Montreal's LaSalle College fined $30M for over-enrolling students in English-language programs

Montreal's LaSalle College says it's facing an existential threat after it was handed down back-to-back fines totalling almost $30 million from the Quebec government for enrolling too many students in its English-language programs.

The private college received a letter from the Ministry of Higher Education at the end of June saying it owed $21,113,864 for enrolling 1,066 students over its quota for the 2024-25 academic year. That amount is added to the $8.7-million fine it was handed down last year for the same infraction.

"The first question that came to my mind is which organization or family business can afford to pay such a fine," said the college's president and CEO, Claude Marchand.

Leading up to the introduction of the quotas in 2023, he said he had pleaded with the government to no avail to give colleges a grace period, as it had done for businesses adjusting to Law 14, also known as Bill 96, Quebec's law to protect the French language.

LaSalle College received its first quota in late February 2023, which was to be enforced in the fall of that same year. But by that point, the college's enrolment process for international students was well underway.

"So, we were already doomed when we got that number," said Marchand.

That year, it surpassed the quota by 716 students.

LaSalle College ran into the same issue the following year. Meeting the quota would have meant breaking the college's contracts with some students who had enrolled before the quotas were ever introduced and cutting short their academic careers at the school, which LaSalle wasn't willing to do, said Marchand.

"Now we're fully compliant in fall 2025, but it took us those two years to be fully compliant," said Marchand.

"We're not challenging the law per se. We are challenging the penalty that is the outcome of the law."

The fine per student enrolled over the quota increased from last year. A spokesperson for Pascale Déry, Quebec's minister of higher education, says the reduced fine rate in the first year was the transitory measure.

"Despite close support and several warnings, it is important to point out that LaSalle is the only subsidized private college to continue to defy the Charter of the French Language and to not respect the law," said the minister's office in a statement.

In a post to X, Jean-François Roberge, the minister responsible for the French language, said Quebec's move to cap enrolment into programs taught in English was "brave, but necessary."

For his part, Marchand says that negotiating and getting any indication of flexibility from Déry has been complicated.

LaSalle was the only college, private or otherwise, to be fined by the government for contravening the quota in 2024 as can be seen in Quebec's budgetary and financial regimes for that year.

Other colleges were able to negotiate their quotas, like the public Cégep Marie-Victorin, which was initially allotted 232 spots in its Attestation of College Studies (AEC in French) programs for the fall 2023. That number rose to 332, according to a government document from October that year, released through an access to information request.

LaSalle is contesting both fines in a civil suit at Quebec's Superior Court, claiming, among other things, that the government's quotas were unreasonable to begin with. That's partially because, as the suit says, the quotas are inferior to the number of international students enrolling into an English program the college is allowed to accept — a number the government itself sets.

The government says its fines are meant to recover the amount of overpaid subsidies. But the government doesn't subsidize international students at LaSalle, the suit goes on to explain, and the particular quota the school didn't meet is at the AEC level where there are a lot of international students.

Marchand calls the fines a "clawback" saying the government is also fining it twice for the same student over the last two years.

"We don't have more students in those [English-taught] programs than in 2019 which is the ultimate spirit of the law. We're fully compliant for next semester and we have a public mission to serve all [our] 5,000 students and we want to keep going."