Thousands of Canadian students and their supporters are expected to protest tuition fee hikes at a national day of action on February 7.
As in Australia, tuition fees have been a growing concern for Canadian students with more and more students unable to complete tertiary education courses because of the spiralling costs. Students who are able to get loans are now paying back unprecedented amounts for their education.
The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), the peak body of students in the country's universities and colleges, has led a campaign to get the provincial governments to protect the right to education by freezing and reducing the fees.
Because tertiary education is administered separately by each provincial government it has been difficult for the CFS to organise a cross-Canada campaign on the fee issue. The campaign has been most effective in Quebec where tuition fees have been frozen for the last decade and students are actively campaigning to have all fees removed.
In Ontario, the largest province by population, the government has largely passed on these costs to students. Public money now makes up only 57% of tuition costs, down from 82% two decades ago. Significantly, seven of the 10 most expensive tuition courses are in Ontario universities.
Toronto University law students, for example, are paying US$17,000 this year while a similar law course at Magill University in Montreal, Quebec, costs under $4000.
The Ontario government's higher education policies have resulted in fees for most undergraduate degrees being raised by 20% over the last four years, with professional, graduate and post-diploma fees up by nearly double that.
The fee rises have grown significantly since the mid-1990s, when federal tertiary transfer payments were cut, leading to some provinces passing on these costs to students.
Not surprisingly, the growing costs have had a toll on equitable access to higher education with Statistics Canada in 1999 noting a decline in the number of tertiary students with a household income under $60,000 — the first time such a decline has occurred since it started recording the figures in 1965.
To fight the fees, university and college campus collectives have been set up to bring together the widest range of people in order to plan how to build the February 7 national day of action into as big a mobilisation as possible.
[Resistance member Stuart Harris recently returned from an extended visit to Canada, where he worked with student activists.]