QUEBEC — Beyond the nightly protests, smashed windows and systemic picket lines of the three-month long Quebec student strike, the province is facing a full-blown crisis that has become a springboard for a wider challenge of Premier Jean Charest's Liberal government.
"The tuition hike is the last straw that broke the camel's back. If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else," said University of Ottawa sociologist Diane Pacom.
The conflict — the longest student strike ever in Quebec — took a turn Friday afternoon as the government convened a meeting with the province's major student organizations and other players affected by the strike.
It was welcomed as a gleam of hope after weeks of very public battles and difficult negotiations.
It has been a dialogue of the deaf between the government, opposition parties and students associations who each held repeated daily news conferences to react to the other party's latest salvo.
And observers are now wondering how and when this will end since the government sees it as a tussle over tuition fees, while the students — and other activists — fight to shake up the province.
The students are furious over the province's tuition increase of $1,625 over the next five years starting in September. But even at $3,800 in tuition in 2017, Quebec would still have one of the lowest university tuition rates in Canada, which averages $5,400.
According to some, the sudden tuition hike in Quebec was perceived by students as a complete change of philosophy. Quebecers had been promised, since the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, that post-secondary education in the province would be free, or virtually free.
"What the students are up against is not just a price tag, they are questioning the philosophy of education put forward by the government, which is to say education is an investment and you have to pay your fair share," Pacom said.
This is exactly what motivates 31-year-old Melanie Millette to continue the strike. The doctorate student in communication at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM) said she wants the province to maintain accessibility to post-secondary education for students without forcing them into debt.
"I don't know of any student who is happy to be on strike. We want the conflict to end because we'll be the first ones to pay the price for the strike. But we're fighting for something that's bigger than us," she said. "It's an issue that concerns the society as a whole."
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the charismatic leader of the CLASSE, the most radical student association, promised last month the strike would lead to a "much wider, much deeper, much more radical challenge of the direction Quebec has been heading in recent years."
Pacom stressed that over time the student movement influenced other segments of the population to air their grievances with the governing Liberals, notably over continuing allegations of corruption in the province and where Quebec society as a whole is going.
"The protest movement is part of a wider phenomenon, such as the Occupy movement, that stems from a widespread discontent," added the professor.
The province's major unions are now backing the student movement and they have given their associations $60,000 to fund their strike.
The students also received money from outside Quebec — at least two Ontario branches of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) gave in April the Quebec student associations a total of $30,000.
Quebec union leaders marched alongside students at the annual May Day march in Montreal, and on the same day, a group of 200 Quebec artists tabled a manifesto backing the students' demand for a tuition freeze and calling for more social justice in Quebec.
The artists are just the latest of a series of groups, such as teachers associations and community organizations, to stand behind the students.
"That's symptomatic of Quebec. There is a certain element in Quebec of people who are disenfranchised. They responded to the Occupy movement, they're responding to this in a way that they are protesting society in general," noted Bruce Hicks, a political science professor at Concordia University in Montreal.
"But as this has gone on, it has attracted a more moderate element who are just upset about the general direction of the economy, society and lack of leadership and so on. Now it's taking on a more legitimate social movement approach."
Some people, including official opposition Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois, have dubbed the student strike a "social crisis".
"The government is losing control of the situation," Marois said recently after a night of violent protest in Montreal. "The tensions are palpable, we are on the edge of the cliff."
In the past week, the demonstrations have been calmer, but the situation is extremely volatile and many fear a new burst of violence.
Charest's government also found itself in a hard place after its last offer to students, including extending the hike over seven years instead of five and beefing up student aid, was shot down in flames.
"I don't see how this could end well for the government," political image specialist Thierry Giasson said.
"It's rare to see a crisis of such magnitude near the end of the mandate of a government," added Giasson, who teaches at Laval University in Quebec City.
Charest is in his third term as premier and is expected to call an election in the coming year.
There has been speculation that he is preparing to go to the polls and would use the student strike as an election issue. Charest vehemently denied it, calling it "grotesque".
But his Finance Minister Raymond Bachand said Wednesday the conflict between his government and students who have been protesting against a tuition hike will be resolved in an election.
Bachand told reporters the government's proposal to end the dispute, with more bursaries for low-income students, has resolved the issue of accessibility and it is "an illusion" that a negotiated settlement can be reached since students are inflexible about tuition.
"There is one place to resolve this," he said. "That's an election."
The PQ also called for an election to resolve the conflict and vowed, if elected, that it would not raise tuition fees more than inflation.
Meanwhile, Simon Groulx, a political science master student also at UQAM, said many students like him feel a responsibility to continue the battle.
"Activists before us fought for workers rights, women's rights, and all sorts of minority rights. They didn't win their battle by voting, they came out in the streets and made demands. That's how major changes happen," he said.
mwhite@postmedia.com
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