http://www2.lactualite.com/jean-francois-lisee/files/48116_414505475239668_2004743380_n.jpg
http://www.facebook.com/occupymontreal
*
HOW A STUDENT UPRISING IS RESHAPING QUEBEC
Jennifer Clibbon
May 29, 2012
CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/05/29/f-quebec-students-voices.html
But many observers are still trying to figure out the larger significance of the protest, which some have dubbed Quebec's Maple Spring. Will it create a new generation of leaders and shape the province (and Canada) for decades to come, as Quebec's Quiet Revolution did in the 1960s?CBC.ca invited two prominent francophone journalists and a political scientist to explore the historical context and current significance of the protests.
Jacques Godbout is one of Quebec's best-known journalists, novelists and filmmakers. He writes for the Montreal-based weekly magazine L'actualité.
Carole Beaulieu is the editor in chief of L'actualité.
Marc André Bodet is an assistant professor of political science at Laval University in Quebec City, where the protests have been much smaller.
*
Carole Beaulieu:
The young generation is a minority within Quebec's population (as elsewhere in Canada).
They have been told the future is bleak: an ageing population that will consume an increasing amount of tax dollars for health care, a pension system that will depend increasingly on few workers, higher housing prices, student debt, crumbling public infrastructures, public debt …
They have been told they can't change the world as it is
(international markets, financial pressure on governments ),
but they are trying to build a different world.
And if they can't be heard through the ballot box — because they are too few of them, why not try something else?
The slogan "Crions, plus fort, que nul ne nous ignore"
[Let's shout even louder so no one can ignore us]
has real meaning to them.
Those weeks of daily street demonstrations have triggered an intense political awakening.
*
Jacques Godbout:
In Quebec, this type of event is perceived as an accelerated education in political culture.
It's more positive than negative and allows us to see the development of the ideas of the new leaders.
This time, the experience was intense and it allowed for young people (18-22 years of age) to develop an amazing solidarity.
This generation will remember for a long time how it held the advantage over the government by taking to the streets.
No one, except union leaders who tried to exploit [the situation], could have predicted the impact and length of the protest.
*
Carole Beaulieu:
Student organizations in Quebec are not set up the way they are in English-Canada. They do not only concern themselves with managing student services.
When you look back in Quebec history, you see that student leaders in the past have often become political and opinion leaders.
*
Jacques Godbout:
If, during past years, the federalists were opposed to sovereigntists, the confrontation today is between the right and the left.
The student protests won popular support among the middle class who have been unhappy about bankers, oil companies and chambers of commerce imposing a style of economic development that repulses them.
Quebecois don't want to get rich at any cost.
The pots-and-pans protest [in which ordinary citizens have joined in by beating pots and pans] is also an effort on the part of the opposition PQ party to drive the Liberals into a corner.
*
103 commentaires
1
It is important to remember that Law 78 also reflects a strong reactionary tradition in Québec politics.
Bill 78 is essentially based on Bills 111 and 142--both brought in by the PQ starting 30 years ago--that set the trend for such legislation by imposing crippling daily fines on individuals and unions and aimed to force them into bankruptcy, thereby essentially making them into society's "walking dead" (remember Orwell?).
Going still further back, the first inspiration comes from Duplessis' infamous "Padlock Law". [Loi du cadenas]
Of course, it is politically convenient for nationalists to divert attention to the War Measures Act and subsequent Public Order Bill, used by Trudeau from 1970 to 1985 and not revoked until Mulroney came to power, but the real model was made right here in Québec..
Nigel Spencer. 2012/05/30. at 4:17 PM ET
