Protesting students might not realize it yet, but their “strike” became a lost cause the moment police discovered Molotov cocktails Sunday night inside of the offices of four provincial cabinet ministers and bags of bricks Monday morning on métro lines. Any vestige of moral high ground is now lost to the students.
The 165,000 student protesters can object all they want that only a small number of protesters were likely involved in the attacks on government buildings and the métro. It’s too little, too late. Violence and the threat of violence have been steadily building for weeks, with students blocking access to schools, harassing other students who want to attend classes and going so far as to intimidate Banque nationale workers last Wednesday.
The violence should have come to an end after vandals trashed Education Minister Line Beauchamp’s office and death threats were made against her and another cabinet minister. Instead, it has escalated.
Beauchamp is right to exclude one of the student groups in proposed discussions geared toward putting an end to the student strike, discussions that would see the creation of a permanent body to oversee university governance. The minister extended the olive branch on the weekend and her decision to exclude the Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE), has not been greeted with enthusiasm by CLASSE. The organization distanced itself from the violence overnight Sunday through Monday but refused to denounce it outright. Notwithstanding CLASSE’s changed attitude to violence, the government has the right to sit down and talk with those groups it chooses to engage with. She has agreed to talk to the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec and the Féderation étudiante universitaire du Québec.
Given the heightened threats of violence and risks of a lost school semester, it will be important in the coming days for all parties in the National Assembly to show unity and bring this sad dispute to an end. Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois can and should denounce violence unequivocally, and Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault should be working more actively to use this issue to demonstrate his leadership potential.
For Marois to say, as she did late last week, that Premier Jean Charest, in refusing to budge on tuition fees, was “demonizing” students and “pouring oil on the fire” showed the PQ leader in a very poor light. Marois might genuinely believe that the current low tuition fees are the birthright of every Quebecer but she must, as a responsible adult and an elected official, dissociate herself from the rise of irresponsible and illegal student behaviour.
Legault also needs to come out and condemn the violence. At the same time, he should be putting constructive proposals on the table for discussion and be less obviously afraid of proposing something that students might not like.
Clearly, a rift is beginning to open up on this issue – not, as CLASSE would have us believe, between the Charest government and students, but increasingly between CLASSE on the one hand and other student groups and Quebec civil society on the other.
CLASSE’s spokespeople have taken to presenting themselves as leading an anti-capitalist revolution. They are dreaming. Given the state of the province’s public finances, it’s not unreasonable to ask students to pay an extra $325 a year over the next five years to maintain high-quality university institutions. Even with these increases, Quebec university tuition in 2017 will be lower than the current Canadian average.
It’s time for striking students and their leaders to accept that Quebec is doing the best it can to make university affordable, but the money just isn’t there.