Jean Charest has not survived for nearly a decade at the pinnacle of Quebec politics by being a fool. Clearly, the Quebec premier was waiting for striking students to give him his “Tonkin incident,” some behaviour so outrageous as to justify the government’s dropping the hammer, without its ceding the moral high ground. A gang of masked ruffians who early Wednesday rampaged through halls of a Montreal university, terrorizing students and teachers, delivered spectacularly.
After that, the “loi speciale,” an emergency law that suspends (but does not cancel) the spring session for striking CEGEP and university students, became an inevitability. Expectations are that the legislation will be tabled Thursday evening, and include stiff penalties for anyone participating in an illegal protest, or blocking access to a classroom. Charest will then need to follow through on the grimly resolute tone he struck Wednesday night, and re-impose order.
He really has no choice but to do so. He also has considerable incentive to get tough. Until this strike came along, the biggest news in Quebec politics this year looked to be the Charbonneau Commission, which soon will begin doing to Quebec’s construction industry what the Gomery Commission did to the federal Liberal Party. Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau begins her work Tuesday. The meat and potatoes will hit front pages in the fall.
Even setting that aside, Charest’s chances of re-election in the vote he must call sometime before December of 2013 had been slim to none. His government has never been hugely popular. Corruption scandals have made it less so. Simple fatigue — 10 years and out is the standard in Canada, remember — would have done the rest.
But now, with Charest finally taking a principled, firm and plainly necessary stand against anarchy, the game has changed. Whatever his flaws, Charest is a fluid, persuasive communicator. Late Wednesday, as he dropped his bombshell on the Quebec media, Charest’s presentation was pitch-perfect — firm, articulate, slightly annoyed, but not angry. Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois, by contrast, has taken to wearing the protesters’ red-square emblem, backing them reflexively. And her personal popularity is tanking.
Indeed, a poll taken by Forum Research for the Montreal Gazette earlier this week showed that, for the first time this year, Charest’s Liberals are Quebecers’ first choice, with seat projections giving them 60 of 125 seats, enough for a minority. Support for the government in the student dispute, meantime, now stands at 45 per cent, up from 28 per cent a month ago. Support for the students has slipped to 33 per cent from 36 per cent in the same period.
None of this is, of course, rocket science. The masked brawlers are a minority even among the strikers, who are themselves a minority among the larger student body, who are in turn a minority in Quebec society. The province’s unemployment rate has actually dropped in the first quarter of 2012, to 8.1 per cent from 8.4 per cent. This means, obviously, that nine of 10 Quebecers have a job — which means they need to get to work in the morning and home in the evening for dinner. Smoke bombs in the metro and riots in the streets, or even traffic jams, are therefore not on.
Moreover, there’s the simple fact that the striking students, at root, are wrong. In gradually increasing student fees over seven years in increments of $254 annually, Quebec City is proposing nothing radical, nothing draconian, nothing unfair, arbitrary or dictatorial. As has been noted many times, Quebec post-secondary tuition fees are the lowest in Canada and will remain among the lowest, even after the increases. In 2009-’10, basic tuition for a university undergrad year cost $1,968. Ontario students paid $5,951. The national average was $5,335.
The staggering irony of this strike is that its existence does betray a fundamental problem in Quebec education, only not the one the strikers imagine. What geography, history, math and civics can they have studied to, first, feel themselves so victimized and, second, imagine they can win this fight, with these tactics?
They can’t. They have neither the facts, nor the moral justification, nor the raw numbers of supporters on their side. This is likely why the protest has gradually become about issues other than tuition — a smorgasbord of tween-aged angst, rebellion against “the man,” sovereignty, environmentalism, anti-globalization, and the sheer fun of skipping school and smashing stuff.
Oppression is the oxygen of protest. This “movement” has hit a dead end, because the youth of Quebec are not oppressed. Rather, they allowed themselves to become oppressors. In failing to rein in violence in their own ranks, they ceded the high ground. And they gave Charest what he most covets — a slim but realistic shot at a fourth term. An abject lesson, perhaps, in the law of unintended consequences? Absolutely. Or Poli-Sci, 101.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Michael Den Tandt
After that, the “loi speciale,” an emergency law that suspends (but does not cancel) the spring session for striking CEGEP and university students, became an inevitability. Expectations are that the legislation will be tabled Thursday evening, and include stiff penalties for anyone participating in an illegal protest, or blocking access to a classroom. Charest will then need to follow through on the grimly resolute tone he struck Wednesday night, and re-impose order.
He really has no choice but to do so. He also has considerable incentive to get tough. Until this strike came along, the biggest news in Quebec politics this year looked to be the Charbonneau Commission, which soon will begin doing to Quebec’s construction industry what the Gomery Commission did to the federal Liberal Party. Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau begins her work Tuesday. The meat and potatoes will hit front pages in the fall.
Even setting that aside, Charest’s chances of re-election in the vote he must call sometime before December of 2013 had been slim to none. His government has never been hugely popular. Corruption scandals have made it less so. Simple fatigue — 10 years and out is the standard in Canada, remember — would have done the rest.
But now, with Charest finally taking a principled, firm and plainly necessary stand against anarchy, the game has changed. Whatever his flaws, Charest is a fluid, persuasive communicator. Late Wednesday, as he dropped his bombshell on the Quebec media, Charest’s presentation was pitch-perfect — firm, articulate, slightly annoyed, but not angry. Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois, by contrast, has taken to wearing the protesters’ red-square emblem, backing them reflexively. And her personal popularity is tanking.
Indeed, a poll taken by Forum Research for the Montreal Gazette earlier this week showed that, for the first time this year, Charest’s Liberals are Quebecers’ first choice, with seat projections giving them 60 of 125 seats, enough for a minority. Support for the government in the student dispute, meantime, now stands at 45 per cent, up from 28 per cent a month ago. Support for the students has slipped to 33 per cent from 36 per cent in the same period.
None of this is, of course, rocket science. The masked brawlers are a minority even among the strikers, who are themselves a minority among the larger student body, who are in turn a minority in Quebec society. The province’s unemployment rate has actually dropped in the first quarter of 2012, to 8.1 per cent from 8.4 per cent. This means, obviously, that nine of 10 Quebecers have a job — which means they need to get to work in the morning and home in the evening for dinner. Smoke bombs in the metro and riots in the streets, or even traffic jams, are therefore not on.
Moreover, there’s the simple fact that the striking students, at root, are wrong. In gradually increasing student fees over seven years in increments of $254 annually, Quebec City is proposing nothing radical, nothing draconian, nothing unfair, arbitrary or dictatorial. As has been noted many times, Quebec post-secondary tuition fees are the lowest in Canada and will remain among the lowest, even after the increases. In 2009-’10, basic tuition for a university undergrad year cost $1,968. Ontario students paid $5,951. The national average was $5,335.
The staggering irony of this strike is that its existence does betray a fundamental problem in Quebec education, only not the one the strikers imagine. What geography, history, math and civics can they have studied to, first, feel themselves so victimized and, second, imagine they can win this fight, with these tactics?
They can’t. They have neither the facts, nor the moral justification, nor the raw numbers of supporters on their side. This is likely why the protest has gradually become about issues other than tuition — a smorgasbord of tween-aged angst, rebellion against “the man,” sovereignty, environmentalism, anti-globalization, and the sheer fun of skipping school and smashing stuff.
Oppression is the oxygen of protest. This “movement” has hit a dead end, because the youth of Quebec are not oppressed. Rather, they allowed themselves to become oppressors. In failing to rein in violence in their own ranks, they ceded the high ground. And they gave Charest what he most covets — a slim but realistic shot at a fourth term. An abject lesson, perhaps, in the law of unintended consequences? Absolutely. Or Poli-Sci, 101.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Michael Den Tandt
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