The red squares faded. The pans are silent. The tear gas dissipated. Anarchopanda, rebel banana and the Rabbit Crew members left to get dressed. What remains of Maple Spring, 10 years after the first votes strike by students opposed to tuition hikes? Overview.
Bad memories. Maple Spring is a subject of embarrassment among political actors who took up the cause of the increase in tuition fees of 1625 dollars decreed by the Minister of Finance, Raymond Bachand, in a burst of “cultural revolution” in March 2011 . The duty sought to delve back into the memories of the grassroots protest movement—behind North America’s “greatest opposition to neoliberalism” (The Guardian, May 2, 2012) — of former Premier Jean Charest and former Education Ministers Line Beauchamp and Michelle Courchesne, but to no avail. In turn, they politely refused to “replay in the film”.
Savings. After the partial electoral defeat of the Liberal Party of Quebec, Premier Pauline Marois hastened to cancel the increase in tuition fees that was in the cards of the Charest government to, less than six months later, announce an indexation tuition fees to the growth rate of household disposable income per capita. This allowed students to save $1,714 per year, according to researcher Philippe Hurteau, of the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS).
Pandora’s box. At the end of the Summit on higher education (February 2013), Pauline Marois had opted for a “fair indexation formula which would stabilize the effort required [aux étudiants] in constant dollars” accompanied by increased financial assistance for studies rather than the “freeze” defended by the Federation of College Students of Quebec (FECQ) and the Federation of University Students of Quebec (FEUQ) or the “free” supported by the Association for Student Union Solidarity (ASSE). “I was betting that no government would reverse this balance, a bet that turned out to be a winner,” she wrote in her autobiography. Pauline Marois also declined our interview request.
History seems to prove him right, for now. Indeed, neither the Couillard government nor the Legault government dared to propose an increase in the student bill. In the summer of 2014, Education Minister Yves Bolduc said he refused to rule out an increase in tuition fees. “That doesn’t mean we want to do it, but we have to keep the room for manoeuvre,” he candidly declared to the press, before beating a retreat a few hours later. In his march to power, the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec, François Legault, for his part supported the Liberal increase of $1,625 (spring 2012), then proposed a “compromise” increase of $1,000 (summer 2012) for finally rallying to PQ indexation (summer 2018).
The current Minister of Higher Education, Danielle McCann, finds it wise to tie the growth in tuition fees to that of the average household income, as her predecessor Pierre Duchesne did. She “continues to be based on this principle, which keeps tuition fees relatively low” – which is “a good thing”, she maintains in full pre-budget consultations.
For philosophy professor Éric Martin, any government “will think twice” before “opening this Pandora’s box” of tuition fees since the largest student strike in Quebec history. “François Legault has made himself known historically with very neoliberal lines on higher education. However, since he has been in power, he has kept himself strangely quiet, and so much the better, ”says the co-author of the essay University Inc.
A demobilization. Even if it resulted in a significant increase in tuition fees, the crisis exit plan deployed by the Marois government has put the lid on the pots of students. The professor of political science at the University of Montreal Pascale Dufour is not surprised. ” [Il est] difficult to mobilize on an annual indexation”, she indicates. According to her, “annual indexing has squarely confiscated the historical claim” of the student movement.
After having chanted “We advance, we advance, we do not retreat! the students indeed seem to have moved on. The same goes for the main associations that represent them. The duty asked the FECQ — which survived the post-Printemps érable unlike the FEUQ and the ASSE — and the UEQ: “What is your position on tuition fees? Their answers were long in coming.
“We most likely have a position on it,” said FECQ president Samuel Vaillancourt, before specifying, in writing, that he is promoting “effective free access”.
“I would have to come back to you,” replied the interim president of the UEQ, Jonathan Desroches. “I think there is a social consensus right now. It’s not a situation that I would call ‘ideal’, but it’s the consensus that has emerged to ensure a kind of social peace in Quebec,” he explained. “The QEU is for the reduction of the student contribution”, specified the grouping a few hours later.
A new generation of activists. The hundreds of thousands of people who wore the red square in 2012 showed the world that “a very large-scale social movement was possible in Quebec”, in addition to training a new generation of activists who have ” continued their involvement in other causes,” says Professor Pascale Dufour. “They brought important militant ideas and know-how and largely contributed to renewing trade unionism, the community environment – defense of tenants, feminist groups, environmentalism, etc. – “, she emphasizes. “Without 2012, there would not have been 2019 and the mobilization of ‘youth’ for the climate. »
Maple Spring has awakened the awareness of young people to the dangers of the neoliberal vision that has “percolated everywhere among the elites”, continues Professor Éric Martin. “It was a questioning of a whole way of life which has no future, which is dangerous, which produces social injustices, which degrades nature, etc. Neoliberalism, or more generally the mode of capitalist development in which we find ourselves, is not only destroying education, it is destroying the Earth as a whole”, summarizes the committed thinker.
Social mobilization had in any case managed to “unearth” the “juvenile hopes of a just society” of Michel Seymour. But, “the PQ indexation, the PQ-CAQ identity withdrawal, the right turn of the PQ…” that followed ruined everything, according to the honorary professor of philosophy at the University of Montreal. He has not lost hope that Quebec will take the “path of a sovereignist, feminist, environmentalist and pro-Aboriginal left”, adding that he is firmly convinced that “the most radical left has become the more lucid and more realistic. “Faced with global warming which calls for radical solutions – clean energies, de-globalization, degrowth – we need radical solutions”, he pleads.
A communication channel. The Minister of Higher Education, Danielle McCann, retains from the 2012 crisis – which she followed as a “citizen”, she specifies – the need to keep a channel of communication open between the government and the students. “You have to listen to the associations. For me, it’s fundamental to have this communication and this partnership with our student associations,” said the former manager of the health network, while mentioning in passing that she will participate for a second year in a row in the general assembly of the UEQ, this weekend.
For those wondering, Danielle McCann was “neither on one side” during the showdown between the “red squares” and the “green squares” a decade ago.
With Francois Carabin