If Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois was undeniably the figurehead of Printemps érable, the former Minister of Finance in the Charest government, Raymond Bachand, could claim paternity.
In a speech presented to the Conseil du patronat in February 2010, Mr. Bachand hadlaunched the idea of a “cultural revolution”in reality tariffs, which he considered necessary to regain control of public finances.
“On each service that the State offers, there is a fundamental question which is this: “What is the fair share that I, as a citizen, must pay, and that the community must pay?” […] If these are the services you want, you have to agree to pay for them, ”he explained.
The problem was obviously to determine what the “fair share” was. Should payment be based on the service received, according to the user-pays principle, or on the income of the person receiving it? The minister and the committee of economists advising him had chosen the first option, which favored the wealthiest.
In his budget speech of March 31, Mr. Bachand pointed out that despite the unfreezing of tuition fees in 2007, Quebec students only paid 13% of the cost of their university education, whereas this proportion was 23% elsewhere in Canada.
The following year, he announced that starting in the fall of 2012, tuition fees would increase by $325 per year for five years. In real value, taking inflation into account, this should bring them to the level of what they were in 1968, but the student movement saw in this catch-up an intolerable manifestation of the neoliberal orientations of the Charest government.
Initially, despite a certain sympathy sometimes tinged with nostalgia, many Quebecers observed the strike movement in CEGEPs and universities with a perplexed eye. After all, even after five years, students would find themselves in a much better situation than those in other provinces.
The tens of thousands of people who took to the streets all over Quebec playing the saucepan didn’t give a damn about tuition fees. Above all, they seized the opportunity to show their weariness towards a government in power for nine years. and who, failing to have succeeded in dismantling the state, seemed to have put it at the service of the friends of the PLQ.
For a moment, we had the impression that after the period of disillusion following the defeat of the Yes in 1995, Quebecers had decided to reclaim politics to change things, but the election of September 4, 2012 clearly demonstrated the limits of questioning.
Out of a total of 4.3 million votes cast, the difference between the PQ and the PLQ was less than 33,000 votes. The delay of the CAQ, which had supported the increase in tuition fees, was only 210,000 votes. The Liberals were defeated, but it cannot be said that the “silent majority” to which Jean Charest had called rose as a whole against the “cultural revolution” of Raymond Bachand.
For the past three years, it has been the consolidation of public finances resulting from the Couillard government’s austerity policies that has enabled the Legault government to limit the increase in rates to that of inflation, with the notable exception of the electricity bill. ‘electricity.
After the 2012 election, the first act of the Pauline Marois government was to cancel the increase in tuition fees, but that was no longer enough for those who were now demanding complete free education.
Mme Marois had worn the “red square” of the demonstrators, but those who had hoped that the election of the PQ would mark a left turn were quickly disillusioned. Rather than taking advantage of the citizen mobilization provoked by the Maple Spring, the Marois government proved to be messy and ultimately disappointed everyone.
Many minority governments have succeeded in convincing voters to give them a majority mandate, but this one did quite the opposite. We no longer knew exactly what the PQ was, and many are still wondering.
Even without the student revolt, the wear and tear of power would undoubtedly have got the better of the PLQ. His purgatory lasted barely 19 months, and his misfortunes today have nothing to do with the events of 2012. Conversely, Maple Spring could have been the occasion for a rebirth for the PQ , while it will have been the prelude to its debacle.
Chance has the sense of drama. Ten years later, the current leader of the PQ, who was the advocate of the “red squares” at the time, must fight for his survival against the one who was the main leader.