Matt Aronson, secretary of the Board of the QCGN, along with Liberal MNA David Birnbaum and Dawson Student Union President Alexandrah Cardona, speaks about the cancellation of the Dawson College expansion project by the Coalition Avenir Québec government.
A petition which calls out the Quebec government for its cancellation of an expansion of Dawson College has been launched. The expansion was meant to solve the CEGEP’s decades-old issue of space for students, which, the petition states, is short by more than 11,500 square metres. The petition reads: “We, the undersigned, demand that the Government of Québec maintain the Dawson College project as a project to be carried out as part of the next Quebec Infrastructure Plan.”
“We are shocked, but we are not surprised” by the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s decision to cancel the Dawson College expansion, says QCGN Board Member Matt Aronson. Also commenting on the government’s decision are the chairman of Dawson’s Board of Directors Michael Goldwax, and former Senator and journalist André Pratte.
An organization supporting Quebec’s English community says it’s a question of language – not budget – that saw the province reverse course on its promise to provide $100 million to expand Dawson College.
The Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) says it’s clear the province is playing favourites when it decided the funds previously earmarked for Dawson would be better spent on the province’s French-language CEGEPs.
Many Quebec anglophones are furious with the government’s decision to pull funding for an expansion at Dawson College.
Quebec Community Groups Network’s Marlene Jennings said the premier is playing partisan politics.
“He’s telling anglophones: ‘Disappear, be quiet, we don’t want to see you,’ and he’s telling francophones, ‘You don’t have the right and the freedom to choose where you get educated,’” she said.
Squeezed for space, Montreal’s Dawson College has for years been planning an expansion of its medical technology department that would include a clinic to serve the community and train its students.
Marlene Jennings, the president of the anglophone organization Quebec Community Groups Network, said the cancellation of Dawson’s medical technology building is a sign that English-speakers aren’t welcome in Mr. Legault’s Quebec, even if they also speak French.
Plans for a new pavilion and medical clinic at Dawson College in Montreal have been shelved by the province, and many supporters of the project are feeling disappointed.
“At this late stage, when the demand is there […] to find out that it’s been withdrawn because of the language in which the instruction was to occur? I can’t help but think that perhaps the CAQ government is looking in the wrong place to find its priority,” said Matt Aronson of the Quebec Community Groups Network.
“We’re being told that we’re not welcome here unless we shut up, unless we assimilate, and that the government will take every measure possible to put the squeeze on our community,” says Marlene Jennings, President of the QCGN.
QCGN President Marlene Jennings speaks with Noovo’s Noémi Mercier about the Quebec government’s decision to scrap the planned expansion of Dawson College. (33:25).
The lack of space at Dawson College has been recognized and documented by the Ministry of Higher Education, and the Quebec government-funded expansion was needed to create more space, explains QCGN President Marlene Jennings. She adds that the move to scrap this project is yet another example of the Legault government’s attack on the vitality of Quebec’s English-speaking community.
The QCGN is funded by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage.
