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The McGill University campus in Montreal, in November, 2017.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
Quebec is upholding a tuition hike for out-of-province students who attend English-language programs at its universities, despite a court ruling last year that found the policy was not justified.
The government says the higher fees are meant to prevent Quebec taxpayers from subsidizing a large part of the education of Canadian students who are not from the province.
That explanation is part of a new rationale for the tuition hike that comes months after the Quebec Superior Court invalidated the measure. In an April, 2025, decision, Justice Éric Dufour ruled the government lacked data to support the policy.
The Quebec government signalled last year it would not back down on the tuition hike, without explaining how it would conform to the court ruling.
An updated version of Quebec’s budget plan for universities, published Jan. 23, does not provide new data underpinning the measure. But in a new preamble justifying the out-of-province fees, the government links the policy to protecting the “vitality” of the French language.
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“We are of course disappointed,” said Vannina Maestracci, a spokesperson for Concordia University in Montreal. The tuition hike harms the competitiveness of Quebec universities and damages the province’s reputation, she said.
Jeffery Vacante, an assistant professor and Quebec historian at the University of Western Ontario, said the policy is meant to “discourage English-speaking people from other provinces from coming to Montreal.”
He said the new rationale does little more than add a few sentences about the French language. But he pointed out that Justice Dufour “never challenged the overall premise” of the tuition increase.
“All he said was they didn’t provide a good justification,” Prof. Vacante said.
The Quebec government first announced in October, 2023, that it would double tuition for Canadian students from outside the province attending anglophone universities. The hike was later reduced to about 33 per cent.
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The province’s two major English-language universities, McGill and Concordia, challenged the measure in court. They argued in part that the policy, which exempted students attending francophone universities, discriminated against English speakers.
As of fall 2025, out-of-province students attending French-language universities could expect to pay about $9,500 a year. Students at McGill and Concordia could expect to pay about $12,600.
In his ruling, Justice Dufour said the government offered little evidence to back up its claims that English-speaking out-of-province students contribute to the decline of French in Quebec and tend to leave the province after graduation.
Protection of the French language “remains fundamental,” he wrote, but that does not justify policies “based on erroneous or missing data.”
He ruled the fee hike could remain in place for up to nine months while the government revised its tuition plan.
In June, Pascale Déry, then Quebec’s minister of higher education, said the province intended to maintain the increased tuition for out-of-province students, but did not explain how the government would adhere to the ruling.
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The court decision “recognizes the government’s responsibility to take the necessary steps to protect French in Quebec,” she said at the time.
The province published its revised budget plan for Quebec universities, including the new rationale for the fee hike, one day ahead of the nine-month deadline. The policy is meant to prevent non-residents from having their studies “largely subsidized by Quebec taxpayers,” it says.
It also extends the exemption for students at francophone universities to all those who study in French. The lower fees for those students aim to position Quebec as “a leading francophone destination worldwide,” the document says.
Ms. Maestracci said Concordia does have a department of French studies, but added the tuition hike will still have a disproportionate impact on anglophone universities.
A spokesperson for McGill University declined to comment.
Bryan St-Louis, a spokesperson for the Higher Education Ministry, said Quebec is not required to submit its new tuition plan to the court.
In his decision, Justice Dufour also struck down a requirement that 80 per cent of out-of-province undergraduate students at English-language universities reach an intermediate level of proficiency in French by the time they graduate, which had been set to take effect last fall. He said it would have been almost impossible for the universities to meet that threshold.
Mr. St-Louis said the government still plans to reach an agreement with the universities on language requirements.
