(NEW YORK) MintPress — After a relatively quiet summer, student protesters in Quebec are once again making themselves heard. Thousands gathered at Montreal’s Place du Canada this week to protest the provincial government’s planned tuition hike ahead of a parliamentary election that will be held on Sept. 4.
A posting on the Facebook page created by the CLASSE, a federation representing 100,000 students that has been the most ardent backer of the civil action, read, “This spring’s political awakening has given way to a new vision for democracy: a popular democracy, a democracy of the streets … On August 22 … let’s march for a just and equal Quebec. Let’s march for a new world.”
In 2011, the Quebec Cabinet, headed by Liberal Party Premier Jean Charest, proposed an increase in university fees from $2,168 to $3,793 between 2012 and 2017.
His main rationale was the need to improve the financing of Quebec’s universities, which, relative to the rest of Canada, are underfunded.
When fully implemented, tuition fees would still be more than 30 percent below the current Canadian average. Quebec has the lowest tuition fees in Canada; students pay 10 percent of the cost and receive transfer payments from other provinces whose students pay up to three times more tuition.
But the hikes would represent a 75 percent increase for these students over five years.
Thus the opposition. On Feb. 13 of this year, social science students at Universite Laval, the oldest center of education in Canada, decided to show their anger about the hike and went on strike; they were followed shortly afterward by students at other schools.
By March 22, the day Charest confirmed his intention of moving ahead with the tuition increase in the budget speech, 310,000 students were on strike, and 300,000 people, including supporters, attended a demonstration in downtown Montreal.
Government crackdown
Two months later, the government passed Bill 78, titled, “An Act to enable students to receive instruction from the postsecondary institutions they attend,” an emergency law that among other things required police permission for marches and allowed for fines of up to $125,000 for student groups that violate the new rules.
Initially, it didn’t have the desired effect. Three days later, in what organizers called “the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history,” between 400,000 and 500,000 people took to the streets.
But more than 2,500 people were arrested, and several civil rights groups said the conflict pushed the government too far toward a policy of maintaining order at the expense of free speech.
“It’s not difficult to create a feeling that ‘enough is enough’ and that this must be stopped,” said Nathalie Des Rosiers, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which is among the groups challenging the law in court. “The idea of passing special statutes to limit protest assumes that they are inherently dangerous. Freedom to dissent is being undermined.”
“We are not anymore into a tuition hike discussion,” said Carole Beaulieu, the editor of current affairs magazine L’Actualite at the time. “Something else is at play, something hard to grasp. We are into a left-versus-right debate, an old-versus-young debate.”
By the summer, however, the protests had waned.
On the campaign trail
But after Charest called elections for early September, student organizers called for fresh action.
Although Wednesday’s protest drew some 10,000 people, far fewer than at the height of the demonstrations, the leaders of the two main student unions, Elian Laberge, president of the Quebec Federation of College Students (FECQ), and Martine Desjardins, president of the Quebec Federation of University Students (FEUQ), said it signaled a renewal of the movement.
During a news conference before the protest, Laberge said, “In 14 days, every Quebecer will have to assess Quebec’s Liberal Party. They will have to assess nine years. Nine years where we saw corruption increase. Nine years where we saw public services fees increase in every domain.”
Indeed, there are signs that the strikes are resurfacing as an election issue.
The center-left Parti Quebecois is promising to scrap the Charest government’s plan for tuition hikes if it gets elected.
The PQ has not said how it would fill the fiscal gap but is promising to call a symposium on the issue.
The PQ’s Marie Malavoy told Le Soleil in Quebec City that universities that have sent out tuition bills with the new, higher amount should have waited until after the election, and she has urged students not to pay their fees for the semester.
Major left-wing groups have also joined forces with the students. Opposition parties and many fringe groups demonstrated alongside the students during April and May.
Just getting started
Still, the most militant of the student organizations, CLASSE, says the movement must continue no matter who wins the election.
“We recognize that the three main parties that can seize power haven’t made much of a case in support of education,” said spokesman Jeremie Bedard-Wien. “They haven’t supported us much during the strike and we don’t expect much from them at all, and that is why we argue for sustained mobilization.”
”What we’ve put forward for students is this idea of popular mobilization,” he added.
And CLASSE spokeswoman Veronique Laplante said citizens need more debate with politicians and tougher questions need to be asked of them.
She said the political parties are not sufficiently responding to students’ demands. “Democratic movements need to have discussions with their candidates,” she continued. “The message we can send is that we should ask people what they think and what they plan on doing.
“I think the protesters bought some time in the ferocity of demonstrations and the ability to turn out large numbers of people on short notice,” she added. “They still have a period of time, say till six months after the elections, to exert pressure.”
In the meantime, said CEGEP college philosophy professor Martin Godon, students “have learned a lot about democracy, civics and engagement, and that’s worth all the diplomas they could receive.”