The Coalition Avenir Quebec's tuition hike is not going unchallenged. Hundreds of students and supporters came out on Monday to protest the doubling of out-of-province tuition, which is slated to affect incoming undergraduate and professional master's students next fall.

Meeting at Dorchester Square and marching to McGill's Roddick Gates, many protestors sported Bishop's University purple and the red squares once worn during the Maple Spring.

The red square "represents education for all, education that is accessible, and that is free — and this is what we're fighting for," said Alexandre Ashkir, president of McGill's undergraduate student society (SSMU).

"These measures are going to do nothing to protect French; they're going to damage the access to education of students, and that is all," he said. "This is a class problem more than it is a language problem."

It wasn't just students at Monday's protests: professors and community members came out in solidarity with out-of-province students.

"[McGill's] reputation is not just because we have good faculty members, but also because of the high quality of students," said McGill professor Benjamin Fung, who also serves as the Canada Research Chair in Data Mining for Cybersecurity.

"If we have to make this unfair adjustment on the tuition, that means we are not taking the best students."

But it was students who had the harshest words for Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry and the CAQ government.

"When asked what lower enrolment ... would mean for the economies of Montreal and Sherbrooke, Pascale Déry responded that 'they will keep on coming,'" McGill student Kennedy McDiarmid told the crowd outside McGill's Roddick Gates.

"I stand here today, as we all do, to tell Déry, [François] Legault, and the Quebec government that they are all delusional."

As of press time, the Minister's office has not responded to a request from CKUT for comment.

With files from Sequoia Kim.

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