Ten years after Maple Spring, student associations are once again fighting for free education from primary to university by organizing a one-day strike on March 22.
A dozen college and university student associations are calling on their tens of thousands of members to pound the pavement in downtown Montreal for free admission “at all levels of education”, a decade to the day after the historic demonstration by opponents the increase in tuition fees on March 22, 2012.
“It is high time to mobilize again to demand that education is not a consumer good and is free”, argue the instigators of the “large demonstration” of March 22, 2022 in a statement.
The General Student Association of Cégep du Vieux Montréal (AGECVM), the Faculty of Political Science and Law of UQAM (AFESPED-UQAM), the Faculty of Human Sciences of UQAM and the Anthropology student association of the University of Montreal are part of the lot. They will seek a strike mandate from their members in late February or early March. Together, they have the “willingness to continue the fight started in 2012”. “We have the power to fight for free education and against the commodification of education. Let’s lead this fight, ”they argue.
“We want to remobilize [nos membres] around the idea of free admission,” says AFESPED’s general coordination manager, Émile Brassard, during a phone call. “People get on board pretty quickly. We have associations from everywhere that are involved, ”he adds.
“We have to hand over the file [de la gratuité scolaire] forward because the situation has not been resolved [en 2012] », continues the acting secretary general of the AGECVM, Xavier Courcy-Rioux, in an interview with The duty. “Currently, there are students who are bullied because they cannot afford higher education,” he maintains. According to him, students should not be content with either indexing or freezing tuition fees. According to Statistics Canada, Quebec undergraduate students will pay $4,310 in tuition fees in 2021-2022.
No unanimity
Over the years, the General Student Association of the Cégep de Saint-Jérôme has obtained no less than “twelve mandates to provide free education,” says administrator Colin Rousseau.
However, free education is not unanimous among the student ranks. In the spring of 2012, the Broad Coalition of the Association for Student Union Solidarity (CLASSE) promoted it, while the Federation of University Students of Quebec (FEUQ) and the Federation of College Students of Quebec (FECQ) favored the freezing of rights of schooling.
At the end of the Higher Education Summit (February 2013), Prime Minister Pauline Marois had finally decided: tuition fees would be indexed to the annual increase in families’ disposable income.
Nationally, only the FECQ has survived the last decade. The FEUQ broke up in 2015, giving way to the Quebec Student Union (UEQ), which today carries the voice of a dozen university associations. The Association for Student Union Solidarity (ASSE) evaporated in 2019, amid disagreements between its members. Some of them said they wanted to think about a “new national structure”. But since, radio silence.
“Very, very preliminary” discussions were organized to give life to an “ASSE 2.0”, according to Émile Brassard, of AFESPED-UQAM. “We are still in debate to determine whether one is needed,” he specifies.
“Trough of the wave”
The history of the student movement is made up of “ups and downs,” noted former student leader-turned-MP Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “At the moment, we are in a trough”, observes the former spokesperson for CLASSE. “But I have no doubt that we will see a resurgence of student mobilization. »
Fifteen years ago, “GND” fought, he says, the tenacious idea according to which the engine of the student movement was flat after running at full speed in 2005 to derail the Charest government’s project to convert 103 million dollars of bursaries in loans in the student financial assistance program. Then, Maple Spring bloomed. The “tradition of Quebec youth to stand up to defend education” is “deeply rooted in the history of Quebec”, underlines the holder of a master’s degree in sociology.
“Extremely strong political moments then produce significant troughs during which it seems that there is nothing left. History teaches us that these troughs are limited in time. One day or another, sometimes at times when we least expect them, the mobilizations come back, ”explains the professor of philosophy – and veteran of student battles – Éric Martin.
realignment
Since the Maple Spring, the discourse of student federations has generally turned away from tuition fees to emphasize the protection of interns in the workplace, the psychological health of students… and the fight against climate change, for example. .
“Environmental protection is at the heart of student demands. We can think of GNL Québec: the associations were extremely involved in the mobilization,” underlines the interim president of the UEQ, Jonathan Desroches.
The fight for the accessibility of studies goes beyond the student bill, notes the president of the FECQ, Samuel Vaillancourt. In addition to urging the government to “improve financial aid for studies”, the organization fights against “systemic racism in higher education” and for better integration of students with disabilities.
Faced with climate change, “eco-anxiety is palpable among some students,” also raises Mr. Vaillancourt.
Environmental protection is at the heart of student demands. We can think of GNL Québec: the associations were extremely involved in the mobilization.
According to Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the mobilization for climate justice looks like a “germ of something that can look like 2012”. “We will not hide it, the pandemic has come to considerably reduce the mobilization”, he points out.
In his view, young people currently in high school, CEGEP or university remember from the spring of 2012 that it is “possible” to “not only stand up, mobilize, express oneself, but [aussi] to win “.
Éric Martin also believes that the ecological crisis could give rise to social mobilization on a scale comparable to that of 10 years ago. “If the disease is neoliberalism, it will continue to produce symptoms” such as plans to tighten the student financial assistance program (2005) and a marked increase in tuition fees (2011-2012) or a economic growth in defiance of the environment.