Looming election challenge in Quebec

Yaba daba doo! says one caption of this photo on the internet, which pictures Quebec Premier Jean Charest 

By Johan Boyden, Montreal
An earlier version of this article appeared in People's Voice Newspaper.

The community of Trois Pistoles along the northern banks of the St. Lawrence river is known for its picturesque beauty and historic links to Basque whalers, who travelled there hundreds of years ago from Spain.

Now it has become a symbol of the pre‑election polarization and fear‑mongering going on in Québec.

An ecological festival in the town, put on by community activists including some who have been fighting high‑risk shale gas development in the region, wanted to invite student leaders to speak at their event.

A storm of controversy erupted. Mayor Jean‑Pierre Rioux met with organizers and threatened to withdraw all funding. "Around here, people think that [student leader] Gabriel Nadeau‑Dubois is [...] like Maurice `Mom' Boucher" one festival organizer said.

Mom Boucher is, of course, the convicted rapist, drug dealer and murderer who leads the Montreal Hells Angels.

Québec's governing Liberal Party is expected to announce a provincial election, likely on September 4th (just before the return of the anti‑corruption commission that has implicated the party with Mafia kick‑backs through the construction industry).


While the province has been shaken by months of student protest that have witnessed a strong public outpouring of support for the students, particularly in working class Montreal communities, Québec elections are not held on the basis of proportional representation.

Instead, the riding system, divided along regional, economic and national lines, can craftily distort public opinion. Not to mention that elections are a multi‑million dollar horse race today.

Even though they have a nationalist wing, the Liberals are the only clearly federalist party on the political map. Going into the race they are "guaranteed" almost all the ridings in Montreal's West Island, where the Anglo minority will not consider a party leaning towards independence (or any other forms of sovereignty that could be guaranteed in a new democratic Constitution).

Of course, the unexpected can happen ‑ like the turn to the NDP by Québec voters in the last federal election. But that phenomenon was much more about a strategy to block the Harper Tories than a re‑evaluation of the national question.


Many commentators say the outcome hangs on ten or maybe just six ridings where the Liberals won by a whisker ‑ sometimes by a lead of one percent and less than a hundred votes. The Minister of Education has said she will not seek re‑election, no doubt expecting she would lose.

One hope of the Liberals is that the ultra‑right Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party will to cut into the votes of the pro‑corporate Parti Québécois (PQ). The CAQ's big idea is to put aside the "divisive" national question for several years and unite the right (federalist and nationalist alike, under a populist framework) to attack labour and social programmes -- an approach which has shown to be a clear "basis of unity" for cooperation with the Liberal government's anti-people attacks in the National Assembly.


Because of their links to the Quebec nationalist movement, the CAQ also pose little threat to the Liberal's voting base who view them with hesitancy. As if to confirm suspicions, the CAQ booted a right-wing businessman from its candidate list after he said the Quebec nationalist movement was racist against immigrants. 

The big Liberal guns are, therefore, turning to take aim at the PQ. One black-and-white attack ad -- already viral -- presents the leader of that party in slow motion, banging on a casserole, although Pauline Marois has officially put away her red square.

Some compare this ballot choice to the frying pan and the fire. The Communist Party of Québec is supporting the left-coalition party Québec Solidaire.

Low voter turnout will also help the Liberals, who are counting on their "law and order" or "strong leadership in a crisis" message.
Even the government`s own arms‑length Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission recently condemned the special law forcing the return of students to class this month, saying it was a violation of the fundamental freedoms safeguarded by the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. But Law 78 was always an election strategy, and there is a real danger it may bear fruit.

Which brings us back to communities like Trois Pistoles, where the militant CLASSE student union is compared to organized crime.

The CLASSE has been running a tour across Québec promoting their manifesto for democracy (see page 6), and weaving together the struggles of the people within the framework of defeating the Liberals. On July 22, CLASSE organized another mass demonstration, estimated at between 30,000 and 80,000 in size. (That same day, police arrested the two spokespeople of a student mobilization in Ottawa, including a member of the Young Communist League.)

The Liberals have asked the Director General of elections to investigate the students in case they are making election expenses.

The other two student federations have targeted specific ridings, basically advocating for the PQ. The past‑president of the college student federation will be a PQ candidate.

The election will be a challenge for the people's movements. There is a need to continue the mobilization in the streets while not falling into the "anti‑politics" trap of pretending the vote does not exist. Whatever the outcome, it should not be seen as a blank cheque for any party. This was the message delivered at a summer BBQ discussion organized by the Young Communist League of Québec (LJC‑Q) in late July.

The meeting heard a report‑back on a very successful ten campus tour in Ontario by Québec student activists including the leader of the LJC‑Q, Marianne Breton Fontaine, organized by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) Ontario. People chuckled when they learnt the National Post had labelled the tour a vector of the Québec protest "virus."

The tour was a concrete expression of solidarity by the CFS towards the Québec students. About a thousand students came out in total between Ottawa and Windsor.

Breton Fontaine will also be a candidate for Québec Solidaire in the Montreal riding of Acadie.

In addition to its own platform (which includes the elimination of tuition fees, public pharmacare, nationalization of energy, pay equity, and other demands) Québec Solidaire has responded to a call for a united front against the Liberals with their own two‑point proposal for an alliance: proportional representation and, basically, the abolition of the last austerity budget. Since this is also, on paper, the existing policy of the PQ, it could be the basis for a coalition or accord, but this is just speculation and the PQ have, so far, ignored the offer.

Marianne Breton Fontaine on the Quebec student strike

Rebel Youth shares here the speaking notes by Marianne Breton Fontaine and her contribution on the Student Solidarity Tour that reached out across southern Ontario campuses. Photo left: delegates from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the United Steelworkers join Quebec students at a major protest yesterday.

I was asked to speak about the context in which this strike was developed, because we cannot see the Quebec student strike in glass jar or, as we say in French dans une boulle de verre.

But if you are outside the strike and you just look at the corporate media, you could think that our strike is just the reaction of a bunch of spoiled students who do not want to pay even $1600 for their education – despite the fact that Quebec student`s pay less than in the rest of the country.

The front-page headline from McLeans magazine on June 4th presents that wrong understanding of the student strike very well: [The Quebec Student Strike.] "How a group of entitled students went to war and shut down a province, over $325."

Who are these students who want to keep such privilege in tough times!

The truth is that the student strike has arisen [...] in a very inflamed social and political moment. We are at the crossroads of many struggles right now across Canada.

Consider the Harper Conservative Budget, the Omnibus Bill C-38. [...] All these attacks together are what is being called austerity.

We are told that there is an economic crisis and we cannot afford any more social programmes that the people won, after struggle, in the past.

We are told the state does not have any more money.

This is exactly the message of the Quebec Bachand Budget, named after the finance minister who himself called it a radical change.

And it is also what people are hearing in Greece, Spain, Britain, and elsewhere.

But the economic crisis was not created by social programmes, or by the people.

To note one statistic, from the Montreal-based IRIS research group, in the last 40 years, Quebec corporations doubled their profits but paid four times less taxes.

Deeper than that there is a systemic problem, and I think we need to openly state that this is an economic crisis of the capitalist system.

We need to find an alternative!

The struggle of students is not just a question of having accessible education.

A few months ago, I interviewed Camilo Balesteros from the CONFECH – the Student`s Federation of Chile where the student have also mobilised in the street, with 300 000 gathering in the street of Santiago, fighting directly for free education, nothing less, and against one of the worst funded education systems in the world -- even high school is not free.

The Chilean students are now, for about a year and a half, in an ongoing series of strike and actions.

Camilo explained to me that their struggle could not be reduced to the demand of free education.

It could not finish there, and just let the government determine how to make free education happen.

It is a question of having the means to achieve free education.

So they struggled to change the Constitution to put the right of education into that document.

They also called for nationalization of natural resources, to have the wealth to pay for free education.

The Chilean students said these means that are needed to achieve accessible education are also the means that are needed to achieve the demands of other popular struggles.

By consequence, the student struggle is confronting directly the austerity measures and the social vision that austerity represents!

[...] Quebec students are not the only one to answer by taking the street.

The young people, internationally, have gathered great courage and risen up, redoubling their efforts to set aside their differences and fight together for a better world. Often fighting in more difficult situation than ours.

What is specific to Quebec is the combination of three factors:

First, the growing corruption scandals that have implicated the Charest Liberals (but also the Parti Québéquois) liking them to the Mafia.

Of course, corruption is not unique to Quebec, but the Liberal Party refused to have a public inquiry for over a year, despite a huge pressure from the public.

Secondly, the government has passed two austerity budgets forcing privatisation of public services, creating a Health Care tax of $200; reducing the envelop for the wages of public sector workers; promoting hazardous Shale Gas projects; initiating the in-famous Plan Nord economic development, despite the opposition of Inuit and First Nations communities and destruction of the environment; and of course increasing student fees.

And thirdly, the development of social and environmental movements by people’s forces to fight back against all those measures, like the Red Hand coalition built by student, labour unions and community organisation to directly to fight austerity.

This rapid increase in involvement by the people en mass in politics – beyond elections every few years – has scared the ruling class.
Take this statement from the president of the Employers Association in Quebec:
“Eventual elections will provide citizens with the opportunity to have their say in regard to the current debate and to decide the responsibilities of everyone involved. That is how democratic societies solve their conflicts and make their decisions - at the polls instead of in the streets.”
Stop mobilizing and just wait for the next election.  This statement is completely anti-democratic!

In fact in order to make gains, including at the polls, we have to go to the streets.

The anti-democratic Bill 78 was also put together in order to discourage any king of mobilisation, whatever it is the student themselves , or other organise groups like labour that would like to protest in solidarity.

It shows the fear of big business and the reactionary political parties faced with a population organising itself and defending its own social interests, because our struggle has opened the question of social transformation.

The student strike is by consequence, also a fight for democracy.

To stop this amazing mobilisation from the people, the Charest Liberal`s have tried to ignore the situation, hoping letting the movement will fall apart on its own accord; to intimidate, through legal injunctions, police violence and repression, and now Bill 78; and to divide the student movement.

To their credit, the two other student Federations have refused to negotiate without the CLASSE.
The Charest Liberal government, and its allies, has also tried to win the battle of ideas and convince the students and the rest of the population by saying that: a diploma is a personal investment.
According to this neo-liberal or big business logic, by paying more the student simply invests in themselves. In other words, a student becomes a product and education becomes a commodity, a privilege.
Instead of social solidarity, we have the atomisation of society – evacuation of all social aspects from education.
Can knowledge be a commodity?  Knowledge is perhaps the only thing – together with love -- that grows only when it is shared. The social tool for transmission of knowledge cannot be reduced to an individual investment.
In fact, there are two ways of viewing education.

What the corporations need, ie. a functional worker with a certain amount of training, or what the people want – education as a right.

Our public education system has developed out of this contradiction. Some people say – education is good for the economy. I would ask: whose economy?
Let me illustrate this point with some examples.
In 1966 the Parent Report fundamentally changed education in Quebec. For over a century the Québéquoise people had been second-class citizens in their own land.  We had higher unemployment, we lived in poorer conditions, we had poorer quality health care and higher rates of disease than the rest of Canada.
The majority of Quebecers did not know how to read or write. Except for some programmes in law and theology, we could not learn in French.
Education was dominated by the Church, women were not allowed in the vast majority of colleges, and there were few science and technical programmes.
But one the one hand the Quebec economy developed, and on the other hand people began to demand a better life.
The Quite Revolution exploded in Quebec society and at the core was the question of being ‘masters of our own house’ and French-language education.
An official commission was established and the resulting “Parent Report” secularized education and created the CEGEP system which is distinct from the rest of Canada, merging college with the last years of high school.
The Parent Report expressed diverging class interests at the same time.
The businesses needed a more highly trained workforce.
The people also needed to get out of the Dark Ages maintained by the ultra-right Duplessis government of the 1930s and 40s.
The Parent report proposed free education as an ultimate goal, to be achieved by freezing the tuition fees and reducing them when possible. The idea was to have the most accessible education system.
Quebec is today totally different. And our education system played a big role in our emancipation.
Free education would require less than 1% of Quebec`s budget and could be obtained by restoring the capital gains tax.
But the corporations do not want to pay the bill for education.
You can see this also with the report that just came out from the McGuinty Liberal government at the start of this tour proposing three-year degrees.
Are students over-educated? Maybe even with `unnecessary` degrees like philosophy or women`s studies?
Or do they have sufficient training to be employees – and the employeers, through tax dollars, will not pay for more?
I am reminded of another extreme example.
About a year and a half ago, I attended a conference in South Africa and met with a leader with the National Union of South African Students, which was an illegal organization under the apartheid system.
They told us that quality education was forbidden to the majority black population, and particularly for women.
For them, access to education could not be separated from their struggle for emancipation.
Education is freedom.
I personally think we have a lot to learn from the student’s of Cuba, who have won free education and demonstrated that there is an alternative direction, even for poor countries.
In closing, I wanted to say that your support and your red squares are very important for us.

Millions of people in Canada share our sentiment that education is a social good, it should be accessible, and it should be a right. Actually, a survey made by the Canadian Federation of Students showed that 83% of Canadians are for a freeze, and 37% for a reduction of fees.

As we go into August, we will continue to need your support – and your fightback.

Two lesson from the Quebec struggle might be important for you.

In Quebec the students have learnt a hard lesson in the power of unity. Over the past forty years, students hav ecollectively marched out classes eight times in a general strike.

While not all students hit the streets, so many acted together that, despite fear mongering by university administrations, they were not academically penalized.

All but one mobilization forced the government to back down.

But the one mobilization that did fail, in 1988, fractured the movement killing the l'Association nationale des Etudiantes et des Etudiants du Québec (ANEEQ).

The lines of communication between the Quebec student movement and the Canadian student movement were also broken, a unity based on equality and the recognition that the Quebec people were a nation, not just residents of another province, but that we had a common struggle.

We are rebuilding that solidarity now, twenty years later, and this tour is one step.
But coming back on the question of unity. Unity does mean to adopt the lowest position to make consensus, but to recognize our real opponents, to politically convince our potential allies, going beyond the campus.

And to get out of an economic discourse with demands that only speak to individual students.

By addressing the question of how to achieve free education, or even the freeze, we can outreach to other people’s demands and struggles, and grow the movement.

I think that even where the student leadership is reactionary, like the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, students on campuses can move into action if they can connect with the mobilization.

Perhaps the biggest lesson of Quebec is to have a plan of action of escalation.

The strike is the most powerful moral weapon the student’s have. But to get there, one day of action should be follow by another, then by an occupation, and a week of local action, a one day strike, etc.

It is militancy that won our current level of accessibility, not charity from the government. Victory through struggle is possible.

The Quebec Student Strike is not over $325, or $1600. It is not about numbers.

It is about what kind of future we have.

Ignorance, debt and more poverty?

Or bold, different direction that says education is a social right.

Democracy and Cuba

Members of the national electoral commission of Cuba

Agnerys Rodriguez Gavilán
Juventud Rebelde, Cuba

This Friday, members of the National Electoral Commission signed the official incorporation document during the ceremony held at the José Martí.

Balseiro Alina Gutierrez, president of the National Electoral Commission, issued the Oath of members of the highest authority that she encabeza.

"Our political system is the main achievement of the Revolution, from which all the others depend. To strengthen it is even more important now, when we are updating the economic model and adopting the necessary changes to improve Cuban society."

This statement was made on Friday in Havana, by the Politburo member Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, president of the Popular Power National Assembly, when he uttered the final words of the act of incorporation of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), and the taking possession of office of each of its members.

"I stress in particular, he explained, that these changes we are making in our model imply a role for the municipal assemblies of People's Power, and therefore for the colleagues who will be elected as delegates to integrate them."

In this way, towards the updating and improvement, the place and the scope for the general election process already underway are vital, and in particular the role of the NEC as its chief executive. In this regard, Alarcon said that all members will lead a process of political importance; it is no exaggeration if we describe it as a political battle that our people have to win once again.

To understand, he said, why it is a political battle, we must remember that in what is commonly known as the Bush Plan, the Plan for Assistance to a Democratic Transition in Cuba, a long chapter is devoted to the Cuban electoral system, and there the Americans are focused on these two points in particular, a new electoral register and, of course, promoting the organization of political parties to usurp the will that in our country each of the voters has been practicing in voting themselves, directly.

Someone might think, since this was a plan of George W. Bush, and Bush is no longer president, but he who replaced him has never said such a plan is not in force. He has done something more, it has been applied systematically and consistently.

As a recent and concrete demonstration that Obama is continuing to apply the Bush Plan, Alarcon referred to the communication that the current administration sent to Congress in which it says that, to the many funds that are used to try to undermine Cuban society to pay mercenaries working to end this democratic system, they have decided to add 20 million more, to be used, according to this communication, between now and September 30 this year, at the conclusion of the current fiscal year.

If the Bush Plan were implemented, the current system of automatic, universal, free and simple enrollment would be abolished, and take away from the people the unique ability to decide who the candidates would be and return to one of the saddest moment of our history. During the first U.S. intervention, precisely what it did was put an end to democratic practices exercised by our freedom combatants in the free fields of Cuba, making an electoral register which gained the congratulations from its military headquarters in the Pentagon, because the voters of Cuba had been reduced to a tiny proportion of the population, characterized by two things, which was white, and had above-average income people.

But, we, and you, have to defend our system with energy and force, he said.

In his view, effective participation and popular control are the essence of our political system and are key factors in this stage of the Revolution.

Returning to the responsibility of the members of the NEC, he said: "You have been appointed to undertake a task of great historical responsibility. It is your responsibility to ensure strict adherence to the principles and rules of this, our system, to promote the free, conscious and authentic participation of the people throughout the process. So, congratulations, but I also ask you to fulfill that precious duty that the country gives you this time. "

He urged them to work with zeal, dedication, to ensure that these principles not only to survive, not only develop, but are increasingly applied more rigorously, more exemplary, in the best way and with everyone, concluded Alarcon. (...)

In better organizational conditions

The country is holding the current general elections in better organizational conditions, said Homero Acosta at the opening of the act.

As part of the institutional strengthening and improving the state apparatus, he reported that in June last year the Council of State appointed a temporary work commission to create in time sufficient organizational bases for the electoral process, on which it has worked, in conjunction with other agencies, on among other things, the preparation of the electoral budget.

That same committee, he added, led the development of a software application that serves as a technical support for the elections, the draft regulations of the support structures of committees at various levels, and the proposed training plan for the electoral authorities.

"All this has allowed us to start this election process in a better organizational condition and more efficient in all areas," he said.

Video - education and social transformation

Rebel Youth magazine presents this video, by the Social Project of Toronto, presenting the speech of Marianne Breton Fontaine during the Quebec student solidarity tour.

Another day of protest - Photo essay

Another significant protest was held today in Montreal, with tens of thousands of students and their supporters in the street. The protest marked the fifth month of mass rallies in the student strike, since the first mobilization on March 22nd. It came on the eve of the return to class for Quebec students. For those who are interested, here is a schedule of the return to class in the colleges and universities where août is August. Quebec is heading most likely towards an election which will be announced in early August just as the students return to class, and the vote will be in early September.

Here we present a photo essay with images by photographer and youth activist Mathieu Breton, whose website is at http://quebecphotomb.com