Quebec politics amid strife: Charest, undead, lives on?!

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 3:58 PM - 0 Comments

The PQ, neck and neck with the Zombies Liberals. Courtesy Léger Marketing

Riddle me this: if, as a majority of Quebecers believe, the Quebec government’s special law regarding protests goes to far; and if, as the same Léger Marketing poll suggests, an overwhelming majority of Quebecers believe that the government should lay off the obstinacy and return to the bargaining table with the students; and if the recent 100,000-strong protest in the streets of Montreal was less about tuition fees than almighty rage against the Charest government, then why, pray tell, is the Parti Québécois still only neck and neck with with the big, bad Liberals, at 32 per cent a piece?

And why, despite having wholeheartedly embraced the student movement’s position to the point of wearing its red square on her lapel everyday, is Pauline Marois only just as popular as Jean Charest? The numbers speak for themselves: when Léger asked, “In the context of the ongoing conflict, do you have a good or a bad impression of the following people?”, Jean Charest ranked at 30 per cent good, 59 per cent bad. Marois, meanwhile, scored an equally paltry 31 per cent good, and only a mildly better 54 per cent bad. In short, despite having radically different and conflicting takes on the student movement, Jean Charest and Pauline Marois are basically within the margin of error with each other. This, after more than three months of headline-grabbing stalemate between the students and the government. What gives?

The answer, if not quite blowing in the wind, at least lies in the between Montreal and the rest of the province. For instance, 47 per cent of Montrealers are for Bill 78; In Quebec City, meanwhile, 54 percent of residents say they are for it. And while 75 per cent of Montrealers are for the City of Montreal’s ban on masks, the support is even higher in Quebec City and what is quaintly referred to as les régions: 80 per cent in both. (These numbers are from the detailed Léger that I can’t seem to find online.)

The numbers are even more stark when you consider how a large western chunk of the island of Montreal has always been staunchly Liberal. As Léger V-P Christian Bourque told me, “Provincially speaking, the west of Montreal is still very Liberal red.” Discount these Liberal red-or-die types (and they include French and English), and you have a real difference between Montreal and the rest of the province. ”We’re seeing how opinions in Montreal and the rest of Quebec is getting and further apart. Montreal is more left and open, while the rest of the province is more conservative.”

The split between Montreal and the rest of the (Quebec) world is nothing new. As long ago as 2006, the Bloc Québécois commissioned a report on the phenomenon after a light electoral spanking in the Quebec City region at the hands of The Conservatives. The ensuing “Alarie Report” noted the following: “The Bloc, its leader [Gilles Duceppe], its organization, its program, the colour and scent it puts off is too Montreal.” One anonymous Bloc candidate, quoted anonymously in the report, was quite succinct. “Our platform was too lefty, too Montreal.”

For the PQ, there is an odd disconnect in this. By tilting her party to the right of the Bloc’s traditional lefty perch—and by the virtue of largely not being implicated in the plethora of scandals wafting around the Liberals—Pauline Marois has made inroads within the province, and rightly so—though, it must be said, she was only briefly ahead of Charest in the polls even before the current brouhaha. The caveat: this support has come mostly from les regions—where antagonism against the student movement is at its highest. ”The PQ is ahead in the regions where the support for the government and tuition hikes is higher,” Bourque says. “By wearing the red square, the party has painted itself into a corner a little bit.” If the current protest had taken place in Quebec City rather than Montreal, Bourque says, “It would have been over a long time ago, and people would have been cheering the police.”

Certainly, the Charest government remains in crisis mode. Today, the Premier brought back Dan Gagnier as his chief of staff. He was Charest’s C-o-S in 2007, and managed to steady the Premier’s nosedive in the polls before resigning in 2009. Charest says Gagnier’s return has nothing to to with the student strike, which I believe about as much as his line about not paying attention to polls. And anything can happen in the coming days, weeks, and (oof) months with people and police frequently clashing in the street. And Charest will have to call an election before December 2013, when the collective memory of tear gas, strife and ugly laws (and alleged party finance skullduggery, and construction industry misery, and more mafia ties) will in all likelihood be stuck in Quebec’s collective memory.

But as dark as things are for the Premier, he can take comfort in this: his opponents aren’t fairing much better than him.

Wrongs and rights: how did Quebec’s student standoff come to this?

By Emmett Macfarlane - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at 11:09 AM - 0 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP Images

Reasoned debate is off the table. The student protesters and the Charest government are sharply at odds – in fact, they despise each other – but they’ve collaborated in one respect: each side has acted to ensure that rather than a robust public discussion about how to fund the province’s universities we get an ugly, protracted battle about the right to protest.

Why has the situation deteriorated so miserably? There is no shortage of finger-pointing on either side.

From the government’s perspective, too many protesters engaged in unacceptable tactics, including blocking non-protesting students from attending classes, vandalism, intimidation and violence. Some critics assert that the peaceful majority failed to condemn, in strong enough words, the hooliganism of those in their midst. Then, last week, classes on one campus were literally invaded, in defiance of court injunctions.

From the protesters’ perspective, the government has been obstinate, initially refusing to meet with student groups and then offering a fishy-looking compromise they quickly and roundly rejected. Peaceful, legitimate protests were often broken up by police. Then the government passed a law which, as I wrote here a few days ago, criminalizes peaceful protest in ways that are likely unconstitutional.

It is this latest decision by the Charest government that has guaranteed consecutive nights of tension, violence and arrests for the foreseeable future. By passing, in hurried and thoughtless fashion, a bill that casts its net so widely, that contains vague provisions and harsh penalties, and that does next to nothing to address the real lawlessness that supposedly necessitated it, the government has legitimated the sense of victimhood that so thoroughly saturates the rhetoric adopted by student leaders.

If much of the blame falls to the government for exacerbating the situation, the protesters – especially the student leaders – are by no means exonerated. That their response to unacceptable legislation was to label it a declaration of war was no heat-of-the-moment exaggeration. Well before the Charest government crossed the line, the movement had declared itself the “Quebec Spring,” with protesters likening themselves to revolutionaries battling a totalitarian state.

It is this mindset that impoverishes our political discourse. It is emblematic of a shift away from policy debate, political compromise and democratic deliberation. It is an attitude that infects people of all political persuasions, although it tends to be more intense among the less moderate on either side.

Some of the protesters’ critics have dismissed the entire movement as representative of a “culture of entitlement.” I think this is problematic, largely because it ignores the reasons and justifications for their legitimate position (even if I happen to disagree with them). There should be room for the policy debate, for the expression of legitimate concerns about access, equality and universality with respect to post-secondary education.

The real problem is the increasing tendency to replace policy discussion and political debate with the invocation of rights. Invoking rights is the equivalent of playing a trump card. It leaves no room for compromise. It denies the validity of other perspectives or alternatives. It reduces political discourse to the making of demands. It subjugates other values, policy ideas or arguments about the distribution of resources. It risks replacing logic and deliberation with emotion and threats.

Now, lest anyone think I’m arguing otherwise, let me state the obvious: fundamental rights are imperative for any functioning democracy. More specifically, the right to free expression and free assembly (including the right to protest) must be fiercely protected.

That said, not everything is a right. In the face of a bylaw regulating unkempt lawns, for example, it would be incorrect to claim one has a “right” to let his or her grass grow three feet tall.

Even more significantly, the fundamental rights we do enjoy also come with limits. This is a fact which almost never emerges in debates about rights. My own research has demonstrated, for example, that media coverage of Supreme Court of Canada decisions concerning the Charter of Rights often ignores the extensive analysis the Court engages in about whether rights limitations are reasonable under the law. The very first section of the Charter is a statement that the rights within are subject to reasonable limits and limitations analysis is often the core feature of Charter cases.

The problem is not that Quebec’s student protesters have asserted the right to protest. The problem is their rhetoric and actions are premised on the notion that a tuition increase constitutes an unreasonable violation of their fundamental rights. They believe their concerns about accessibility and universality override other concerns, like sustainability or quality of education.

Many of those who support the student protests will find this argument unpersuasive. They’ve pointed to the Quebec Charter of Human Rights, which includes free public education under its social and economic rights, conveniently ignoring the language of the section (“to the extent and according to the standards provided by law”).

More generally, critics’ response to my argument that the debate should not be about rights often amounts to “of course it should, unless you don’t believe in social justice.” The problem with social justice, like rights-based arguments, is that everyone favours it but have legitimate disagreements about what counts as social justice. For example, proponents of the tuition increase have pointed out that rather than functioning as a progressive policy, subsidizing tuition is in fact a regressive policy that disproportionately benefits the middle and upper classes.

Unfortunately, that policy debate has been taken off the table. Thanks in part to a foolish law passed by a government that has bungled its response to the protests from the beginning, the rights narrative dominates. And look at how productive it has been.

Emmett Macfarlane is a political scientist at the University of Victoria. You can follow him on Twitter: @EmmMacfarlane

Quebec’s protest crackdown: It’s not just rights that make it wrong

By Emmett Macfarlane - Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 9:27 AM - 0 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP Images

If you’ve listened to some of the commentary about Bill 78, emergency legislation purportedly designed to deal with the out-of-control student protests in Quebec, you’d assume the government has thrown a match onto a powder keg.

Some may have hoped that in the midst of its massive, ongoing failure to deal with the protests these past few months, the Charest government might finally turn the corner by passing a law to settle things down. This was sadly – though somehow not surprisingly – optimistic. Apparently no one knows how to sour a lemon like Jean Charest.

Legal experts and critics have pounced on the bill to declare, with all the subtlety of a window-smashing tuition-phobe, that it represents “mass repression” and constitutes “the worst law since the War Measures Act.” One student leader declared the bill “an act of war.” Such rhetoric is about as helpful as smoke bombs in a metro station.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some obvious Charter of Rights problems with this law. One of the worst provisions, which would have treated as guilty anyone who by “omission” or “encouragement” helps or induces a person to contravene elements of the bill, has reportedly been removed.

Another section requires anyone organizing a demonstration of more than 10 people (now amended to more than 50) in a “venue accessible to the public” to report the date, time, duration, and venue to the police at least eight hours ahead of time.

As Andrew Coyne has pointed out on Twitter, many other jurisdictions in the rest of Canada, the United States and Europe have similar reporting requirements. But these often apply to events like planned marches on public streets. Canadian courts are unlikely to find the very broad language here acceptable. Not all public demonstrations are public disruptions, nor are all publicly accessible spaces equal: it may be a reasonable restriction on freedom of assembly to require reporting and impose other limits on street protests. Imposing the same limits on demonstrations in parks or empty fields may not meet the threshold of reasonableness.

Many commentators have also expressed displeasure at the harsh fines in the bill but there’s no reason to believe the penalties themselves lack constitutionality.

Does the bill, even after amendments, overreach? Possibly. The language is too vague in some places, and a reverse-onus clause in the section dealing with the civil liability of student groups and institutions might be a problem. Does the bill compare to the War Measures Act? Not even close.

But in several important respects, the potential Charter issues aren’t the main reason this bill represents a major failure on the part of the Charest government.

First, the bill does nothing to address the lawlessness that has characterized tactics used by certain elements of the protest movement. All of these activities – flagrant defiance of court injunctions, violence, vandalism, intimidation and assault – were already illegal. The problem up until now has been a lack of enforcement, not a lack of legislation.

Second, by casting its net so wide, the bill threatens to criminalize the largely peaceful activities of a majority of the protesters. Given the current climate, this is a bad idea.

Third, the bill cancels (okay, technically it postpones) remaining classes. For people who blandly titled a bill “An Act to enable students to receive instruction from the postsecondary institutions they attend,” I think the policy geniuses in Quebec City have an inappropriate flair for irony.

Finally, the bill encourages the protesters, media and critics to continue to frame the story as the Quebec state versus the right to protest. Such a narrative provides only a partial picture of the debate and of the rights that have been trampled during this saga. The majority of students in Quebec have not joined the protests; rather, they have sought to continue their classes. They have that right, or at least they did, until the government of Quebec failed to protect it

Emmett Macfarlane is a political scientist at the University of Victoria. You can follow him on Twitter @EmmMacfarlane

Charest invokes ‘special law’ to suspend semesters in Quebec’s boycotted schools

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 9:14 PM - 0 Comments

Quebec premier Jean Charest announced a law on Wednesday night to suspend classes 11 universities and 14 CEGEPS across the province currently affected by student boycotts.

CTV reports:

In a bid to end a 14-week conflict with students, Charest stood alongside Education Minister Michelle Courchesne as he announced that the school’s impacted by student boycotts would be closed until August. Students would be able to finish their winter semesters by September.

Quebec’s student protests: righteous anger, shame about the execution

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 6:45 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Chiasson/CP Images

At last, it's come true!

About a year and a half ago, sister mag L’Actualité published a rebuttal issue to our fun and frameable Bonhomme cover entitled Quebec: The Most Corrupt Province In Canada. Their cover picture depicted a pack of righteously outraged Bonhommes armed with (I think) vuvuzelas, marching in the street against corruption. The idea, of course, was that Quebecers were furious with corruption-addled Liberal government, and weren’t going to take it anymore.

I thought it was a neat-o picture. My friend/colleague Patrick Lagacé, not so much. “Bah,” he said when he saw the cover. ”Quebecers don’t protest in the streets unless it’s over a hockey team.”

Ouch.

And yet, he’s right, isn’t he? Despite being in power for nearly 10 years, most of which in the doldrums of public opinion, there has been no large-scale, grassroots protest against the Charest government. This is even more incredible given the numerous scandals (here, here, here and most recently here, for starters) over the last three or so years.

In fact, far from protesting the government, Quebecers keep re-electing it to office: Jean Charest’s Liberals are the only government since Duplessis to win three consecutive terms. If, as the polls suggest, Quebecers aren’t happy with the Charest government, they certainly haven’t done much about it. Meanwhile, the only blue march we’ve seen was a festive affair to (playfully) cajole the NHL into anointing Quebec City with a hockey team. Several thousands attended. And yes, there were plenty of vuvuzelas.

Which brings us to the current protest over tuition fees waging in the streets, Metros and, in an exceptionally unclassy episode today, in the classrooms of the province. I’m not sure when, exactly, it happened, but at some point the scope of the strike became larger even as those remaining on the street diminished. It’s at the point where CLASSE, the more radical of the four groups representing striking students, had its legitimacy challenged by Force étudiante critique, which counts among its members at least one of the alleged Metro smoke bombers.

The anti-capitalist group known as CLAC has incorporated “the fighting students” into its ranks of  ”radical feminists”, “anti-capitalists, anarchists, communists” and “those who are pissed off, and are at the end of their rope.” There are huge problems with their tactics and their rhetoric, but it remains that those students (and many non-students, surely) are the only ones to wear their discontent with the current government on their sleeve. Everyone else has stayed on the couch.

Of course, their boorish tactics and yawn-inducing nihilist spiel have only alienated these noyau dur protesters from a population that might otherwise feel a certain kinship to their cause. They aren’t humanitarians, freedom fighters or anything approaching such romantic connotations. At best, they are discontents; at their worst, thugs. Perversely, they add legitimacy to the government’s argument for a special law to end the strike. Yet there isn’t an ounce of apathy to their cause. The same can’t be said for the people watching them.

There is a much better outlet for their energies: work to vote the bums out. There are two political parties that at the very least support the broad strokes of the student movement. One of them, the Parti Québécois, stands a good chance of forming the next government—and its MNAs wear the red square on their lapels! Both these parties—the other is Québec solidaire—have histories of advocating broad social change, and together occupy a huge chunk of Quebec’s left political flank. Conveniently enough, there has to be an election within the next year and a half.

Marois and company, who know a thing or three about electoral pandering, need to be held to account on their pro-student rhetoric; meanwhile, Québec solidaire needs to elect more than one MNA. The low voter turnout, fueled largely by younger people staying home on election day, only helps the incumbent Liberals.

But no. There are injunctions to break, and windows that need smashing.

Where do you stand on Quebec student strikes?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 5:27 PM - 0 Comments

Quebec Education Minister Line Beauchamp steps down, says she’s no longer ‘part of the solution’

By Richard Warnica - Monday, May 14, 2012 at 5:08 PM - 0 Comments

Quebec’s education minister is resigning, not just from cabinet, but from politics altogether, walking away from a tuition dispute that has sparked months of protest and chaos across the province.

From the Canadian Press:

Line Beauchamp said she was not resigning because of violence and intimidation related to the student strikes this spring.

The move leaves Premier Jean Charest with the thinnest possible parliamentary majority — with a one-seat advantage in the legislature, where the Liberals hold 63 of 125 seats including the tie-breaking Speaker.

Making the announcement at a news conference with the premier, Beauchamp said she was actually leaving because she didn’t feel like she was helping to solve the problem.

‘I am resigning because I no longer believe I’m part of the solution.’

Maclean’s Alex Ballingal was in Quebec recently reporting on the demonstrations.

Students began walking out on their classes in February. More than three months later, the dispute has become the longest student strike in Quebec history. The stubborn persistence of the strike has left many in the rest of Canada scratching their heads over why there’s been such uproar. Even in Quebec, the intensity of the protests has puzzled observers. “The whole political and media class has been taken by surprise,” says Eric Pineault, a sociologist at the Université de Quebec à Montréal (UQAM). Quebecers currently enjoy the lowest tuition in the country. And never mind that with Premier Jean Charest’s proposed hike, the average tuition in Quebec would then be the second-lowest in Canada. Yet more than 165,000 students are on strike indefinitely. Many of them will lose their semester if they don’t head back to class soon. How did the movement attain such strength and longevity?

The answer lies largely with a particular thrust in Quebec society that links ideals of social democracy—such as widely affordable university education—to a sense of national identity. These ties date back to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, a time when Quebecers became maîtres, or masters, of their own province, instituting changes that gave Quebec a more left-leaning bent than elsewhere in North America. “The Quiet Revolution is a very important moment in Quebec history,” says André Pratte, editor of Montreal’s La Presse newspaper. “Every time someone questions the decisions that were made at the time, it’s almost as if you are trying to destroy a very important part of that moment.”

Martin Patriquin, meanwhile, analyzed the fallout from strike on his blog on Friday.

And as bad as it is, the situation is actually worse than it appears. That’s because the government has, in the last round of negotiations, allowed the student associations a say over how the universities spend their money—a power the student associations themselves won’t likely relinquish in the future.

Though it was scuttled by the students, the deal hashed out last week will likely serve as a blueprint for  any settlement between the students and the government—which will come some time in the next year, Inshallah. It includes a clause by which an ”interim council” is set up to examine university expenditures, and apply the savings (if any) to a corresponding reduction in student fees, up to $125.

Quebec: From Quiet Revolution to not-so-quiet student riot

By Alex Ballingall - Friday, May 11, 2012 at 1:55 PM - 0 Comments

Photographs by Roger Lemoyne

For more than 12 weeks, tens of thousands of Quebec students have taken to the streets in anger and frustration. They’ve hurled slogans from worn-out vocal cords, sung and danced and taken their clothes off. Protesters threw stones, smashed windows and clashed with riot police, all in an effort to halt the government’s proposal to increase tuition $1,625 over the next five to seven years.

Students began walking out on their classes in February. More than three months later, the dispute has become the longest student strike in Quebec history. The stubborn persistence of the strike has left many in the rest of Canada scratching their heads over why there’s been such uproar. Even in Quebec, the intensity of the protests has puzzled observers. “The whole political and media class has been taken by surprise,” says Eric Pineault, a sociologist at the Université de Quebec à Montréal (UQAM). Quebecers currently enjoy the lowest tuition in the country. And never mind that with Premier Jean Charest’s proposed hike, the average tuition in Quebec would then be the second-lowest in Canada. Yet more than 165,000 students are on strike indefinitely. Many of them will lose their semester if they don’t head back to class soon. How did the movement attain such strength and longevity?

The answer lies largely with a particular thrust in Quebec society that links ideals of social democracy—such as widely affordable university education—to a sense of national identity. These ties date back to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, a time when Quebecers became maîtres, or masters, of their own province, instituting changes that gave Quebec a more left-leaning bent than elsewhere in North America. “The Quiet Revolution is a very important moment in Quebec history,” says André Pratte, editor of Montreal’s La Presse newspaper. “Every time someone questions the decisions that were made at the time, it’s almost as if you are trying to destroy a very important part of that moment.”

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Quebec and students: it’s actually worse than you think

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, May 11, 2012 at 8:59 AM - 0 Comments

Graham Hughes/CP Images

Here’s an understatement for you: the negotiations between the various student associations and the Quebec government aren’t going well.

As we approach the three-month mark of the student strike/boycott/study-stoppage/what-have-you, relations between both sides could hardly be worse. An agreement in principle between the Charest government and the FEUQ, FECQ and CLASSE was roundly rejected by the students themselves, and we’ve already seen the fallout: the daily marches have for the most part resumed, much like the caustic rhetoric from both side as each accuses the other of bad faith. Yesterday, the entire Metro system was shut down after a coordinated smoke bomb attack.

Perversely, there’s a normalcy to all this Gong Show-iness, as though demonstrations, riots, street closures and metro shutdowns are part and parcel of  the coming very long, very hot summer in la bête noire province. Just like periodic language tiffs. Just like rampant corruption in the construction industry. Just like eye-bleedingly horrendous Éric Lapointe videos. (I warned you.) Ayoye.

And as bad as it is, the situation is actually worse than it appears. That’s because the government has, in the last round of negotiations, allowed the student associations a say over how the universities spend their money—a power the student associations themselves won’t likely relinquish in the future.

Though it was scuttled by the students, the deal hashed out last week will likely serve as a blueprint for  any settlement between the students and the government—which will come some time in the next year, Inshallah. It includes a clause by which an ”interim council” is set up to examine university expenditures, and apply the savings (if any) to a corresponding reduction in student fees, up to $125.

Notably, the counsel was to be made up six university rectors/presidents, four student representatives, four union people, two people from the business sector, one CEGEP rep, one ministry rep, one president and, while we’re at it, René Angelil, Sol the Clown and the ghost of René Lévesque.

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Deal on Quebec student strike fizzling

By Gustavo Vieira - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 10:12 AM - 0 Comments

A tentative deal to end the three-month long student strike in Quebec has so far received a strong rejection from students. On Monday, students in more than a dozen institutions had rejected the deal reached on Saturday, while student leaders accused the provincial government of claiming victory over the striking students. The leaders of the student groups also accused the Charest government of failing to include in the deal what had been discussed during last week’s talks.

Under the deal, tuition fees would rise by $254 a year but other ancillary fees would be reduced and a special provisional council, including student members, would be created to review university spending and curb extra fees students pay in addition to tuition. The vote on the deal continues in Quebec throughout the week, but the early votes indicate it will not put an end to the crisis.

From the Globe and Mail:

Leaders of the student movement demanded that the agreement be clarified to include the government’s verbal commitment, made at the bargaining table, that reductions in surcharges as well as all savings made by the universities would go to lowering tuition fees.

And they contend that the minister’s comments inflamed an already heated debate over an agreement which, from the outset, failed to meet the students’ demands for a freeze on the fee hikes.

“The comments made by the government have done nothing to appease the confrontation. That was not what we agreed to at the bargaining table,” said Martine Desjardins, president of the Quebec federation of university students. “It has contributed to sabotaging the deal.”

A note to violent student protesters

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, April 20, 2012 at 3:51 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Chiasson/CP Images

Dear Red Square Types,

I’m writing this a few hours after you wreaked havoc on Palais des Congrès where your nemesis Jean Charest was giving a talk about the Plan Nord. Congrats on busting open that fire hydrant; lord only knows that the streets around there needed a good soaking anyways. Also, nothing shows originality and righteousness like smashing windows. By destroying so much property, you’ve officially put yourself into esteemed company: you now have that much more in common with those bands of addled mooks who destroy St Catherine Street after a monumental win or loss by the Habs at the Bell Centre. And, like those brave souls who break windows and clash with police, many of you did as much from behind a mask. If only you’d steal a few dozen pairs of tennis shoes we really wouldn’t be able to tell you apart. Again, congrats. You’re as brave as your average internet commenter.

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