Demonstrations continue on 48th night
Mainstream overview of Grand Prix weekend says that one woman’s dyed red hair made police ban her from the race site.
There was a red-clad cycle protest Sunday and the 48th evening demonstration with plenty of police presence, followed by ten arrests according to a police tweet.
The race promoter is pleased about the outcome, which he should be: quoting Le Devoir’s account of talking to a cop on Île Sainte-Hélène Sunday: “Le SPVM, aujourd’hui, répond donc aux besoins et désirs des organisateurs du Grand Prix ? «Tout à fait,» dira le matricule 5323, le répétant fièrement une deuxième fois lorsqu’on lui redemandera.”
Hamza 05:30 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
It’s funny that the media is being censored to the extent that it is. We’re not living in 1972 guys. Charest is just Richard Nixon and Watergate all over again.
I mean, doesn’t the state realise that they are all going to jail sooner or later for what’s being done in Montréal?
I mean what Trudeau did in the October Crisis is rather tame to what’s gone on for the last few weeks. This looks like the death throes of a dying regime.
I have faith in my fellow Quebecers that this ugly time will pass and that our belle province will still be there.
Tyrannical governments always have a ticking clock above their heads. Patience and all will be right again.
Paul S. 07:39 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
The only thing the protesters are accomplishing is ensuring the re-election of Jean Charest.
Ephraim 08:58 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
Here’s the question… are the student demos even newsworthy anymore. It’s become the new norm. It’s boring. It belongs on page 7 or 8. It’s just not news. But I tell you what, it’s going to make a heck of a lot of people vote PLQ and CAC.
If Pauline Marois (being of the common people, NOT!) thinks that she’s so right, why doesn’t she offer to go in and negotiate for the students, she could do it from her $8 million dollar home, right here in the Montreal suburbs.
Of if the students are so right that the PQ will be elected, they should just accept the increase. I mean, the PQ has offered to roll it back.
Kate 09:20 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
Ephraim, rem acu tetigisti. Is there a political solution to the current crisis?
Proportional representation would be a start and if it were done in good faith, and people no longer felt their votes were a waste of time if they didn’t support the winner, I think we would rejuvenate hope in and respect for our political institutions. The problem right now is that a lot of people are not just sick of the Charest government but that a deep cynicism has set in about the power and the will of politicians to act in the best interests of, and in the name of, their constituents.
The problem here is that it’s always against the interests of a ruling party to bring in proportional representation. It would take a real leader with balls of brass to get the process started.
paul 09:38 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
Good post Kate…agreed. I would love to see more minority governments as they are typically more representative and accountable.
It is really a shame there is no inspirational leader (Obama, Nenshi) in place to channel all this tension and dissatisfaction into inspiration…
As pointed out above, I believe the Liberals will win solely on the back of the extremist protesters, and I can’t say that I blame them.
For me personally, I would much rather live in a police-state than have the protesters control the policies of this province.
@Hamza – ‘doesn’t the state realise that they are all going to jail sooner or later’…do you genuinely believe this?? It must be difficult to live in a world where everything is a conspiracy??
Ephraim 13:04 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
@Kate – Proportional has a LOT of problems. Take a look at Israel, Greece and the Netherlands. In the case of Israel, they have NEVER had an elected government, it’s always minority governments (probably because the threshold is so low and the fragmentation so high.) I would think we might do better with the Hare method than with proportional representation, because at least that way you have approval rather than tides, and of course you have to fine people for not voting, because not voting affects the turnout.
We also need a lot more transparency. For example, every time a mandarin has a meeting where lunch if paid, for the sake of transparency it should be published with the value of the lunch (not to mention that legally speaking in this province, the value of the lunch needs to be declared on their income tax form. But what can I say, RQ’s job seems to be to make a good citizen’s life miserable, they have no interest in going after their own mandarins.)
The current crisis is like all union business (from my experience being a member of a union), they promise you the world that they can’t deliver and they don’t know how to convince you afterward to buy what they managed to get. The problem for any negotiated settlement is you either need to create win-win or small-loss/small-loss. The students won’t get the government to back down from the increase, especially since the tax-payers don’t want them to. So the best bet is to actually find a way to get government money in a way that makes the government look good. I’ve said it before, the way to do this is to go after much more bursary money, more loans. The calculations on the bursaries are wrong and the indexation isn’t there, they need more money for the poorest of Quebecers and assurances that the amounts will grow as to not leave them behind. I would say to look for maybe $7 to $10 a day of living expenses during the school weeks (including weekends) plus the full tuition for those on the bottom rungs, index those amounts so that they never end up losing. Less for those with higher incomes. Bursaries, not loans. I would say to ask the government to provide deferred credits for tuition, maybe larger deferred credits, that are claimable over a 10 year period after graduation. Frankly, you could double them or even triple their value easily because of the number of students who move away and could never claim them. And the government could easily sell it as being a way to ensure that the money we invest in education stays in Quebec and the students become tax payers.
As for the universities, the students should look at indexed caps in spending. Which is in the government’s best interest anyway. For example total salary and compensation is at X and that’s indexed based on the number of profs. And that works out to X/Y where Y is the number of students, so you have an average income based on the number of students taught. Cap that in a way that a university can grow, but that they can’t drop golden parachutes without it costing them, instead of the public.
But I’m not on the negotiation team. And frankly, if I were the government, I would propose actually having the press in the negotiations, so that it’s transparent and everyone can see who is negotiating in good faith. If both sides are negotiating in good faith, there should be no problem to have the press watch, as long as the press is governed by not reporting until the end of each session or day.
Kate 13:16 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
At this point it will be difficult for both parties to get out of this standoff while saving face.
I think the government does have to come off its high horse. They need to address a number of educational issues and tuition is only the biggest one. The dropout rate from high school is still bad here, for example. Education has to open up – they want us in the workforce till we’re 67 now, which may be reasonable since we’re all living longer, but if that’s so there has to be a lot more mid-life retraining made easily available and a serious push to motivate employers to hire people over 45.
There’s talk about nobody going into the trades any more in Quebec. A push to train more women in those areas, retrain older workers to learn trades for which there’s a demand? Why not?
But the thing about the tuition argument is that overt dissatisfaction is now bigger than the initial issue. The regular demonstrations, the casseroles, aren’t about tuition any more, but about how wealth is being divided up and how social justice is being crapped on by neoliberalism. CLASSE is never going to get satisfactory answers on this from Jean Charest because Charest is never going to acknowledge that the critique is about anything wider than the tuition question.
Anyway, I like minority governments, because nobody’s ideology gets to dominate for years at a time.
ant6n 13:38 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
There exist mixed proportional systems that ensure both local representation and party representation. The resulting plurality of parties in parliament can be good – and a 5% hurdle would ensure enough concentration that there are less than 5/6 parties in parliament altogether. In such a parliament the parties have to form coalitions in order to govern, which is always based on making concession and compromises. If we had a coalition government right now, the student issue would’ve not gone this far – Charest’s macho politics are only possible because he holds a majority of the parliament.
Ephraim 15:30 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
@Kate You should see the waste and abuse in our education system. We could start small, but asking to close any school that doesn’t have a fully functioning governing board. See how quickly the principals of those schools manages to find enough people to get a governing board working. If I remember the numbers correctly from a few years ago, we have 6X the number of employees in our education ministry than Norway. We have 7,750,504 citizens and they have 4,885,240. And they have to worry about two different Norwegian languages, never mind ESL. You should see how long it takes the ministry to translate a course. They could hire someone via the Internet to do it in 2 weeks at pennies a word instead it can take 2 to 3 years to get it done. And if we didn’t have enough ministry employees, we get pseudo education government employees, like GRICS.
BTW in spite of what I am saying, the ministry and the school boards have a number of well funded “free” programs that will retrain people to fill jobs that don’t need university education. Many of which actually pay better than most jobs that need university. Some of the jobs include telephone and computer support, cabinet making, soldering, gardening, carpentry, electrical/wiring, home care and plumbing. Soldering is one of the top jobs, unionized, big pay and never seem to have enough employees. And most of these programs are set up to help high school drop outs get their high school leaving at the same time. And these programs have good bursaries and loans for people who need to retrain.
@ant6n There are, but you still end up with fragmentation and it gets worse over time. Do you vote for a party that represents immigrants, anglophones, social reform, fascists, conservatives, green, activists for the left handed, human rights, red heads, etc. Even the hurdle of 5% leaves a lot of people unrepresented… those who only got 4.9% for example. And with minority governments that don’t have a chance at majority, you are open to intimidation and blackmail, because you need the votes to get things done. (And when it all breaks down you run to try to form a national unity government, just to get something passed so the country doesn’t go completely down the tubes.)
It isn’t about Charest, it’s about the numbers, it’s about the Laffer curve, it’s the reality of it, we are milking the cow for too much milk. You can’t ask a population that went from 7.5% sales tax to 9.5% sales tax in two years to pay for University. It’s just not the time, you don’t have the political will for it. If it wasn’t Charest it would be Marois. It’s easy to be in opposition, you just say no to everything even if you agree with it. But when you have to balance the budget, you do what you have to.
Kate 23:10 on 2012/06/11 Permalink
Ephraim, I looked into retraining as proposed by Emploi Québec. I even spent several hours filling out, in French, a long form about my experience and skills and aspirations. The EQ woman was stunned – she’d never had anyone come back to her with such a professional-looking document. But it may not have helped, because it seemed to have the ironic effect of convincing her that I have too many chops to be given free retraining.
Anyway, I was not offered soldering. I wouldn’t be too proud to do soldering, except my busted depth perception means I’d be constantly burning myself and ruining stuff – this also makes things like cabinetmaking difficult, as I’d be a major hazard around power saws. Besides, they don’t offer these things to women. Day care or home care for the elderly is what was on offer, and me without a nurturing bone in my body.
Ephraim 06:18 on 2012/06/12 Permalink
@Kate EQ usually sends the schools the BS cases, they aren’t very efficient at it. But all the school boards and CEGEPs have the programs. And you better believe they offer them to women, there was a big push and bonuses for the schools if they brought more women into the program. Check out http://inforoutefpt.org/home.htm they have a list of all the programs and which school boards offer them. Most of the high school level programs allow people as young as 16 into them, with the voc.ed certificate, English, French and Math they also get high school leaving.