Quebec judge invalidates tuition hike, French requirements for out-of-province university students [Video]

A Quebec Superior Court judge on Thursday struck down a tuition hike for out-of-province Canadian university students in Quebec and the French language requirements that the province had attempted to impose on them.

In his 82-page decision, Judge Éric Dufour awarded McGill and Concordia universities a partial victory.

He invalidated changes that the Higher Education Ministry made to its budgetary rules. Those changes raised tuition fees for out-of-province students by 33 per cent and said 80 per cent of them needed to learn French by graduation. The changes also affected international students, setting their minimum tuition fees at about $20,000. 

Dufour struck down the rules that affected out-of-province Canadian students, saying that the ministry lacked data to support its claims that they weren’t integrating into Quebec society. 

“The evidence shows that the ministry has absolutely no data on this subject, or only fragile information to back it up,” Dufour wrote. 

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