Debunking myths about the Quebec student strikes

Denise Martins, right, at an interview with members of Concordia TV.

Denise Martins
Reprinted from the Ontarion

May 22 marked the hundredth day of student strikes in Quebec. The following list of myths and facts will hopefully uncover the truth behind the recent student demonstrations.

I recently spent three days in Montreal with a group of student journalists working around the clock to learn more about the truth behind the strikes.

MYTH #1

Quebec students have nothing to complain about because they have the lowest tuition fees in the country.

This is one of the most propagated myths of the strike. The fundamental flaw of this myth is its failure to analyze why Quebec fees are so low. The freeze in tuition fees, along with many other victories, are the result of mass mobilization on behalf of the student movement. A ten-year freeze was won in 1996 through a student strike in Quebec, and an attempt to convert student bursaries into loans in 2005 was stopped the same way. Students in English-speaking Canada have long been able to point to the Quebec model of accessibility where students graduate with a debt a fraction the size of those in other provinces. The erosion of Quebec students’ right to education will hurt our ability to demonstrate that alternatives are possible.

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Five thoughts from Quebec on organizing student strikes

McGill student holds up a red square.

by Jamie Burnett
Special to Rebel Youth

Jamie Burnett is an undergraduate student at McGill university in Montreal, a founding member of Free Education Montreal, and a former Student Society of McGill University Director. When McGill refused to accept student referendum that voted 65% in support of continued funding for the Quebec Public Interest Research Group, students occupied the 6th floor of the James Administration building for a week in February to demand that the administration uphold the results. Jamie helped lead the occupation and then fought hard to win a General Assembly at McGill where he helped present a strike vote on behalf of the students. Although the vote did not pass, ten other student associations did go on strike at McGill. Jamie has been actively involved in the major student strike of 2012 and an student activist since he was in high school.

I thought I'd put together a few ideas about how to organize strikes in English Canada, specifically Ontario. I'm basing this on my own experiences doing student strike organizing at McGill, as well as conversations I've had with close friends and comrades involved with strike organization at Concordia, UQAM, several CEGEPs and elsewhere. I don't want to suggest that social movements can't be predicated on creativity and new ideas, but there are a lot of really good ideas and a lot of really terrible ideas that make the difference between a movement that can be effective, and one that can't be. I've tried to be as concise as possible while still providing background information.

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Neet -- or a lost generation?

The number of young people without work in the world has grown by four million since 2007. Millions more “disconnected youth” have given up the job search altogether. The global youth jobless rate this year remains stuck at “crisis peak” levels and won't likely come down until at least 2016, the International Labour Organization predicts in a grim outlook on youth employment published this week.  Of chief concern are young people who are neither in employment, nor in education or training – dubbed NEET in many countries. Canada is not immune. The country's unemployment rate for young people is 13.9 per cent and the 15-to-24 age group has seen little employment gains in the past several years.  Broken down by province, the highest youth jobless rate is in Newfoundland, at 20.2 per cent as of April (according to Statistics Canada's CANSIM data). Nova Scotia's jobless rate for young people is 19.6 per cent – the highest in a decade. Ontario's rate is 16.4 per cent.  (There are almost a million (904,000) NEETs in Canada.)


Source: The Globe and Mail, May 23rd.

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Venezuela’s new labour law “first in transition to socialism”

Pedro Conceicao,
People's World

In what Venezuela’s government described as the “first law in the transition to socialism,” President Hugo Chávez has signed into law new comprehensive labour legislation. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans marched through the streets of Caracas on May 1, International Workers’ Day, to commemorate the signing of the historic document.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans marched through the streets of Caracas.
“The triumph of the people, of the workers, has never come about without a long process of resistance, of struggle, suffering even. This law, which I will have the honour of signing ... is the product of a long process of struggle,” said President Chávez.

The legislation reduces the work week to 40 hours and seeks to abolish private sub-contracted labour in the country, which the state views as an exploitative practice and relic of neo-liberal policies of the 1990s.

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Quebec Law 78 is a dangerous club to beat the people!

Hundreds of thousand of demonstrators march in the streets of Montreal on May 22, defying  law 78
in what is being called the largest civil disobedience action in Canadian history

The adoption of Bill 78, May 18, 2012 by the corrupt and reactionary government of Jean Charest (with the support of the ultra‑right party, Coalition Avenir Québec or CAQ), will go down in Canada and Quebec`s history as one of the most serious attacks against civil liberties, fundamental rights and democracy in general.

The attack in Quebec on freedom of speech, assembly, and the right to organize threatens the people across Canada.

We call on labour, students, popular movements and all democratic‑minded people of Quebec and English‑speaking Canada to unite and fight for the preservation of our democratic rights and against Bill 78. A unified and coordinated resistance is the only effective way for the people of Quebec to repeal the Act and to make a break from the policies of austerity,privatization and higher fees. We call to intensify mobilization efforts to organize a general strike in Quebec.

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Campaign aimed at justice for Australian Aboriginal youth

Aboriginal dancers in Australia lead a protest march at a rally to mark the twentieth anniversary 

of the handing down of the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Kirstie Parker
Koori Mail 

During the past decade, Aboriginal imprisonment rates across Australia have skyrocketed by more than 50 percent – to a point where Aboriginal Australian adults are 13 times more likely to end up in jail than the rest of the population.

And Aboriginal Australians now account for about a quarter of the nation’s overall adult prison population, despite making up less than three percent of the broader population.

The situation is so dire that advocates have pleaded for the reduction of Indigenous incarceration to be added to official close-the-gap targets.

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Bahrain struggle continues

Emile Schepers
Peoples's World

Dissidents continue to organise protests against the government of Bahrain, a Persian Gulf kingdom known for its pearl fisheries but also for its large scale oil production and its hosting of the US Fifth Fleet.

Bahrain is an island of 1.2 million inhabitants off the north coast of Saudi Arabia, to which it is connected by a causeway. The tiny kingdom has been the focus of a power struggle between its two important neighbours, Iran and Saudi Arabia, with the latter being backed by the United States.

To understand what’s going on, a little history is important.

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