All Posts Tagged With: "quebec"

Prospective students worry about disruptions

A 2012 Quebec protest (Alexis Gravel/Flickr)

Almost a year ago, I was a prospective student touring McGill University for the first time. I remember the excitement, the nerves and the shock of seeing more than 100 people protesting on campus. For the dozen or so students on my tour, it was our first impression of McGill and, to be honest, it was a bit of a deterrent.

I recall a parent on the tour asking how disruptive the protestors were for classes. It was a serious concern of his and many others. Of course, we were assured that it was not disruptive at all and that the protests had very little to do with McGill. That alleviated the concern in my mind, but I’m sure that it was not the case for others.

In the past few months, I’ve been receiving emails from friends back home in Vancouver who are currently in their graduating year of high school and are now attempting to navigate the confusion of choosing a university. While I’ve gotten the classic questions—“How are the professors?” and “What’s the nightlife like?”—the one theme that keeps coming up is Quebec’s student movement. My friends’ concerns include not only how protests affect classes, but whether they are violent or too intense. I have assured everyone asking these questions that the protests are not an issue; they stay out of McGill’s way, they are not violent and they do not affect the classrooms.

Continue reading Quebec protests are hurting McGill

What students are talking about today (March 20th)

UBC Bike Rave (parkermckay92/Flickr)

1. Students at the University of British Columbia celebrated cycling culture with electronic music and glow sticks at the UBC Bike Rave on Friday night. It was organized by student residence advisors and was funded by a community grant. Unlike the drug-fuelled all-night parties of the 1990s that inspired the bike rave, this one was, according to The Ubyssey, “good clean fun.”

2. A student writing in The Varsity at the University of Toronto reports that the stress seminar she attended is a sorry excuse for counseling. “I had hoped that this “Coping with Stress” workshop, run by U of T’s Counselling and Psychological Services (CAPS) would help me, but instead it left me frustrated and angry,” writes Amanda Greer. “After a hard first semester, I approached CAPS about meeting with a counsellor. I was told there was a four month waiting list and to start looking for other options.” She points out that despite much discussion about the mental wellness of Canadian students, including in a recent cover story in Maclean’s, students often can’t access the one-on-one counselling. It’s a shame, but I think the explanation is obvious: tight budgets.

3. Western University is mourning the loss of student Noah Kishinevsky, whose body was found in a parked car at a high rise in London, Ont. The cause of death has not been confirmed, “but a hazardous substance was found in Kishinevsky’s car,” reports The Gazette. Police told the student newspaper that there was “no foul play” and that they won’t release more details.

4. A commentary in The Griff student newspaper at MacEwan University defends Ohio University photography student Sara Lewcowicz, who witnessed a man beat his girlfriend and documented it with photos instead of intervening. The heartbreaking photos of Shane, 31, abusing Maggie, 19, were published in TIME. Rebecca Trites supports the young photojournalist, arguing that intervening can be dangerous and that the photo essay creates awareness of domestic violence.

5. Police arrested 45 people in Montreal who were demonstrating against tuition fee hikes on Tuesday, reports CBC. As usual, police immediately declared the demonstration illegal because organizers did not submit an itinerary in advance. Several of the protesters threw snowballs, and four were arrested for assaults on police, reports Radio-Canada. The hikes recently proposed in Quebec under its Parti Quebecois government are about $70 per year—much less than the $325 increase that was planned by former premier Jean Charest. Quebec students pay about $2,200 per year.

Man, 29, accused of possessing explosives, threats

A man arrested on a terrorism-related charge during a student protest this week in Quebec will remain behind bars for now.

Denis Marc Pelletier was in a Montreal courtroom Thursday for what was supposed to have been a bail hearing, but the case did not proceed as planned.

A new lawyer and evidence disclosure pushed the bail hearing back to at least March 8, and perhaps later.

The Crown has already indicated that it will oppose bail in Pelletier’s case due to the nature of the charges against him.

The 29-year-old man is facing at least seven charges, including possession of explosives, possession of an arson device and uttering threats.

A charge of inciting terrorism stems from alleged postings on a social media site that police observed last weekend.

Continue reading Quebec protester faces terrorism-related charge

Anarchists, arrests, riot police and plenty of red squares

Montreal freelance reporter Justin Ling snapped these photos of Tuesday’s anti-tuition protest in Montreal where 13 were arrested. To learn more about the debate in Quebec, check out this report from The Canadian Press and read Ling’s commentary on Premier Marois’ missed opportunity.

Quebec premier says confrontations are “behind us”

Arrested during demonstration (Graham Hughes/CP)

Without the salvos of snowballs pelting police, the chunks of ice flying through the air, and the officers chasing protesters across a snowy plaza, this could easily have been a scene lifted from the “Maple Spring.”

The clash in downtown Montreal was a mid-winter twist on the student demonstrations that shook the city on a near-daily basis last spring and summer.

Thousands of people marched through the streets Tuesday in a protest that coincided with the end of Quebec’s summit on higher education.

This time, protesters were venting at a different government.

The two-day summit saw the newly elected Parti Quebecois announce three-per-cent-a-year tuition hikes. The PQ’s new fees are significantly lower than the ones proposed by the previous Liberal government — about one-fifth as much.

Premier Pauline Marois had left the conference feeling confident enough to declare that Quebec’s era of social unrest was over.

“We have succeeded in putting the confrontations behind us,” Marois said in the closing address of a Montreal summit that assembled students’ associations, university leaders, unions and social groups.

“The social crisis is behind us.”

A few hours later, signs of the familiar tumult re-emerged.

On the other side of town, armoured police confronted projectile-throwing protesters in a sequel to the clashes that drew international attention last year.

The demonstration blocked streets, altered bus routes and saw police drag some marchers out of the crowds in order to arrest them.

The skirmishes led to 13 arrests, mostly for unlawful assembly and assault with a weapon. Two of those arrested were carrying Molotov cocktails, police said.

The police department said one officer was injured.

Last year, Quebec’s first student strikes of began in mid-February and they grew into a social movement that saw nightly street marches.

At issue was the $1,625 tuition increase over five years planned by the previous Liberal government.

The PQ cancelled the Liberals’ hikes after it won power in September and this week it announced scaled-down increases of its own. Its proposed hike will raise tuition by one-fifth of the Liberal plan — $70 per year, or roughly $350 after the first five years.

Earlier in the day, Marois had conceded that her small tuition hikes wouldn’t please everyone — not the student groups, nor the university administrators who said they needed more cash.

“We had some difficulties (finding a consensus) with the tuition, but the responsibility of the government is to decide — and I decided,” Marois told reporters after the summit.

Even the more moderate student groups, who participated in the summit, called the three-per-cent annual increases unacceptable.

They had requested an absolute freeze on tuition. Instead, they got what some of them called a perpetual tuition hike.

“We’re really disappointed about the fact the tuition fees are going up,” said Martine Desjardins, president of Quebec’s largest student federation, who attended the summit.

She said she had hoped the government would have debated the issue further.

But students, Desjardins added, did not leave the summit empty-handed. She credited the government with providing some extra funds for the financial-aid program and establishing a committee to examine mandatory student fees.

Student leaders will now consult their members about the next step.

The march Tuesday in Montreal, meanwhile, was the first of more student protests expected in the province. The movement is planning to stage nightly demonstrations starting next week.

It’s not yet clear how many student groups, and protesters, will participate in the demonstrations.

Thousands hit the streets Tuesday in a march organized by ASSE, one of Quebec’s more-radical student federations.

The group boycotted the education summit and has long demanded free university tuition.

“We will not cease mobilizing, we will not cease demonstrating, we will not cease these actions,” Jeremie Bebard-Wien, a spokesman for ASSE, said of Tuesday’s protest.

“We will keep coming back to remind the government that the summit was not what we expected and that a tuition hike will not pass.”

He predicted that it would take time, however, for the movement to gain steam again.

While his group said 50,000 students agreed to a one-day strike Tuesday, those at some schools with a reputation for militancy actually voted to stay in class.

Inside the tight security bubble that shielded the summit, students weren’t the only ones who disagreed with the PQ government’s plans for the education system.

Some university administrators left the long-awaited event with deep concerns their schools are at risk of under-funding, due to a cut in their budgets by $125 million in 2012-13 and again in 2013-14.

“The university system remains anaemic and it will be bled of $250 million in the coming years,” Universite de Montreal rector Guy Breton told the summit.

Breton warned of a looming crisis that could imperil some university programs — including medicine — unless the government increases university funding.

“The patient is far from being in good health — I guarantee that,” he said.

Others saw the PQ government’s indexed tuition increases as too small, a plan that would pile more burden on taxpayers who didn’t go to university.

“You’ve obtained an artificial consensus… in this room where the vast majority is excluded,” said interim Liberal leader Jean-Marc Fournier, who then pointed to the challenges of lower-earning Quebecers.

“You’re asking (students) to pay a little less, someone else will pay instead.”

In an abrupt reversal of roles compared to 2012, it was the PQ government dealing with uproar in the streets.

While she was Opposition leader, Marois wore the student movement’s signature red square in the national assembly and even took part in a pot-banging protest that became commonplace in the province.

One marcher held up a sign Tuesday that read: “Pauline, where’s your casserole (pot)?”

During the closing news conference of the summit, Marois was asked about her declaration that social harmony had been restored.

“I’m very at ease telling you that the divisions are now behind us,” she said.

“That doesn’t mean that there isn’t any tension; that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any disagreements.”

—Andy Blatchford with files from Peter Rakobowchuk

Scenes from the demonstration (#manifencours)

To read about today’s Quebec education summit, click here.

What students are talking about today (February 26th)

Aboriginal students at Lakehead (Andrew Tolson)

1. Lakehead University students say that the school’s decision to change a course that will be offered in the new law program will water down the Aboriginal Studies component, reports CBC News. Lee Stuesser, the law school’s dean, says it will still address First Nations issues and that one reason for the change is that past Ontario law deans have raised concerns about non-law courses taught in law schools. “I felt the best thing to do was to make it a law course because my experience over the years has been that law students like law courses, and if they perceive something’s not a law course, then there’s a large measure of dissatisfaction,” he told CBC. Coincidentally, a new report from Frank Iacobucci, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, says this country needs to urgently address the crisis of Aboriginal under-representation on juries. While on the topic of legal education, Memorial University of Newfoundland has announced it’s exploring the feasibility of a law school in St. John’s.

Continue reading Tories vs. student unions, Lakehead law & #StandWithLanden

Politicians’ offices vandalized

Quebec’s long-awaited education summit kicked off under heavy security Monday, a year after a student crisis rattled the province.

Steel crowd-control barriers, a gauntlet of security checkpoints and bag searches greeted participants at the Montreal building housing the two-day event.

Inside the venue, the discussions were courteous. School administrators, politicians, student leaders and social groups outlined their visions for Quebec’s post-secondary education system, talks that explored topics such as university funding and financial aid for students.

Outside the building, police officers circled the neighbourhood on bicycle, sat in vans packed with riot gear and discretely kept watch over the area from the shadows of residential doorways.

The streets around the hall were quiet, however, except for a small group of professors protesting tuition-fee hikes Monday.

It was in stark contrast to the months of massive, nightly protests that consumed Montreal last year in a student crisis sparked by the former Liberal government’s plans to hike tuition fees. The student movement dubbed itself the Maple Spring.

Continue reading Quebec’s education summit begins under heavy security

Student group says there won’t be second ‘Maple Spring’

Not even the most militant of Quebec’s student federations expects this week’s education summit to plunge the province into another Maple Spring.

Quebec gained international attention last year when a dispute over proposed tuition hikes boiled into a months-long uprising.

The unrest, dubbed the Maple Spring, saw thousands of protesters swarm Montreal streets night after night. The crisis eventually faded away, in part because the Liberals lost power and the incoming Parti Quebecois government cancelled the tuition increases.

The PQ stickhandled its way through the perilous political issue, during the election, by promising to come up with a new tuition policy at an education summit.

Some students are feeling disillusioned and boycotting the two-day summit, which starts Monday, because they believe the new government has tuned out some of their ideas.

The ranks of the restive, however, appear smaller than last year.

“We are aware… that there will not be a new Maple Spring,” said Blandine Parchemal of the ASSE student federation, one of the more militant groups within the movement.

“The Maple Spring is over.”

The once-powerful ASSE, led by its charismatic former spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, suffered several setbacks last week after it failed to gather support on a strike vote from a number of its associations.

The most symbolic setback came at a college near Montreal known as a bastion of activism, which was the first school to declare a strike last February in an event that kicked off the movement.

This time, College de Valleyfield not only voted against the strike, it tabled a motion to disassociate itself from ASSE.

That doesn’t mean the tuition divide between students and the government has disappeared.

One of the major sticking points is the PQ government’s intention to freeze rates, which are the lowest in Canada, but to introduce small increases indexed to inflation.

Some student federations that made up last year’s protest movement have drawn a line in the sand at an absolute tuition freeze.

They say they refuse to accept indexation.

ASSE, meanwhile, decided to boycott the summit completely over the government’s refusal to debate the group’s desire for zero tuition.

They view free university as an achievable goal, if only policy-makers would make it a priority like in many other jurisdictions. Former premier Jacques Parizeau, who as a young civil servant in the 1960s helped build the province’s university network, expressed support for their cause.

The federation is now planning to take its battle back into the streets. ASSE has planned to stage a protest Tuesday outside the summit venue.

With memories of last year’s clashes with demonstrators, Montreal police pledge to be present in large numbers and will maintain a security perimeter around the summit’s building.

Student associations representing junior colleges and universities affiliated with ASSE have also voted to hold a one-day strike on Tuesday.

But any protest revival from within ASSE faces an uphill climb. Several of its member unions voted last week against the strike, including those from some of the most militant schools during last year’s uprising.

“There’s a lot of exhaustion,” said Parchemal, ASSE’s secretary of academic affairs. She was referring to the compressed, intensive academic schedules students have had to endure after the 2012 strikes cancelled sessions.

She maintained, however, that the associations that voted against the strike still oppose indexation and support free tuition. Parchemal added that some schools that voted against strikes last year, actually supported the most recent one.

That stood in contrast to places like College de Valleyfield — where the vote was 366 against the strike and 124 in favour of it, said a student-union representative.

“We didn’t expect to be crushed like that,” said Cedrick Mainville, himself a supporter of the strike.

He blamed the loss on student fears that a Yes vote would lead to a prolonged strike like last year.

ASSE’s approach is much different than that of FEUQ, the largest student group in the province. The organization, which says it represents 125,000 students, plans to take its concerns to the summit’s negotiating tables rather than into the streets.

FEUQ president Martine Desjardins believes the student movement still has many potential avenues to explore before presenting a strike vote.

“Before that, you need to prove that you’ve tried everything that you could,” said Desjardins, who led FEUQ during last year’s protests.

When asked if students in her federation would be prepared to strike over indexation, she said it’s too early to know.

“We’re not planning strikes, for example, in two weeks,” she said. “It will take much more time to convince students to ramp up the pressure.”

Desjardins disagrees with ASSE’s decision to boycott the summit, a step she believes could hinder the process.

Last year’s student unrest was ignited by opposition to the Liberal government’s proposal to boost tuition rates by $325 per year, over five years. The government later tweaked the planned increases to $254 per year, over seven years.

Even though the hike still would have left Quebec with some of the lowest tuition in Canada, many students insisted they opposed the increase out of principle.

Some demanded a freeze to keep fees from inching closer to the higher rates in other provinces. Others called education a right that should be free, just like in some European countries.

The Marois government appears to be aiming for the middle ground with indexation, somewhere between a freeze and the increases proposed by the former Liberal government.

A recent poll suggested the PQ’s middle-ground indexation solution had strong public support.

That’s a far cry from the spring, when the PQ’s early alignment with the protesters — such as wearing red squares in the national assembly and banging on pots and pans in the streets — came to be viewed as a political liability.

But the PQ did take some steps to try distancing itself from the protesters in the weeks before the election.

It ditched the red squares, and started side-stepping questions about its own tuition policy by promising a summit.

Now that the moment has arrived, university administrators worry the meeting won’t address the serious issues they say are facing post-secondary institutions.

Relations between the PQ and the universities are already strained after the government announced a $124-million cut to universities in December, midway through the fiscal year.

Universities have gone on the offensive in the lead-up to the summit. At one of a series of town hall meetings, McGill University’s provost called the cuts “an unprecedented attack” on higher education.

Alan Shepard, president of Montreal’s Concordia University, said he’s concerned the summit will get bogged down in the debate over tuition fees and proposals like that one won’t see serious discussion.

Even with an increase tied to inflation, Quebec universities would remain woefully underfunded, he said.

“The difference is substantial when you compare the financing we have per student compared with the rest of Canada,” he said in an interview.

One idea being floated by Shepard and others is to introduce differential fees based on the subject, so that a student in dentistry or law school would pay substantially more than a history student.

If the funding issue isn’t somehow addressed, Shepard said Montreal risks losing what he called an “enormous jewel” – a hub for research and student learning at its four major universities.

Universite de Montreal rector Guy Breton said post-secondary institutions now realize they need to do a better job explaining their role. Last spring, he felt they were drowned out in a debate dominated by students and the government.

“The student message was two letters — n-o,” he said.

“Ours is much more complicated.”

—Andy Blatchford and Benjamin Shingler

The Twitter generation is engaged and deserves a say

prayitno/Flickr

Should 16-year-old Canadians be allowed to vote? The Parti Québécois thinks so. Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, speaking in London, hinted as much following a quiet meeting in Scotland with First Minister Alex Salmond, whose governing Scottish National Party plans to lower the voting age to 16 for the country’s 2014 referendum on independence.

Members of Marois’ party have indicated their support for lowering the age to 16 in the past, and countries like Austria, Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil have made similar decisions over the years to combat flagging voter turnout. Considering young people are the biggest drag on Canada’s overall decline in turnout, it’s something we should consider nationally too.

Elections Canada reported 38.8 per cent turnout among people age 18 to 24 in the May 2011 federal election, well below  the 75.1 per cent of those aged 65 to 74 who voted. Considering the under-25 set is told from the get-go that they’re apathetic, this isn’t surprising. Civics courses don’t help: I drudged through Ontario’s— a well-known online bird course at my high school.

Continue reading Let’s lower the voting age to 16