Once again, the boycotting students took to the streets of Montreal last night in protest of tuition hikes. Once again, Montrealers are subject to broken glass and a shattered downtown core. And once again, the student leaders of the organization refuse to take any responsibility or action for what they have unleashed on our beautiful city.
The protests were initiated over a proposed tuition hike of $1,650 over the next 5 years, which would still make Quebec's tuition among the lowest in Canada. Initial claims in favour of the strike made by the students were over the notion of accessibility to education, and how the tuition hikes would be yet another unjust obstacle for children from lower income families trying to attain post secondary education.
However, it then became quite clear that the link between accessibility and tuition is not as linear as the protesters made it out to be. If that were the case, then Quebec should boast the highest graduation rate and university attendance among the provinces, since we offer the lowest tuition, and Ontario should have the lowest graduation rate and attendance. The opposite is true. Ontario enrolls more students per capita in post secondary education and graduates more students at the university level than Quebec.
Ok, on to the next. The students then started to claim that this wasn't solely about education, this was about an entire corrupt government system they were trying to overhaul and overthrow. Fair enough. I don't think a single Quebecker would disagree with the dire state of corruption and politics in our province.
The students were trying to unleash their own "Printemps Érable" or "Maple Spring." Never mind the fact that comparing themselves to the people of countries such as Syria is grossly hyperbolic at best and denigrating at worst. The striking students refuse to stand for government mismanagement of funds. Ah yes, the students are the true fiscal conservatives, simply looking out for the hard working tax payer, trying to make sure that tax dollars are put to good use.
One student site put the cost of the strikes at $104 000 per hour.
It would seem perplexing then that none of the students have spoken out against how the strikes are themselves adding to the unduly burden to the already over taxed tax payer. No, that would be too logical. Instead, the students claim that the onus is solely on the government to surrender to the demands of an effective fringe group.
Yes. Fringe group. The number of post-secondary students in Quebec is roughly 460,000 and of those, roughly 165,000 are striking. An even smaller percentage of those students have either turned to violence and insist on an unabashed level of demagoguery that has effectively hijacked this movement.
The striking students would be best to distance themselves from their so-called leaders in this lobbying effort, as these leaders have done nothing but hurt their cause. C.L.A.S.S.E, the most militant of the student groups, has systematically refused to condemn the protesters' violence and terror tactics. Moreover, they are the ones who are responsible for shutting down negotiation talks with the government yesterday, by refusing to abide by the 48-hour truce. In blind solidarity, the other student groups, FEUQ and FECQ left the table, only to blame the government.
Considering the last two protests have turned violent, one would think that the students would be the first to distance themselves from those who are hurting their cause, and reclaim the protest as peaceful. Once again, it would seem as though militant political rhetoric supersedes common sense.
The students must realize that their public support is waning. Nobody likes daily metro interruptions, traffic jams and vandalized property, and that is exactly what the student strike is becoming synonymous with. If the students wish to be taken seriously, they must seriously reconsider their representation.
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Canadians simply cannot sustain this much debt, with a tenuous global economic and financial system, a bubble in the Canadian property market, and a reliance on resources that you're pulling out of the ground, while polluting your own soil, air and water.
What are you going to do when technology reaches a point (robotics and automation will make millions of jobs redundant over the next decade and beyond) where there's no jobs, and those students have ridiculous debts that they simply can't pay off? You haven't seen riots yet. When that happens, this will all seem like a picnic.
If you wish to be taken seriously, you should stop thinking that your personal and trivial inconvenience is more important than everyone's future. This is about much more than student debt. Bill 78 was written to effectively quash protests, making Quebec even more of a police state than the US. You are on the wrong side of this argument, and the wrong side of history.
As a law student, you should know better.
as for everybody here ranting and raving, here are some facts about how good Quebec has it:
your government loans and bursary program is unmatched anywhere in the country, where up to 60 000 of family income is considered as receiving no parental contribution to education. which means free money from the government for the vast majority of people
tuition and accessibility has no link. so stop using that as an argument. if that were true then Quebec should be boasting much higher post-secondary attendance and graduation rates. education has largely to do with culture, which is why university education is so prevalent amongst Asian minorities, they have a culture that puts education above all else.
the negotiations with the government stopped b/c the "student leaders" walked out of the negotiations.
Truth is, Quebec does not consider Canada, let alone the US, as a model.
Whether you are for or against the tuition increase, there has to be a dialogue. You may say that the tuition fees are low but they represent a 75% hike. Contrary to other provinces, only families who make less than 35,000$ per year are eligible to a student loan.
My 2 kids have $30,000 and $11,000 student debt but they agree that some increase in tuition fees is necessary to maintain the quality of our education system. But they also ask that the government better manage its education budget. There has been multiple examples of mismanagement that made the news in recent years. The government has to do its part too. It has closed the door today to negotiating and has lost my support.
Guys, not to sound insensitive, but that's nothing. Seriously. Compare that to the hundreds that get thrown away on "smart phones" (and their attendant contracts), iPads, laptops, not to mention the cost of those mocha grandes from Starbucks, and it doesnt take much to see that cutting a few corners off things like that would allow you to save the needed money.
That's the way the world works, by the way. Better to find it out now so that you get used to the idea of actually saving for something important than racking up a lot of debt that's gonna cost far more on the installment plan.
And know what? *Everyone* is going through hard times now, not just you. A lot of us are living cheque to cheque and have no real savings to fall back on because we got slammed in the recession. So sorry, no sympathy. If you cant save a thousand dollars in five years, then you need to readjust your spending priorities. Give up the beer, for one.
note how some of them openly want to overthrow the "capitalist" system. as if quebec can even be considered capitalist...
For example, after tuition fees were deregulated in Ontario, the median income of the families students came from jumped from 80 000$ to 140 000$.
Furthermore, I think the numbers of students are misleading, for a simple reason... English-Canadians are much more likely to leave their home province to study than Québécois. So if the biggest and most renowned universities are in Ontario, these are going to draw young people from Manitoba, New-Brunswick, Saskatchewan, etc... This artificially inflates the amount of 18-24 year-olds present in the provinces with these universities. Same thing with Nova Scotia, Newfoundland only has one university and so has PEI, NS has 11, it's likely a lot of Altantic Provinces' youth go to Nova Scotia for studies.
As most people in Québec speak French and French universities are a rarity outside Québec, the same dynamic isn't true for Québec.
also, keep in mind the generous bursary program in quebec compared to ontario.
and the reality is, that the majority of university goers are already from high socio economic background, which is why maintaining low tuition across the board makes even less sense, so you just argued against your own point.
Second, the budget of the OQLF is less than 20 millions a year. That is peanuts compared to the entire government budget.
Third, why are anglos such one-trick ponies about Québec politics, always bringing things back to the language laws? Face it, gone are the days where the English-speaking minority could lord over the French-speaking majority and force them to learn English to get jobs, to shop or even to know what public signs were saying. Get over it.
I'm francophone, was deprived of learning English b/c of Bill 101 but then went to English CEGEP and learned the differences of Eng and French values.
Waste is waste. Decreasing the OQLF budget is a start. Or maybe decreasing the powers of unions...but oh wait, they're funding this movement, and they're in bed with the PQ.
And your comment is just a testament that this movement is just backed by francosupremacists and separatists.
Now that this situation has been (partly) reversed, you want to throw away the policies that made the change possible?
Plus, Miss Dwivedi would clearly not know how to manage a problem with financial impacts on any kind... What she is saying is like, for example, you have a piece of machinery that you know for sure is going to fail but you are not doing anything about it because stopping the machine to replace that piece would cost 100 000$ per hour. FAIL... because when that piece breaks, it's going to break other piece too which will undoubtably cost a lot more and take a lot more time.
All I see here is poor analytics, poor management thinking and lack of judgement. I pity the law firm that will one day hire Miss Dwivedi.
besides, her point is that the students claim to be concerned about the cost to the middle class and yet are rampantly costing the middle class much more via their tactics.
So many people jump on others who do not support the strike, and yet what are they doing to try and be heard? evidently walking the streets with the people who are breaking windows and jumping on cars is not going to serve the purpose. And you act like writing a piece about how acting violent in this case is bad. Do you think 'fredcarle' that these actions are justified??? no? ok, so then you agree with her statement.
As far as I can tell, "Miss Dwivedi" wrote and OPINION PIECE, and was not shoving her opinion on ppl's faces.
You also equate thinking that violent means are inexcusable to condoning any action taken by the police. You're right, many that were arrested did not even commit violence, but so what about the guilty ones? do you think throwing a rock into shop windows is helping their cause? do you think it tells government that they are rational, and ready to talk? no. it screams: we will do anything to get what we want and are not willing to compromise.
Like I said... those who where arrested are not necessarily students. All she does is generalizing and this, a thing that is done by close minded journalism.
Sorry if you felt offended by my judgement of her opinion piece. I'm not a student, I have an above average salary and I didn't pay for my tuition fees because I had good grades (I studied in Ontario) and I still feel that Dwivedi showed a lack of judgement and poor analytics in her article. She reflect the poor journalism that we see more and more everyday in the mainstream media. And I hate to see this in the HuffPost that I love to read.
I may be an idiot... but I'm an informed idiot with an open mind an very very good analytics skills ;)