Where next for the Quebec mobilizations? Debate opens on strategic perspectives

Despite massive mobilizations throughout Quebec in opposition to Law 78 and the Charest government, the student struggle is once again at an impasse.

At the end of May, the government terminated the latest round of negotiations with the four college and university student associations without offering any concessions on the students’ key demands: for repeal of the tuition fee increases and repeal of its “bludgeon law” aimed at smashing student unionism in the province.

The student negotiators had bent over backwards to find some acceptable compromise. They agreed not to discuss Law 78 pending an agreement on the fees. They put aside the proposal of the CLASSE, the most militant student group,[1] that a tax on banks be substituted for the fee increase, proposing instead that the funds in question be found through increasing the existing education savings program. All to no avail.

Meanwhile, mounting public opposition to Law 78 brought new forces into the struggle. On May 22, hundreds of thousands marched once more in the streets of Montréal and other cities in support of the students and against the law. The nightly demonstrations, which began in late April when the government ended its initial bargaining session with the students, continued. And for the first time they began to draw in masses of non-student participants, attracting entire families who spontaneously descended into neighbourhood streets banging pots and pans (casseroles) in angry yet exuberant displays of opposition to the Liberal government.

Pierre Beaudet has provided a vivid description of one such demonstration in his neighborhood: “Samedi soir sur la rue Fleury.” In a few areas, the casseroles participants have initiated attempts to create more permanent structures. Here (in French) is an interesting account of one such effort.

Fearing to use the full panoply of measures under the bludgeon Law 78 against these massive and diverse demonstrations, the cops have resorted to selective repression. They declare the demonstrations illegal under the law, but often “tolerate” them. In some instances, however, they have arbitrarily engaged in mass arrests even in the absence of any violence by the demonstrators. Those arrested are mostly charged under traffic control laws, which bring heavy fines. So far, however, no charges have been laid under Law 78. The total of those arrested since the student strike began in mid-February is now somewhere close to 3,000.

On the night of June 5, police in Quebec City “kettled” one such demonstration after declaring it illegal, arrested and handcuffed more than 60 persons, including Amir Khadir, the Québec solidaire member of the National Assembly, and charged them under the highway traffic code with obstructing the streets. In a news conference the next day, Khadir strongly defended peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience of Law 78. “When a law is immoral, when a law is unjust, there is a law of conscience that must be obeyed,” he said. It was his responsibility to “accompany my people” in such actions, Khadir said, citing Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King as his “models.”

The student associations have reacted in differing ways to the deadlock with the government. The FECQ and FEUQ, which represent a minority of the students who struck the campuses, as well as the non-striking TCEQ, [2] appear to have limited their action against Law 78 to court challenges, although such proceedings may not reach a final conclusion before the law expires in June 2013.

The CLASSE, at its annual congress early this month, adopted a three-part action plan for the coming period: (1) to sponsor mass national demonstrations on June 22 and July 22; (2) to participate in an action on July 13 organized by a broad coalition against user fees and privatization of public services; and (3) to prepare a broad mobilization this fall, including a discussion of the perspectives for a “social strike” at the end of the summer vacation period. Together with the other student associations, CLASSE members will also leaflet various entertainment events during the summer to help educate the public on the issues in their struggle.

A Legal Defense Fund, with a bilingual web site, has also been organized to raise money for the defense of those arrested in the student demonstrations in recent months. And the CLASSE has mounted a campaign, also with a bilingual web site, to raise funds to help it continue the struggle in the coming months.

The summer will be a difficult period for the movement, confronted by the government’s hard-line resistance, the continuing repression and threats, the legislated closure of the campuses at least until mid-August, and the need for many students to find summer jobs… to help finance their tuition fees.

Mass action vs. electoralism

A new challenge to the students and their supporters is posed in a strategic debate now developing in nationalist and progressive circles. Essentially, it involves a clash between those who want to put the student struggle on ice in order to build an electoral coalition behind the Parti québécois, and the militants who argue that the future of the movement lies primarily in the development of mass action in the extra-parliamentary arena. In recent days this debate has gone public, with opposing polemics in the radical and mass media.

An initial round was fired in the daily Le Devoir on June 5 in an op-ed piece by Pierre Curzi, a dissident péquiste who (together with a few other MNAs) left the PQ parliamentary caucus last year to sit as an independent, primarily in protest against PQ leader Pauline Marois’ reluctance to steer the party toward a new referendum on Quebec sovereignty.

Curzi’s “call to the nation,” as he titled it, lamented the PQ’s loss of support to both its right and its left, and the growing development of a “left-right axis” in Quebec politics. The rightists, now assembled in the Coalition avenir Québec, are objectively allied with the federalist Liberals (the PLQ) on the national question. On the left is the pro-independence Québec solidaire, which is now registering between 6 and 10 percentage points in opinion polls. This, in Curzi’s view, was a major problem: “With the first-past-the-post ballot, in one round, the rise in popularity of QS works directly to the advantage of the PLQ” as QS appropriates a section of the pro-sovereignty vote traditionally hegemonized by the PQ. Curzi failed to mention that the undemocratic under-representation of both PQ and QS votes in legislative seats was largely the fault of the PQ, which in its 18 years in government never implemented its promise to institute some form of proportional representation.

A related problem, said Curzi, is the mounting rate of abstention in the electorate, which works to the disadvantage of the PQ as the Liberals have a faithful electorate in the Anglophone and ethnic populations that guarantees them about 40 seats in the 125-seat legislature. (Here, too, Curzi failed to note the possible connection between the growing class divide and the rise in abstention in elections, where the alternatives to the neoliberal consensus of the major parties have been weak or non-existent.)

The solution, he argued, lies in the formation of a common front of the PQ, QS and a small pro-sovereignty party, Option nationale, headed by former PQ dissident Jean-Martin Aussant. This front would organize primaries in each riding to choose the common candidate with the best chance of election. Curzi admitted that in most cases the péquiste would be chosen. But he was willing to contemplate a few exceptions for leaders of the other parties and perhaps independents like himself. Above all, however, QS president Françoise David, who is running in Gouin riding against a sitting PQ member, would have to desist, although possibly she might manage to be chosen in another riding.

The program of this supposed coalition? Obviously there could be no demand opposed by the PQ, the dominant component of the alliance. So Curzi thought that on the subject at the heart of the current political crisis it would be sufficient to oppose “the drastic increase in student fees.” After all, the PQ does not support even the students’ minimum demand for a freeze on fees, still less free tuition, and proposes only a brief moratorium on the increase followed later by indexation of fees.

Curzi’s proposal — which was flatly rejected the next day by PQ leader Marois — was supplemented by an opinion piece published in the on-line edition of Le Devoir, also on June 5, under the by-lines of Marc Laviolette and Pierre Dubuc, leaders of SPQ Libre,[3] a small caucus of left supporters of the PQ. They pointed to growing speculation that Charest might call a snap election in the midst of the current social crisis, counting on the support of a majority of voters hostile or indifferent to the students’ demands, to re-elect his government.

The SPQ Libre authors then pointed to what they consider the major problem: the deepening social mobilization by the students and their supporters.“We have all seen the immense banners in the demonstrations calling for a ‘social strike.’ But at this point this would be a tremendous error. It would simply facilitate the re-election of the Liberal party.” Charest will win on the theme that voters have to choose between “the street and the government.”

They pointed to some historical precedents. Charles de Gaulle had been re-elected in the wake of the May 1968 revolt in France. (In fact, he resigned a few months later when defeated in his referendum on reform of institutions.) Similarly, after the 1968-69 student strike Liberal leader Robert Bourassa had been elected in 1970 to restore order, and re-elected in 1973 “after the October [1970] crisis” (they might have added, after the 1972 labour upsurge and radicalization). Clearly, they implied, these social mobilizations do more harm than good when it comes to an electoral strategy for winning office.

“The struggle is political and will be played out in the electoral arena,” argued Laviolette and Dubuc. “So we must avoid letting the student conflict obscure the record of the Charest government. We must build a broad coalition around the Parti québécois on the theme: ‘Charest divides, the PQ unites!’”

To this effect, the unions in particular should mobilize their members to get out the vote for the PQ. And Québec solidaire should reach an agreement with the PQ under which QS would campaign for the PQ in ridings identified as “winnable” by the latter. Furthermore, this “electoral coalition” should be expanded to include not only Option nationale but all the student, environmental, popular and other organizations that oppose the policies of the Charest government. And their leaders should be invited to run for the PQ. As for Québec solidaire, a newly elected PQ government might offer a cabinet seat to QS leaders “Amir Khadir and/or Françoise David, if they managed to get elected of course.”

It must be said that on their face some of these proposals are laughably impractical. As Le Devoir political columnist Michel David cynically commented, “it is totally unrealistic to think of a ‘coalition government’ that would include representatives of QS…. With Amir Khadir in her cabinet, Pauline Marois would go crazy within two days.” Indeed, the PQ cannot possibly unite the opposition to the Liberal government.

However, it is undeniable that the prospect of Charest’s re-election has panicked many nationalists and social-liberal progressives, prompting the more pessimistic like the SPQ Libre leaders into contemplating possible electoralist alternatives. And some members of Québec solidaire — how many cannot be ascertained at this point — may be susceptible to the idea of some sort of electoral alliance with the PQ, notwithstanding Marois’s current opposition. These pressures on QS are destined to mount exponentially in the coming months. Although the party members have rejected analogous proposals in the past, most notably at its April 2011 convention, the polarization in Quebec politics produced by the students’ magnificent strike movement has created new challenges on the electoral front as well.

Maintaining and expanding the mass movement

These developing debates are the subject of several articles in the current issue of the on-line journal Presse-toi à gauche, which is editorially sympathetic to Québec solidaire. In a notable contribution, entitled (free translation) “The challenges of Law 78: The resistance must continue!,” Benoit Renaud, a former national secretary of QS, addresses the strategic dilemmas facing the student movement and directly confronts the issue of their impact on electoral politics.

Law 78, he writes, “is an unprecedented attack on the student movement and a completely arbitrary and unjustified assault on the democratic rights of the population as a whole.” It “challenges the democratic forces in Quebec society to unite to resist the law itself but also to reflect collectively on how to reverse the offensive. Otherwise, this setback, which is ostensibly temporary, could prepare the ground for some future attacks and defeats from which it will be increasingly difficult to recover.”

The daily demonstrations and the casseroles movement have confirmed the existence of significant opposition to the special law and, to a lesser extent, popular support for the students, Renaud notes. But this is far from universal. The focus must remain on the need to build mass support in defense of the students and their demands, he argues. The stakes are huge:

“It will be very hard for the student associations to defy such legislation. The sanctions against the organizations and their leaders are very harsh. The loss of one session’s dues per day of strike — or even an attempted strike — could handicap the most militant student associations in Quebec for many years. Legal challenges of the law and the various penalties it entails could seriously undermine the ability of the organizations to mobilize students against future attacks.”

“The FEUQ and the FECQ seem to have already abandoned the idea of defying the law in order to concentrate on the legal challenge. But the CLASSE’s declared intention remains to be spelled out and demonstrated in practice. What local associations will be prepared to take such risks starting in August, in a strike movement that is probably confined to a small minority? Should a new threshold level of participation be determined for this phase of the mobilization? If some associations decide to move ahead in testing the law, will the rest of the student movement and its allies be prepared to share the costs and support this vanguard?

“If the largest student mobilization in the history of Quebec were to end in the legal denial of the right to strike and the demolition of the most militant organizations, as well as the maintenance of the tuition fee increase, there could be a major demoralization leading to passivity for the majority and ultra-radicalism for a small and increasingly criminalized minority. The movement could take a decade to recover.

“In other words, we must develop a strategy to win on the basic question of the tuition fees, the only true test of the relationship of forces and the best way in which to preserve the student movement’s capacity for action. To do this, we must strengthen solidarity, protect the student organizations and their leaderships, expand the mobilization and support over the issue of the fees, and ultimately win the debate over the best means of making education accessible to all….”

Although this is the first time a sweeping emergency law has been aimed at the student movement, Renaud notes, “the labour movement has a long experience in this regard,” especially in the public sector. “In addition to the Labour Code and the Essential Services Act, both of which already severely limit its exercise, the government arsenal includes special laws — adopted or threatened — to deny, for all intents and purposes, the right to strike for the public sector as a whole.” More recently, the Tory government in Ottawa has used its parliamentary majority to break strikes by workers at Canada Post, Air Canada and Canadian Pacific.

With few exceptions, the unions have failed to mount successful struggles in their defense, relying largely on court challenges, says Renaud. A different approach is needed.

“Law 78 demonstrates to us the need to retake the initiative and defend — by methods going beyond the strict limits of legality, if necessary — our fundamental collective rights, including the right to strike. The Charest government, through its actions, is attempting to take us back to the 1950s in terms of social rights. Isn’t it time to go back to the methods of struggle of the 1950s and to draw our inspiration from the determination of a Madeleine Parent or a Michel Chartrand?

“In 1972 FTQ president Louis Laberge characterized the special law against the [public sector] Common Front as fascist and urged his members to defy it. The jailing of Laberge, Charbonneau and Pépin [the latter two leaders of the CEQ and CSN centrals] provoked a wave of “illegal” strikes in the private sector. It is this — a widening of the struggle rather than its narrowing — that constitutes the only valid response to abuse of power. That was what enabled the union movement to make some gains that year and in the following two rounds of bargaining. The 1972 special law had been broken by the general strike in May.”

Renaud then turns to more contemporary examples.

“Calls for a political general strike or ‘social strike’ began to be heard in the first months of the Charest regime, in response to a series of anti-union laws adopted at the end of 2003. Resolutions along these lines were adopted by many organizations, but they did not lead to concrete operations of organization and preparation. This idea has come up again in the student conflict. A social strike is an action often used in Europe to challenge austerity measures. The development of a concrete action plan for holding such a strike, aimed at repeal of Law 78, would be a needed complement to the legal challenges and a means of re-establishing the relationship of forces in favour of the student movement and, by extension, all of the social movements.

“There is also talk in some circles of the idea of an Estates General of the social movements. Indeed, the employers’ attacks are aimed not only at unionists and college and university students. It is the 99% of the population who do not benefit from the system who are targeted, especially by the social and environmental policies. The need for unity of the movements in the face of governments in Quebec City and Ottawa determined to undermine our social gains and make us pay for the costs of the economic crisis certainly warrants working together and with a new range of methods, including the social strike, irrespective of who wins the next elections. Hence we must continue to demonstrate throughout the summer. If the purpose of Law 78 was to restore the social peace that is so dear to business people, mayors and the premier, the lack of social peace will demonstrate the failure of the law and end up undermining the credibility of the government. Who knows, they might even find the road to genuine negotiation.”

Québec solidaire, a tribune for the student cause?

Renaud then turns to the appeals for a common electoral front of the left and social movements with the Parti québécois. He acknowledges the dilemma we face in today’s conditions, given the profoundly undemocratic electoral system and the absence of a “credible governmental alternative or an effective option for defeating” the Liberals or CAQ in many ridings. But is the election of a PQ government our only recourse, he asks.

“[T]there is a huge problem with this approach. The bosses’ offensive, of which Law 78 is the most egregious and brutal expression up to now, was begun by the Parti québécois at the time when Marois began her political career as Minister of Poverty. PQ governments adopted especially vicious bludgeon laws against the teachers in 1982 and the nurses in 1999.

“Not surprisingly, the PQ’s attitude in the student conflict has also been full of ambiguities. Ms. Marois came out against the increase… for the time being, calling for yet another forum to discuss the funding of the universities, and then for indexing fees to inflation. She declared her opposition to the use of injunctions… while calling on the students to abide by them scrupulously. And now her party promises to repeal Law 78… but asks that we obey it without exception in the meantime.”

A more comprehensive critical review of the PQ record both in and out of office is offered in an accompanying article by Bernard Rioux in PTàG answering the arguments of the SPQ Libre leaders. “Between 1994 and 2003,” the PQ’s last term in office, “this social liberal party now in opposition adopted and implemented neoliberal policies.” A PQ government would “be led… to follow the same paths as the Liberal government that preceded it….” The principal danger today, he argues, “is the weakening of the autonomy of the social movements in relation to a party that defends the interests of the ruling oligarchy, not the majority.”

Benoit Renaud notes the futility of a strategy based on support of the PQ:

“The social movements cannot rely on an ally with such a troubled history and such an obvious propensity to try to sit on the fence. The fact is that the construction of a left alternative rooted in the social struggles is an unavoidable task in any strategy aimed at rolling back the offensive and putting such notions as social justice, the fight against poverty, environmental protection, equal rights, feminism, etc. back on the agenda.”

As to “strategic voting,” even its supporters must concede that “in most ridings the question of incidental support to the PQ to avoid a PLQ or CAQ victory will not even be posed.

“Many ridings are strongholds of one party or another. There will be several battles between the PLQ and the CAQ. Several ridings are now winnable for Québec solidaire. There will be some cases where strategic voting may an issue. But even in these situations a fair section of the electorate will prefer to abstain if there is no credible progressive alternative to voting PQ.”

Renaud concludes on a modestly optimistic note:

“[I]n the next National Assembly a respectable contingent of QS members could make a big difference, irrespective of the distribution of the other seats. The experience over three and a half years with a single QS member should suffice to show that. And if the PQ forms the next government, it will be necessary to continue to mobilize against policies in substantial continuity with those of the previous regime, even if the style, the pace and the discourse may change. In this context, each vote obtained by Québec solidaire in the election will be a further political signal that the resistance will be there.”

Clearly, an important debate that is only beginning.

– Richard Fidler, June 7, 2012

 

Some further reading on the mobilization in Quebec:

In English:

Peter Hallward, “The Threat of Quebec’s Good Example,” http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/647.php

“The extraordinary student mobilization in Quebec has already sustained the longest and largest student strike in the history of North America, and it has already organized the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. It is now rapidly growing into one of the most powerful and inventive anti-austerity campaigns anywhere in the world.

“Every situation is different, of course, and Quebec's students draw on a distinctive history of social and political struggle, one rooted in the 1960s ‘Quiet Revolution’ and several subsequent and eye-opening campaigns for free or low-cost higher education. Support for the provincial government that opposes them, moreover, has been undermined in recent years by allegations of corruption and bribery. Nevertheless, those of us fighting against cuts and fees in other parts of the world have much to learn from the way the campaign has been organized and sustained. It's high time that education activists in the UK, in particular, started to pay the Quebecois the highest compliment: when in doubt, imitate!”

Xavier Lafrance and Alan Sears, “Red Square, Everywhere: With Quebec Student Strikers, Against Repression,” http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/640.php

“The demand for quality, accessible and democratic public education was connected to Quebecois struggles for national self-determination and French-language rights. The English-language education system in Quebec was at the time far more extensive and much better funded than the French-language system. The idea of quality, accessible French-language education was part of a broader agenda for liberation.

“The student strike also drew strength from the rising wave of labour militancy sweeping Quebec in the later 1960s and early 1970s. Quebec students also consciously learned from the model of the French student movement dating back to the Charte de Grenoble in 1946, which asserts that student are intellectual workers with distinct and common material interests (for example, for quality, accessible and democratic education), who have the collective power and responsibility to fight for social justice. The commitment to student unionism modelled on workplace trade unionism represents an orientation to collective strength through organization.

“Militant activism, then, has played an important role in forming the Quebec student movement, so that general membership meetings and mobilization committees are written into the bylaws of many local student unions. The demand for free education also has a long history in Quebec. Tuition was basically frozen after the 1968 strike until 1990 through a series of campaigns that included general strikes. Though there was a significant fee hike in the early 1990s, Quebec students have continued to mobilize effectively, and as a result they pay considerably less tuition than in the rest of North America. The history of this movement also means that the idea that education is a public service with an important social role and not a product for sale on the market has considerable currency in Quebec society.”

Interview with CLASSE activists Guillaume Legault and Guillaume Vézina, http://socialistworker.org/2012/06/04/a-monster-that-will-haunt-them

See also the blog of Roger Annis, “A Socialist in Canada” for day-to-day coverage of events and republication of some corporate media reactions to the struggle, http://www.rogerannis.com/

In French:

Christian Laval, “La formidable grève des étudiants québécois,” a view from France: http://www.pressegauche.org/spip.php?article10498

“La décision du gouvernement Charest d’augmenter de 75 % les frais d’inscription ne sont, au dire même des responsables politiques, qu’une mesure de rattrapage par rapport à la norme établie en Amérique du Nord. Or, ce modèle défendu dans les hauts lieux de la pensée dominante, depuis l’OCDE jusqu’à la Commission européenne, commence à prendre l’eau. Cette décision survient en effet à un moment où, dans le monde entier, les révoltes contre le modèle néolibéral d’enseignement supérieur se multiplient. Que l’on songe à la grève des étudiants anglais à l’hiver 2010 ou à celle des étudiants chiliens au printemps et en été 2011.

“Ces luttes ont pour trait ne pas rester confinées au seul monde de l’enseignement. L’alourdissement des charges pesant sur les familles et les étudiants vient frapper les couches sociales les moins favorisées mais aussi une masse croissance de membres des classes moyennes en voie d’appauvrissement. La situation est particulièrement dramatique en Europe. Les pays les plus frappés par les conséquences de la crise financière sur les budgets publics, de l’Irlande à la Grèce en passant par l’Italie et l’Espagne, ont tous eu recours à l’augmentation des frais d’inscription qui encourage mécaniquement l’endettement privé. Et ceci à un moment où les tensions sociales en Europe se font sentir de plus en plus fortement du fait des politiques d’austérité qui aggravent les conditions de vie et détruisent l’emploi.

“Les luttes étudiantes contiennent donc un potentiel de contestation de l’ordre néolibéral très puissant, capable d’entraîner de larges couches de la population et de s’élargir à toutes les conséquences des politiques néolibérales, comme on l’a vu au Chili ces derniers mois.”

Louis Gill, “La lutte étudiante québécoise expliquée aux européens,” http://www.pressegauche.org/spip.php?article10497

“Le mouvement de grève a manifesté une extraordinaire maturité politique et une rare détermination dans la défense de la volonté de changer les choses. Il a fait apparaître de manière percutante l’arrogance et le caractère rétrograde d’une clique au pouvoir qui est prête à tout pour préserver ses privilèges et ses valeurs désuètes. Il a démontré un immense talent et une remarquable créativité en liant à l’action militante l’art vivant de la résistance. On l’a vu sur les banderoles, les affiches, les pancartes, les costumes, les maquillages, voire par le dénuement partiel de certaines participantes aux seins peints d’un simple carré rouge dans les manifestations, mais aussi par le théâtre, la parodie et la chanson. …

“La résistance étudiante s’est gagné un immense appui au sein de la population. Chez les enseignants d’abord, professeurs et chargés de cours, des collèges et des universités, et leurs syndicats, fédérations et centrales. Le regroupement « Profs contre la hausse » en particulier, constitué dès le début de la grève, a multiplié les initiatives d’appui aux étudiants, sur les lignes de piquetage et par diverses initiatives. Il en est de même des organismes de défense des droits et libertés et de nombreuses personnalités. Le milieu des artistes leur a témoigné un solide appui. Il faut mentionner notamment la soirée des Jutra, qui récompense chaque année les intervenants du milieu du cinéma québécois, à l’occasion de laquelle on a vu cette année une majorité de ses artistes exhiber le carré rouge. L’affichage de l’appui à la cause étudiante est aussi largement répandu dans la population en général.”

André Maltais, “Comme au Québec, les étudiants chiliens revendiquent la gratuité scolaire,” http://lautjournal.info/default.aspx?page=3&NewsId=3722

“Alors que les étudiants québécois se battent courageusement contre le gouvernement Charest, la CREPUQ, la police et la quasi-totalité des grands médias, presque personne ne parle du Chili où, depuis un an, les étudiants ont pourtant réussi à déclencher un véritable mouvement social à l’échelle nationale pour une éducation gratuite et de qualité.

“Après une paralysie des campus universitaires, des collèges et des lycées qui a duré cinq mois, entre mai et octobre 2011, après 37 mobilisations de plus de 100 000 personnes, deux grèves nationales de deux jours et deux changements de ministres de l’Éducation, les étudiants viennent de reprendre la rue.”

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[1] The Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante [Broad coalition of the Association for student union solidarity].

[2] Respectively, the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec, Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, and the Table de concertation étudiante du Québec.

[3] Syndicats et progressistes pour un Québec Libre – Trade unionists and progressives for a free Quebec. Their article is entitled “To avoid Charest’s bear trap.”

Charest declares war on Quebec’s students

“It’s a declaration of war on the student movement,” said Martine Desjardins, leader of the FEUQ. “They’ve just told the young people that everything they have done, everything they have created as a social movement for 14 weeks will now be criminal.”

“It’s a bill designed to kill the student associations, but also to silence an entire population…. This law is far worse for freedom of expression than the 75% increase in tuition fees might be for accessibility to education,” said Léo Bureau-Blouin, leader of the FECQ.

Bill 78, tabled late in the evening last night by Quebec’s Liberal government, is draconian legislation. Here are its main provisions, which as I write are still being debated in the National Assembly after an all-night session.

• It suspends the academic sessions in all colleges and universities affected by the student strike. They will resume in August, and the scheduled fall sessions will be postponed to begin in October.
• It forces professors — most of whom have supported the students — to report to work by 7:00 a.m. on August 17 and to resume teaching. All staff must, as of that date, perform all normal duties “without stoppage, slowdown, decrease or alteration in his or her normal activities,” and must not engage in any “concerted action” in violation of these clauses.
• It prohibits any attempt, by act or omission, to prevent access by anyone to an educational institution which he or she has the right or duty to access.
• No picketing that might inhibit such access may be held within 50 metres of the institution.
• It virtually bans demonstrations for the next year. Organizers of demonstrations, it says, must tell police how many demonstrators will be involved (!) and their intended route at least eight hours before the demonstration begins, and must comply with any police order to change the location or route. Student associations will be held collectively liable for any damage caused to a third party as a result of the demonstration.
• Violations of these provisions will be punished by fines of between $7,000 and $35,000 for each leader, employee or representative of a student association. The associations as such may be fined between $25,000 and $125,000, with double these fines for repeat offenses. Individual offenders may be fined $1,000 to $5,000 per day.
• Student associations deemed responsible for any disruption of courses within an institution may be deprived of their check-off of dues from student fees, as well as their premises and facilities, during one semester for every day of such disruption.

With this law, Quebec is “sliding toward authoritarianism,” said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, co-spokesman for the CLASSE, the major student association that represents about half of the strikers. This is a law that “challenges fundamental liberties” and “recognized constitutional rights,” he added.

Pointing to the bill’s attack on the rights of association, demonstration, and speech, Opposition leader Pauline Marois compared the bill with the federal War Measures Act, used by Trudeau to jail hundreds of Québécois in October 1970. Premier Charest, the PQ leader said, “has no further moral authority or legitimacy to govern.”

Amir Khadir, the Québec solidaire member of the National Assembly, attacked Charest for constructing “a police state around the academic community and threatening all those who work in education with his judicial, police and financial bludgeons.”

“This is a dark day for Quebec,” said QS president Françoise David. “Tonight we solemnly appeal to the student movement, the popular movement, the committed artists, the socially responsible lawyers and jurists, the trade unions, the parents worried about the escalation in violence, to put up a determined and concerted resistance in order to make this law unworkable….”

Earlier in the day, leaders of the FEUQ and FECQ held a news conference accompanied by Marois, Khadir, and other MNAs in a last-minute appeal to the government to negotiate in good faith with the students. Significantly, they were joined by Laurent Proulx, a leader of the “green squares,” a student group that has initiated many of the anti-strike injunction proceedings in the courts. He said his “movement of socially responsible students” supported the position of the former head of the Quebec Bar, who had publicly called for mediation, not a special law, to resolve the tuition fee protest.

Also attending the news conference was Robert Michaud of the “white squares for social peace” movement, formed by concerned parents in the aftermath of the extreme police violence in repressing a pro-student demonstration in Victoriaville early in May.

However, their efforts to head off Charest’s repressive legislation have failed. It now remains to be seen whether these forces can respond to the law with the “concerted resistance” that Françoise David calls for.

The mass demonstration planned for next Tuesday, May 22, in Montréal will be an early opportunity to initiate this defiance.

Quebec government bludgeons student strikers with emergency law — but the struggle continues

Quebec premier Jean Charest announced May 16 that he will introduce emergency legislation to end the militant student strike, now in its 14^th week, that has shut down college and university campuses across the province. The students are protesting the Liberal government’s 75% increase in university tuition fees, now slated to take place over the next seven years.

The special law, Charest said, will suspend the current session for the striking students and impose harsh penalties for those who in the future attempt to block physical access to campus premises or “disrupt” classes. It will not include the terms the government offered following a 22-hour marathon negotiating session May 4-5 — although, as we shall see below, we have not heard the last of some of those provisions. That offer was rejected overwhelmingly by the students in mass meetings held during the past week. In all, 115 associations representing 342,000 of Quebec’s 400,000 college and university students voted to reject it. Of these, more than 150,000 students are still on strike.[1]

The law will effectively end the present strike, but without resolving any of the underlying issues. The immediate goal of the strike was to stop the tuition hike, but the strike also revived a major public debate over long-standing proposals in Quebec to expand access to university education through abolition of fees and to roll back the increasing subordination of higher education to market forces and private corporate interests. The government turned a deaf ear to the students on all these questions.

“The Liberals have spit on an entire generation,” said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, a spokesman for the CLASSE,[2] the largest student association. “It is a repressive and authoritarian law. It restricts the students’ right to strike, which has been recognized for years by the educational institutions.” The CLASSE has called for a massive march of students and their supporters, to be held May 22 in Montréal. It hopes the numbers mobilized in the streets will be comparable with the estimated 200,000 who came out on March 22 and the even greater number who assembled on April 22, Earth Day.

Equally outraged was the president of the national teachers union, the FNEEQ-CSN,[3] Jean Trudelle. “They talk of accessibility as if was simply a question of opening the doors,” he said. The president of the university professors’ union, Max Roy, likewise denounced the government for failing to take the students’ concerns seriously.

Charest’s announcement came less than two days after education minister Line Beauchamp suddenly resigned not only from the cabinet but from her seat in the National Assembly, admitting that she was no longer “part of the solution” to a crisis that has shaken the government. Arrogant and obdurate to the end, Beauchamp said she had “lost confidence in the willingness of the student leaders to search for solutions and… a genuine way out of the crisis.” Premier Jean Charest promptly replaced her with Michèle Courchesne, a former education minister.

“The problem for us has never been Ms. Beauchamp,” said CLASSE spokesman Nadeau-Dubois. “The problem is the hike in tuition fees. And it is not by changing the minister… that the present crisis will be solved. The crisis will be solved when they agree to talk about the reason why the students are on strike, that is, the increase in tuition fees.”

Charest’s self-imposed crisis

The minister’s resignation underscored the depth of the crisis the Charest government has brought upon itself. For months it tried to trivialize the strike, ignoring the students’ demands, refusing to negotiate, evidently hoping the movement would exhaust itself, especially as the current spring session approached its end with no resolution in sight. But even as they faced loss of their session credits if the strike continued, the students for the most part held firm, successfully mounting defiant mass pickets at many campuses and frustrating more than 30 court injunctions to reopen the institutions, often in the face of massive police violence and multiple arrests. Well over one thousand students have been arrested — a total that far exceeds the previous record arrests in the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto — and many face criminal charges for disruptive tactics or defiance of police orders to disperse.

In recent weeks they have marched each night, usually in the thousands, through the streets of Montréal, in colourful impromptu demonstrations that play cat-and-mouse with police attempts to control their route. It is the “Printemps érable” — the “maple spring” that is the Quebec version of the Occupy movement — in this case occupying the streets of the province’s metropolis.

Although the government and the corporate media have worked relentlessly in recent months to turn public opinion against the students, there were signs that the students’ militant resistance was opening breaches in this strategy. A Léger Marketing poll published May 11 reported that 71% of those interviewed think the government has “mismanaged” the conflict. Another Léger poll found that Francophones (more than 80% of the province’s population) and those under 55 years of age tended to hold the government and not the student associations responsible for the failure to settle the crisis.[4]

The portrayal of the students’ struggle as a self-serving attempt to avoid paying “their fair share” of education expenses is falling flat on its face. Le Devoir columnist Michel David was simply stating the obvious when he concluded: “If so many young people are prepared to sacrifice their session, it is manifestly because they feel they are defending a cause that goes beyond their individual interests.”

As David noted, the strike is showing signs of becoming one of those epochal moments in Quebec’s evolution, a “catalyst,” as he put it, for a burgeoning movement of protest challenging the current direction of the society. His take on this is worth quoting at some length:

“Any society periodically experiences a conflict that captures the imagination and then becomes a sort of landmark. In recent decades Quebec has been marked by the asbestos strike, the strike of the Radio-Canada producers, or the strike by the United Aircraft workers.[5]

“The student strike could well become one of these landmarks. What was initially claimed to be a mere budgetary item has had a catalytic effect on the frustrations of those who are fed up with hearing the ‘lucides’ associate the social-democratic values inherited from the Quiet Revolution with opposition to change or the status quo. [...][6]

“It is true that the gradual rehabilitation of the ‘solidaire’ discourse in public opinion began before the student conflict. The world financial crisis, which has spectacularly enhanced the role of the state, the movement of the ‘indignés,’ and the right-wing policies imposed by the Harper government have disturbed people, but the red square [the red felt flash worn by striking students] has clearly favoured the link with what was once called the ‘forces vives,’ the living forces of the society.”

Like any mass struggle of such scope, the student strike has also challenged the existing political forces in Quebec society to declare where they stand. The only party strongly supporting the students, the left-wing Québec solidaire, calls for free education from kindergarten to university.[7] Responding to Charest’s announcement May 16, Amir Khadir, the QS member of the National Assembly, declared his party’s solidarity “more than ever, on the side of the students” and promised to fight any attempt to criminalize dissent. And he added:

“Québec solidaire strongly believes that … the student movement in Quebec has won, in that it has changed Quebec. The movement has won through its intelligence, its unity, by putting a freeze on tuition fees and even free university education at the centre of the debate on education, and education at the centre of political debate.

“Whatever the decision of the student movement on its conduct in the face of the special legislation, we are going to respect it. We are going to accompany this movement and defend it as best we can. Whatever happens in the coming months, the students’ struggle is not finished, and will enter new stages, and our party will be in solidarity with it.”

Ranged solidly against the students are not only the Liberals but the new right-wing Coalition Avenir Québec led by former Parti Québécois minister François Legault, who has been calling for increased police repression and other measures to break the strike.

Somewhere in the middle is the official opposition party, the PQ, which appears to be caught between two stools. PQ members of the National Assembly sport the red square badge of support for the students, to the obvious irritation of Premier Charest and his ministers. But PQ leader Pauline Marois calls only for an “indexed freeze” on current tuition fees — somewhat less than what the PQ congress of April 2011 demanded: a restoration of the freeze at 2007 levels until a summit on higher education is held and legislation is adopted governing tuition fees and incidental fees.

However, at the opening of the PQ national council in early May, Marois said that in the forthcoming elections Québécois will have to choose between “everyone for himself” and the “culture of mutual assistance.” Could she be looking over her left shoulder at Québec solidaire?

Doing unionism differently?

Also tested in this struggle have been the major social institutions of the 99%, Quebec’s trade unions, which continue to represent almost 40% of the province’s workers and a substantial majority of its public and parapublic sector employees. The union centrals are coming under increasing criticism for their approach to the strike — one of lukewarm and largely symbolic support to the students, but at crucial points of doubtful assistance. Details are now emerging of the role played by the leaders of the major union centrals in the May 4-5 negotiations between the students and government, to which they were invited as “advisors” to the students.

Although all three (FTQ, CSN and CSQ[8]) told the ministers they supported the student demands — the CSN said it had supported free tuition for 40 years — it appears from the CLASSE account[9] that the union leaders

• accepted the government move to focus a “solution” to the strike on reduction of university expenses, possible reductions in incidental fees, but not tuition fees;
• counselled the students more than once not to “go too far” in their demands;
• joined with the government negotiators in rejecting a student request after more than 12 hours of meeting for a break in which to get some rest and consult mutually on details of the proposed agreement;
• later lauded the government offer — while the government termed it an “agreement,” the unions termed it a “road map” toward a settlement — as “good news” for the people of Quebec.

Writing in the left-wing online journal Presse-toi-à-gauche, a publication not in the habit of criticizing the union leadership, René Charest noted the similarity between this “road map” and the sweetheart public sector union agreement negotiated by the union leadership in 2010. The latter agreement made a possible wage increase — mainly at the end of the contract, five years later — contingent on the union’s ability to demonstrate sufficient growth meanwhile in Quebec’s GNP.

“The negotiated agreement on the tuition fee hike, for its part, said it would have to be demonstrated that there were possible savings in order to decrease the incidental fees. In both cases, these agreements acknowledge that the financial framework is insufficient to meet the requirements of the contending parties. … [T]he Liberal government’s device was to tell the students: Pay up or help us rationalize the university: either way, it’s win-win for the entrepreneurial state. You could say the same thing about the union movement in the public sector: ‘If you want to earn more help us reorganize the public finances.’ […]

“What is the role of the union movement in this social struggle being led by the student movement? We don’t really know what happened in the corridors, although some journalists have begun to publish some interesting facts. One thing is clear, however. There has been no real dialogue between the student movement and the union movement since the beginning of this strike, or else we would not have had this tragicomic episode. Yet a strategic dialogue could have begun two years ago when the Coalition contre la tarification et la privatisation des services publics began the battle against the [first] Bachand budget. […]

“And this strategic dialogue could have taken place after the CSN congress last spring. We recall that a member of the Montreal hospital union came to defend a proposal for a social strike against the neoliberal measures of the Charest government. She hadn’t even finished her speech when the hall erupted. A standing ovation, no less! Two or three delegates from the CSN apparatus (central council and FNEEQ) spoke in favour. Then Pierre Patry, a member of the executive, spoke in support, along the following lines: we will support the students and then debate the mandate for the social strike. The next day the new president Louis Roy called for discussing the need for the social strike in the workplaces. Since then, we have heard no echo of this call for a social strike.

“It is not too late to do the right thing. The student movement has no need for mediators or facilitators. It needs the solid support of the union movement as a whole. Perhaps it is time to think of doing unionism differently. That is, to lead a union struggle that is plugged into the social struggles and vitality of the mobilization, and not to the fossilized bureaucratic structures of the entrepreneurial state.”

Professors join in denouncing May 5 ‘agreement’

It should be noted that, contrary to what I reported previously[10] on the basis of press reports, the university professors’ union was excluded from the May 4-5 negotiations and did not support the government “agreement.” In a news release published on May 9, the FQPPU[11] complained that it was therefore prevented from expressing the views of the professors, “whose work will nevertheless be indispensable when courses resume.” And it concludes: “In view of the absurdity of this situation and the trivializing of the issues that has appeared in recent months, the FQPPU does not support the agreement announced on May 5.”

An op-ed commentary on the terms the government had offered, co-signed by FQPPU president Max Roy, published in Le Devoir May 9, gave a “fail” grade to “this travesty,” and called the proposed provisional council “a bad joke” that would “trade off problems of university mission and orientation as simple problems of management.” Furthermore, it would “completely obliterate the meaning of what we do, the preservation of a university that is a genuine collective good, a genuine public service for our entire community.” The proposal as a whole, the authors noted, “offers an accounting solution to a problem that must be resolved in terms of a ‘societal choice’.”

Given the social polarization that resulted, many have questioned why the Charest government has held so stubbornly to its decision to hike the fees — even while advertising repeatedly that the increase, spread over seven years and minus a tax credit, would add only “50 cents a day” to the student bill. In fact, even free post-secondary education, as demanded by many students and professors, would cost barely 1% of the total government budget, according to most estimates.

It seems that shifting the costs of higher education increasingly to the students is as much a principle for the government’s post-secondary education planners as abolishing those fees is a principle for many students and professors. Why is this? Some indication may be gained from articles by Pierre Dubuc, editor of L’aut’journal, who draws on research by Philippe Lapointe, a leader of the CLASSE.[12] Dubuc summarizes the research in an article in the May 17 on-line issue of L’aut’journal. Here is the article, in my translation.

* * *

Charest wants to transform Quebec into a “Right-to-Study State”

by Pierre Dubuc

Maintaining the increase in tuition fees, suspending courses and disqualifying student organizations. With its special law, the text of which is unknown at time of writing, the Charest government continues its effort to integrate Quebec universities in the world university network in accordance with the neoliberal principles of the Bologna process, and transform Quebec into a “Right-to-study state” on the model of the “Right-to-work states” of the southern United States.

In the agreement of last May 6, now obsolete, the minister Courchene slyly introduced, in article 2, the creation of a Permanent Universities Council with a mandate to examine “in light of the best practices” such topics as “abolition and creation of programs, internationalization, partnerships between the universities and the communities, continuing education, the quality of training, research, support and university bodies.”

Close observers of the universities saw in this clause — which has no obvious link to the issue of tuition fees — a desire by the government to comply with the Bologna process. The latter derives its name from a conference held in Bologna in June 1999 in which 29 European countries signed a document that envisaged the creation of a European common space for higher education.

This process is divided into three major reforms. First, standardize studies into three cycles. Second, establish a single system for calculating university credits that are transferable between institutions. Third, institute quality assurance, under the management of agencies external to the universities.

In Quebec, the first two reforms are already in place, apart from the non-compliance of the CEGEP network, hence the repeated calls for its abolition — most recently from the CAQ of Sirois-Legault — and its restructuring on the model of the “colleges” in English Canada.[13]

In Europe, this reform, which is modelled on the American universities, presents education as a personal investment. It is accompanied by a substantial increase in tuition fees, with repayment proportional to income: exactly the measures put forward by the Charest government.

In this big global market, education is an industry and the universities are enterprises fiercely competing to attract international students. The Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec (CREPUQ) has identified, among its priority objectives, the need to “increase the resources to attract foreign students.”

Unsurprisingly, in the middle of the current conflict, the rectors of our universities did not hesitate to go to Brazil to recruit students. The Brazilian government has just announced that more than 100,000 Brazilian students will attend foreign universities over the next four years, at the expense of their government. Canada plans to attract 12,000 and the Quebec universities want “their fair share” of this windfall.

The international market in foreign students is expanding rapidly. In 2008, 3.3 million students were educated in countries other than their own. This is a 154% increase over a five-year period. And of course there is a strong demand for courses in English, which explains the inauguration of courses in English by the University of Montréal, its business school the HÉC and even UQAM, the Montréal campus of the University of Quebec.

In Quebec, the number of international students has risen from 9,135 in 2003 to 26,191 in 2010. Today, in the Quebec universities, close to one student in ten is an international student.

For the Quebec universities and government, the international students “pay” much more than Quebec students, if we make an exception for students from France or other countries with which Quebec has agreements.

Overall, the university fees demanded of foreign students are about seven times higher than those paid by Quebec students. So why not replace Quebec students, ousted by the hike in tuition fees, with students from other countries?

But the fees paid by the international students, even subsidized, do not cover the actual costs of many courses such as medicine, engineering, etc. So we subsidize, through our taxes, a portion of the costs of these students, most of whom will return to their countries at the end of their studies.

Of course, there are other financial advantages for the host countries in accepting international students. They have to be housed, clothed, fed, entertained, etc. But the question is posed: Do these economic spinoffs and the tuition fees they cover compensate for the amount of the subsidy we pay to them?

The presence of international students is, to be sure, a source of cultural enrichment and Quebec has a duty, as a rich country, to welcome students from poor countries. We already have agreements with these countries that codify the disinterested assistance we give them.

However, the current market in international students is something else. It has all the characteristics of an industry and it illustrates perfectly the commodifying of education in the epoch of globalization.

Evidently, the Charest government gives precedence to positioning our universities in the global hall of fame over the schooling of the Québécois.

Unfortunately for it, and fortunately for us, the students do not see it that way. Through their courageous and determined struggle against the tuition fee hike they are challenging the very foundations of this liberal vision of education.

For the government, the issue goes beyond the amount of the tuition fees. Thus it resorts to a special law in which primacy is given to individual rights over collective rights, in which a student’s “right to study” prevails over the collective decision of a student assembly.

This is exactly the situation experienced by workers and unions in the so-called right to work states, those former slave states in the South, where collective agreements are illegal and the unions are condemned to operate in the underground. Is that the fate that awaits the student organizations?

That the Charest government is attacking the right to association should be no surprise to us. There is a lock-out at the Rio Tinto Alma plant because the government opened the door to contracting out with the amendments to section 45 of the Labour Code in 2003. It let the company violate the spirit of the anti-scab law through the hiring of numerous management personnel prior to the conflict, and it allows Hydro-Québec to purchase the kilowatts of electricity freed up by the stoppage of two thirds of production.

The students’ struggle must be the struggle of all Québécois, of all their organizations. It should be taken to the political level and become part of the struggle for the emancipation of the Quebec people.

We will be unable to establish free tuition and improve our social programs while we continue to pay 20% of the tens of billions awarded by the federal government for the operation of the tar sands, the Ontario automobile industry and the purchase of the F-35 fighter planes.

The fight against neoliberalism has its specific national features. In Quebec, it proceeds through national independence. That alone has the potential to shake the structures of domination, to liberate the creative forces, and to be the leaven of social transformation at the level of North America.

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[1] For detailed results of the voting, see Résultats des votes sur la dernière offre du gouvernement.

[2] Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante [Broad coalition of the Association for student union solidarity]. Also participating in the strike were the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec; Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec, and the Table de concertation étudiante du Québec.

[3] Fédération nationale des enseignants et enseignantes du Québec, which is part of the Confederation of national trade unions (CSN).

[4] See Michel David, “Le nouvel ennemi public,” Le Devoir, May 12.

[5] The 1949 strike in the asbestos industry fostered many of the social and political forces that initiated and led the Quiet Revolution a decade later, as did the Radio-Canada dispute in 1958. A major issue in the 20-month strike at United Aircraft (now Pratt & Whitney), in 1974-75, was the company refusal to allow deduction of union dues at source and later the use of scabs to break the strike. The violent strike ended without major gains for the workers, but was followed by a plant occupation. The PQ government elected soon afterwards allowed union dues deduction and introduced a still-popular anti-scab law.

[6] The lucides (clear-eyed) was the name adopted by a group of right-wing political and corporate leaders who issued a neoliberal manifesto in 2005, which was answered by a manifesto signed by prominent “progressives,” the solidaires, among them some of the founders of Québec solidaire in 2006.

[7] The QS proposals on post-secondary education are outlined in a leaflet that party members have been distributing during the student strike. Click here to see it.

[8] FTQ – Quebec Federation of Labour; CSN – Confederation of National Trade Unions; CSQ – Central of Quebec Trade Unions.

[9] It was also published, inter alia, in L’aut’journal. See also Gilbert Lavoie, “Qu’est-ce qui n’a pas marché entre le gouvernement et les étudiants?” in Le Soleil, May 12.

[10] “Defiant Quebec students reject shabby government offer,” note 2.

[11] Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d’université. Founded in 1991, the FQPPU includes 15 unions and associations that represent more than 5,000 university professors.

[12] See Philippe Lapointe, “L’ironie de l’assurance-qualité,” first published in Ultimatum and republished in L’aut’journal.

[13] The CEGEPs — Collèges d’enseignement générale et professionnelle — are public post-secondary institutions with a general arts and science or occupational stream that is preparatory to university. Tuition is free in the CEGEPs, unlike the universities.

Defiant Quebec students reject shabby government offer

Quebec college and university students are now in the 13^th week of their militant province-wide strike while voting by overwhelming majorities to reject a government offer that met none of their key demands.

After a 22-hour bargaining session involving ministers of the Charest government, university and college heads, and leaders of the major trade-union centrals, the student leaders agreed on May 6 to put the offer to a vote of their memberships without recommending acceptance.

If the offer (the French-language text is here) were accepted:

• The 75% hike in tuition fees (now spread over seven years, but indexed) would remain, albeit with slightly liberalized access to scholarships and loans, and provision for repayment of loans geared to future income.
• A provisional committee would examine university budgets and propose possible cuts. Each dollar cut would go to reducing incidental fees not related directly to tuition (admission, registration, sports services, technology, etc.).
• The committee would include four students, but also fourteen other members: 6 university rectors, 4 trade union representatives as well as 2 representatives of business, 1 from the ministry of education, and a chair with a tie-breaking vote — the latter four all designated by the minister of education.
• The committee would table its recommendations by December although if necessary its mandate could be extended by one more year. It might then be replaced by a permanent committee appointed by law, its composition undetermined at this point.
• Pending the provisional committee’s conclusions, the students’ incidental fees would be deferred. However, these fees would apply retroactively to the students in any amount the committee is unable to cut from current expenses.

There is no assurance that the proposed committee would agree on budget cuts sufficient to reduce or eliminate the hike in tuition fees. Furthermore, the committee would be composed largely of members with a vested interest in opposing cuts in expenditures, especially in research and funding of pro-business courses.

Market prerogatives, not social need

Most importantly, the offer, if accepted, would trivialize the key demands advanced by the students throughout the strike movement: for an immediate freeze on tuition fee levels, increased access to quality education and a public debate on the long-ignored goal of free and universal education from kindergarten to university. It would force the students into a market-driven accounting exercise, striving to justify cuts in spending on infrastructures, research, courses and teachers’ salaries — just when students and professors have struck a responsive chord among many Québécois with their united campaign against the underfunding of public post-secondary education in the province.

Small wonder, then, that this miserable “offer” is being rejected overwhelmingly by students across Quebec. And thousands are continuing to march for hours each night through the streets of Montréal, in spontaneous demonstrations that began some two weeks ago in rejection of an earlier offer by the Liberal government.

In continuing their boycott of classes, which has shut down the majority of Quebec’s major post-secondary educational institutions, the students are courageously risking loss of credit for an entire semester. They have led an exemplary struggle, conducted since the beginning with mass democratic assemblies and decision-making. The three main student organizations — the CLASSE, FEUQ and FECQ[1] — have maintained a united front in the face of repeated government attempts to divide them and isolate the more radical CLASSE from the other two groups.

They have withstood vicious media attacks on them as a selfish elite, and the exploitation of a few, isolated acts of violence against property (often by Black Bloc anarchists) to portray the students as little more than publicity-seeking vandals.

They have successfully defied more than a dozen court injunctions ordering universities to reopen and professors to teach.

And they have resisted massive police repression that has resulted in the arrest of well over 1,000 students and serious injury to some as a result of the cops’ use of rubber bullets, concussion grenades and tear gas.

Solidarity lacking

But by themselves — notwithstanding these heroic actions — the students have been unable to create a social relationship of forces sufficient to break through the unyielding opposition of the government and the business class it represents. They have won significant support from some community grass-roots groups, including a broad-based Coalition against privatization and user fees for public services. The Coalition was a prime organizer of the massive demonstration at the Liberal party’s general council meeting May 4-5, held in the town of Victoriaville in the futile hope of avoiding pro-student demonstrations in Montréal.

Notably missing, however, has been active solidarity from Quebec’s trade unions, whose million-plus members represent the largest social force with the potential economic clout to defeat the government and business assault on the students. The major centrals and many local unions have issued statements in support of the students, and some have contributed funds to their organizations. But they have made no effort to organize economic action, even a one-day general strike in support of the students’ demands as requested by the CLASSE. And now their central leaders appear to have been accomplices in the government’s latest manoeuvres with the students.

By the 12^th week of the student strike, the government was coming under a lot of pressure not only from the students but from the university and college administrations, which feared they would be faced this fall with a double cohort of students in the wake of a cancelled semester — an enrolment overflow they are not equipped to accommodate. Furthermore, a mounting series of disclosures of scandals and corruption implicating government ministers in lucrative construction contracts, illegal party financing, and even possible connections with organized crime — as well as widespread criticism by First Nations and ecologists of Charest’s showcase Plan Nord program to expand mining in Quebec’s far north — have undermined the government’s legitimacy and fed rumours that Charest is planning to call an early election before the Liberals are outflanked by the opposition Parti Québécois or ultra-neoliberal Coalition Avenir Québec. However, the student unrest jeopardizes this scenario.

Charest’s manoeuvre

The government’s response was to call a meeting on May 5-6 with the rectors and student representatives in an ultimate attempt to bludgeon the students into a deal that would, it hoped, rescue its credibility and restore order in the schools. And in a shrewd move, it invited the presidents of Quebec’s three main union centrals, the FTQ, CSN and CSQ,[2] to attend this summit, held simultaneously with the Liberal party’s general council meeting in Victoriaville.

The formula proposed by the education minister seems to draw in part on a proposal first advanced by the two relatively conservative student organizations. The FEUQ and FECQ had suggested that the tuition fee increase might be avoided through equivalent cuts in unnecessary expenditures by the universities.

The CLASSE, for its part, fought to maintain the focus on the fee hike and the broader perspective of free post-secondary education. However, its own proposal, adopted a few days later, noted that funds for higher education could be found through cuts in business-oriented research programs (not basic or theoretical research) and competitive advertising by universities; a moratorium on infrastructure expansion, including additional satellite campuses; and an immediate freeze on pay and hiring of senior university management personnel. The CLASSE also called for an “estates general” on the future of Quebec education, in which it said it would advance the demand for free education, which could be financed by a capital tax on financial institutions. And it drew attention to the huge profits being registered by the major banks, even amidst the economic crisis.

Although there were significant differences in the proposals of the respective student groups, there were clear parallels. The FEUQ and FECQ were retreating somewhat from the earlier focus on tuition fees. The CLASSE was clearly striving to maintain a united front while appealing to other forces in the community to engage in economic action in support of its overall demands.

A call for a social strike appeared on the CLASSE web site, although a discussion of this proposal, scheduled for debate at two successive meetings of its weekly congress, was postponed for lack of time. And, as mentioned, it received no response from the forces to which it was primarily addressed.

Students undefeated

Remarkably, Quebec’s major trade union leaders — experienced negotiators in hard-fought bargaining with businesses and governments — apparently advised the student leaders to accept the shabby offer presented to them by the Charest government. Although to date little has been said publicly about their role, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that their intervention did nothing to aid the students’ struggle and may in fact have undermined it.

Judging from this week’s votes rejecting the offer, however, hundreds of thousands of students have not been taken in. Their anger, and renewed mobilization, may even be preparing the way for a new advance.

While speculation on the ultimate outcome of this massive uprising is premature, it is already clear that even if the strike ends without major gains, the students have not been defeated. They have fought impressively, to the best of their ability. And they have ignited a major debate in Quebec society, challenging neoliberal prerogatives and opening the prospect of “another Quebec” in which access to education will be a basic social need, available to all irrespective of income, and not a commodity for which access and content is a function of big business exigencies. The students have set the parameters for the continuation of this important debate, which has facets that reach far beyond public education as such.

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[1] Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante; Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec; Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec. Also participating in the negotiations was the TaCEQ (Table de concertation étudiante du Québec), which represents about 65,000 students at McGill, Laval and Sherbrooke universities. It broke with the FEUQ in 2005.

[2] Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec, Confédération des syndicats nationaux, and Centrale des syndicats du Québec. Also participating was the FQPPU, the Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs du Québec.

François Cyr, 1952-2012

François Cyr, a leading member of Québec solidaire and prominent activist and theoretician of the Quebec left, died May 5 in the aftermath of a brain tumour operation. The following is my translation of a tribute to François by Pierre Beaudet, one of his closest collaborators in the editing of the journal Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme, where this article first appeared. I follow it with some memories of my own.

* * *

Our friend François died today, Saturday May 5, at the Charles Lemoyne hospital after a short and sudden illness. He had just turned 60, and up to the very last he was actively devoted to his many professional and political commitments. He will be missed by many.

François began at a very young age in the student movement on the South Shore of Montréal, then at the Cegep[1] de Vieux-Montréal. He was subsequently active in the radical left of the Seventies. In the Eighties, he completed a master’s degree in political science at the UQÀM,[2] writing a dissertation on the national movement of the Acadiens.

The national question was a constant source of fascination for François. He was persuaded that the traditional approach of the left was unsatisfactory and required rethinking. With a number of trade-union and political comrades of those days he contributed to the huge debate on this question, which allowed the left to play a role in the 1980 referendum and the later resuscitation of the mass movement.

Until the Nineties he worked as a part-time lecturer, a difficult job that took him to various points throughout Quebec. Through countless encounters he wove a large network of committed individuals who responded to his openness and generosity. He also completed a law degree, and became involved in the defense of the unemployed, mistreated trade unionists, and all those whose rights were being violated, working with his comrades at the progressive law firm he helped to create.

François was untiring and a marvellous organizer. While pursuing his teaching career he was a leading participant in the unionization of lecturers at the Université de Montréal. Finally hired as a full-time professor at the Cegep d’Ahuntsic, he devoted much effort to strengthening one of the most militant unions in the academic community. As an active member of the FNEEQ, the teachers’ federation of the CSN, he was elected to the executive for several years until the early 2000s. As we saw recently, in the context of the student strike, the FNEEQ became a union with an activism that extended beyond the CSN and the trade-union movement as such. Modest, methodical, loyal, standing apart from the interpersonal tensions or frictions that are all so common, François was, it can be said in all honesty, the friend of (almost) everyone.

Meanwhile, and over and above all of these battles, François sought to combine the social struggle with the construction of a political perspective. He participated in the establishment of the Rassemblement pour l’alternative progressiste, in 1996, and in the unification of various left parties within the Union des forces progressistes in 2002. One year earlier, this left-wing grouping had achieved an initial electoral breakthrough with the campaign of Paul Cliche in Mercier riding.

François was pleased with these advances, but he continued to think that the convergence should go further. He was in the forefront of those who sought a rapprochement with Françoise David and her comrades in D’abord Solidaires, which resulted as we all know in the creation of Québec Solidaire, in 2006.[3] During this crucial period François chaired the policy commission and played an absolutely central role in the genesis and development of QS. Likewise, he helped in the election of Amir Khadir, with whom he remained a close friend to the very end. François was a QS candidate in Marie-Victorin riding in his old bailiwick south of Montréal Island. Shortly before his illness, he was chosen as the QS standard-bearer once again for the forthcoming elections.

François was also a man of reflections and ideas. He was a passionate reader, engrossed in history. He thought the contemporary left should create and innovate, but without reinventing the wheel. This was, in some ways, a point of departure that led him, in 2005, with a few friends and comrades, to a new project that took the name Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme (NCS). Throughout these recent years he organized and chaired the debates within NCS, including most recently a meeting in March when we discussed — guess what! — the Quebec national question. Many of his writings can be found on the NCS web site, as well as that of Presse-toi-à-gauche.

François Cyr leaves behind his companion Carole Potvin, his daughter Annie, his brother and his two sisters, as well as a more extensive and tightly knit complex of family members. He leaves as well a vivid memory among the hundreds of militants with whom he worked directly, not to mention the others who knew him in the trade-union movement, in education (including his students), in Québec Solidaire and elsewhere.

A tribute to François will be held in June, the place and date to be announced before long.

Pierre Beaudet, May 5

* * *

I first met François Cyr in the mid-1970s, when the two major components of the Fourth International in Canada fused to form the Revolutionary Workers League (the Ligue ouvrière révolutionnaire in French). François was at the time the editor of the newspaper of the Groupe marxiste révolutionnaire; I was editing the newspaper of the League for Socialist Action. Introducing us to each other, a comrade quipped that François was my Francophone “vis-à-vis.”

Within a very few years, both François and I had parted company with the RWL/LOR and, independently of each other, went on to (among other things) study law and pursue other career paths, he in Quebec, I in Ontario.

It was not until 10 years ago, with the founding of the Union des forces progressistes, that François and I renewed acquaintances. As president of the UFP, he piloted the fusion with Option citoyenne to form Québec solidaire and later served as chair of QS’s policy commission. During this last decade, while attempting to publicize the development of this promising left initiative to an English-speaking audience outside Quebec, I found my thinking shaped in part by François’ understanding of the centrality of the Quebec national question to Canadian left politics, and I had occasion to reflect (sometimes critically) on his conception of the refounding of the Quebec left and the lessons that experience might offer for a process of recomposition of a radical left in English Canada.

François was an innovative thinker, perpetually dissatisfied with simplistic formulas that so often substitute for “a concrete analysis of the concrete situation.” Nowhere was this more evident than in his perceptive thoughts on the national question. In a book on the Quebec Federation of Labour and the national question that he co-authored some thirty years ago,[4] he drew attention to “the singularity of the [Quebec] provincial state and its role in the evolution of Quebec nationalism,” writing:

“This is a decisive element in the analysis of Quebec’s insertion in the Canadian Confederation. Since the beginning of the 1960s, the Quebec state appears as a contradictory phenomenon. On the one hand, like the other provinces, it must be considered an integral part of the Canadian state, in part a regional relay of imperialist domination. On the other hand, subjectively, it is perceived by broad sectors of the population as a specific institution crystallizing on the political and juridical plane the national aspirations of the Québécois people. In addition, it can be analyzed as the political instrument of significant sectors of the Quebec bourgeoisie. The particular features of the Quebec provincial state will heavily influence the evolution of Quebec nationalism, including within the working class….”

In the numerous tributes to François now being expressed in cyberspace, many note how his passing coincides with a new rise in struggles in Quebec that must have inspired him with hope for the future during what turned out to be his final months. We can only regret that he will not be with us to share in these experiences, and to help us understand them. And he will be missed for his notable ability to find common ground for active solidarity with many others, notwithstanding whatever disagreements they might have on questions of secondary importance.

Richard Fidler

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[1] Collège d’enseignement générale et professionelle – general and vocational college, the first stage of post-secondary public education in Quebec.

[2] Université du Québec Montréal campus.

[3] For an account of these developments, see “Québec Solidaire: A Québécois Approach to Building a Broad Left Party,” Part I and Part II.

[4] François Cyr and Rémi Roy, Éléments d’histoire de la FTQ: La FTQ et la question nationale (Montréal: Éditions coopératives Albert Saint-Martin, 1981).

Quebec students call for a social strike in solidarity with their struggle

In a previous post I asked if the time has arrived for a social strike by unions and social movements in support of the students and their fight against the Charest government’s tuition fee hikes. A reader referred me to a statement issued recently by the CLASSE that calls for such a strike. The CLASSE is the largest of the student coalitions or federations leading the strike movement. It represents more than half of the 180,000 students now on strike across Quebec.

Here is the full text of its appeal. My translation.

-- Richard Fidler

* * *

Toward a social strike

It’s a student strike, a people’s struggle

Hike in tuition fees is part of “the cultural revolution”

For several weeks now a student revolt has shaken the neoliberal consensus imposed for many years by the Quebec and Canadian governments. It was sparked by the announcement of a new, 75% increase in university tuition fees. Since its announcement in the 2010 Quebec budget, the media lackeys of the Liberal government have attempted to present this measure as inevitable. But behind this claimed inevitability we find an eminently political decision expressed in what the finance minister terms a “cultural revolution,” and the international economic authorities refer to as an “austerity budget.” Whatever the name given to it by governments, it clearly and definitively involves the dismantling of public services aimed at privatizing what remains of the commons.

The student movement has focused on the issue of tuition fees and the commoditization of the universities. However, it is not unaware that this measure is integrally linked to a larger project affecting elementary and secondary education, the healthcare sector and the unfettered development of natural resources. Our resistance to the Quebec government’s neoliberal measures has to take into account all of these sectors, establishing a social link that enables us to speak of a community. The government is trying to compartmentalize our strike by saying its tuition hike is designed to get the students to pay their “fair share.” However, the students have attempted from the outset of the strike to say that their policy goals went beyond the framework of a strict accounting and corporatist exercise with the government. Of course we want to see the government cancel this tuition fee increase, but at the same time we want to challenge the economic imperative that informs the policies of our governments.

If it is to do this, the student movement cannot remain alone, and must be joined by all of the forces that make up our society and make it live — whether it is the workers in healthcare, education and social services; the workers locked out by Rio Tinto and laid off by Aveos, victims of unfettered capitalism; the casual employees of the Couche-Tard convenience stores, denied the right of association; the women faced with Conservative threats to their rights; the elderly forced to work longer; or the Indigenous peoples seeing a new colonization that pillages the territory remaining to them.

From the student strike to the social strike

The striking students are aware of their inability by themselves to force the government to retreat from these various measures. Hence the necessity for the student movement to be joined by all social forces in our fight against Finance Minister Bachand’s cultural revolution. We not appealing here for some superficial support, with a few union full-timers writing a news release repeating for the umpteenth time their support for the student struggle. On the contrary, we are calling for a convergence of the Quebec people as a whole in opposition to the cutbacks and the commoditization of social services and our collective rights. Only a generalization of the student strike to the workplaces can make this convergence effective. It is therefore a call for a social strike that we are issuing to the population as a whole!

The government’s response to the students is to muzzle them through the courts and police truncheons. The education minister is making daily efforts to break the strike that the students voted for democratically. Our best response to the hardening of the state’s management of the strike is to widen it, to render impossible any isolated repression. Let us stop fearing the laws that fetter our discontent, let us collectively disobey and go together into the streets of Quebec. Alone, this disobedience will be marginalized and repressed by the government. But if all sectors of Quebec society act together the government will be unable to rely on the courts.

We must build this social strike from the bottom up, by initiating a discussion in the workplaces on how to desert our day-to-day occupations. Let us call for general meetings in our local unions to discuss the possibility of instituting such a strike. Let us contact the community groups in our neighborhoods, to hold citizens’ assemblies on the social strike. These assemblies are the expression of our capacity to deliberate together and to build a movement that goes beyond the limits established by the elite. May the streets, occupied for two months now, become the expression of our collective refusal.

The government is now scared, it is ready to yield. Let us seize the moment to insert a key into the gears of the cultural revolution and defend a society that puts people before profit.

Government ends negotiations with Quebec’s striking students

Has the time arrived for a general social strike?

On Wednesday, April 25, Education minister Line Beauchamp abruptly ended the negotiations with the student leaders to which she had reluctantly agreed two days earlier — before they had even got to the key issue of the $1625 fee hike. She refused, once again, to negotiate with the CLASSE, the largest student union, which represents about half of the 180,000 students now on strike in Quebec’s post-secondary colleges and universities. That effectively ended the negotiations, since the other two student unions refused to break their united front with the CLASSE and fall for the government’s blatant attempt to divide them.

The minister’s pretext this time was even flimsier than her earlier refusal to meet with the CLASSE. She claimed that an announcement of a demonstration that appeared on the CLASSE web site constituted a breach of the 48-hour “truce” on civil disobedience actions she had imposed on the students as a condition of the talks. However, the demonstration in question was not organized by the CLASSE, and had been announced on many websites, including Profs contre la hausse, which represents the thousands of professors who are supporting the students.

The strike is now at an impasse. The students are determined to continue their protest; thousands took to the streets of Montréal within hours of the minister’s announcement. And they are being joined by pupils in a growing number of high schools. But the two-month long strike by more than one third of Quebec’s college and university students has not sufficed to win even preservation of the status quo, a freeze on current tuition fees, let alone the free post-secondary education sought by the CLASSE.

The Liberal government’s hard line, supported by the far-right opposition party Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), reflects their determination to preserve the entire neoliberal package represented by the recent federal Conservative and provincial Liberal budgets. It is not the expense of higher education that motivates them — that’s a mere bagatelle compared with many other state expenditures. They are determined to extend the user-pay ideology into additional social sectors, to provide more openings for the privatization of educational facilities, and to roll back the mounting public support for free education at all levels including university — one of the original goals of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Even a freeze on tuition fees, as won by the students in some previous mobilizations, is now seen as an acknowledgement of this principle of gratuité scolaire. And in the background is the downward pressure on Quebec’s relatively advanced, if limited, welfare state exerted by market forces bolstered by “free trade” agreements like NAFTA and the pending deal between Canada and the European Union.

It is now clear that in order to succeed the students must be joined by additional forces. Above all they need the active mobilization of the trade unions, the only social force that can quickly and qualitatively change the relationship of forces at the point of production and provision of services. The CSN[1] has voted in convention in favour of a 24-hour social strike by its 300,000 members; a good start could be made on May First, the now traditional labour day in Quebec celebrated by all the major unions, usually with a giant demonstration in Montréal. Unfortunately, there is no visible militant wing in the unions at present challenging the inertia of the union bureaucracy.

However, the issue has been debated recently in some circles in Quebec, including some unions. The following document was produced in 2010 by the committee on the social strike established by Quebec’s Coalition against privatization and user fees for public services.[2] It is republished in the current (April 24) issue of the web journal Presse-toi-à-gauche as a contribution to the discussion on the next steps facing the unions and social movements in the broadening and deepening mobilizations this spring against the neoliberal agenda of the government headed by Premier Jean Charest. It could provide fuel for the debate on the current political situation scheduled to be held at the delegated convention of Québec solidaire this coming weekend. Here are some major excerpts; my translation from the French.

-- Richard Fidler

* * *

Why discuss a social strike?

The Coalition against privatization and user fees for public services was formed to fight the neoliberal intentions of the Charest government, which is moving to reinforce the regressive nature of the revenues collected by the government while decreasing the resources devoted to social services, and thus opening the door to the private sector in many of the fundamental tasks that the government is supposed to assume. The coalition now groups more than one hundred community agencies, trade unions and popular organizations.[3] […]

In this context, the Coalition adopted the following proposal at its meeting of May 31, 2010:

“To begin thinking about the social strike in all the member organizations. That the members of the Coalition mandate the committee considering the social strike to produce a tool to accompany the groups in their thinking.”

The task is not to discuss the intrinsic value of the social strike, but to do so in relation to the present conjuncture. Is it relevant and feasible in the present struggle against the orientations of the Charest government?

What is a social strike?

A social strike is the widest possible stoppage of work and activities by workers in the public and private sectors as well as by other social movements, students, women working in the volunteer sector, etc. It does not fall within the legal bargaining framework of a collective agreement. It has objectives of a broad social and/or political scope. Unlike many European or South American countries, Quebec — like the rest of Canada and the United States — does not have a great tradition of social strikes. There are many reasons for this, but it is no doubt explained in part by the present statutory framework. The type of trade-union organization we have in Quebec, with the Rand formula,[4] also plays a role in configuring the way in which big social struggles are organized. Notwithstanding, we find some notable exceptions in history.

A. The May 1972 strike of the public sector workers

Although it was within the context of bargaining a collective agreement, the strike of the public and parapublic sector workers in May 1972 in Quebec had many characteristics of a social strike. Its objectives were social in their scope (a mininum weekly wage of $100). The walkout extended to a section of the private sector. And the actions used — for example, occupations of cities or media — went beyond the traditional frameworks.[5]

B. The general strike of October 14, 1976

The general strike of October 14, 1976 was organized on a Canadian scale. It had a clear political objective, the withdrawal of the wage-freeze Law C-73 adopted a year earlier by the federal government under Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, which affected the entire working class. It mobilized workers in private and public sectors, and was supported by many social movements. In all, more than 1 million workers staged a one-day walkout in 150 cities across Canada.

C. The 2004 debate on the general strike against the initial policies of the Charest government

In 2004, a proposal for a one-day general strike to oppose the orientations and laws adopted by the Charest government immediately upon taking office was debated in the local unions affiliated to the major trade-union centrals, and many of these unions adopted strike mandates. A discussion was also begun in the Réseau de vigilance, the erstwhile coalition formed to oppose the direction taken by the Charest government, about the relevance of extending the strike to other sectors, such as the community milieu, and to make it a social strike. The idea of a general strike was abandoned given the requirement posed from the outset of obtaining the participation of all the union centrals, which proved impossible. We might mention, however, that the mandate had been achieved in some centrales. A question for further discussion: Do we all agree on the proposed definition of a social strike? What form might it take in our milieu? […]

Is the social strike feasible in the present context?

A number of conditions must co-exist if a social strike as defined earlier can take place successfully. It is necessary to have the support of the largest possible number of groups in all sectors, including the trade unions. In the case of the latter, the participation of the public sector is essential if it is to have the bandwagon effect on the private sector. The social strike is impossible, however, without the participation of a least a section of the union centrals. The anger must be sufficient to justify the risks that will be taken. The government, or some of the measures it intends to take, must be considered illegitimate by broad segments of the population. The traditional means of struggle must have revealed their limitations; the social struggle must come in the wake of a mounting series of actions or appear to be justified by a breakdown in democracy.

Questions to discuss

Do we think all of the conditions set out above must exist in order for a social strike to be considered feasible? Do they in fact exist in the present context? If not, can they be assembled within the near future? […]

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[1] Confédération des syndicats nationaux – Confederation of national trade unions.

[2] Coalition contre la privatisation et la tarification des services publics.

[3] For a current list of member organizations, see http://www.nonauxhausses.org/membres/.

[4] A reference to the industrial relations regime established following World War II, in which unions are granted some legal recognition and the automatic dues checkoff in return for abandoning the right to strike during the life of a contract, and the statutory provision of “residual rights” clauses for management, etc.

[5] The classic account of this strike is Les Travailleurs Contre l’État Bourgeois: avril et mai 1972, by Diane Éthier, Jean-Marc Piotte and Jean Reynolds (Montréal, Les Éditions L’Aurore, 1975).