There is one fundamental question we have to answer in Quebec : What is the role of Universities in our community ? (As a citizen what do I want Universities to be ?)
In my point of view there are two potential answers : Universities should create high level thinkers and by being competitive, be the leader in innovation and creativity (competitive Universities) . The second answer might be that Universities are a sanctuary of global knowledge and accessibility to knowledge should be the priority (accessible Universities).

Even if in theory, Universities can be both, competitive and accessible, it is not true in Québec (and even in most of the countries) because of the low budget. As a community, we have to choose what the role of Universities is.
Because Québec has no general long term view of our society, we don’t know the answer. (Saying that we are different but acting like other North-Americans is not a long term view!)

I was really excited about the summit because it was the perfect opportunity for citizen, academia and government to talk to each other and answer that fundamental question. But instead of a great discussion, the government choose to say to people who believe in accessibility for everyone “free education for everyone is not a possibility”, and say to people who believe in competitive Universities “we cut your budget before the end of the year”.

We can talk about solutions and problems in each case and how we would change the actual system and even talk about how we can find an agreement in between, but it is not the time for those discussions. We really need to have a big discussion on the role of Universities first.
The government closed the door to the two main obvious answers for me before the Summit.

What’s left?
I think the Québec has a high proportion of highly qualified and creative thinkers. Why don’t we base our economy on this unique human resource instead of natural resource ?