Democratic Action in Quebec

"I risked my life so that women and Afghan children could to to school [without] coercion by a social cause or ideology.  And now, I return to Canada to try educating myself with the money I saved, to become a better asset to society, and they tell me: 'We have a just social cause to defend, so you don't get access to education'."

These are the words of a former soldier who served in Afghanistan, and was recently taunted by fellow students in Quebec City after he won an injunction allowing him to attend his Universite Laval anthropology course.  He's not the only Quebec college or university student anxious to continue studies, but unable to do so because of the strident and violent actions of a core of students intent on pursuing their 'rights'.

A CEGEP in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu set to resume classes on Monday was forced to shut down when protesters blocked the doors.  Valleyfield had the same experience the week before; a student opposing the strike, wishing to get into his class and expressing his opinion, was intimidated when a balaclava-face-covered striker intimidated him.

At Universite du Quebec en Outaouais a group of student protesters barricaded themselves inside the school, defying a Quebec Superior Court injunction.  This was an injunction brought by students who wanted to continue their education.  The injunction ordered the school be reopened, and ordered the student association to cease all "intimidation, picketing, threats and demonstrations".

In defying the injunction, the students had the support of one of their professors in the social sciences faculty.  Who felt it was just fine that the masked students prevented entry to the Gatineau campus, forcing the university to cancel the day's classes.  "It's their right - we are a democracy, after all - to express themselves against this injunction", she claimed.

In a democracy it's the right of hundreds of students to loudly and violently create an atmosphere of chaos, and intimidation denying the democratic rights of other students to attend classes they urgently need to be part of, to ensure they can complete their school year.  In Montreal, student protesters have blocked bridges and rush-hour traffic. 

A downtown office building was blockaded; ambulance technicians were unable to access a woman in its interior who had been injured in a fall.  The city's subway was paralyzed for a half-hour by bags of bricks thrown on the tracks  Students ransacked the Montreal office of Education Minister Line Beauchamp last week; later four other ministers' offices were vandalized, unignited Molotov cocktails discovered within.

The most militant of the student groups featured a speech at a rally last week where former FLQ terrorist Paul Rose, convicted for the 1970 murder of Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte, spoke encouragingly.  All this, in denial of the government's proposed tuition hikes of $325 yearly over five years that will still leave Quebec students with the lowest tuition in the country.