay their fair share. Be it the CAQ, the Parti Québécois or the Liberal Party of Québec, every government since the 1980s has had a role to play in the weakening of the right to education. In the face of each stage of this erosion, there have been students who refuse to let the Government abandon their education.
Today, the situation is critical. It’s no longer enough to defend the status quo. For everyone to be able to live with dignity and so that those who wish to can study, we need major structural changes. A massive reinvestment in postsecondary education is necessary for education to be a source of learning and emancipatory knowledge, not just careerist diplomas and debt. This translates itself into a reform of the Aide Financière aux Études, a reduction of tuition fees, real academic freedom and funding that allows quality education.
If all the parties that have been in power in the last 40 years have participated in the pillage of our educational system, it’s clear that the solution won’t come from an election. We must act and put pressure on the Government to force them to change direction in order to reply to our demands.
Last Fall, thousands of students were on strike on November 7th to oppose the abandonment of postsecondary education. This mobilisation was a good starting point, but hasn’t yet succeeded in forcing the Government to take necessary action. Therefore, we have to turn up the heat.
To create real pressure through collective action, students need to stop playing their role passively. Let’s refuse social peace, and strike. Striking is stopping our studies to invest our time in a political cause. It’s economic and social disturbance, an opportunity to organise protests, occupations, disruptions and a moment of collective reflection. After the mobilisation of November 7th, for our strikes to rise above being symbolic and cease being ignored, we must escalate our pressure tactics. Were our demands not to be fulfilled, this escalation would culminate with an Unlimited General Strike, i.e the threat of not graduating. This threat is strong enough that, in the 10+ general strikes that the ‘Québec’ has experienced since the 1970s, strikers have always ended up graduating after the conclusion of strike.
It’s for these reasons that CRUES is calling for a week-long strike from the 23rd to the 27th of March 2026. Let’s stop simply being witnesses to the slow death of the right for a free education. Let’s stop accepting students’ desire to learn being rewarded with precarity. It’s time to follow in the footsteps of the thousands of students who fought for their education and for ours. The Strike must spread and lengthen. Be it in the street, in your classes or in your General Assemblies, the time has come to join the wave.