The difference in tuition fees between Ontario and Quebec is now so large that students entering medical school in Ontario in 2003/04 will have paid about $50 000 more for their tuition by the time they graduate.
Although fees vary somewhat between Université de Montréal, Université de Sherbrooke, Université Laval and McGill University, Quebec medical students now pay about 20% as much as their Ontario counterparts.
The standard fee at all 4 schools in Quebec is $55.61 per credit, although the number of credits required varies. According to the Association of Canadian Medical Colleges, first-year students in the undergraduate medical program at the Université de Montréal pay tuition fees of $2224 annually, compared with $16 207 at the University of Toronto (see table, previous page). The highest tuition fee in Quebec is at McGill, $3559, but it drops in subsequent years.
Low tuition fees have long been part of the educational landscape in Quebec, where rates for Quebec residents have been frozen since the mid-1990s. (At all 4 schools, students from other provinces or another country pay higher fees.) “The problem is not the tuition fees that we charge,” maintains Dr. Pierre Jacob Durand, dean of medicine at Université Laval in Quebec City. “It is the underfunding of our universities. What I need is adequate funding to train my students, and that's [the] problem — I don't have adequate financing.”
Dr. Raymond Lalande, vice-dean at the Université de Montréal, agrees. “We are convinced that the medical faculties are underfunded in Quebec,” he says. “We are not all financed like Toronto or Vancouver, so at the end of the day we figure that it penalizes the faculties.
“Quite frankly, what surprises us a lot is that we manage to keep offering a very high-quality program. Our students perform very well in the Medical Council of Canada exams. We look at what we receive [in government funding], and it's ridiculous.”
In mid-July, Caroline Richard, press secretary for Quebec Education Minister Pierre Reid, told CMAJ that new funding will eventually be announced for infrastructure and equipment for Quebec's medical schools. As for the possibility of the government increasing the amount it pays per student, a tight-lipped Richard said: “It is still under discussion.”
However, tuition fees in Quebec are unlikely to increase anytime soon. Premier Jean Charest has vowed that his newly elected Liberal government will not increase fees during its first term. — Brenda Branswell, Montreal