Interesting to see Milner taking this position. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 11:02 AM To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: [Futurework] FW: as others see what is happening in Quebec
Some interesting observations from another list (with permission... Henry Milner is a Prof. in Poli Sci in Montreal (and also in Sweden) and a long time supporter of the NDP. M -----Original Message----- From: Milner Henry [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 5:09 AM To: michael gurstein; [email protected] Subject: RE: as others see what is happening in Quebec When John Richards and I founded Inroads, one of our motivating factors was to counter the knee-jerk political correctness of our respective political families in the Canadian and Quebec left. I fear that it has reemerged in spades vis-a-vis the current situation in Quebec. Typical is this excerpt from CUPE's public statement: "We cannot stand by while governments continue to violate our basic rights in the name of austerity and funding cuts that only fuel the growing gap between rich and poor. We stand in solidarity with Quebecers who oppose these measures," "Students shouldn't have to suffer huge debt loads before they even get to work. .... They don't want a society where only the rich can afford to go to school...." Who could disagree with that? Except that it has nothing to do with the actual situation. Let's look at some pertinent facts that shed light on the real situation of Quebec students. The most obvious and by now well-known is that even after the seven years of gradual tuition increases, Quebec students will still be better off than their counterparts elsewhere in Canada, while Quebec universities will still be worse off than their counterparts. Here are a few less known pertinent facts. 1 .Leger polls show that about 85 per cent of Quebec allophone students and 80 per cent of Quebec anglophone students (very few of which participated in the strike/boycott) see a university degree as a minimal requirement , compared with just 40 per cent of francophone students. 2. As Ross Finnie found, despite much higher tuition in Ontario, 39 per cent of university-age Ontarians in families with household incomes less than $25,000 go to university, compared with 18 per cent in Quebec. In households with incomes between $25,000 and $50,000, the respective proportions are 34 per cent vs. 20 per cent. This situation indeed needs to be addressed but the best way is not a continued tuition freeze for the mainly middle and upper middle class kids who go to university, and who will be rewarded with well paying jobs. Surely the government's proposal is better in that it includes new provisions for grants which, as Luc Godbout showed, will actually result in a lower overall tuition cost for students with family income under $60,000, while providing for loans for those with family income of 60,000 to $100,000. So let us be clear. Objectively, the battle has nothing whatsoever to do with whether "only the rich can afford to go to school or a widening gap between rich and poor. Nor should there be any illusion that if the students manage to reduce tuition this is a somehow a step toward Swedish style social democracy. Below I reproduce what I wrote in the current Inroads, the gist of which is that meeting the student demands will take Quebec universities toward French public universities, not Swedish ones. It is my suspicion that many progressives actually realize this but have been looking for a pretext for jumping on the bash the Quebec government bandwagon, ands have found it in Bill 78, the law instituted to try to restore order to the streets of Montreal. Obviously we would all prefer not to have such a law - but beyond modification of some wording, it's not obvious to me what real alternatives the government could have chosen. The reality is that Quebec is being torn apart, and among the actors, least to blame is the Charest government (I say this as someone who has never voted Liberal). It is unpopular for other reasons, and its members are hardly the most competent; but it has tried to balance the various needs and concerns raised by the issue. More to blame are the student organizers of street marches, which provide cover for les casseurs. Yet their control is limited: those on the street have become emotionally swept up in their cause, with themselves cast as the good guys and the government and police as the villain. The greatest responsibility, in my view, lies with the opinion leaders who encourage the student actions often out of simple partisan political interest in defeating Charest. On Radio Canada, in Le Devoir, the academy, the public-sector unions, etc., they have turned the highly unrepresentative minority who want to force change via the street rather than the ballot box into heroes of democracy. I would have preferred that instead of Bill 78, the government call an election to be fought over whether change comes through the ballot box or the street, rather than having to defend a law to restore calm. Yet I realize that even an election might not get those who are turning downtown Montreal into a battleground every night to leave the street and put their energies into electing parties that support their demands. Knocking on doors in working class suburbs is not as much fun as parading before the bright lights and TV cameras of the big city. ---- Articles in this and previous Inroads have portrayed the positive side of the "Quebec model." But, in light of what we have been witnessing in Quebec this spring, there is clearly another side. I write as the governing Quebec Liberal party meets in Victoriaville, surrounded by thousands of striking junior college and university students - apparently undeterred by the fact that more than two thirds of Quebeckers support the government's decision to raise university tuition. This is a strike for which I have no sympathy, which may seem surprising since my work has presented a generally positive portrait of Scandinavian policies, policies often cited as a model by the student leaders and their supporters in their demand to freeze, and reduce to zero, university tuition. But there is no contradiction; not for someone who operates in a university setting in Quebec and Sweden, as I do. The reality is that free university education in the latter is one spoke in a wheel the other spokes of which are certain policies and institutions largely absent - and unobtainable - in Quebec. Indeed the real contradiction lies in the position of the various faculty unions and associations that support the strike. Those whose conditions would be most adversely affected if the Scandinavian system were instituted here are the university professors. To understand this, we need to compare conditions affecting university education in Scandinavia to those here, both as to costs and benefits. 1. There is no general BA; all university education is specialized, and thus shorter in number of years. This also means that university programs are not only less costly but, on average, less universally accessible. 2. They are also less costly because, compared to this country, university professors get lower pay and - unless they have successfully competed for research grants - teach more than twice as many hours per year. 3. As everyone knows, Nordic taxes are higher than here. But less known is the fact that it is not on the rich - taxing whom produces little - but the mass of the population whose taxes make up the difference. In Sweden everyone who earns a full-time salary pays a minimum income tax of 25 percent. And everyone pays a VAT of 25 percent. Would the adults who support the Quebec students agree to pay far more in taxes than would be saved in tuition fees for their children? The crucial fact is that free university education, as all welfare state benefits constituting the Scandinavian model, are paid for. There is no free lunch. The decisions to implement such programs result from a consensus developed over time and expressed through electoral choices, not in response to noisy street demonstrations and blocked school doors. This is not the case here. Even with the tuition increase, Quebec's debt level will be high by the level of the other provinces - and very high compared to Scandinavia. Given the constraints, if Quebec continued to freeze tuition, let alone try to bring it zero, it would be moving not toward the Scandinavian model but toward the model of another country well known to Quebeckers, namely France. In France, the pattern has been to ignore the economic costs of social choices such as those reducing the number of working years or working hours. As a result, there is no money to begin to adequately address the deterioration of state institutions, notably the public universities, with their huge classes, run down, inadequate facilities, and outdated technology. I have experienced this first hand as a visiting professor at the Sorbonne. Quebec's students, before taking to the streets, should have asked their confrères and consoeurs from France, who come to their universities in very large numbers, if that is the direction they should take. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
