Quebec Student Leaders Teaching Ontario

"They contacted us a few weeks ago to say that there were a lot of students organizations in Ontario who were interested in receiving us.  It's really an opportunity to share what we have learned in the last months; to share our knowledge of mobilization, of social organization."  Quebec student protest leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois

Support for the Quebec student protests has come from unions such as the Ontario Union of Postal Workers local 538 and the Public Service Alliance of Canada.  Just as the majority of Quebecers however, do not support the student protest, it can be logically assumed that not all members of those Ontario-based unions are thrilled that their union leaders and their union dues will be sprinkled as largesse to encourage students to 'protest' in Ontario.

The University of Toronto will be the host site of a Student Strike Training Program with workshops to focus on "creating and/or radicalizing student associations", along with methodology in "enforcing strikes".  All of which sound rather venomously ominous.  As though they don't really need to take lessons from Quebec on how to mobilize dissent, create public disorder, offend citizens and parliamentarians, destroy public property. 

But the Canadian Federation of Students has organized and funded this rabble-rousing Quebec student leader - who is perfectly fine with the commission of violence on behalf of student protests against an increase in tuition - to tour ten Ontario universities for a Quebec-Ontario Student Solidarity Tour.  "We are optimistic that a general student strike in Ontario can and will succeed given the right ingredients", stated an open letter from Quebec to the CFS.

It should be recalled that the Quebec students that went 'on strike' over the province's plan to have them pay slightly more for their annual tuition, an increase that would still leave them paying much, much less in tuition fees than any other province, represented a relatively small number of Quebec students.  Most students were far less interested in joining the protests than they were in completing their school year.

But they are the silent majority and it is the vocal, strident minority that gets all the attention.  That has the Black Bloc on their side, focusing public attention on their violent antics.  As in Quebec, so too in Ontario; not all students are involved with and interested in protesting the cost of (subsidized) university and college tuition. 

Alexandre Meterissian for one, a student journalist and opponent of the student strikes who feels the student groups are simply "playing politics" with students' union funding.  "I would not advocate to stop the workshops.  I just don't want my money to pay for it in any way; if I was a University of Toronto student I wouldn't want my money in any of these workshops."

Two-thirds of Quebec students, for the most part from McGill, preferred not to be involved with the student 'strikes'.  They remained in school to complete the writing of their final exams.  Quebec university students were exposed to intimidating tactics by the protesting students, who also defied court orders to restrain their activities and respect university premises and not to interfere with the rights of others.

The proposed increase in tuition fees of $1,625 over five years represents a lowball figure of what it costs to attain a university education, heavily subsidized by taxpayers.  Students from middle-class backgrounds whose personal expenditures are far in excess of such tuition fees feel that they are entitled to non-charge services, and they're fully prepared to share their spleen and their tactics with their Ontario counterparts.