Quebec education cuts: petition on National Assembly website

A petition against Quebec budget cuts in education was launched and by Wednesday at 1 p.m., it had reached 30,506 signatures, including 25,000 in the first two days.

The petition, sponsored by PQ MNA Pascal Bérubé and available on the National Assembly website, calls on the Quebec government not to proceed with these cuts, “so that direct services to students are not affected”.

The petition refers to the fact that the new budget targets “will directly affect services to students, more specifically students with disabilities or learning or adjustment difficulties”.

It also refers to certain job titles “essential to educational success”, such as special education technicians and attendants for handicapped students, whose positions could be “reduced or cut”.

Given the budgetary situation, school administrations will have to find $570 million to meet Quebec’s order.

Education Minister Bernard Drainville already indicated that the government will slow the pace of growth in the education budget, which will increase by five per cent instead of seven per cent in previous years.

Already, school principals and union organizations representing teachers, support staff and education professionals have protested against these restrictions, which are due to take effect at the start of the new school year.

But it’s not the education unions that are behind this petition, sponsored by MNA Bérubé, himself a teacher by training.

“I was approached. It’s a mother who’s worried about the effects of these cuts in education, who’s particularly interested in this issue, and who called on me because I’m the education spokesperson for the Parti Québécois,” recounted the MNA in an interview on Wednesday.

Various scenarios have been put forward to find out in which services these sums should be spent: psychologists or speech therapists on disability or maternity leave who will not be replaced, a reduced food aid program, less school dropout prevention, and so on.

“He comes in with an accounting vision. The education community is telling him: there will be an impact and you will bear the brunt of it. So which services do you choose to cut?” illustrates Bérubé.

To those who asked him where, precisely, he would suggest cutting instead, Bérubé replied that “we don’t have the state of public finances. I’m not the minister; I don’t have access to the data he has; I don’t have access to Treasury Board data. Basically, what I’m saying is: if education is a priority, how come we’re looking for half a billion dollars? And maybe it’s not there anymore.

People can sign the petition until Sept. 15, and it will be tabled at the National Assembly when it reconvenes.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews