SEPTEMBER 6, 2012
Students and their supporters throughout the Canadian
province of Quebec are celebrating the ousting of Liberal Premier Jean Charest,
the promise of the withdrawal of Bill 78 and most importantly the freeze in
tuition fees. This victory comes after six months of student strike involving
more than 190 000 students.
Quebec students who already paid the lowest tuition fees
across North America were faced with a 75% tuition fee increase. Even if the
planned increase had gone ahead, Quebec students still would have pay less than
in any other Canadian province. Why? Quebec students have a strong tradition of
fighting for free education since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. And if you
fight you can win!
During the six month –long strike many the demonstrations held
on the 22nd of each month reached up to 500 000 protesters. However, it
was the roughly180 local unions organised in CLASSE which carried the fight
from day to day shutting down the Port of Montreal, ministerial meetings and
nearly all classes in post-secondary education across the province.
In the face of state repression, the use of tear gas, shock
grenades, the arrest of thousands of protesters, and riot police in college
corridors, students didn’t buckle but instead called upon workers and the neighbourhoods
to join in nightly pots and pans protests, the casseroles. Charest’s unpopular
Bill 78 acted as a catalyist for the student movement to turn into a popular
movement.
But student protesters were not only campaigning against
tuition fees. Time again, they argued that Finance Minister Raymond Bachand’s
provincial budget of 2011-2012 would cut public and accessible healthcare,
hydroelectricity and education.
Over the last nine years in power the Liberals have pursued
to restructure society in the interest of the rich. Tax cuts for corporations
have gone hand in hand with increasing the retirement age to 67. After trade
unions suffered a blow in 2005 it was announced that student fees were to
increase. As the ‘sacred cows of Quebecoise society’ came under attack students
engaged in a ‘general strike’, causing significant economic damage to the
provincial government. This meant that the elections were a referendum on the
student movement and dominated by two topics: tuition fees and student debt.
With full privatisation looming, students did not want to
see a repeat of their 2005 strike, which saw them go back to class
empty-handed. Students have learnt some important lessons. They are organising
on a departmental/faculty basis, which has strengthened the overall
organisation of the strike. This has also helped them to hold their unions and
executives to account.
The high point of the ‘Quebec Spring’ has been the
350,000-strong demonstration in Montreal on May 22. Following the biggest
student demonstration ever, students called for a week of economic disruptions,
bringing inner cities’ traffic to a standstill while also mobilising 30,000
parents in support of the students’ demands. The two largest public sector
unions also called their membership on to the streets for the mobilisation.
The looming summer break did not succeed in breaking the
strike either. Instead students continued to carry their message into the
streets and to the election rallies.
While the mainstream media continuously claimed that the liberal
government had “extended a hand” by offering students an “increased bursary and
loan programs”, the government was intent on breaking the movement time again.
Premier Jean Charest said: “The decision has been made and we will not back
down”. This only strengthened the determination of student strikers, and led
them to forge new alliances. Students organised solidarity with locked-out Rio
Tinto Alcan workers and with hundreds of Aveos employees who recently lost
their jobs.
Protests also saw environmentalists and students come out
together. They stormed the top floor of a conference centre in which Charest
was to unveil further details of his ‘Plan Nord’, a mining plan which will see
a 1.2-million-square kilometre stretch of indigenous land be sold off to big
business.
At the same time, other students stormed a meeting of the
federal Immigration minister Jason Kenney, best known for his anti-gay and
anti-immigration stances.
This display of resistance has inspired activists far beyond
the provincial borders of Quebec. The question is whether the newly elected
nationalist government will stick to its promises and whether students will
continue to be part of the fight for a different kind of society. Another
Quebec is possible! Another world is possible!
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