An Angry Ex-Quebecer's Rant about Student Protestors

In Montreal there’s a student protest group called ASSÉ (Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante and, as a double entendre, means "enough" in French) whose latest antics involved pelting riot police with beer bottles because their deeply indebted provincial government had the audacity to consider raising their tuition, which is already the lowest in the country, by the unreasonable sum of 70 dollars a year and 3% per year thereafter. No, none of that was a prank. It’s not a hidden camera Just For Laughs gag that has waited a few months too long to let us all in on the joke either, and it’s the latest bit of slapstick political comedy to come out of Quebec since the PQ has come to power. That said, as a former Quebec resident myself, I can’t help but get extra-angry about this destructive show of confusing activism.

Since part-time work apparently became extinct sometime in the last ten years in Quebec, it has become nearly impossible for students to come up with the roughly 2,200 dollars a year it costs for the privilege of a post-secondary education (no, it’s not a right). Although Quebec is struggling with the highest debt of all the provinces after decades of having their pockets picked by the mafia, student protest groups such as ASSÉ are not only adamant in their defiance of the most minimal of tuition hikes, they are actually pushing for free tuition.

The ASSÉ movement had been taking to the streets whenever a Liberal so much as mentioned the word ‘tuition’ since 2001 when they formed in Sherbrooke; a town in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, of which the only childhood memories I have are the Hells Angels compound on the way in, the putrid smell from the toilet paper factory throughout the town, and the relief of leaving it in the rear-view on the way to the greener pastures of our dilapidated cottage on Lac Miroir. ASSÉ promotes “free education at all levels and for all, abolition of student debt, conservation of quality post-secondary education and the democratization of schools while opposing education commoditization”, which is a somewhat respectable and noble cause, except when the question is raised of coming up with the money to fund this post-secondary utopia.

After digging around for some kind of answer (they have to have a plan, right?) I couldn’t track down much information from their French-only website. After firing up Google Translate, I figured out that the only document tagged to include free tuition information says that it’s “important for ASSÉ to allow a greater number of international students and international study in Quebec as an equal with students residents in Quebec. We wish to diversify their sources and application of free education to complete these and those, for reasons both economic and social, and in order to build long-term a better society in Quebec and elsewhere.” So apparently their strategy is to let all of the non-French Canadian students pay for their education.  And the mainstream media isn’t much help at answering this question either. This piece from CTV simply just says that ASSÉ believes free tuition is “reasonable and affordable.” Really? Is it at all possible for the most indebted Canadian province to give out free education exclusively to its native residents, paid for by the rest of the province’s students?

All of the misguided activism came to a head in the spring of 2012 when the students took to the streets to protest the Liberals latest proposed tuition hikes in order to “put public finances on a more sustainable footing, while guaranteeing better-funded universities.” The media hopped on the season-themed protest moniker bandwagon and the event was dubbed the “Maple Spring”, because this is fucking Canada, so of course we need to squeeze some syrupy iconography in there. Now, the proposed tuition hikes were quite high, but still nothing a summer’s worth of work couldn’t cover with cash to spare for all the smoked meat your heart could handle. So along came election time, and the Liberals were run over by the PQ who ran on the promise of a tuition freeze, then a pissed off Anglophone shot up the victory speech, and Pauline Marois is now too busy poring over the logistics of how to get Quebec out of Canada to do anything right.

The PQ came through on their promise, which got the heat off their backs long enough for them to get to the important things, like increasing the budget of the OQLF by 6 percent so that they could effectively sweep any evidence of a culture other than French-Canadian existing in Quebec under the rug, then acting surprised when they get a little bit overzealous with the xenophobia. Oh, and they took the Canadian flag down in the Quebec legislature and replaced it with the Fleur-de-lis, because if they can’t actually have a referendum then they’re at least going to make-believe, goddamnit.

The PQ finally kicked off their long-anticipated education summit recently, and ASSÉ has told Pauline Marois that they refuse to participate unless she promises to entertain the silly notion of zero tuition, which is totally not what they agreed on beforehand, but whatever, right? So now the main association in the protests is refusing to cooperate in the discussions that they fought so hard for, and Quebec is stuck with a referendum-crazy, anglo-bashing government that can’t seem to stop making an ass of itself. At least the Canadiens are on top of the Eastern Conference (for now) and if you’d excuse me, I have to celebrate last night’s win against those insufferable Leafs.

Watch:

Teenage Riot - Montreal