Ten years ago, a few student groups started a strike that snowballed to the point of spanning an entire spring and bringing down a government. The Journal collected the testimony of several outstanding figures of this historic movement, the effects of which are still being felt. Today, former student leaders tell how this period of effervescence transformed them.
A polarizing face of Maple Spring, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois believes that his role as a student leader was both an enormous privilege, but also a “great burden” to bear ten years later.
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Coming from a family of activists, it was only natural for GND to join the student association when he began his college studies.
At that time, the young man, having gone through private school, dreamed of becoming a journalist. He committed himself to the movement to “take care of communications”, but did not immediately grasp that with this task comes the responsibility of spokesperson.
Photo archives, QMI Agency
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, in June 2012.
Aged 21 at the time, the spring of 2012 would completely change his life.
“To go overnight from complete anonymity to public figure status, and add to that a very polarizing public figure status, it shakes a lot, it changes our friendships, our relationships with our colleagues. As a young man, it also changes the relationship with women. You suddenly become a person that a lot of people admire and […] that others deeply hate until they spit on you in the street. »
Errors
He admits that at times the situation was completely beyond him.
“There were a lot of moments of improvisation. […] I made mistakes, ”he admits, without expanding on the subject.
He also finds it difficult to judge harshly the activist he was, given his young age at the time.
“You’ve never been in front of a camera in your life, you’re always tired, because we didn’t sleep, we didn’t have a penny, we lived in student apartments…”
Photo archives, QMI Agency
Thousands of students marched through downtown Montreal in a nationwide protest against rising tuition fees, March 22, 2012.
A decade and a few gray hairs later, he nevertheless understands that he could have been portrayed as an “arrogant” character.
But despite the assurance he publicly displayed, GND had many moments of doubt. Every two weeks, he was convinced that their cause was going to fizzle out. He had many detractors in the population, but also within the broad Coalition of the Association for Student Union Solidarity (CLASSE).
A heavy legacy to bear
He will never renounce this role of standard bearer of the more radical wing of the student community, he assures us.
Now an aspiring Prime Minister, this past is no less heavy to bear.
“I have long wondered how I am going to do not betray this heritage. I also can’t help but evolve as a person just because ten years ago I was one face of a collective movement,” he insists, sitting on the couch in his office. parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire in the National Assembly.
A studious politician, GND is now known for his nuanced tone. A contrast he accepts.
“What I try to do is to find the balance between remaining faithful to the values that inhabited me at the time […] and give me the right to change as a person and to gain maturity and experience”.
The imminent arrival of her first child, whose birth is scheduled ten years almost to the day after the great mobilization of March 22, 2012 against the rise in tuition fees, is a significant coincidence.
Courtesy picture
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and his spouse, Maëlle Desjardins, are also expecting their first child in mid-March.
“It’s a symbol that moves me deeply. It’s a bit intimidating. Beyond [des incertitudes de la paternité], I know I’m in the right place at the right time. »
Silence among the Liberals
Do the elected Liberals under Jean Charest want to forget this episode of their passage to power? Former Education Ministers Line Beauchamp and Michelle Courchesne, as well as then-House Leader Jean-Marc Fournier and former political staff members declined our offer to comment on the events of 2012. Jean Charest n did not respond to our request. For his part, the former leader of the Quebec Collegiate Student Federation (FECQ) Léo Bureau-Blouin also declined our interview proposal, due to a duty of reserve in the context of his work.
Death threats to student leaders
Photo archives, QMI Agency
Léo Bureau-Blouin and Martine Desjardins, in May 2012.
Martine Desjardins was the victim of death threats at the height of negotiations with the Charest government.
“I had a police ghost car following me for a while,” she says. They ended up arresting the person. »
However, the student leader was only made aware of the threats and the increased security she was subjected to after the events, her team having deemed that she was experiencing enough stress during this period.
tough friends as guards from the body
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois was the victim of death threats and they attacked him physically. And the enemies sometimes came from his own association.
“I was physically shuffled, pulled from business, spit on in the demonstrations by parts of the movement who did not like me,” he recalls. To protect himself, two burly friends often accompanied him and acted as bodyguards.
“Freedom Convoy” and right to protest
While the “convoy for freedom” still paralyzes Ottawa, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois stresses that demonstrating is a fundamental right.
“I want to demonstrate these days in solidarity with the health care workers who have killed themselves, sometimes in the literal sense, on the front lines of the pandemic, and sometimes it comes to get me people who say that this is not Solidarity with these workers is not important. But I will always defend people’s right to express their opinion, their disagreement, even if I don’t agree with them. »
Jean Charest’s joke too much
Photo Chantal Poirier
The maple spring changed the trajectory of the life of Martine Desjardins, former president of the Federation of University Students of Quebec (FEUQ). We see her today with her little Charles, barely three months old.
As the mobilization crumbled, it was Jean Charest’s joke mocking the young demonstrators that breathed new life into the student movement in 2012, and which subsequently led to the fall of the Liberal government.
This is the observation of former student leader Martine Desjardins, ten years after the mobilization of thousands of young Quebecers who took to the streets to protest against the increase in tuition fees of $1,625 over five years decreed by Quebec.
After several weeks on strike, the cause was running out of steam. Faced with the hard line of the liberals and the multiplication of demonstrations which degenerated, a good number of students wanted to return to the school benches.
The prospect of failure then strikes Martine Desjardins.
“I had reports on what was happening on campuses and we were systematically losing our strike votes. […] I was really afraid that it would be over, ”recalls the former president of the Federation of University Students of Quebec (FEUQ), who granted us a telephone interview, her little Charles, three months, dozing in her arms.
Contempt of Charest
On April 20, 2012, she is traveling between Quebec and the metropolis. The demonstration that besieged the Palais des congrès de Montréal, where the Salon Plan Nord was held, turned into a riot. Windows are smashed.
Worry seizes Martine Desjardins. That’s when the Prime Minister, who is delivering an inside speech, indulges in a joke about the protesters.
“The Salon Plan Nord is already very popular, people are running from everywhere to get in,” says Jean Charest in a mocking tone, triggering laughter in the room. Those who knocked at the door this morning, we could offer them a job… in the North as much as possible. »
The young woman fumes. The students on strike welcome this statement as proof of contempt and take up the torch.
Of course, the adoption a month later of Law 78 restricting the right to demonstrate will once again put a spoke in the wheel of student mobilization.
But this special legislation will federate another movement, that of the saucepans, which will extend to all layers of society with a view to driving the liberals from power. A new impetus for the student cause.
Disagree with Marois
According to Martine Desjardins, the youth movement coupled with the population’s fed up with a liberal reign marked by stories of corruption enabled the Parti Québécois to take power in the fall 2012 elections.
Pauline Marois will however have to be content with a minority government.
Martine Desjardins also remembers a dispute with the former Prime Minister after the election.
“She accused us of having cost them the majority, the fact that they were too stuck on us. But we were convinced that there would never have been this transition, liberal to the PQ, if it hadn’t been for the student movement, ”she still firmly believes.
A feeling of pride invades the now 40-year-old woman when she remembers this adventure that will have changed her life.
Destined to become a university professor, Martine Desjardins will notably make a passage in the media as a columnist. PQ candidate defeated in the 2014 elections, she has since given up on politics.
She is currently the Executive Director of the Professional Federation of Journalists of Quebec.