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Quebec student leader takes protest on road as group looks to create Ontario ‘strike movement’
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, known for his telegenic looks and refusal to condemn violence, has been recruited to teach Ontario student leaders about Quebec’s paralyzing student strikes, as Ontario students appear to be setting the stage for their own season of discontent.
The Canadian Federation of Students has organized and funded Mr. Nadeau-Dubois and other Quebec organizers to tour 10 Ontario universities for its Quebec-Ontario Student Solidarity Tour.
“We are optimistic that a general student strike in Ontario can and will succeed, given the right ingredients,” an open letter from Quebec activists to the CFS said, adding the letter “represents a first step towards creating a radical, democratic strike movement in Ontario and beyond.” (Photo: Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)
Montreal police arrest 12 as hundreds march in post-Grand Prix protest
Protesters sent a clear message Sunday night that while the Canadian Formula One Grand Prix may be over, their nightly demonstrations will continue.
After a weekend of violence and arrests that put Quebec’s student protests back on the international stage and brought claims of police “profiling,” several hundred marched in a downtown demonstration that almost immediately was declared illegal.
Windows were smashed, notably those at the offices of the Caisse de depot pension manager and at the National Bank.
A police cruiser was also damaged and police said they made 12 arrests — nine for bylaw infractions and three for alleged criminal offences, including assault. It was the 48th consecutive night that protesters gathered in Montreal. (Photos: Gazette; Reuters; AFP/Getty Images)
Quebec tuition protesters clash with Grand Prix partiers in Montreal
A group of activists, protesting capitalism in general and Quebec’s tuition hikes in particular, tried their hardest last night to crash the party on the Montreal street most closely associated with this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.
On one side of the barrier they shouted about injustice; on the other they sipped beer and wondered what the fuss was about.
Thousands of Formula One fans flock to Crescent Street each year for the expensive cars, the free swag and the popular nightclubs. It is the focal point for scenesters, for those looking to see and be seen.
A protest march that began near a community center in one of the city’s working-class neighbourhoods projected an altogether different ethos.
1,2,3,4, this is f—ing class war,” the crowd of several hundred chanted. “5,6,7,8, overthrow this fascist state.” (Photos: Canadian Press; AFP/GettyImages; Reuters)
Sid Ryan: The case for zero tuition
In Ireland, where I’m from, education is free from kindergarten through university. It seems absurd to me that we charge our young people any college or university fees at all, given that their skills and knowledge will propel our economy.
There are 20 developed countries in the OECD that currently charge zero or nominal fees for higher learning. However, here in Canada, free tuition continues to be treated like a radical idea, while the more than 150,000 students who have been striking in Québec for the past 15 weeks to stop fee increases have been chided by politicians and pundits alike for harboring a sense of “entitlement.”
Isn’t it time to consider free and universal access to college and university in the same way it universalized high school education at the beginning of the last century? Isn’t it time that profitable corporations were obliged by law to invest in workplace-based training such as apprenticeship and basic skills?
Lawyers take to the streets with students for Montreal’s 35th consecutive night of protest
As negotiations between student leaders and the provincial Liberals resumed in Quebec City Monday evening after a supper break, more protests took place in different parts of Quebec including Montreal, which hosted its 35th consecutive night of demonstrations.
Lawyers dressed in their courtroom gowns paraded in silence from the city’s main courthouse through the streets of Old Montreal to join the nightly march.
“It is one of the first times I’ve seen lawyers protest in public like this…and I’ve been practising for almost 30 years,” Bruno Grenier said outside the building surrounded by about 250 people, some carrying copies of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The lawyer said his colleagues wanted to show the public that they oppose a law they “find unjust and which is probably unconstitutional.” (Photos: Canadian Press/Reuters)
‘Arbitrary’ arrests being used to silence student opposition: Parti Quebecois
The historic scope of the unrest in Quebec was illustrated in surreal scenes and statistics Thursday: more people were detained within a few hours — at least 650 of them, in mass roundups — than were arrested in the entire October Crisis.
More than 2,500 people have been arrested in a months-long dispute that has catapulted the province onto international news pages.
That is at least five times the number jailed during the 1970 FLQ crisis that saw martial law declared in Quebec.
“That’s where the Quebec Liberal party has taken us: mass arrests, more often than not arbitrary ones, to silence opposition,” said Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois.
