Quebec school renovations on hold as effects of widespread education cuts take hold

Quebec school service centres and school boards say they've been told by the provincial government to put renovation projects on hold due to budget cuts.

Planned construction works being delayed include the building of annexes, a range of repairs, such as roofs, and equipment and paint jobs. Some plans for entirely new schools are also on pause.

"Budgets already promised and allocated are being taken back," said Kathleen Legault, president of the Montreal Association of School Principals (AMDES). 

"School boards and service centres are being told 'hold,' I would say, most projects."

Legault says that just before the holidays and in the middle of the school year, the Quebec government announced $200 million in cuts to education.

The Education Ministry told school boards and service centres to pause any new construction and maintenance project that wouldn't affect people's safety, Legault said.

For example, students of École des monarques, an elementary school in Montreal's Rosemont neighbourhood, have been going to school at a temporary location.

Their school was partially torn down to make way for a new, more modern building. 

But now it's unclear when that will be built. 

"All these projects that are being put on hold, they've been presented to the government, sometimes three or four years in a row before being accepted and now they were accepted, the budget was announced," but the schools don't know when or whether they're going to happen, Legault said. 

Overcrowding an issue

Lester B. Pearson School Board in Montreal says plans for two new elementary schools are also on hold. While on the South Shore, the Marie-Victorin school service centre had to press pause on the construction of four new schools. 

"Services are going to be delayed; students are going to have to travel longer distances to get to their school," said Joe Ortona, the president of the Quebec English School Boards Association. "There may be overcrowding issues that we're going to have to deal with."

In a statement, Education Minister Bernard Drainville's office said that since 2018, the budget to build and renovate schools went from $9 billion to $23 billion, and that Quebec has built more than 100 schools since then.

The ministry says it asked school service centres and school boards to respect their allocated budgets, but that projects shouldn't be cancelled — just paused.