Quebec Premier Jean Charest should stop underestimating the student movement. What started as a protest about rising tuition fees in the province has now become a popular revolt against the Charest government. Charest is out of touch.
Despite desperate efforts to placate the student leaders, it is Charest’s draconian Bill 78 that has become his Waterloo. The hastily thrown together bill has outraged people across the province for its attack on the right to protest. What the premier has done is to throw people of all ages and political persuasion behind the protest.
At the same time, Anglophone Canadians outside of Quebec are somewhat puzzled by the fuss. Ontario university students have been unsure what the Quebec students are protesting. Ontario university students pay outrageously high fees compared to fees in Quebec. In contrast, Quebec university fees are the lowest in Canada. It all comes down to the Quebec students’ sense of entitlement.
Since the early 1970s, successive Quebec governments have catered to the students. Both Separatists and Liberals have seen the university students as the ally needed to win the battle for and against separatism. To this end, both sides of the separatism question have kept the fees for post-secondary education extremely low while also extending university accessibility to students across the province.
The Charest government thought they could start to increase the fees. Bear in mind that the Quebec Liberal Party is closer philosophically to Harper’s federal Conservative Party than to the federal Liberals. With a weakened and split provincial separatist movement, the Liberals saw this as the time to better balance their books.
Charest was wrong. It is also a time of the ‘Occupy’ movement and growing threats from Harper’s Conservatives in Ottawa. The students saw the increases—no matter how reasonable—as a challenge to their sense of entitlement. They fought back. And their determination caught Charest off guard. He tried outlasting the students but they proved far more determined than his side expected. With the rapidly approaching tourist season, Charest panicked. The economic impact of a lost summer of tourism can be catastrophic to the province.
It was the concern over tourism that prompted the draconian dictates of Bill 78. With the proposed control it would give police over the student demonstrations, the government felt that maybe it could hide the dispute from tourists. Just how was not clear.
If we have any political advice for Jean Charest, it is to capitulate and fast. It has already cost the students their year. The government only loses its dignity.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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