The law and the demonstrations
Discussions continue at the National Assembly over the special law, Bill 78 – OpenFile has the English of it here.
Jean-François Lisée calls it liberticide. Josée Legault points out the risks of such repression. Ariane Moffatt sings about it. Thousands are marching.
Jack 00:50 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Off those three, give me Moffatt off key playing the ukulele.
Hamza 07:22 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Is this special law not unlike a Québécois version of Harper’s proroguing parliament? Tell me just one thing that’s solved by this dereliction of duty. Was not debate , just 48 hours ago, about wrongfully denying access to education?
St-Henri 08:13 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
This law isn’t repression unless you were already breaking the law. This is an ANTI-BULLYING law. You still have the freedom to march, to demonstrate, to associate, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press. There are no jail terms, there is no disbanding of organizations, there are no identity cards, there are no curfews. File your map before you demonstrate and leave the students who want to finish their education alone. If you want change then get your agenda put on the platform of a political party and elect them into power. The student unions have shown that they do not understand how their freedoms are supposed to work and now they are getting a lesson (for free) from an elected government.
Matthew 08:38 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Kate, respecting your wishes to keep everything positive, I deleted what I wanted to reply to Hamza. Instead I’m opting for something positive:
Hamza, thanks for all the great laughs over the past few weeks. Your comments, which I couldn’t disagree with more for the most part, are about the only thing that have put a smile on my face during these protests.
See everyone, wasn’t that easy?!
Anto 08:50 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Maybe the PLQ’s strategy will work in the short term with people who think a few broken windows is more important than a corrupt government. Maybe they’ll be reelected. But in the long term, all they achieved with the way they reacted to the strike, and now with law 78, is to create a new generation of activists who will remember 2012 for a long time.
Spock 09:31 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Its about time.
St-Henri 09:34 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Anto – Dealing with corruption of government officials is extremely important and urgently needs to be dealt with. Breaking windows of taxpayers and fellow citizens, delaying them on their way to work, threatening their children who want to learn, saying you want democracy when you represent a small proportion of your constituency and an even smaller proportion of the general populace is equally as corrupt and that is corruption that the special law is addressing. If you want I will march with you demanding a special law punishing corrupt government officials as long as we don’t break any windows.
Hamza 12:19 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
‘threatening children’ makes me think of reverand lovejoy’s wife.
Laugh it up while you can guys. Your smugness might just triumph this time but your generation’s clock is ticking. And we will remember
Bill Binns 12:43 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
@Hamza +1 for the Simpson’s reference but given what happened at UQAM two days ago, I think St Henri’s line was accurate.
This “our generation will remember and you will be sorry” line has been cropping up all over the place today. I doubt it. There is something about looking at your first few check stubs from your first real job and seeing in ink how much of your earnings are being handed over to “the people” that makes you feel like maybe you are doing enough.
Kate 12:55 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
It makes me sad to read anyone glorying in breaking the spirit of youth, but I’ve seen it on the blog and elsewhere in recent days.
Matthew 13:37 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
“your generation’s clock is ticking”. I am all of 25 and many of my friends have very similar views to my own on this issue. I am tired of the radical left acting as though they speak for everyone under 30. And yes, I use the word radical, because I know of several people who vote for the Bloc, NDP and Liberals federally who agree with Charest on this matter.
Josh 14:03 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Matthew, I agree. One of the most galling aspects of this protest movement (and other similar ones that have come before) is its tendency to speak as though they just assume everyone is on their side.
I remember at the Quebec City summit in 2001, a counter summit held by activists alongside the official one. The name of the counter-summit? The Group of Six Billion Summit. Talk about arrogance! I don’t remember voting for anyone who spoke there. That kind of arrogance shows up in lefty protests from time to time still.
Hamza 14:28 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Since agreeing with students is grounds for being a radical leftist, I’ll indulge in a little radicalism. But just this once.
Agreeing with Charest demonstrates a disturbing willingness to submit to authourity , regardless of everything the facts have demonstrated over these past months. The man pals around with people who take envelopes from the mafia, ruled for ten years over this province without dealing with the budget, taxes or the massive bureaucracy, wants to basically sell the entire north of the province to energy companies and is the number one reason that any of us are in this mess.
This is your hero? This is who you call your leader? Because the ADQ are wingnuts and the PQ are a joke, he’s gotten himself elected. Well done. Stephen Harper got himself elected too. Should we accept everything he says too? He’s our prime minister after all.
We as citizens do not have to swallow every bit of filth that emerges from the Assemblie Nationale. Dissent is democracy folks.
But no, somehow we’ll just all magically shut up , go to class (cancelled till August), pay our taxes and happily swallow everything else once this law passes. Just relax. Cool off. Quebec is fine. Trust in Charest.
Thanks.
Hamza 14:31 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
I’m 28, for the record, and Matt , if you think that everything that’s happened over the past two years, from Egypt to Occupy and now this, is just leftist nonsense, then you’re just as f’d as the older generation.
Matthew 15:12 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Hamza, wow. “Since agreeing with students is grounds for being a radical leftist”…first of all not all students think the same. Get that straight. And to compare the Arab Spring with a protest against a $250.00 a year tuition increase protest is deplorable. And thanks for the compliment, you reek of class…I mean CLASSE.
Matthew 15:26 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
PS I hope every single poster on this weblog has a great long weekend :). Digital group hug anyone?
Kate 20:23 on 2012/05/18 Permalink
Matthew, if you think the protests have only been about tuition, you’re sadly blinkered. There’s a much deeper criticism of socioeconomic trends going on.
Please don’t insult other commenters and please refrain from ordering people around.
Kevin 08:13 on 2012/05/19 Permalink
@Hamza
You’re fundamentally wrong on the Budget. The PQ made a series of budgetary decisions in the ’90s that are still affecting us today.
All that construction across Quebec and the deaths of several people when 2 overpasses collapsed: direct result of the PQ slashing Transport Quebec inspection budgets to the bone.
Can’t find a doctor? The PQ offered early retirement to doctors in the ’90s while pressuring the College of Physicians to limit admissions.
The PQ budgets of the 90s were short-sighted documents created with one goal in mind, and when that wasn’t achieved, boy did it screw things up for a generation.
But don’t worry too much about the Plan Nord. Newfoundland and Labrador has grander plans for its ‘northern’ development. SNC-Lavalin and other companies is in the process of building not just towns, but entire cities for miners and their families, on a scale about 10x larger than what Charest would like to see.