Students in Canada are under severe attacks that need to be met with the strongest and the broadest fightback. In the last 20 years, tuition fees have tripled. For the academic year 2017-2018 alone, tuition in Canada rose to $6,571, an increase by 3.1% compared to the previous academic year, and all odds indicate that tuition will continue to increase in the next years as pro-corporate and anti-popular measures continue to be the policies of the different provincial and federal governments, no matter what the colour of the elected party is. In addition to that, students are faced with skyrocketing debt levels that average $30,000 across the country.
In the meantime, banks are registering record profits. Big corporations such as oil and gas monopolies, those who are mainly responsible for the destruction of our environment and for the perpetuation of genocide against Indigenous nations, continue to get all they need to pursue their dirty work as illustrated with the $4.5 billion gift from the Federal government to Kinder Morgan last spring. In the meantime, the military budget is also hitting record levels. With $20 billion allocated to dirty imperialist wars in the interests of Canada’s big corporations throughout the world currently, Canada is now set to raise it by 73% in the next 10 years.
This is all money that could be invested in social programs, not the least being education. The money is there: it would cost approximately $10 billion to achieve free education in Canada. That is roughly half of the military budget, which means that if we cut it by 75%, there would be, even after allowing for free tuition for all of Canada’s post-secondary students, $5 billion left for other programmes such as social housing. In fact, with the remaining 5 billion, we could build 178 571 social housing units…
The reason why we don’t have free tuition in our country is simple. It is related to the structural crisis of capitalism that forces the ruling class to make the youth, students and the popular strata pay for this crisis; a crisis that we are not responsible for. By restricting access to education, the ruling class ensures that its offspring find their way to the summit. They also force working class youth to contract debt in order to get a job (we should remind ourselves that in Canada, according to the Canadian Federation of Students, 70% of the jobs offered require a post-secondary degree).
The commodification of education is also part of this neoliberal plan. Today, only 49% of the funding of education comes from public funding, as opposed to 70% only 20 years ago. This means that the quality of our education is now bound to corporations’ interests. In other words, science is being controlled by big capital instead of being emancipatory.
As such, the fight for free, quality, publicly-funded, accessible and universal education is more crucial than ever. It is important because it impacts the vast majority of the students as it is the uniting demand capable of building a strong, militant, combative student movement, as illustrated by the 2012 Québec student strike, but also by the student movement’s fights against free trade agreements in the 1990s. It is also important because it is a way to include different components of the student movement into the fightback such as the indigenous solidarity, LGBTQ+, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), anti-ableist, anti-racist, feminist, and environmental movements. These movements are all present on campus and would all benefit from free, quality, publicly funded education.
The Young Communist League – Ligue de la jeunesse communiste (YCL-LJC) demands:
- 100% free and publicly funded education: no to any kind of corporatisation of our education, education should be emancipatory and democratic, not designed for their profit;
- Student debt amnesty: grants not loans;
- Accessible education: no to any kind of exclusion of marginalized groups from education;
- Democratic education: students, working class communities and oppressed nations and peoples should have the right to decide what their curriculum will look like;
- No to unpaid internships: a living wage to all workers;
- Fascists off our campuses: free speech doesn’t include hate speech;
- International students are students: they study here and live here, they shouldn’t be treated like cash cows for our corporate-funded universities;
- Students in Canada should benefit from a Charter declaring that education is free for all;
- No quality education without quality services: on-campus employees should be paid a living wage as a minimum;
**The Young Communist League Presents: Build the Student Movement: The Fight For Free Education**
Saturday, September 29th @ 9am-5:30pm
Centre for Socialist Education, on Unceded Coast Salish Territories
706 Clark Drive, Vancouver (corner of Clark & E. Georgia)
**Breakfast, Lunch and Coffee Provided**
**There will be many great speakers from diverse activist backgrounds and experiences!! **
For more information please visit the event page on Facebook.
