MAPLE SPRING, THE SEQUEL
Crowds heap scorn on Marois, Péladeau, Couillard and Legault
University and CEGEP students protesting against the PQ government’s 2014 budget marched through downtown Montreal on Thursday despite the fact police had declared the demonstration illegal. The march was organized by Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante.
As they wove through gridlocked cars and buses downtown, then through Old Montreal and back downtown again, it was clear the thousands of students that joined the anti-austerity demonstration Thursday wanted to flex their protest muscles, left idle over the last 18 months.
“Who does the street belong to?” shouted one. “To us!” the raucous crowd responded.
For many of the demonstrators and journalists and no doubt law enforcement too, there was a sense of déja-vu going back to the so-called Maple Spring of 2012. Then, as now, demonstrators wore red squares on their lapels and backpacks, drummers drummed, and a helicopter hovered overhead, as groups of riot police watched and waited.
But a lot has changed since the last time this many protesters took to the streets, leading up to the last provincial election.
Then, they wanted Jean Charest’s head, and were driven first and foremost by the singular goal of stopping the tuition hikes the former premier had planned.
Now, the person these same students helped get elected in Charest’s place is in their line of fire — along with most other politicians — and the students want so much more.
Posters made by the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ) in preparation for the event depicted Pauline Marois, Finance Minister Nicolas Marceau and Higher Education Minister Pierre Duchesne with red eyes under the slogan “Traîtres chez nous,” — Traitors in our midst — a play on Maîtres chez nous, one of the PQ’s slogans. About 60,000 students went on strike Thursday, ASSÉ spokesperson Justin Arcand told the crowd.
But Marois’s star candidate, former Québécor president and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau, was also jeered and sneered at by this anti-capitalist crowd, as were Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard and Coalition Avenir Québec’s François Legault.
For students carrying placards demanding more social housing, lower electricity costs, less surveillance, no pipelines or oil exploration, and an end to cuts in social services, all three leaders were one and the same.
“They are all right wing and they all want to privatize,” said Nicholas, a law student at Université de Montréal, who didn’t want his last name used for fear of being fined for participating in an illegal dem- onstration. (The police declared it illegal before it even began.)
“And they all want to make the poor pay more, instead of the rich.”
In 10 years the Parti Québécois’ indexation of tuition fees will amount to the same increase planned by the Liberals, he said.
Shanie Gamache, who was one of the 17 people arrested outside the Palais des congrès in 2012 is more concerned with the environmental challenges facing Quebec, and the lure of petro-dollars in Anticosti, for example.
“I think (students) have understood that we have power, and we can express ourselves,” she said. “But they also understand that we can’t trust any politician more than another. ... It’s good to see spring is back, and we’re still fighting.”
Whether the students will be heard is another matter.
Several groups of protesters carried banners to discourage students from voting. “There is no electoral solution to the social question,” read one banner. “We don’t vote, we fight.”
But others vowed they would make their vote count, as it did in the last election. Only this time many said they would be voting Québec Solidaire.
“I’m going to vote and fight,” Nicholas said.
By the end of the march, police reported that two people had been taken to hospital with minor injuries and six people had been arrested — one for a municipal bylaw infraction, and five for criminal acts: two were “preventive arrests”, said Montreal police spokesperson JeanBruno Latour, one person was arrested for possession of a sharp object, one for armed assault, and one for damaging an electoral poster.