Quebec protests

[Cain]

I've been following the Quebec student protests for a while.  However, things have turned pretty ugly recently, with the adoption of Bill 78, which it makes it illegal to protest without police permits. 

To give you a flavour of what is going on

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hNjE-ZE749PnLytbzGAz5Os-Jk-Q?docId=325f9d81a1b7412eba74a1a660b87036

Quebec's generous social services date back to sweeping reforms in the 1960s, a period of intense nationalism. Yet many Quebecers look back at the "Quiet Revolution" with regret over one unfulfilled promise: free higher education.

That sentiment is fueling Canada's most sustained student demonstrations ever. It has been anything but quiet.

Some 150,000 students in more than a dozen Quebec colleges and universities have been on strike since February to protest the provincial government's plan to raise tuition fees. Street protests in Montreal have ended in clashes with police and mass arrests.

A strict new law designed to stop the demonstrations has only broadened the movement to include separatists and Occupy protesters, and triggered a wider debate over public freedoms. The students are threatening to persevere through the summer, just when the city traditionally awakens from its dark and frigid winter for jazz and comedy festivals that draw in millions of dollars in tourist revenue.

The French-speaking province's average undergraduate tuition — $2,519 a year — is the lowest in Canada, and the proposed hike— $254 per year over seven years — is tiny by U.S. standards. But opponents consider the raise an affront to the philosophy of the 1960s reforms that set Quebec apart not only from its U.S. neighbor but from the rest of Canada.

"The whole consensus around education was built around the Quiet Revolution," said Pierre Martin, a political science professor at the Universite de Montreal. "That consensus would tend toward a tuition-free model in the future. That was a promise."

As a result, he said, Quebecers don't compare their tuition rates to those in the U.S. or English-speaking Canada, but to those in European countries where higher education is free.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest, who has vowed to shake up the debt-ridden province's finances since he was elected nearly a decade ago, has refused to cave.

More than 2,500 students have been arrested since the demonstrations began more than 100 days ago, including nearly 700 this past Wednesday alone. The total is five times the arrests during a period in the 1970s when soldiers were deployed to the streets in Quebec because of a spate of terrorism by a group demanding independence from Canada.

The tuition hike is part of a broader effort to shift Quebec's fiscal burden away from taxpayers — the province has some of the steepest personal income taxes in North America and the highest per-capita debt in Canada— and onto the shoulders of each person who uses a service.

"Every citizen has to do their part," Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "This is the 21st century."

Bachand said the students want more money in their pocket to the detriment of others. He noted that the government has expanded student grants so that middle and lower income students can more easily afford the increase.

"We're talking about 50 cents a day so basically it's moved from a question of tuition fees to a question of a social movement like you've seen in other parts of the world," Bachand said. "We're not used to this as Canadians. We're used to sitting down, disagreeing, negotiating and coming to an agreement."

In an effort to restore peace, Charest's government passed emergency legislation on May 18 restricting protests and closing striking campuses until August. The law requires that police be informed eight hours before a protest begins, including details on the route of any demonstration of 50 or more people. It also prohibits demonstrations within 50 meters (165 feet) of a college and declares that anyone who incites or helps another person break the new protest regulations can be fined.

This is the perspective of a political science/IR professor at Université du Québec à Montréal:

What is at play in this conflict is no less than the fate of social-democratic expectations in Quebec. These expectations are actively discouraged and discredited by the current political elite. The demands for a tuition freeze by sizeable portions of Quebec's students are considered unreasonable in many quarters, and seen as a plane expression of bad faith and overindulgence by a majority of Canadians, seemingly stuck in a Stephen Harper induced stupor. The words 'pragmatic', 'realistic' and 'rational' have been duly appropriated by the partisans of deregulation, free-enterprise and individual responsibility. Any suggestions that the latter orientations are based on an ideological choice are ridiculed; they simply express a sounder and more logical way to manage society.

Up to now, there seemed to be a dour resignation to the decimation of our social programs. This young generation of Quebecers, which many had touted as completely apathetic and apolitical, has taken a resolute stand against restricting access to a public good, against the further commodification of knowledge and against the uncompromising law and order approach of an arrogant and irresponsible government. Those that have taken to the streets day after day and sacrificed their terms and put their professional lives on hold for the students that will come after them, have shown extraordinary resilience and bravery. It came as a surprise to many, because they did it on their own, with little or no help from their political science professors, who have long abandoned critical thinking for functionalist replications of reality sanctioned by government money.

Bowing to public pressure and repeated calls from the opposition, Line Beauchamp, the province's education minister who has since resigned, invited student representatives, union leaders and university rectors to negotiate a settlement. After gruelling overnight negotiations, which involved the tried and tested wily tactics of sleep deprivation and shift negotiation, the government announced that a deal had been struck. The result was a highly convoluted, technocratic and most importantly conditional agreement over the notion that some money "could" be saved from a more efficient management of University budgets and that these savings could be used to reduce the ever-increasing administrative (not tuition) fees. In what some heralded as substantial gains for the students, the government also proposed improvements to loans and bursaries.

The next day, Prime Minister Jean Charest, the object of passionate dislike by important sections of Quebec's population, made yet another faux pas by displaying more than a hint of triumphalism in front of the TV cameras. Worse, state officials and rectors publicly expressed their doubts about the already severely underfunded Universities' ability to find extra money. As the agreement was diffused in the media and studied a little more closely, muted enthusiasm was replaced by incomprehension and disappointment verging on anger. The student representatives took the proposal back to their respective assemblies and the answer was a resounding NO.

As a result of the government's obstinate refusal to go back to the negotiation table, students initiated a series of night protests in Montreal's downtown core. The government's response to the student's determination was to pass Bill 78, a blatantly anti-democratic measure that flies in the face of our fundamental right to associate and demonstrate and of our socio-political culture. Under this new legislation, demonstrations are restricted to 50 (10 in the original proposal) people and an itinerary must be provided to the police eight hours in advance. Draconian fines are to be imposed for students and organizations that violate provisions of the law. An individual blocking access to a CEGEP or university could face a fine anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000. Student leaders could be charged up to $35,000, while student associations and federations could face a penalty of up to $125,000.

The language used by government officials to describe the principled stance of some sections of the Student movement is equally troubling. Quebec's minister of Public security minister, Robert Dutil, claimed that civil disobedience was just a pretty word for vandalism. Raymond Bachand, Finance minister of finance, came out saying that the student movement was led by a handful of radical Marxists. Most of the big corporate-owned media outlets (Journal de Montreal (the equivalent of The Sun in the UK), La Presse, etc.) have been pumping out disinformation, twisting statistics and putting out inflammatory editorials. It would appear that Quebec's establishment dramatically underestimated the resolve and conviction of the youth. The current generation's sensitivity to diffused power and to surreptitious prejudice turns into an appreciation of the full force of the state apparatus. Many young Quebecers now know what the state does when it is shaken to its core. In a desperate attempt to preserve its own biological existence against adverse life forms, it convulses and lashes out. One thing is certain, there nothing like police brutality to politicise and radicalise a whole generation.

It is difficult to see what the future holds. The government is now showing signs of faltering as a majority of Quebecers expresses its indignation with Bill 78 and mass arrests in the Province's main cities. Quebec's reviled minister of Education, Michelle Courchesne, has confirmed that talks would re-open with Student Associations in the next few days.

In spite of Wednesday's mass arrests, people have come out in force again tonight in a massive show of civil disobedience. In clear defiance of Bill 78, no itinerary was given to the police. Thursday's demonstration was the biggest and most diverse yet; we seem to have reached an apogee of enthusiasm and popular support for the students. If Bill 78's purpose was to silence protest, it has failed miserably. Since the weekend, Quebecers from various corners of the province and various parts of Montreal have also embraced an old Chilean protest method against Pinochet's dictatorship, by banging on pots and pants from 8pm to then swell the ranks of on-going or impromptu noisy processions.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Illegal to protest without police permits. 

Pretty much says it all.

[AFK]

That's pretty lame. 

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

In Montreal on Wednesday there was a student march to openly defy and protest Bill 78. Before the march police couldn't help but hear about it and requested the route they would be taking. Here is the map the students sent them.

[Chairman Risus]

In Montreal on Wednesday there was a student march to openly defy and protest Bill 78. Before the march police couldn't help but hear about it and requested the route they would be taking. Here is the map the students sent them.

[Telarus]

In Montreal on Wednesday there was a student march to openly defy and protest Bill 78. Before the march police couldn't help but hear about it and requested the route they would be taking. Here is the map the students sent them.

[inode_buddha]

It amazes me what Canadians will put up with sometimes. Also, you know its getting pretty bad when they're protesting something.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

In Montreal on Wednesday there was a student march to openly defy and protest Bill 78. Before the march police couldn't help but hear about it and requested the route they would be taking. Here is the map the students sent them.

I knew what it was before I clicked it.