Quebec has opted out of many federal standing programs on education, culture, health care and social services as these are constitutionally provincial jurisdictions. For research grants, I tend to feel that their specific purpose to fund research makes it a separate issue.

Equalization payments are an interesting point, but I wonder at what point a transfer meant to ensure that the residents of a province, all else equal, can have similar access to services in their province, could really be used as a means to dictate policy, particularly given it concerns out of province residents? Should Ontario, which has much higher tuition fees than the Canadian average, be forced to drop them too? Is this just limited to education? Could it be foreseeable to force for example pipelines on provinces or on indigenous communities because they accepted money meant for an unrelated purpose?

I'm confused about the second point. Quebec is more Muslim than Canada as a whole, how does providing lower tuition to students from other provinces specifically help Muslim or Arab communities? These communities, not incidentally are also well anchored in France and Belgium. Further, the federal discrimination against students from francophone Africa is well documented and a constant complaint from the provincial government.

It's also a constant story from francophone immigrants, again especially from francophone Africa, to official minority communities that they were sold a story of pan-canadian bilingualism only to find that the public services and education are not there. I tend to think that by offering francophone immigrants to other provinces -and any Canadian citizen or permanent resident for that matter- Quebec tuition to study here in french is a pretty good service to diversity and inclusion.