Mandatory evening classes; the precarization of employees through temporary contracts; a ban on hiring new staff; a new satellite building located a 30 minute walk from the main pavilion for general education: living space is fragmented and the cégep community is disintegrating under the insidious pressure of austerity measures. Very much present, austerity delivers a severe blow to higher education in so-called Québec.
Cégep Saint-Laurent is collapsing. Not only is the quality of education deteriorating due to budget cuts, but Building B on campus is literally at risk of collapsing. After structural issues were discovered during the 2023 holiday break, Building B was closed and rendered inaccessible during the winter of 2024. Jess Corneau, mobilization officer for the Syndicat des Employés de Soutien du Cégep de Saint-Laurent (SESCSL), expects a return to normal only after 10 years, according to information received from the cégep’s administration.
That major renovations are needed in a cégep network over 50 years old surprises no one. What causes discontent is that the cégep’s administration had taken steps to begin major renovations with the government, but funding was refused because the situation was not deemed urgent enough.
An avalanche of cuts
François Legault’s austerity has not only weakened the cégep’s buildings, but also student services and employees’ working conditions. The $151 million reduction in cégep operating budgets, along with the hiring freeze for new employees in 2025, is an indirect way of cutting full-time positions. Some employees in adapted services have been renewing “temporary” part-time contracts for two years, sometimes even four. In addition, some employees are now highly isolated from others in the new Pavilion K, which is far from the main campus. The cap on paid hours imposed by the Ministry of Higher Education has also reportedly led to an increased workload for support staff.
Jess Corneau indicates that all of these factors are causing a “gigantic” turnover among support staff, given how poor working conditions have become. He says this reduces the quality of services for students. He predicts that these cuts will eventually threaten part-time student jobs, library budgets, and other non-permanent positions.
While the student population continues to grow across the entire college network, the number of support staff remains the same. The SESCSL notes a growing overload among its members. If the government continues to stubbornly apply austerity measures without a plan to increase staffing levels to relieve this overload and accommodate the projected rise in student enrolment, the union fears that it will eventually become impossible for young people to enroll in cégeps, which will be too overcrowded to meet demand.
On the ground, the SESCSL criticizes the cégep administration’s handling of the closure of Building B. The administration allegedly did not sufficiently prioritize geographical proximity when selecting a temporary building.
The government defends itself
In an interview with Radio-Canada on August 18, 2025, former Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry claimed that cégeps had budget surpluses they could draw from, and that there would therefore be no service cuts. The SESCSL responds that these “surpluses” are in fact fund balances, used among other things as emergency cushions, and that they are necessary in many cégeps—particularly Cégep Saint-Laurent, whose infrastructure is deteriorating.
The administration of Cégep Saint-Laurent had to dip into these fund balances this year to limit service reductions, but this will no longer be possible next year, as the funds are largely depleted.
On the student side, the Association Étudiante du Cégep de Saint-Laurent (AECSL) launched a mobilization against the provincial government’s austerity measures during two strike days on April 3, 2025 and November 7, 2025. They denounced the “blatant lack of funding in public educational institutions” and the closure of Building B for an entire semester as a result of this underfunding.
The SESCSL, for its part, participated in the Faire Front campaign of the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN), which culminated in a demonstration of more than 50,000 people on November 29. “Cégep Saint-Laurent has become the symbol of the government’s mismanagement,” fumes Jess Corneau, mobilization officer for the SESCSL. To fight this mismanagement, the SESCSL also launched a local campaign called Save Our Jobs, Our Services, Our Cégep, in which they demand:
- the maintenance of existing jobs;
- the conversion of temporary jobs into permanent ones, full-time when possible;
- A reinvestment of cut hours, followed by additional funding to hire staff to address the challenges of campus fragmentation and building maintenance.