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Students from Ontario must pay up One of the consensuses emerging from the Quiet Revolution was the notion that university education should be made as accessible as possible through the grace of low tuition fees. That notion was undermined last year when Education Minister Pauline Marois imposed differential fees on out-of-province students, leaving them with tuition bills nearly double those that Quebec residents pay. >> Enter the Student Society of McGill University. Arguing that differential fees for out-of-province students were discriminatory and violated students' residency and mobility rights, the SSMU took the PQ government to court last June to have the differentials abolished on constitutional grounds. >> It appears they've lost--the first round at least. Quebec Superior Court Justice Tellier sided with the government last week and ruled that differential fees were legal. In a near-unanimous vote this week, the SSMU board decided to appeal the ruling. >> The legal cost of the appeal is prohibitive--$15,000 to $25,000, according to SSMU president Tara Newell--but the SSMU sees it as a precedent-setting case. The judge's argument was "a political one, not a legal one," Newell says. "I think it's a question of precedence, not just a matter of tuition. What the government is saying is that students can be judged on the basis of where they were born." >> Nine thousand students at McGill--30 per cent of the student population--come from out of the province. --Jacquie Charlton
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