Skip to main content

A few hundred demonstrators walk to a hotel Saturday, May 5, 2012 where the Quebec Liberal Party is meeting in Victoriaville, Quebec.Jacques Boissinot/THE CANADIAN PRESS

The Quebec student strike has been portrayed largely as an issue gripping only that province. Yet a survey of 2,200 globeandmail.com readers between May 2 and 7 shows that students across Canada share a similar anxiety over rising tuition fees.

About 62 per cent of postsecondary students said they would join a similar strike in their own province; 32 per cent said they would not, while 5.9 per cent were undecided. Ontario students, whose undergraduate tuition fees – currently the highest in Canada – were frozen for two years by self-styled education Premier Dalton McGuinty, are among the most agitated.Sixty-nine per cent said they would strike to oppose a raise in tuition. Students from Alberta – whose undergraduate tuition fees are also above the Canadian average – are much less inclined to take action, with only 22 per centsaying they would strike.

Meanwhile, students across the country were evenly split, at 47 per cent, between those who found Quebec's tuition fees excessive and those who said they were not.



Tamara Baluja

Interact with The Globe