National Assembly, May 18, 2012. Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois enters the Parliament Building for “the first or second time”, only to come out a few hours later “crushed by a special law”. He is convinced that Bill 78, passed under his indignant eyes, will break the general strike which had broken out three months earlier.
The co-spokesperson for the Broad Coalition of the Association for Student Union Solidarity (CLASSE) sits on one of the folding seats of the opposition platform to watch, helpless, the final act of the A 20-hour parliamentary “play” which will culminate with the adoption of the legislative text of 37 articles. A constable spies on his actions. “I was right above the Liberal ministers, literally. Besides, I didn’t see them, I heard them, ”he says almost a decade later.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois remembers the “breaking applause” from the Liberal MPs after each of the speeches made in support of the bill to cut Maple Spring short. “There was something triumphant about the elected Liberals at that time,” remarks the former figurehead of the students opposed to the tuition hike, turning his gaze once again to the past.
May 18, 2012, around 4:45 p.m. The Deputy Government House Leader, Henri-François Gautrin, maintains that Bill 78 rearranges the school calendar, in addition to reaffirming the “fundamental right” to education and the “right to a diploma”, as well as the “right integral to being able to demonstrate”. “But demonstrate in order, demonstrate while being protected, demonstrate without unduly disturbing all citizens,” he told the National Assembly. Applause.
“Supporting young people, bringing hope for the future, also means allowing those who want to study to do so in complete safety, without violence and without intimidation”, continues the Minister of Education, Michelle Courchesne, having “a sense of accomplishment”. Applause.
Then, the leader of the official opposition, Pauline Marois, takes the floor to denounce the “ignoble law”, the “bludgeon law” submitted to the express examination of Parliament after some 50 injunctions or safeguard orders pronounced by the courts, mostly at the request of students — like Laurent Proulx — wanting access to their classrooms, but to no avail. Premier Jean Charest leaves the Blue Room. “Oh, he’s leaving, Jean! “, ” What a man ! », « Go see the students! ” launch elected PQ.
Around 5:15 p.m. The Liberals and the Caquistes are rising in turn to support Bill 78. They are carrying the “final blow” to social mobilization, is convinced Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. François Rebello is on the side of Jean Charest and Michelle Courchesne. The former president of the Quebec University Student Federation (1994-1996), passed from the Parti Québécois to the Coalition avenir Québec, looks like a “traitor” with eyes drowned in “GND” tears.
Adopted by 68 votes to 48, the Act allowing students to receive education provided by the post-secondary institutions they attend has the effect of putting an end to the application of the strike mandates of student associations, after 15 weeks of mobilization against the increase in tuition fees planned by the Liberal government.
Protesters must stay at least 50 meters from educational establishments when classes resume according to a pre-established schedule. Student associations will have to make sure of this, failing which they would be exposed to severe administrative and penal sanctions – the suspension of their dues for a term for each day of violation, for example. Until then, the organizers of demonstrations of more than 50 people will have to make their itinerary known, eight hours before pounding the pavement.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois came out of the Blue Room with the feeling that the deputies had “enjoyed [à] crush” social mobilization by means of a special law. “There was a desire to crush the youth, then we felt that it was not reluctantly, but quite the contrary,” he said in an interview with The duty in the Parliament Building almost 10 years later.
The Charest government’s “show of force” has “deeply disturbed” the exhausted spokesperson for 75,000 students. He wonders in particular about the meaning of Quebec democracy when the government uses all its weight to stifle the demands of hundreds of thousands of people. “I’ve never felt a feeling like that afterwards,” he insists.
The headliner of CLASSE comes out of the Blue Room, following in the footsteps of the president of the FEUQ, Martine Desjardins. “I am convinced at this time that it is the end of the mobilization”, he repeats.
However, between 100,000 people (according to the police forces) and 250,000 people (according to the student movement) took part four days later in the national demonstration of May 22 2012. The slogans “The special law, we don’t care”, “An educated people, never will be submitted”, “Police everywhere, justice nowhere” mingle with the noise of saucepans and protests from the High Commissioner for Human Rights. of the United Nations, Amnesty International, the Barreau du Québec, the League of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. In short, Bill 78 breathed new life into the popular protest born of the announcement of an increase in tuition fees of 1,625 dollars.
“The adoption of this law is really the official tipping point of a movement led by young people to a much broader movement challenging the liberal regime,” explains the current deputy for Gouin. “I underestimated my generation a bit,” he admits, adding that Maple Spring was full of “surprises.”
There was a desire to crush the youth, then we felt that it was not reluctantly, but quite the contrary.
From the “red square” to the pin
In 2012, during his visit to the opposition gallery in the Blue Room, the 21-year-old looked down on the members of the National Assembly. ” [À] few exceptions (and they are negligible), the rhetorical monologues and partisan parades that I was given to hear in the hours preceding [l’adoption de la loi 78] were of a heartbreaking intellectual poverty”, he writes in particular in stand up (Lux, 2013).
It is “a young man who is deeply affected in his guts” who wrote this, nuance the “GND” of 2022.
In 2012, he brushed aside the idea of moving from the seat of spectator to that of legislator. “That’s not how we’re going to change society,” he said in a judgment without appeal to Radio-Canada.
He entered the floor of the National Assembly five years later, in favor of a by-election in the riding of Gouin. “Citizen mobilizations are essential to change things. There is nothing, ever, that […] will change if people [ne] not take matters into their own hands. But that is not enough. We also need people who govern, who apply, who put in place the transformations, “says Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois after having swapped the red square for the pin of the National Assembly.
“But when your first experience of politics, when you were very young, was to be crushed by a special law like Law 78, it’s sure that at the beginning, it doesn’t give much taste to go downstairs, then go and sit on a bench in the Blue Room. »