In the weeks leading up to the 2018 provincial election, The Equity has reached out to all the candidates in the Pontiac riding to get their take on a variety of issues.
For the final week, we asked them to take a look at Quebec’s schools.
By Caleb Nickerson
What would you do to improve our province’s education system, from daycare to post-secondary?
André Fortin
Quebec Liberal Party
Education is at the heart of every community’s success. From daycare to post-secondary education, we are fortunate to count on dedicated and quality professionals that put our children’s needs first.
Over the last few years, thousands of additional professionals have been added to our school system across the province, and significant investments have been made to improve our school infrastructure, including the first new classroom additions in rural Pontiac in decades, with the construction of the new wing of the elementary school in Luskville.

But we are proposing to go much further. For daycares, we will continue to add new CPE daycare spaces in the region, and are proposing free daycare for all 4-year old children who do not yet have access to pre-kindergarten. At the same time, we will continue to add 4-year kindergarten classrooms as many parts of the Pontiac already have, starting with areas that are most in need.
To better support our teachers, we are proposing to have a second professional in the classroom in all of the province’s pre-school and Grade 1 classes. This will also help better identify and detect individual needs at an early age. To attract and retain our teachers, we will raise at a minimum their salary during the first five years by eliminating the first six pay scales. This means that a new teacher will see his or her salary increase by 18 per cent. This will make a big difference in attracting new teachers to our West Quebec school system.
As a society, we also need to ensure that our professional training programs meet the needs of employers in our region. As such, more flexibility in the development of programs is essential. Finally, our region must continue to develop additional programs in our CEGEPs, including Heritage College, and universities.
Education will be key to the Pontiac’s future success. Let’s continue to invest in it and offer tailored solutions to our region’s needs.
Julia Wilkie
Quebec Solidaire
According to the IRIS study requested by Équité Outaouais (https://iris-recherche.qc.ca/publications/outaouais), the Outaouais has a funding deficit of $150 million per year.
To make up for this shortfall, Quebec Solidaire will:
– Invest $1.6 billion over four years in a national infrastructure plan for schools to renovate, expand or build new ones (Quebec-wide).
– Invest $140 million to hire 2,100 new teachers at the primary and secondary levels in order to reduce the student-to-teacher ratio (Quebec-wide).
– Invest $200 million to hire 2,300 professionals (tutors, speech therapists and specialists in psychoeducation) to provide better services to students (Quebec-wide).
– Make education free from early childhood to university, in particular by ending taxpayer subsidies to private schools in order to reinvest these funds in our public school system.
– Rapidly develop new programs of study working with relevant institutions (school boards, cegeps, universities) and other regional stakeholders (health and social services institutions, the business community, municipalities).
– Establish a Faculty of Health Sciences at UQO linked to the Faculty of Medicine and add programs in the field of health at CEGEP. This will help train health specialists in our region, and encourage them to stay and work in our region.
– In terms of professional and technical training, explore the possibility of developing a creative hub for those working in the cultural and performing arts and thus create a positive synergy with our cultural industries and our artistic community. (Our region is also underequipped on a cultural level, with only 1.6 per cent of the performing arts venues in Quebec, and 2.8 per cent of the museums…)
– Through our economic transition plan, increase the number of programs offered in the fields of environmental protection and clean energy.
Louis Lang
Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec
The problems we face in education are linked to the direction of the economy. As long as the political parties, who are representatives of the rich, are in power the right to education, healthcare and other social programs will always be neglected because the main concern at this time is to ensure the profits of monopoly corporations, mainly foreign-controlled and the financiers. This is what is behind the cut-backs in education.
We must change the direction of the economy and stop paying the rich and put the emphasis on meeting the needs of the people and guaranteeing their human rights. This means increasing investments in education, healthcare and social programs.
We must recognize that the quality of education depends on the level of the working conditions which are provided for the teachers. We must pay attention to the problems raised by the teachers as well as the parents’ organizations which are seeking to improve the working conditions of the teachers.
For sure the teachers need an immediate increase in salary which was severely limited by the cut-backs imposed by previous Liberal and PQ governments.
Instead of abolishing school boards, ways have to be found to provide adequate funding so they can function properly. School boards are important public institutions to maintain control in each locality to meet the needs of the students and teachers.
We must stop the tendency of the introduction of privatization in the education system at whatever level and stop providing public funds for private schools.
The right for all to an education must be recognized and this means free of charge from primary school to secondary and even beyond. This means stop charging students for extra programs like sports and other activities and invest funds to ensure that youth who want to pursue studies in CEGEP and at university don’t have the added pressure of a huge debt burden to pursue a full education.

Editor’s note: All eight candidates in the Pontiac riding were asked for comment. Marie-Clarie Nivolon (Parti Quebecuois), Samuel Gendron (New Democratic Party of Quebec), Olive Kamanyana (Coalition Avenir Quebec), Kenny Roy (Conservative Party of Quebec) and Roger Fleury (Green Party) did not respond back in time for print.