Opinion: In education, we must rebuild what the CAQ destroyed

The damage is concrete, measurable and ongoing — the worst record on education of any government in modern Quebec history.

For nearly eight years the Coalition Avenir Québec treated education as a convenient target for centralization and control rather than the foundation of Quebec’s future. Grand promises of making education “the first big priority”
produced chronic underperformance, democratic erosion, budget chaos and an assault on the constitutional rights of English-speaking communities.

The damage is concrete, measurable and ongoing. I can say with confidence the CAQ has compiled the worst record on education of any government in modern Quebec history.

Spending rose roughly 57 per cent between 2018 and 2024. Yet, the system is no better off than before. Public-sector five-year graduation rates crawled from 64 per cent to 65 per cent. Boys remain near 59 per cent. The government’s own seven-year diploma-and-qualification target of 85 per cent was missed; the rate sat at 82 per cent.

…

Nowhere has the damage been more overt and shameless than in the attack on local democratic control. Bill 40 sought to abolish elected school boards. French boards were converted to service centres. English boards fought and won successive court victories affirming Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government appealed to the Supreme Court anyway, spending public money to dismantle minority rights rather than fund classrooms.

Later legislation further centralized power in the minister’s office. Local expertise was sidelined. Accountability was weakened. On the French side, the service centre model has repeatedly failed.

Language measures added further harm. Bill 96 imposed enrolment caps and new requirements on English CEGEPs and created barriers that affect pathways for students. Adult and vocational education faced the threat of expanded restrictions before that effort was sidelined by the election.

English boards have spent years and significant resources in court defending rights previous generations secured. Those resources should have gone to teaching.

Earlier governments of different stripes had their flaws, yet they generally preserved elected local governance and did not wage multi-year legal campaigns against minority-language education rights.