22:47 on 2012/10/21 Reply  

• Charles Lanteigne 00:14 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  Care to elaborate why? (I don’t care for zombies myself, in the same manner as I don’t care for vampires and werewolves.)

• Kate 08:20 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  I suppose it’s some kind of metaphor, and in the future some social critic will say something like “At the turn of the 21st century everyone was totally spooked by the environmental degradation all around them, but – unable to cope with the knowledge or process it consciously – many people simply mimicked the dead in public places, not with any specific political agenda but as a personal artistic expression of their fear.”

  But I don’t have to like it. We’re a long time dead, why mimic it now?

• jeather 09:21 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  This isn’t a terribly relevant place to put it, but using Firefox on Windows gets me stuck on your mobile site right now. I know you had wondered when it happened.

• Kate 09:22 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  Interesting. Can you see if you have any cookies from me and what happens if you delete them?

• Ray 11:30 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  Beats the hell out of protesting students!

• walkerp 11:31 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  Wow, the production values have gone way up since the last time! I guess that’s Quebec for you, always good for a show.

• Kate 13:07 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  I can’t agree with Ray. The student protests had a purpose and – have we forgotten already – toppled a government. The zombie thing (while it may have some weird zeitgeisty overtones as suggested in my faux quotation above) is just a sort of flash mobby exercise in group entertainment.

• Philippe 13:55 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  Toppled a government? Léger Marketing reported last week that a majority of people still favour the tuition hike.

• steph 15:49 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  Charest specifically said the student protests were the reason he called an election. He addressed that the protests weren’t only about tuition, but about bigger social issues. Yet you can agree with the tuition hike but disagree with how the Liberals went about it.

• jeather 16:35 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  By the time I came back — without even closing and reopening firefox — it sad solved itself. Have no idea what happened.

• Ian 18:51 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  @Ray – not to worry, though the “special law” from Charest has been repealed, Tremblay has kept his law against free assembly on the books. People are still getting busted just for being in demos, the cops will have lots of opportunity to practice using chemical weapons and their matraque technique on people simply engaging in legitimate protest.
  @Philippe – whether they favour a tuition hike is not the issue, it’s how Charest handled it. If you can’t see the casseroles and the students essentially forced Charest to look like an out-of-touch bully, you either didn’t spend much time in the city or you weren’t paying attention to what anyone other than the bought-and-sold news media was trying to pass of as the “word on the street”.

  It’s all very funny until there’s a cause you care about enough to protest, and the next thing you know, the cops are gassing & beating up you and your friends. I must admit that I was surprised to find myself in that boat at my age and station in life.

• Philippe 21:33 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  @steph: Charest hoped to leverage the student protests to win another election before the corruptions hearings sank his chances. Unfortunately for him, the students chose to return to class instead — against the CLASSE’s calls to the contrary. So in a sense, the student movement hastened the fall of the Liberal government — by failing to reignite in August as Charest had obviously planned. But toppling is not the correct word to describe it IMO.

  @Ian: The “city” voted Liberal. The ROQ sanctioned the Liberals largely for their cynicism and apparent corruption.

• Ian 22:20 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  @Philippe – Your part of the city, perhaps – mine voted QS.

• Philippe 23:20 on 2012/10/22 Permalink

  @Ian: And no Liberal incumbent was defeated in the exercise. All the red districts on the island stayed red.

• Ian 05:11 on 2012/10/23 Permalink

  @Philippe – Proulx and Bureau-Blouin beat Liberal incumbents in Laval. Charest lost his own riding in Sherbrooke. These are also university towns. You can stick your thumbs in your ears and sing as loud as you want but that doesn’t mean LA LA LA THIS NEVER HAPPENED.

• Philippe 07:31 on 2012/10/23 Permalink

  @Ian: A couple of satellite campuses, one of which (UQAM campus Laval) is limited to evening classes, do not a university town make.

  That a deeply unpopular government lost seats comes as no surprise, but there’s no denying the fact that the primary battleground of the student movement blithely ignored them on election day. There’s no compelling evidence that the student protests had a deciding effect on the outcome.

• Kate 09:46 on 2012/10/23 Permalink

  Philppe, I don’t think you can deny that the student protests helped force Charest to call an election as much as a year earlier than he wanted to. His government couldn’t go on without a renewed mandate. The students won their main original point with the rollback of tuitions. I don’t think they had a plan (nor is it reasonable for us to expect them to have had one) to influence the election or become more of a permanent factor in politics.

• Kevin 10:38 on 2012/10/23 Permalink

  I’m still waiting for the fury when the PQ announce that it will either have to implement tuition hikes or start drastically reducing university budgets.

• Philippe 10:51 on 2012/10/23 Permalink

  @Kate: I disagree, I think Charest called an election when he did because he hoped that by cultivating the conflict, he could win an election before the corruption hearings tarred him irrevocably.

  What reason did he have to call an election before it was known whether the students would carry the fight into having the session cancelled, other than that he hoped the conflict would resume in the midst of the campaign?

  Right now several apparently un-reelectable mayors (Montreal, Laval, Mascouche) are reminding us that clinging to power is in fact fairly easy (just don’t resign). The SPVM and protesters had their nightly choreography down to an artform with minimal damage to persons and property. Opinion polls consistently supported Charest’s position, if not handling of the crisis. A very liveable posture — if it were not for the Charbonneau commission resuming in September.

  @Kevin: Truly. I didn’t have high hopes for this government, but they’re downright impressive in their constant backtracking.

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