Let's Hear It For Smug Defiance

"It is clear for us, there was a probable agreement with what we put on the table.  We will see after supper."  Martine Desjardins, Federation etudiante universitaire du Quebec

Negotiations are still ongoing.  And so is the 16-week-long tuition "strike" embarked upon by a minority of Quebec university and college students.  The student unions collectively offered a counter-proposal to the government of Quebec.  But the simple fact is, the government, duly and democratically elected, has the power and the right to enact laws that in its wisdom it chooses to do.

And since the Province of Quebec is under tight financial duress, it really cannot continue its social welfare programs that are the envy of other provinces who themselves cannot afford them, but who generously give up their own provincial taxes to enable Quebec to please its citizens in such a manner. 

"Right now we're facing a wall.  We are trying to look into the proposition of the government, making sure that we observe and we do the numbers.  So we expect that the government will do the same thing in exchange."  This is the students and their unions offering the government 'options' to make the rise in tuition fees more palatable to them.

The student unions are kindly and solicitously offering the government ways in which it can curry greater favour with the student unions.  Education Minister Michelle Courchesne, understandably, is more concerned with offering the student unions a way in which they might accept the inevitable, and save face.  But an offer to reduce the increase by $35 annually hasn't impressed the grieving students.


"We are still in the same mood, wanting to find solutions", offered Ms. Courchesne.  Wishing perhaps, that her premier, Jean Charest, could find it in himself to be a little more ... firm ... in his attitude toward the recalcitrant, demanding students who are still enamoured of the thought of themselves in full control, not the government.

The blackmail that they so thoughtfully extended to make their point, by forcefully halting classes, intimidating students wishing to save their school year and attend classes, and by wreaking havoc and destruction here and there, behaving like a menace to the public order and inconveniencing ordinary citizens, all meant to convince the government they mean business.

That the government should have succumbed to the witless hope that offering a $35 deduction in the yearly $254 fee increase, appears rather absurd.  Why would the students accept that if they cannot accept that they should be held responsible for any tuition fees whatever?

"It was judged insufficient", said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, haughtily.  "We submitted a counter-offer.  New elements were added in the evening.  That is where we were when talks broke off yesterday.  We are looking at several places to get money, to reduce as much as possible the tuition hike", he said.

Well, here's a good idea.  Why not recommend a reduction in the rather munificent and certainly undeserved salaries of university professors and college instructors?  That would certainly relieve some of the fiscal burden.  And while they're at it, recommend cutting down on classroom expenses, on refitting school infrastructure, that kind of unnecessary expense.

The professors and their unions, so anxious to support the denial of the student unions of the feasibility of Bill 78 and the intolerable tuition hikes should most certainly be eager to accommodate....