Quebec court upholds law limiting student protests
Press TV – June 28, 2012
Students in the Canadian province of Quebec have pledged to continue protests after a court rejected a petition to scrap parts of a law that was passed to crush student protest over tuition hikes.
The controversial law was passed in May in the wake of clashes between police and students fighting an 82 percent hike in tuition fees in the French speaking province.
Judge Francois Rolland said on Wednesday that the parts in question do “not prevent protests, even if certain limitations are imposed.”
Students and their lawyers rejected the court’s ruling, saying they would consider appealing.
Under Special Law 78, the organizers must inform the police about the timing and locations of marches at least eight hours before they stage a protest. It also allows imposing heavy fines on protesters who fail to do so.
Critics believe the law breaches rights of assembly and free expression. Police have arrested many people since the start of the protests more than four month ago.
University students and student unions have been protesting since mid-February to draw international attention to the government’s announced plans to raise tuition fees and the passing of the controversial law.
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The Threat of Quebec’s Good Example
Peter Hallward | The Bullet | June 6, 2012
The extraordinary student mobilization in Quebec has already sustained the longest and largest student strike in the history of North America, and it has already organized the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. It is now rapidly growing into one of the most powerful and inventive anti-austerity campaigns anywhere in the world.
Every situation is different, of course, and Quebec’s students draw on a distinctive history of social and political struggle, one rooted in the 1960s ‘Quiet Revolution’ and several subsequent and eye-opening campaigns for free or low-cost higher education. Support for the provincial government that opposes them, moreover, has been undermined in recent years by allegations of corruption and bribery. Nevertheless, those of us fighting against cuts and fees in other parts of the world have much to learn from the way the campaign has been organized and sustained. It’s high time that education activists in the UK, in particular, started to pay the Quebecois the highest compliment: when in doubt, imitate!
The first reason for the students’ success lies in the clarity of both their immediate aim and its links to a broad range of closely associated aims. Students of all political persuasions support the current ‘minimal programme,’ to block the Liberal government’s plan to increase tuition fees by 82 per cent over several years. Most students and their families also oppose the many similar measures introduced by federal and provincial governments in Canada in recent years, which collectively represent an unprecedented neoliberal attack on social welfare (new user fees for healthcare, elimination of public sector services and jobs, factory closures, wanton exploitation of natural resources, an increase in the retirement age, restrictions on trade unions and so on). And apart from bankers and some employers, most people across Canada already regret the fact that the average debt for university graduates is around $27,000.
The Growth of CLASSE
A growing number of students now also support the fundamental principle of free universal education, long defended by the more militant student groups (loosely co-ordinated in the remarkable new coalition CLASSE), and back their calls for the unconditional abolition of tuition fees, to be phased out over several years and compensated by a modest and perfectly feasible bank tax, at a time of record bank profits. “This hardline stance,” the Guardian’s reporter observed, “has catapulted CLASSE from being a relatively unknown organization with 40,000 members to a sprawling phenomenon that now numbers 100,000 and claims to represent 70 per cent of striking students.” Growing numbers, too, can see how such a demand might help to compensate for the most obvious socioeconomic development in Canada over the last 30 years: the dramatic growth in income inequality, reinforced by a whole series of measures (tax cuts, trade agreements, marketization plans…) that have profited the rich and very rich at the expense of everyone else.
In Quebec, student resistance to these measures hasn’t simply generated a contingent ‘chain of equivalences’ across otherwise disparate demands: it has helped to create a practical, militant community of interest in the face of systematic neoliberal assault. “It’s more than a student strike,” a CLASSE spokesman said in April, “We want it to become a struggle of the people.” At first scornfully dismissed in the corporate media, this general effort to make the student movement into a social movement has borne fruit in recent weeks, and it would be hard to describe the general tone of reports from the nightly protest marches that are now taking over much of Montreal in terms other than collective euphoria.
Nothing similar has yet happened in the UK, of course, even though the British variant of the same neoliberal assault – elimination of the EMA, immediate trebling of fees, systematic marketization of provision – has been far more brutal. But the main reasons for this lie less in some uniquely francophone propensity to defend a particular social heritage than in the three basic (and eminently transposable) elements of any successful popular campaign: strategy, organization and empowerment.
As many students knew well before they launched their anti-fees campaign last summer, the best way to win this kind of fight is to implement a strategy that no amount of state coercion can overcome – a general, inclusive and ‘unlimited’ boycott of classes. One-day actions and symbolic protest marches may help build momentum, but only “an open-ended general strike gives students maximum leverage to make their demands heard,” the CLASSE’s newspaper Ultimatum explains. So far, it has been 108 days and counting, and “on ne lâche pas” (we’re not backing down) has become a familiar slogan across the province. So long as enough students are prepared to sustain it, their strike puts them in an almost invincible bargaining position.
Ensuring such preparation is the key to CLASSE as an organization. It has provided new ways for students previously represented by more cautious and conventional student associations to align themselves with the more militant ASSÉ, with its tradition of direct action and participatory democracy. Activists spent months preparing the ground for the strike, talking to students one at a time, organizing department by department and then faculty by faculty, starting with the more receptive programmes and radiating slowly out to the more sceptical.
At every pertinent level they have created general assemblies, which have invested themselves with the power to deliberate and then make, quickly and collectively, important decisions. Actions are decided by a public show of hands, rather than by an atomising expression of private opinion. The more powerful and effective these assemblies have become, the more active and enthusiastic the level of participation. Delegates from the assemblies then participate in wider congresses and, in the absence of any formal leadership or bureaucracy, the “general will” that has emerged from these congresses is so clear that CLASSE is now the main organizing force in the campaign and able to put firm pressure on the other more compromise-prone student unions.
Assemblies and Collective Empowerment
Week after week, assemblies have decided to continue the strike. In most places, this has also meant a decision to keep taking the steps necessary to ensure its successful continuation, by preventing the minority of dissenting students from breaking it. Drawing on his experience at McGill University, strike veteran Jamie Burnett has some useful advice for the many student activists now considering how best to extend the campaign to other parts of Canada: don’t indulge in ‘soft pickets’ that allow classes to take place in spite of a strike mandate, and that thus allow staff to isolate and fail striking students. “Enforcing strikes is difficult to do, at least at first,” he says, “but it’s a lot less difficult than failing a semester. And people eventually come around, building a culture of solidarity and confrontational politics in the process.”
The main result of this process so far has been one of far-reaching collective empowerment. Resolved from the beginning to win over rather than follow the more sceptical sectors of the media and ‘public opinion,’ the students have made themselves more powerful than their opponents. “[We] have learned collectively,” CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said last week, “that if we mobilize and try to block something, it’s possible to do it.” From rallies and class boycotts, in April the strike expanded to include more confrontational demonstrations and disruptive nightly marches through the centre of town. Soon afterwards, solidarity protests by groups like Mères en colère et solidaires started up in working-class districts of Montreal.
In a desperate effort to regain the initiative by representing the conflict as a criminal rather than political issue, the panicked provincial government rushed through its draconian Bill 78 to restrict the marches, discourage strike enforcement and consolidate its credentials (in advance of imminent elections) as a law-and-order administration. In the resulting escalation, however, it’s the government that has been forced to blink. On 23 May, the day after an historic 300,000 people marched through Montreal in support of the students, police kettled and then arrested more than 700 people – a jaw-dropping number by historical standards. But the mobilization has become too strong to contain, and after near-universal condemnation of the new law it is already unenforceable. Since 22 May, pro-student demonstrations have multiplied in ways and numbers the police can’t control, and drawing on Latin-American (and older charivari) traditions, pot-clanging marches have mushroomed throughout the province of Quebec. On Thursday night tense negotiations with the government again broke off without resolution, and business and tourist sectors are already alarmed by the prospect of a new wave of street protests continuing into Montreal’s popular summer festival season.
There is now a very real chance that similar mobilizations may spread further afield. Recent polls suggest that most students across Canada would support a strike against tuition increases, and momentum for more forceful action may be building in Ottawa and across Ontario; in Quebec itself they also show that an initially hesitant public is beginning to swing behind the student demands and against government repression. On 30 May, at the ritual hour of 8pm, there were scores of solidarity rallies all over Canada and the world. In London around 150 casserolistas clanged their way from Canada House to the Canadian embassy at Grosvenor Square.
If enough of us are willing to learn a few things from our friends in places like Quebec and Chile, then in the coming years such numbers may change beyond all recognition. After much hesitation the NUS recently resolved that education should be “free at all and any level,” and activists are gearing up for a massive TUC demonstration on 20 October. After a couple of memorable springs, it’s time to prepare for a momentous autumn. •
Peter Hallward teaches at the centre for research in modern European philosophy at Kingston University London, and is a member of the Education Activist Network. His book on The Will of the People is forthcoming from Verso in 2012. He is the author of the 2008 Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment [book launch LeftStreamed].
~~~
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- Quebec: New poll shows support for Charest’s tuition increases has dropped 41 points in six days (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Quebec: Poll shows support for Charest’s tuition increases dropped 41 points in six days
By Ethan Cox | Rabble | May 25, 2012
Quebec is known for swift and drastic shifts of popular opinion. From the election of the first PQ government, to the rise of the ADQ and the Orange Wave, public opinion in this province is prone to sudden reversals.
The results of the most recent poll, an online survey of 1000 Quebecois conducted between May 23 and 25 by CROP for Radio-Canada, seem to suggest we are in the midst of such a dramatic swing.
When CROP was last in the field, on May 17 and 18, they found that a whopping 68% supported the government’s proposed tuition increase, with only 32% supporting the students. The same poll found 66% supported a “special law” to help end the crisis.
The poll was roundly criticized for asking respondents about a law which had yet to be introduced, and was at that time an unknown quantity. Criticism was also levelled at its methodology. That poll, and the most recent one, were conducted using a representative online panel, which was not randomly selected and as such cannot be assigned a margin of error.
Fast forward six days, through a civil-liberties-crushing special law, the largest protest in Canadian history, and mass arrests of over 700 people, and the results are stunning.
The latest poll did not ask the same question, but instead asked who respondents felt was to blame for the crisis. 44% placed the blame on Jean Charest’s ailing government, while only 36% blamed the students. On the question of what should be done with tuition fees, the poll found 45% supported indexing them to the cost of living, 13% thought they should be frozen at current levels and 11% thought they should be abolished. Only 27% thought they should be increased beyond inflation. Add that up and 70% of the population are now opposed to the Charest government’s proposed increases.
In a period of six days, support for the proposed increases to tuition has gone from 68% to 27%, a drop of 41 percentage points.
Unsurprisingly, the poll found that 60% were opposed to Loi 78, with 42% being strongly opposed. 30% supported the law, with 11% strongly supporting it. This is a drop of 36 percentage points in support for Loi 78, but given that the first poll was conducted before details of the law were public, that’s not as surprising.
The poll also found that 49% believed mediation between the government and student federations was the best way to resolve the dispute, coming in far ahead of a new election, a moratorium or a summit on university financing.
When asked if the student federations and government had been negotiating in good faith, both received failing grades. 48% thought the government had been negotiating in bad faith, over 37% who disagreed, while 58% thought the same of student federations, with 26% disagreeing. 50% did not have faith in either the government or students to resolve the conflict, while 25% had more confidence in the government and 16% more faith in student federations.
Given that both sides have been adamant that they will not back down from their demands, this is hardly surprising.
A friend commented that this showed people “hated Charest, but hated the students more.” I think he’s off the mark. Although there is clearly a warranted pessimism that there will be a swift end to the strike, I imagine 9% more people have greater confidence in the government to resolve the issue because 70% now want the government to make major concessions. People expect the government to fold, and as such expect that this will lead to the resolution of the conflict.
I prefer to compare polls by the same company, because differences in methodology and questions can make comparison between companies difficult, but if we look at the Leger poll done for the Journal de Montreal between May 19 and 21 (prior to the mass demonstration), it really demonstrates the trendline in this province.
The question asked was, given the positions of both sides ($1625 increase vs. freeze) do you support the students or the government? The poll showed an 18% shift in support from government to students over Leger’s previous outing, ten days prior. However, it still left the government with 51% support, and the students with 43%.
The change from 51% supporting the government position to 27% is a drop of 24 percentage points. In four days.
The Leger poll also found that 47% supported Loi 78, with an equal 47% opposing it. With 60% opposition, and 42% strongly opposed in the new CROP poll, we can see that opposition to the law has grown by 13 percentage points and crystalized. Those opposed tend to feel strongly about the subject, perhaps explaining the sudden popularity of the “casseroles” phenomenon (Where Quebeckers in all parts of the province go outside each night at 8 PM to bang on pots and pans in opposition to the law)
Notwithstanding all the normal caveats about polls and their flaws, it seems clear that there is a seismic shift going on in Quebec right now. The introduction of Loi 78 was a political miscalculation of epic proportions. It contributed to hundreds of thousands pouring into the streets on Tuesday, and provoked the casseroles movement.
The protest and ongoing casseroles in turn sent a strong message to Quebeckers that all was not right. They demonstrated to those outside Montreal that this was no longer a student issue alone, but a social one which involved people of all ages. Then that crazy social solidarity I wrote about earlier this week kicked in, and people began to turn on the government en masse.
The CROP poll did not ask for voting intentions, but I will be interested to see if the next provincial poll shows improvement for the PQ, who originally proposed increasing tuition at the rate of inflation.
Assuming this is not a rogue poll, it seems clear that the Charest increase is dead in the water. Most Quebeckers now want an increase at the rate of inflation, if that. These numbers will put wind beneath the wings of tiring students, and indicate that the record for protest attendance set last Tuesday may be challenged sooner rather than later.
The open question now is, will Charest hunker down and defy public opinion in the face of what will certainly be growing protests? And if Charest does offer students an increase at the rate of inflation, does it resolve a conflict which has become about much more than tuition?
While this poll holds some negatives for the students too, Quebeckers rejection of both Loi 78 and the proposed increase will no doubt have many a glass lifting tonight wherever students and their supporters are gathered.
______
Rabble’s Special Correspondent on the Quebec student strike, Ethan Cox is a 28 year-old organizer, comms guy and writer from Montreal. He cut his political teeth accrediting the Dawson Student Union against ferocious opposition from the college administration and has worked as a union organizer for the Public Service Alliance of Canada. He has worked on several successful municipal and federal election campaigns, and was a member of Quebec central office staff for the NDP in the 2011 election. Most recently he served as Quebec Director and Senior Communications Advisor on Brian Topp’s NDP leadership campaign.
As Rabble.ca’s newly minted Special Correspondent on the Quebec student strike, you’ll be seeing me in these pages every few days with all the latest from Montreal’s streets. For more frequent updates follow me on twitter @EthanCoxMTL
~~~
Canadian police arrest 400 in student protest in Montreal
Press TV – May 24, 2012
Canadian police have arrested some 400 people in Montreal in the latest student protest against tuition hikes, police say.
Several thousand demonstrators poured into Montreal’s central square late Wednesday to protest tuition hikes and to denounce a new legislation aimed at ending months of anti-tuition hikes protests.
Police clashed with the demonstrators and arrested nearly 400 protesters.
On Tuesday, tens of thousands of students took to the streets of Montreal to mark the 100th day of protests.
The protesters, carrying red banners and signs, marched through central Montreal to commemorate the day and also voice their opposition to the Quebec provincial government’s new law that would make protests more difficult to organize and impose stiff fines on those who disobey.
Since the law was passed on Friday, daily protests have often turned violent.
Under the new legislation, any individual, who prevents students from entering an educational institution or disrupts classes will be fined between CAD 1,000 and CAD 5,000.
The punishment will rise to between CAD 7,000 and CAD 35,000 for a student leader and to between CAD 25,000 and CAD 125,000 for student federations or unions.
The law also forces regulations to govern student protests, requiring protesters to inform the police of their demonstration plans, including an eight-hour notice for details, such as the itinerary, the duration, and the exact time of the action.
Quebec students have been holding almost daily demonstrations since February in an attempt to show their outrage at the proposed tuition fee rises.
Under the provisional agreement, university fees would increase by CAD 1,780 over seven years or about CAD 254 a year, bringing the total to CAD 4,000 per year. The plan is scheduled to be effective from 2012-13 until 2016-2017 academic years.
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The Cradle | November 1, 2024
An Italian private intelligence firm that allegedly hacked government databases to collect information on thousands of prominent people, including politicians, entrepreneurs, and celebrities, is accused of working for Israeli intelligence and the Vatican, media reported on 30 October.
Police wiretaps leaked to Italian media show that Equalize, which employs former members of Italian intelligence, is accused of breaching the servers of government ministries and the police between 2019 and 2024 to collect information.
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Prime Minister Meloni described the alleged scheme as “unacceptable” and “a threat to democracy.” … continue
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