An estimated crowd of 7000 people is demonstrating in Montreal streets Monday night. This Canoe piece talks about the bridge, but tweets are now talking about marchers in places as far afield as Westmount and Villeray.
Updates from May, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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I’ve seen all kinds of dark hints about the army being called in to deal with the demonstrations; Jean-François Lisée stokes the paranoia while others are dismissing it. At this point I’m not sure the rest of Canada would want to help pay the bills for Quebec’s problems.
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Alex L
It wouldn’t surprise me if they bring in the army.
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Faiz Imam
And do what? The student are holding no physical ground, there is nothing to protect or attack or disperse. There is no problem for demonstrators to just go home and come back the next day.
This is a police job and they are making a mess of it(as would be expected really…)
Unless we are talking real martial law, there is not much the army can do that the cops are not.
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Hamza
Bringing in the army follows the same line of thinking that loi 78 did – namely if you apply enough force, fear and violence against students , that they will abandon their beliefs, fall back in line and somehow magically everything will go back to the way it was .
You know , when this province just swallowed Quebec City’s filth and said thank you.
All the truncheons and tear gas and rubber bullets and tanks in the world can’t make 2+2=5.
Just cancel the tuition hikes and give us our peace.
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Spock
War Measures Act should be enabled, or its current name; the Emergencies Act.
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Bill Binns
I don’t see what the big emergency is with the nightly marches. Let them march until they wear holes in their sneakers. Follow them around and arrest the people who are violent, leave the rest alone. I’m much more concerned with the Metro smoke bombing, the violent takeover of UQAM last week, the arson and the blocking of schools than a bunch of children walking around the city blowing horns all night.
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Spock
Because they are a real pest. The Emergencies Act isn’t just for “emergencies” per say but also for anything that’s disrupts the social fabric and life, in general, that we need to establish normality.
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Hamza
normality is 75% increases in tuition, a mafia-funded government, universities handing out multimillion dollar golden handshakes to deposed presidents and rehiring them months later, the entire part of Quebec north of the 49th parallel to be converted into Alberta2 , the right of peaceful assembly made criminal , construction projects that routinely go overbudget by far greater amounts than anywhere in north America…
I could go on but needless to say normality is overrated no?
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Bill Binns
@Hamza – Normality here is also universal health care, a quality higher education system so cheap it may as well be free, one of the safest (the safest?) cities in N America, a functioning economy and generally good prospects for anyone who has even the slightest motivation to get off their ass and do something with themselves. Things are so good here that doctors and engineers from other countries come here to drive taxi cabs.
Things can always be better but we are not exactly living in Somalia here.
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Anto
@Bill Binns: So if forces are pushing against all these good things, little by little, when exactly should you start taking action?
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Stefan
@Binns
It is interesting that the aspects you compare in your argument only work because you seem to compare to the United States (if not Somalia).
I haved moved back to Austria, because I am afraid of this crappy health system. Education here is basically free from kindergarten to university and Vienna is much safer compared to Montreal, where innocent people can get shot by the police, or run over by drivers without any consequences. Aside from an economy in better shape, all these advantages seem to be the consequence of less rampant corruption. -
Stefan
From my personal experience it seems to me that a cultural emphasis of education (and not just simple formation for the industry) leads to a better understanding of society and how not to tolerate corruption, demagogy and so on. This is why I think free access to education is so important (and not just being seen as a return-on-investment).
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walkerp
I heard a theory that the cops are actually equally sick of the Charest government (they had their own labour issues) and the corruption and that they are deliberately taking it relatively easy on the students.
On a side note on the importance of education, one of Quebec’s big industries is videogame development. Quebec shines relative to its size in the industry because we have so much talent. This talent is the result of an excellent education and social system that produces disciplined and hard-working young workers who also have some global values, making them more than just code monkeys and thus making our product a much higher level and thus making our market more sophisticated and valuable than the kind of code and animation farms that you get in South Korea.
This isn’t just about social justice and wealth disparity. This is about the economic future of this province and choosing the correct strategies that will grow us long term. This is what Charest and his cronies are throwing away for short-term gain (and a minimal gain at that).
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Kate
so well put, walkerp!
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ant6n
@walkerp
Some would argue that the video game industry is only in Quebec due to big subsidies. -
walkerp
I’m not sure how that is relevant to my point.
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Josh
That’s kind of anecdotal, walkerp, and I question the value of looking at one particular employment sector. Any one of us could pull out statistics from other sectors of commerce and industry and show that other parts of Canada also produce things at a higher level than South Korea (or wherever) despite the low tuition in Quebec, or whatever it is that you think is responsible for the video game industry.
And ant6n’s point is totally relevant: Part of the reason for the thriving video game industry in Montreal might very well be subsidies from the provincial government. Are you able to deny it? (Genuine question – personally I don’t know the first thing about subsidies to the industry.)
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walkerp
Of course the videogame industry is subsidized, like pretty well all other industries in the province. My point is that we create employees here with higher level skills that perform well in a high-end service economy, which produces finished products rather than exports raw materials. This has always been a weakness in the Canadian economy and Quebec is one that has taken the lead in some areas, computer programming being one of them, but I believe also in pharmaceuticals and engineering as well. These people, as long as we keep them here (which is part of the reason the government subsidizes these industries) are very valuable to our economy.
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Kevin
I can personally attest to the benefit of provincial subsidies (although I prefer to say I’ve been bribed) in the pharmaceutical industry.
The problem is it doesn’t necessarily work. High tech, high-skilled industries are very mobile, because the *people* are the resource, and will go wherever the pay is better.Case in point: almost all pharma firms in Quebec have now closed because the subsidies from *other* state/provinces/countries got bigger.
It’s one reason I agree with the Plan Nord approach: if you want to make money from primary industry, you kind of have to do it here.
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Josh
Fair enough, walkerp. I just don’t think it’s a very convincing argument in support of low tuition. My point is that other areas of Canada can certainly point to areas in which they’re successfully turning out skilled workers. I’m not the person to make that case because I don’t have the expertise, but rattling off skilled industries that Montreal has a track record in is not in and of itself an argument in favour of the present higher education system in Quebec.
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The numbers are in on a Léger Marketing poll done since the adoption of Bill 78 about attitudes to the tuition hike, the bill and the mask law. Details of the questions asked are here.
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Nice piece by Mike Spry here: Quebec is the Canada we should want: There is a richness, a depth to Quebec that is evidence of not a culture of entitlement, but rather enlightenment. A lower drinking age, dépanneurs, a Francophone celebrity culture, successful indigenous film and television industries, cheese curds in gas stations, topless lunch buffets, a uniting affection for Les Canadiens, and, yes, a long history of social protest. All of these entities are elements of a people who make demands of their government and state, not for the Quebec they believe they deserve, but rather for the Canada we need.
Read, read. Also in French.
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Spock
Very endearing elements… :)
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Robert H
An excellent essay; irony of ironies, Quebec, the seat of separatism, is the most Canadian of all provinces in its conception of a government’s obligation to the citizenry, and Montreal the most Canadian of its cities in its coexisting, increasingly co-mingling franco-anglo-allo demographic vortex. We know all about what a corrupt, backward hell hole Quebec is, how we have the worst government, the most potholed roads, the highest taxes, the most chaotic society. We get to hear and complain plenty about that and we will continue to do so, because we aren’t naive, complacent pollyanas. But every now and then, it’s refreshing to be reminded why living here is so worthwhile, why we haven’t all pulled up stakes and moved to Calgary, Toronto, or Vancouver where as we all know, everything is just wonderful and money trees rain bills of large denominations on the locals. And it has even more to do with one’s ideals as it does with how much one has in the bank.
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Fella in Kahnawake grabbed a little video of that pair of fighter jets that’s been flying over Montreal lately. Is there a story about these that I’ve missed?
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Matt
Yeah! Saw them last week! Quite the lunchtime roar if you ask me.
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Ian
Saw one yesterday afternoon, I recognized the sound and went out onto the balcony just in time to see a fairly low flyover heading west. I’m curious, too.
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Kate
Someone on Twitter suggests it could be to do with the royal visit, but since they’re not coming to Quebec I’m not sure if that’s plausible.
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Spock
Its to blow the students up to smithereens :)
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Kate
You’re not amusing anyone but yourself, Spock.
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Tiger
I find Spock amusing.
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Tux
A friend of mine who’s an aviation nut tells me that it’s probably Air Force spring training.
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pat
They were too low for it to be training. I saw the mayor being interviewed at the cathedral in Old Montreal and noticed many cadets or military personel.
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Spock
Thats Tiger :)
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Kris
One yesterday around 1pm, one this morning 8:05. In 27 years living near Dorval, I’ve never heard such “spring training”.
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Asad
Two of them just flew over hochelaga maisoneuve region,…very low, loud and scary…..people came out in the balconies, ….birds flew off the trees….what the hell is all this for?
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Daniel
I’ve seen 15 or more so far . The first two I saw was about three weeks ago and the occurances have been increasing in frequency . Three days in a row now I’ve seen at least 4 each day . Today I saw 5 . What are we going to war or something ? They all seem to be heading north east .
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Linoue
Saw one yesterday and just saw 2 today fly over Verdun. Very loud and very fast. Very impressive these planes.
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CHRIS
I work near the drval airport and i was out for lunch today and 4 were taking off
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The Charbonneau inquiry opens on Tuesday, and with any luck will give news hawks a new topic to discuss.
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Raoul
you mean the hawks who work for gesca/powercorp? the hawk i understand, but the news? where were they last night…
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Kate
No Raoul, I meant news hawks, as in people who watch the news closely.
Plenty of news people were out last night. Some of them I’ve linked already. OpenFile’s Henry Gass filed a story, for example. But the best way of following the demonstrations is to follow #manifencours and #ggi on Twitter, where numerous journalists file live reports that are often much more informative than we see the next day in the official media.
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Raoul
news hawks = chicken hawks… easy to get them confused. But i was commenting on the MSM, not the indies
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mdblog
Isn’t news “junky” the commonly used term?
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Ian
Chickenhawks used to mean guys who picked up runaways at bus stations.
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Kate
Newshounds, OK? Sheesh.
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Description of the samurai exhibit open at the Pointe-à-Callière history museum (which, like all local attractions, has become much more expensive this year: $16 for an adult to visit with another increase planned for mid-June).
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Louis
Yes but the permanent exhibit “Ici naquit Montréal”, where you can visit the archeological site, is free for Montrealers till next May.
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A man was shot and wounded on the eastern lookout of Mount Royal early Monday; another man was stabbed down in the Quartier Latin around the same time. The death toll from the long weekend highways isn’t yet in.
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A brief heatwave is cooking the city on this long weekend – Sunday’s temperature matched the record for a May 20.
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There were more than 300 arrests Sunday night during the 27th consecutive march. CBC is headlining the story tuition protesters but the technicalities of school fees seems to be left behind in the general swell of anger against Bill 78. The Journal makes an estimate of 4000 people involved but the numbers in these night marches, with groups splitting up and merging, are harder to estimate than most crowds. La Presse’s Gabrielle Duchaine, herself arrested last night, gives her account of the scene.
Some ugly scenes have come out in video: a brief clip from CUTV showing a police car running over a person and fleeing the scene, another clip showing police constable 728 coldly pepper-spraying someone in the face at point-blank range.
The Globe and Mail talks about celebrity support for the protest and a brief article about the mayor merely suggests him wringing his hands helplessly.
People have started a blog called Translating the printemps érable to put some texts and statements into English with the explicit intent to “balance the English media’s extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Quebec.”
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Bill Binns
I love the term “printemps érable”. It neatly sums up how fake and empty this whole “movement” is. Paying university tuition thats cheap but not quite cheap enough is being compared to people who risked (or lost) their lives ousting dictators in the Middle East. Why not “Quebec Student Holocaust”, or “The Great Quebecois Genocide”?
I wonder what the people who are living in bombed out cities in Syria and eating their pets would think of the problems of the students of Quebec?
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Adam Hooper
The video you linked to does not show a police car running over a person, and the police announced hours ago that they did not run a person over.
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ant6n
Looks like a hit and run to me.
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Kate
Bill Binns, it’s a false dichotomy to say “things are much worse elsewhere, so nothing can be going wrong here.” One doesn’t have to be a radical to see that Bill 78 is the kind of move a politician makes when he’s completely failed at what politics is fundamentally about: convincing people you have the authority to lead a country (or subsection thereof) in a peaceful manner. Charest failed to talk when it was time to talk, he failed to negotiate when it was time to negotiate, and now he’s pulled out the truncheons and peace is breaking down.
I find Charest depressing, but it’s even more depressing that no one has appeared on the scene capable of commanding enough respect to bring some kind of truce to this situation.
There are a lot of quotes around about how if you don’t look after your freedoms they will be taken away from you. Thomas Jefferson has a nifty about democracy having to be watered with the blood of martyrs every generation. I repeat: comparing our situation to Syria or Libya is a red herring.
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Raoul
@Bill
So because 3/4 of the world have it worse, we should lower our standards? -
ant6n
@Bill
Here are some definitions from wikipedia/wikitionary:
Spring (political terminology) – “The term spring is often used to name periods of political liberalization.”Holocaust – “The annihilation or near-annihilation of a group of animals or people, whether by natural or deliberate agency; The state-sponsored mass murder of an ethnic group.”
Genocide – “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”
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Bill Binns
@ant6n – Seriously? You do not think the use of the term “Maple Spring” is an attempt by the students to draw parrallels between their anti tuition hike protests and the over throw of various dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen that have collectivly been reffered to as the “Arab Spring” ever since?
Really? This is just a coincidence?
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Raoul
Sometimes a name is just a name. and maple spring seems fitting with everything else going on around the world.
I hope this isn’t your only beef with the protest movement, cuz’ its pretty weak.
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Phil
@Bill: So your stance is, ‘well, other people elsewhere have it bad, so we should be OK with losing some of our rights and freedoms and social values.’ So because Egypt and Yemen are clearly suffering worse, we should be willing to allow a government to indebt us by billions via corruption, cost overruns and mafia involvement. And then allow them to try to ameliorate the deficit by squeezing money out of the ONLY fraction of the population that had NOTHING to do with the election of these groups or ANY of the problems facing the province?
I’ll go ask an Egyptian protestor whether I should be OK with my government doing the things they’re doing.
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Raoul
I think the whole point is to protest before things get as bad as other countries, not wait until we’re on par and then hit the streets with a much emboldened government and paramilitary “police” units.
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Bill Binns
@Phil – “So your stance is, ‘well, other people elsewhere have it bad, so we should be OK with losing some of our rights and freedoms and social values.’ ”
That is not what I said and I suspect you know it. What if I were to start reffering to the boycotting students as the “Quebec al-Qaeda”? I imagine that I would be (correctly) criticized for comparing a bunch of protesting students to a worldwide terrorist organazation responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.
Whatever this is thats going on in Quebec at the moment, it’s not comparable to the events collectivley reffered to as the “Arab Spring”. Not even close.
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Raoul
So whats your point exactly, or do you just want to argue semantics?
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ant6n
@Bill
The term “spring” is used to refer to many movements, some of which can safely desribed as revolutions. The term spring is broad enough to that it may be applied in this case, even if you use a more narrow comparison to the arab spring – it’s a movement, mostly by young people to get more participation in government decisions, which they attempt to bring about by prolonged protesting and utilizing social media. The “spring” phenomenon is not exclusive to the Arab world, it’s global, just like the depression of the youth is a global phenomenon.The point about genocide and holocaust is that there exact definitions, that involve the words state sponsored/deliberate/systematic klilling/annhiliation/destruction ethnic/national/racial group – and that is meant to be literal! The definition for ‘spring’, if there is any concise one at this point, doesn’t have anything like that at all.
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Adam Hooper
It’s not just Charest. The CAQ voted for Bill 78, too.
Politicians aren’t idiots: they’re smart, and they want to be re-elected. That means they’ll do what they believe their constituents want them to do. They won’t enact a repressive law without checking their facts first; they’ve probably pored over more poll results than are public.
This is where Bill’s argument makes sense: the Arab Spring did not fight democratically-elected governments.
Arguments about history, corruption, distant lands and individuals’ alleged ineptitude are all, in my view, red herrings. Someone could try to argue that our elections are rigged, but I believe that would fall flat. The entire tuition debate boils down to a simple question: what share of education costs do we want our students to pay? The majority answer to that question is more in line with Charest’s vision than with students’, judging by public polls, and it hasn’t changed in the past three months. Polls also suggest most people approve of Bill 78.
When protesters criticize Charest, they’re criticizing the majority of Quebeckers. Rather than say “Charest increased tuition too much and passed a repressive law,” let’s see how this sounds: “A democratic majority of Quebeckers encouraged Charest to increase tuition too much and pass a repressive law.”
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Raoul
Just because 25% of people were stupid enough to vote for him, doesn’t mean they approve of each and every piece of legislation that he passes.
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mdblog
The way that all of the supporters of the Student Uprising on this site are attacking Bill Binns, you’d think that they’re the one’s who are against the right to free speech and political liberalization in general. The man has an opinion, so just let him express it. It’s not like he’s out in the streets pepper spraying and running over protesters, ok?
If I understand my friends ant6n, Kate, and Raoul, I suppose that the gravity of the situation can only be assessed by those who support the uprising – because according to you three, these are the only people who are capable of objective. Got those blinders on good and tight? Applying the term “spring” to what’s going on here in Montreal does seem a tad bit pretentious but god forbid we try to put things in context.
@Kate: So now this whole things isn’t about tuition, and is instead about Bill 78, which was crafted in response to the tuition protests? What a mess!
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Bill Binns
I don’t feel like I’m being attacked. As an Obama supporting, anti-war, pro gay rights, pro abortion rights, pro gun control American I find it interesting to be in the Arch-Conservative roll here. I think the discussion is pretty civil here and rarely gets worse than snarky. I appreciate having access to people who are on the opposite side of the fence from me on some of these things.
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mdblog
Bill, I hope I’m not being called an arch-conservative! If I am, I have been grossly misunderstood. I like debate too.
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Kevin
@Kate
That’s the second time in as many days you’ve dismissed parallels with other movements. I don’t know why you find this protest action so unique that it defies all comparison.As for a leader, the only way one could arise is if the protesters recognized the elected government as being legitimate.
We don’t live in a dictatorship, our province is not going to hell in a hand basket, and to be honest, I think the people who started this mess walked into it with far more passion than they did reason.
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ant6n
What a lot of you people who have an exaggerated sense of the mandate that Charest has don’t realize is that you don’t lead in a democracy by taking your majority (whatever that is – 28%), and decide that in order to not inconvenience that majority you are going to make decisions and enact laws that are opposed vehemently by a large minority. The division that we see right now in Quebec is a result of lack of leadership that says “I have a mandate, I have a majority, and fuck you everybody else.”
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Spock
Maple Spring… That is a severe insult to the memory of the thousands that were murdered trying to free the Middle East of American imposted tyranny.
Shameful to associate a “student” strike to the murdered martyrs and symbols of freedom. Shame, shame, shame.
Not to mention pathetic.
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Josh
@ant6n: He should govern as though he has just a minority then?
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ant6n
He should try to build the minimal consensus that results in the large minority not going out on the barricades – despite popular belief, the students are not completely unreasonable.
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ant6n 22:26 on 2012/05/21 Permalink
Seems they walked up Cote-des-Neighes (heard them around Sherbrooke). TVA rumors about them wanting to visit Charest’s house in Westmount.
Ian 22:30 on 2012/05/21 Permalink
BY following twitter you can see there are a bunch of different groups, but they are already in westmount – the riot cops are holding a line at Victoria #manifencours
Robert 22:58 on 2012/05/21 Permalink
I can hear the chopper overhead in ndg close to Decarie boulevard. Maybe Charest can finally discuss the matter in person with the students?
Spock 07:25 on 2012/05/22 Permalink
Call in the army :)