Canada, proteste, studenti
Gli studenti del Quebec cercano di allargare la lotta, ma i leader di CLASSE capitolano di fronte all’opposizione del sindacato
– Canada – Da metà febbraio oltre 100 000 studenti delle varie università del Quebec, dei CEGEP (due anni preparatori all’università, non hanno più frequentato le lezioni per protesta contro il piano del governo liberale di Charest di un forte aumento delle tasse universitarie, +75%, pari a +€200, per i prossimi 5 anni a partire dal prossimo autunno.
– Il movimento è andato via via ingrandendosi.
– In Canada gli studenti del Quebec sono quelli che finora avevano il minor costo per l’educazione post-secondaria, mediamente circa $2 519 annualmente che garantivano l’accesso a studenti di qualsiasi livello reddituale; dal 1994 al 2007 le tasse universitarie erano state congelate, poi il governo Charest ha introdotto un aumento annuale di $100.
o In Quebec le entrate dalle tasse universitarie rappresentano circa il 31% degli $850mn. destinati al settore. Secondo il piano del governo una parte degli aumenti andrebbe alla ricerca, una parte (35%) tornerebbe in forma di borse di studio agli studenti.
o Anche con gli aumenti attuali il costo delle università del Quebec nel 2016-2017 sarà inferiore a quello di 7 province canadesi del 2009-2010.
– Al secondo posto per costo di istruzione in Canada le università di Newfoundland e Labrador, con una media di $2 649 per anno.
– Le più alte tasse universitarie sono quelle dell’Ontario, aumentate negli ultimi 4 anni del 23%, da $5 388 a $6 640, per oltre 700 000 studenti a tempo pieno.
– Il movimento degli studenti ha come obiettivo ideale la gratuità dell’educazione.
o Il 24 maggio 2012 l’Associazione studentesca CLASSE ha organizzato a Montreal una manifestazione con decine di migliaia di studenti e loro sostenitori (300mila secondo gli organizzatori). 100 gli arresti durante la manifestazione.
o Durante la manifestazione del 21 luglio, nonostante fosse pacifica con la partecipazione anche di famiglie con bambini, la polizia ha improvvisamente circondato centinaia di manifestanti impedendo loro di uscire dall’accerchiamento e ha effettuato arresti di massa, (518); 176 gli arrestati a Quebec City; tutti incriminati di non aver rispettato la nuova legge 78, introdotta il 18 maggio in risposta alle proteste studentesche per limitare il diritto di manifestazione; per organizzare una manifestazione pubblica occorre un preavviso di 8 ore alla polizia e averne il permesso. La 78 sospende inoltre il semestre accademico e decide quando e come potranno riprendere le lezioni, vale solo per la provincia di Montreal, non ad es. per Ottawa.
– L’introduzione della 78 ha trasformato la protesta contro le tasse universitarie in un movimento più ampio contro la legge 78, perché limita il diritto di parola e di riunione.
– Wsws: Di fronte all’opposizione dei sindacati, CLASSE ha rinunciato ad ampliare la lotta che iniziava a coinvolgere il movimento operaio, se pur in misura limitata.
o Non è riuscita finora ad ottenere dal governo la revoca degli aumenti alle tasse universitarie, e della Legge 78.
o Nelle ultime settimane Classe ha posto come proprio obiettivo la sconfitta dei liberali al governo a favore del partito dei grandi affari, il Parti Quebecois (PQ), centro-sinistra, nazionalista per l’indipendenza del Quebec,
o rinnegando le precedenti parole d’ordine di “lotta sociale”.
o Classe ha deciso nel suo congresso del 14 luglio, che è più “democratico” “lasciare agli studenti” l’iniziativa di organizzare i prossimi passi della lotta, e non ha dato indicazioni per la riapertura del semestre invernale.
I sindacati hanno dichiarato che ottempereranno alla Legge 78, secondo cui devono sostenere il governo a obbligare a interrompere lo sciopero il lavoro insegnanti e altri dipendenti universitari e dei corsi pre-universitari.
World Socialist Web Site
Quebec students seek to broaden strike, but CLASSE leaders capitulate to union[e] opposition
– Tens of thousands of striking students and their supporters marched through downtown Montreal Sunday in a demonstration called by CLASSE, the student association that has spearheaded the five-month strike against the Quebec Liberal government’s plan to drastically raise university tuition fees.
Held in blazing heat in the middle of the traditional summer vacation period, the boisterous demonstration attested to students’ determination to fight for education to be a social right and the depth of popular anger against the Charest Liberal government.
– But the leadership of CLASSE offered no viable perspective for carrying forward the struggle under conditions where the strike has brought students into headlong conflict not only with Liberal government of Jean Charest, but with the entire Canadian ruling class, it courts and police.
CLASSE’s leadership claims to support a “social strike”—a larger protest movement involving limited worker job-action. But in the face of fierce opposition from the trade unions, it has for all intents and purposes abandoned its call for any broadening of the strike. Participants in Sunday’s demonstration were greeted with CLASSE’s standard protest refrain, “Shout louder, so no one can ignore us.”
– Its attempt to pressure the government into withdrawing the tuition fee hikes having clearly failed, CLASSE is increasingly adapting to the union-led campaign to divert the student strike and the broader opposition movement that erupted in response to the Liberals’ draconian Bill 78 behind a campaign to elect the big business Parti Quebecois (PQ). In recent weeks, CLASSE spokesmen have repeatedly indicated that they would view the defeat of Charest’s Liberals at the hands of the PQ—a party which when at last held office imposed the greatest social spending cuts in Quebec history—as a positive outcome for students and working people.
– Speaking at the conclusion of Sunday’s march, which culminated in front of Charest’s Montreal office, CLASSE spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, declared, “We are hundreds of thousands who dream of a better Quebec. We are hundreds of thousands who are determined to be rid of Jean Charest, rid of the Liberals, and rid of neo-liberalism. We are hundreds of thousands who want to give back the country to its people.”
– As was the case at the June 22 demonstrations in Montreal and Quebec City, CLASSE speakers made no mention whatsoever of a “social strike.” Nor did they clearly call for the student strike to continue when the three-month government-imposed “suspension” of the winter semester ends in mid-August.
CLASSE speakers pledged to support students should they choose to defy Bill 78 and organize picketing of strike-bound universities and CEGEPs (pre-university and technical colleges). They made no recommendation, however, as to what students should do when the government tries to resume the winter semester.
– This is in keeping with a decision CLASSE took at its July 14 congress that it would be more “democratic” to “leave it to students,” organized in their local student associations, to initiate the next steps in the struggle.
– The unions, meanwhile, have declared that they will obey Bill 78. This makes them nothing less than accomplices in the state suppression of the strike, since Bill 78 legally compels them to assist the government in forcing teachers and other university and CEGEP employees to break the strike.
As for the government, it is an open secret that it is using the lengthy suspension in the school term to prepare an unprecedented police mobilization.
Many workers participated in Sunday’s demonstration, but they did so as individuals. Apart from a bus-load of United Steelworker members from Toronto, there were no union[e] delegations whatsoever.
Yet even as the unions isolate the students’ struggle and pledge to enforce Bill 78, CLASSE’s leadership continues to promote them as allies of the students and the legitimate representatives of the working class.
Sunday’s demonstration was held under the theme “Out with the neo-liberals.” Many students and their supporters welcomed this, for they saw it as a broadening of the strike, with the struggle against the tuition fee hikes tied to a wider opposition to the ruling elite’s drive to dismantle public services though social spending cuts, user-fees, and privatization.
But this slogan clearly had a double-meaning which dovetails with the identification of the Charest Liberals as students’ principal enemy. Even more importantly, it is tied to the bankrupt reformist conception that the dominance of “neo-liberal ideology” is the result simply of greed—that the class war of recent decades is a bad policy choice not the outcome of the failure of capitalism; and that through protest the ruling class can be pressured into restoring the limited concessions it made to working people during the post-Second World War boom.
In line with this protest orientation, CLASSE continues to confine the struggle within the parameters of Quebec, depicting it as a “nationalist” struggle of the Quebec people, rather than part of a growing working-class led opposition to the drive of big business and its political representatives to make the working class pay for the capitalist crisis.
Only one of the three CLASSE speakers who addressed the crowd at the beginning of the demonstration made any reference to the brutal austerity measures being imposed by Canada’s Conservative government. None spoke of the growing working class resistance in Greece, Spain and around the world to the class war policies of the financial aristocracy, nor made any mention of the greatest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression.
The CLASSE speakers also made no mention of the PQ, a party that precisely because of the support it receives from the unions and residual popular illusions that it is a “lesser evil” has frequently proven better able than the Liberals to impose sweeping attacks on the working class.
FECQ and FEUQ, Quebec’s other major student associations, have, along with their mentors in the union[e] officialdom, long touted the PQ as an ally of the students. Prior to Sunday’s demonstration, FECQ and FEUQ leaders held a press conference to promote their call for students to focus their efforts on defeating the 10 sitting Liberal legislators who won their seats with the smallest pluralities.
“I think this movement woke a lot of young people up to the fact that we can affect changes,” said FECQ President Elaine Laberge. “Before we were stuck in this vicious cycle where we wouldn’t vote so we wouldn’t be represented and because we weren’t feeling represented we wouldn’t vote.”
While some FECQ and FEUQ leaders did join Sunday’s protest, they did nothing to build it. This is because they are determined to adhere to the letter of Bill 78. In a show of defiance, CLASSE refused to submit to the police for prior approval the itinerary of the Montreal march and a parallel demonstration in Quebec City. Police declared both protests “illegal” at the outset, but with thousands marching, chose not to take any action.
Supporters of the Socialist Equality Party intervened in the Montreal demonstration to warn that students’ courageous and tenacious five-month struggle is in peril and to fight for the relaunching of the student strike on a socialist perspective. They distributed more than 2,000 copies of a statement that read in part: “To prevail in their struggle, students must make their challenge to the ruling class’s austerity agenda explicit. They must broaden their struggle politically and geographically by making it the catalyst for a working class counteroffensive in Quebec and across North America in defence of all jobs and public services, and for the development of an independent political movement of the working class directed at bringing to power workers’ governments.
“Only the working class can break the stranglehold of big business over socioeconomic life by radically reorganizing the economy so as to make social need, not private profit, the animating principle.”
To read the statement in full go to Quebec student strike at the crossroads .
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Canada student protests erupt into political crisis with mass arrests
More than 500 people were arrested in Montreal on Wednesday night as protestors defied controversial new law Bill 78
Bill 78 places restrictions on demonstration rights and was rushed through by legislators in response to the student protests.
– Protests that began in opposition to tuition fees in Canada have exploded into a political crisis with the mass arrest of hundreds of demonstrators amid a backlash against draconian emergency laws.
– More than 500 people were arrested in a demonstration in Montreal on Wednesday night as protesters defied a controversial new law – Bill 78 – that places restrictions on the right to demonstrate. In Quebec City, police arrested 176 people under the provisions of the new law.
– Demonstrators have been gathering in Montreal for just over 100 days to oppose tuition increases by the Quebec provincial government. On Tuesday, about 100 people were arrested after organisers say 300,000 people took the streets.
But what began as a protest against university fee increases has expanded to a wider movement to oppose Bill 78, which was rushed through by legislators in Quebec in response to the demonstrations. The bill imposes severe restrictions on protests, making it illegal for protesters to gather without having given police eight hours’ notice and securing a permit.
On Wednesday night, police in Montreal used kettling techniques – officers surrounding groups of protesters and not allowing them in or out of the resulting circle – before conducting a mass arrest.
– Police immediately declared Wednesday’s protest illegal, but allowed it to continue for about four hours before surrounding protesters and making arrests.
– Martine Desjardins, who represents more than 125,000 students in her role as president of the federation of university students in Quebec, said protesters had been "peaceful" on Wednesday’s march.
"It makes a lot of people angry," she said. "We fear that tonight, because there will be more demonstrations going on, people will become a bit more violent, because as you saw yesterday, when you are peaceful, you get arrested."
– Police arrested 518 people at the demonstration, the largest number detained in a single night so far. Montreal police constable Daniel Fortier, who told reporters rocks were thrown at police, said most of those arrested would face municipal bylaw infractions for being at an illegal assembly.
"I was so so scared," said Magdalena, one of those arrested, who asked that her last name not be given. She told the Guardian that she had been taking part in the protests since February, and that Wednesday night’s action had actually seemed particularly peaceful.
– "This was one of the most jovial I’ve taken part in," she said. "We were commenting how in good spirits we were, how everyone seemed in such great energy. There were families, children, women with strollers, which you don’t necessarily see at the night protests as much," she said.
Protesters were allowed to walk freely and briskly through Montreal, she added, but that changed when they came to certain intersection, the pace of the march slowing dramatically. "We didn’t think anything of it," Magdalena said. "All of a sudden you just smelled tear gas and could see smoke, and people were running."
Magdalena said people from the front of the march came running back past her and her friend, who had been strolling with their bicycles. "We turned around and there was already a line of cops behind us. We tried to go on the other side but then there was cops there too.
– Police officers then tightened their ring around the "hundreds" of protesters, she said, not allowing anyone in or out. Magdalena said this situation continued for an hour, before everyone in the group was read their rights. After that, it was another "hour or two" before she was detained with plastic handcuffs and led to a city bus. She said they were then kept on the bus for "hours and hours" and were not allowed to go to the toilet. "I have some medical problems, and I wasn’t feeling well. I really needed some water and I needed some sugar, and they were really awful, they said they didn’t care," she said.
Magdalena said she was eventually charged with being part of an unlawful assembly, and given a ticket for $634, which she said she planned to contest.
– Protesters have vowed to continue the nightly protests that began on 14 February when Quebec’s liberal provincial government announced it would introduce tuition fee increases over a five-year period. The Quebec government’s department of education, leisure and sport says fees would go up by $325 (£200) per year for five years from autumn 2012, a total increase of $1,625.
The protests have resulted in a backlash against the Quebec prime minister, Jean Charest, who has refused to back down over the tuition fee increase, and the new law.
– Students have been boycotting classes over the past three months, arguing that the increases would lead to an increased dropout rate and more debt.
– In response to the protests, the provincial government rushed through Bill 78 on 18 May. As well as the restrictions on protests, it suspends the current academic term and provides for when and how classes are to resume.
Some student organisers said that the introduction of the bill, far from cowing the demonstrations, had actually brought more support for their cause.
Mathieu Murphy-Perron, who has been helping to organise demonstrations against tuition fees since last year, said: "I would say that I’ve seen more individuals come out and say: ‘You know what? I was neutral on the question of tuition fees, but to bring this draconian law has revolted me and I will take to the streets with you.
– "There have been more and more people who recognise that Bill 78 is a breach of the right of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and they’re not going to have it."
– Some legal experts argue that the bill contravenes Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms. Montreal constitutional lawyer Julius Grey told the Vancouver Sun that Bill 78 was "flagrantly unconstitutional". Opposition has come from the Quebec Bar Association and the Quebec human rights commission.
In an appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live in the US on Saturday night, the Grammy award-winning band Arcade Fire, who come from Montreal, wore symbolic red squares of cloth on their chests during their performance, in support of the protests.
Murphy-Perron said the red-hued, four sided shapes were visible "everywhere you go" in Montreal, adding that they show the "inter-generational aspect of this struggle".
"You see red squares on buildings, on homes, on children, on teenagers, on students, on bluehairs, you see them everywhere."
– Desjardins said that she and other student representatives will meet with the government next week in Montreal or Quebec City to discuss tuition fees – the fourth meeting since strikes began.
– In the meantime the daily marches would continue, she said, adding that protesters were also planning a protest in Ottawa, around 150 miles west of Montreal, on 29 May. Ottawa is in a different province from Montreal, and so safe from the clutches of Bill 78 – introduced only in Quebec.
"It’s something to ridicule the bill," she said. "If we are restricted to have a demonstration in Montreal, or in the province, we are going to go outside the province, to Ontario, and have a big demonstration there."
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
Quebec tuition fight about keeping education accessible, students say
By Claire Penhorwood, CBC News
Tens of thousands of students filled the streets of Montreal Thursday in a mass protest against a planned hike in tuition fees that they say will undermine Quebec’s long-standing commitment to keeping university education accessible to people of all incomes.
– The 75 per cent increase in post-secondary education tuition fees was included in the budget the Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest tabled Tuesday but has been anticipated for some time and had already been forecast in the 2011 budget.
– The increase will see fees for Quebec residents rise by $325 a year for five years, starting in the 2012-13 academic year and continuing until 2016-2017.
TUITION FEES Comparing post-secondary costs across Canada
– Joël Pedneault, vice-president of external affairs for the Students’ Society of McGill University in Montreal, is an active member of Quebec’s student movement and is helping co-ordinate some of the activities taking place Thursday.
– He says the biggest obstacle students currently face in their fight against fee hikes is getting the government to open lines of communication with the various groups protesting the increase.
– "Ideally, we are striving for tuition fee reductions and, possibly, free education; that has historically been the demand of the Quebec student movement," said Pedneault.
Even though the student groups hope the size of Thursday’s demonstration is enough to get the attention of the Quebec government, starting a two-way conversation on the issues may take some time.
– More than 100,000 students at several Quebec universities and CEGEPs, the colleges Quebec students attend for two years before entering university, have stopped attending class since mid-February. But the walk-outs, which continue to gain momentum, with student associations at more and more schools taking strike votes as the weeks progress, have done little to sway the government, which has urged universities to ignore them and continue business as usual.
Do you think tuition fees are fair across Canada? Take our survey.
"If the government does not agree to speak with us, then the strike will continue, and after six, seven or eight weeks of student protesting, the universities have to start making arrangements for prolonging the semester, and it becomes a very costly decision," said Pedneault.
– The annual $325 hike will result in an overall increase of $1,625 for Quebec students, who pay the lowest post-secondary education tuition in the country (see the chart comparing Canadian tuition rates at the bottom of this story). Currently, a year’s tuition at a Quebec university costs on average $2,519 (when fees for all disciplines are averaged), according to Statistics Canada figures.
– The second-lowest tuition fees in the country are in Newfoundland and Labrador, at an average of $2,649 per year.
– A post-secondary education in Ontario is the most costly in the country. Tuition fees in the province have increased from an average of $5,388 to $6,640 in the past four years, a 23 per cent increase for the more than 700,000 full-time post-secondary students in Ontario.
– Roxanne Dubois, chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, a nationwide organization representing university students, says the protests in Quebec are warranted given that the fee increases could threaten the province’s unique system of post-secondary education, which prides itself on its accessibility to students of all income levels.
"They are fighting to protect one of the most successful systems of post-secondary education we have in the country," Dubois said. "We are lucky enough to have a model that we can point to as something that recognizes that education should be something that should be available to everyone, regardless your social status."
Students have been demonstrating against the fee hikes since February, boycotting classes at several universities and CEGEPs. Here, students protest in Quebec City on March 1, 2012, holding a banner that reads, ‘Marching for the right to an education.
Dubois says it doesn’t make sense to jeopardize Quebec’s model in order to bring tuition in line with universities in other provinces.
– "The Quebec government is saying it must increase tuition fees to ‘catch up’ to other provinces and keep the quality of education at the expected standard," Dubois said. "This is backwards, because Quebec is one of the only provinces that has made it a priority to provide accessible education to its students and has had very good outcomes because of it."
– Students outside Quebec might look at the province’s low tuition costs and question whether the planned hike is really so unreasonable. However, a 75 per cent increase is a drastic jump for a province that has long enjoyed low tuition costs and had a freeze on tuition from 1994 to 2007, when the Charest government introduced a five-year tuition hike of $100 per year.
"If the tuition fees increases that are proposed go ahead, Quebec’s tuition fees will no longer be the lowest in Canada … They will be higher than those in Manitoba and Newfoundland," said Pedneault.
– The tuition increase is part of the Quebec government’s university funding plan, which will see a total of $850 million committed to university education by 2016-17, $320 million to maintain current operations and $530 million in additional funding. Tuition revenue makes up about 31 per cent of the $850 million.
– "Some of the additional money will be used to help the university with research and another part will be returned to the students through financial aid," said Ministry of Education spokesperson Esther Chouinard.
– According to the government plan, 35 per cent of the tuition increase will go toward student financial aid.
– The government has set limits on how universities can spend the $530 million in new funding: 65 to 85 per cent is to go toward improving the quality of teaching and research, 10 to 20 per cent is to be used to make Quebec universities more competitive with their counterparts in other parts of Canada and abroad, and five to 15 per cent is to be used to improve administration and management.
– Universities will also have to sign annual performance agreements demonstrating that they have distributed funding according to these targets.
– Compared to the rest of the country, even with the fee increase, Quebec tuition fees in 2016-2017 will still be lower than those paid by students in seven Canadian provinces in 2009-2010.
The government insists the fee increases are in the best interests of students and will improve the quality of the province’s universities. It says the fee hikes are a response to university administrators’ complaints about underfunding and rising deficits.
– The Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec, the organization that represents university rectors and presidents, has said Quebec’s universities are underfunded by $620 million, according to 2010 figures.
– But students say any benefits that might materialize from tuition hikes won’t be felt until years down the line.
According to Pedneault, the students who will be protesting Thursday are concerned about the effects the cuts will have right now.
– "If governments make the decision to increase fees on education, then they are making the decision to cut people’s standard of living, and that has really profound repercussions on people’s ability to make choices that make sense for them today."