A petition against budgetary restrictions in education has just been launched. It was returned on Wednesday noon, at 29,100 signatures, including 25,000 in the first two days.
The petition, sponsored by the PQ deputy Pascal Bérubé and available on the website of the National Assembly, asks the Government of Quebec not to carry out these restrictions, “so that direct services to students are not assigned”.
The petition mentions the fact that the new budgetary targets “will directly assign the services to the students, more particularly the disabled students or in difficulty of adaptation or learning”.
It also refers to certain employment titles “essential for educational success”, such as technicians in special education and attendants to disabled students, whose positions could be “reduced or cut”.
School environmental departments will have to find 570 million to respond to the Quebec order, given the budgetary situation.
The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, has already indicated that the government would thus slow down the rate of growth of the budget in education, which will increase by 5 % instead of 7 % in previous years.
Already, management of establishments and trade union organizations which represent teachers, support employees and education professionals have protested against these restrictions, who will have to enter into force at the start of the school year.
But it is not the education unions that are the source of this petition, sponsored by the Bérubé deputy, himself a teacher by training.
“I was approached. It is a mother who is worried about the effects of these compressions in education, who is particularly interested in this issue, and who called me because I am the spokesperson for education for the Parti Québécois, “said the deputy in an interview on Wednesday.
Different scenarios have been mentioned to find in which services to find these sums: psychologists or speech therapists on disability or maternity leave that will not be replaced, a reduced food aid program, less control of dropping out of school, etc.
“He arrives with an accounting vision. The education environment said to him: there will be an impact and you will have the odious of that. So what services you choose to cut? », Illustrates Mr. Bérubé.
To those who ask him to indicate where, precisely, he would suggest cutting instead, Mr. Bérubé replies that “we do not have the state of public finances. I am not the minister; I do not have access to the data he has; I do not have access to data from the Treasury Board. What I say, essentially, is: if it is a priority (education), how is it that we are going to seek, leaving, half a billion? And it may be more there ”.
Interested parties can sign the petition by September 15. It will be deposited in the National Assembly when resuming the work.
