Students occupied the Montreal offices of Quebec premier Jean Charest and finance minister Raymond Bachand last week in a show of mounting discontent over a proposed tuition fee raise.
On March 24, students occupied the ministry of finance’s office, said
Hugo Bonin, a student who attended the protest. He estimated that 100 people were present.
About a dozen students entered the office. Bonin said a security guard pushed one student into a glass door, and another student was injured by the shards strewn over the floor.
“Six out of seven of UQAM’s student unions agreed to hold a day-long strike on the 31 to attend a massive protest,” said Bonin in French.
Over 2,000 students attended the protest on March 31, which ended in a sit-in in front of Charest’s office.
A group separated from the rest and kicked in the glass doors of a government building, according to CBC news.
Montreal police arrested five people and had to use tear gas to push back the protestors. Two police cars were vandalized, CBC reported.
Raymond Bachand, Quebec’s minster of finance, announced March 17 that the province would raise tuition fees by $325 a year, according to The Globe and Mail.
The planned increases would bring tuition to $3,793 in 2016. Currently, Quebec students pay $2,168 a year.
A third protest took place April 3 in Boucherville, east of Montreal, this time organized by the fédération des étudiants universitaires du Québec (FEUQ). Around 200 students gathered in front of the Mortagne Hotel where the Liberal Party of Quebec was holding a conference, said Louis-Philippe Savoie, the president of the federation.
“We proved to Charest’s government that students can and will mobilize and will continue to do so until the government agrees to our demands,” Savoie said in French.
The FEUQ will continue its protests until the government re-instates the tuition freeze, Savoie said. Quebec put into place a tuition fee freeze in the mid-‘90s in the hopes of increasing enrolment, but the freeze was lifted in 2007.
In addition, Savoie said the government should provide students with better financial aid.
Savoie said his organization will continue to hold protests. They will discuss future actions at their upcoming general assembly in Rimouski. In October, they plan to protest at a Liberal Party conference, Savoie said.
On March 31, Minister of Education Line Beauchamp said the protests would not change anything because the government had already made its decision, according to Bonin.
“We have heard that line before,” Savoie said. “It’s an unacceptable decision.”
“We have changed their mind in the past, in 2005 when the government tried to cut student loans,” he said.
That year, when Charest announced the province would cut $103 million from the grants and loans program, a wave of protests rocked the province from February to April. In April, the government announced that it would reimburse $70 million taken from the program that following year, as well as grant $103 million the next four years.
Savoie said the current strike may or may not be as big as the one in 2005. “It depends on the students’ associations,” he said. “Students will keep protesting to make the government back off.”