First To Blink

Jean Charest's Liberal government was unequivocal; it would not turn back from raising Quebec tuition fees - the lowest fees of any province in Canada - to a level that would see Quebec university students paying 17% of the cost of their education by 2017.  The students could protest all they wanted, the resolve of the government was unshakeable.  This same government also pleaded with the student unions to be reasonable.

But the more militant of the unions, like CLASSE, felt it was not their job to inform their members that civil disobedience and violent protests were unacceptable, and they smugly thus informed the government that what it was attempting to impose in a tuition rise was unfair, and the rioting students had been 'provoked' by the government.  As such, they were simply exercising their democratic right by expressing themselves.

The strikes or student protests have gone on for eleven weeks.  And as they drag on the students have become increasingly destructive, vandalizing public property and harassing municipal governments and the public.  The protesting students have invoked their right to protest, and in the process they have deliberately interfered with the rights of other students who don't support the protests, and do wish to continue their education.

Setting fires, destroying public property, hurling rocks at police are not the actions of civil and educated youth.  They are activities normally associated with the dull, uneducated oafs any society is usually rife with, who see opportunities to run amok whenever situations such as this arise, to mingle among those with an authentic grievance during protests such as those that occurred during the G-8 summit in 2010 or the IMF or World Bank meetings anywhere.

For its part, the government invited students to be reasonable about the situation.  To exercise some restraint and intelligence; obviously far too much to expect of elite youth of a privileged society who feel that no excess of manipulative violence is too much to express their disgust at having to be responsible.  In meeting with several of the student unions, the government offered to extend the period of tuition increase by two years.

Instead of spreading the proposed increase over a five-year period, it could be done over an additional two years.  The unions walked out on the meeting, to begin with, because the government disinvited the most militant of the unions because of their members' violent "boycott".  They were not, in any event, impressed with the government offer to add $39-million in bursaries.

The promise that student loan repayment would be proportionate to a graduate's income also cut no ice with the unions.  The students and their unions consider themselves to be oppressed.  That the government has unfairly burdened them with a financial cost they refuse to accept.  And while Quebec's famously militant unions may be fully in support of the student protests, it would appear the general public is not.

Results of the latest poll undertaken by the Association for Canadian Studies and the Montreal Gazette appears to suggest significant inroads have not been made to convince Quebecers outside the student age demographic that planned tuition hikes will result in lower university enrolment and reduced access to higher education.