Quebec City courthouse, April 3, 2012. Laurent Proulx had “spent nights” preparing to plead his case before Judge Godbout. On the morning of April 3, after several hours of hearings, he obtained the injunction which, according to him, was going to weaken the camp of the strikers for good.
That morning, Laurent Proulx appeared alone before Judge Bernard Godbout. He is not a lawyer – although he has an eye on the profession. He decided to plead his case himself.
The free student has an anthropology course on his agenda at 3:30 p.m. at Laval University, and he intends to attend. His admission to the law program depends on it, he claims. “It all happened here, he says ten years later, his eyes raised to the ceiling of a courtroom at the Quebec City courthouse. We really did with the means at hand. »
Laurent Proulx represented at the time the movement that would later be given the nickname of “green squares”, but it was not the increase in tuition fees that occupied his mind. The 24-year-old student has it against the picket lines.
“For us, the increase was a government decision,” he says today. Then, we understood that some people wanted to militate against that. Where we got off the friendship bandwagon was when people started behaving like real unions and saying, ‘We’re barring the doors.’ »
The man who became a restaurant owner remembers arriving at 300 Jean-Lesage Boulevard with “jurisprudence binders” assembled with his anti-strike buddies. “We spent nights at Laval University, nights in the [pavillon] From Koninck. The concierge went behind with the mop… Nights of time, ”he says. “So, of course, when we arrived here, I had a lot on my heart. I had a lot to say,” he adds.
On the morning of April 3, Laurent Proulx asserts that the strikers are causing him harm. In the courtroom, a handful of friends, but also students wearing the “red square”, curious to know the outcome of the pleadings a few weeks after the start of the strike. “There are seven lawyers on the other side. Me, I’m sitting alone, ”summarizes the former municipal councilor of Quebec, now 34 years old.
He explains to Judge Godbout that he must absolutely go to class. The picket line is jeopardizing the success of his studies and a summer job, he says. “I felt like stuttering a little at first,” he recalls.
After six hours of pleadings, the magistrate of the Superior Court of Quebec partially surrenders to the arguments of the young Drummondvillois. A provisional injunction is granted to him for ten days.
The snub of the “navellist”
“I felt like I was in a Queen music video, you know? “We are the champ !”»
Leaving the courthouse, Laurent Proulx invites students who “feel bullied” to contact him. In his eyes, this is a first step, a first breach in the armor of the strikers. Dozens of injunction requests will follow. “So many people told us it was impossible,” he says. There were third-year law students telling us we were mixed up. […] People laughed at us at the student cafe. »
With a smile on his face, Laurent Proulx goes to his class in the middle of the afternoon. A “hedge of dishonor” organized by a few students awaits him. A few months later, he will abandon his anthropology course, his only “regret” of spring 2012, he says.
In an interview he gave to Radio-Canada after his victory in court, Laurent Proulx is serene. But his gaze darkens when he evokes the insults he received in the days preceding the hearing: “individualist”, “spoiled baby”, “navel-list”…
“The truth is that in higher education, there are all sorts of people in there. There are single mothers who go back to school and people like me who, after being in the labor market, go back to school to find a better future, he says. [Je n’avais] not necessarily afford to lose two or three weeks of a session. »
Student “trade unionism”
A decade later, Laurent Proulx says he is proud “to have succeeded in achieving his objectives using legitimate methods”. “Without breaking anything. Without preventing anyone from going to work,” he says.
“Isn’t the strike a legitimate method? ” ask him The duty. “It is a legitimate means when it is done by [un] workers union […]then everyone is at work in a shop and that there is a vote that is ready. Students are not workers. A student association is not a union,” he maintains.
By winning in court, on April 3, 2012, Laurent Proulx believes he has made case law and forced the hand of the Liberal government of Jean Charest. Law 78 born a few months later had become “necessary […] to enforce order on campuses,” he said. “I think we planted something with that. Students can never again be held hostage,” he said.
Laurent Proulx is delighted to have seen pressure tactics move away from educational institutions. But the associations have not lost their power of influence, he analyzes.
In 2013, he returned to court to challenge automatic membership in student associations. With another student, Miguaël Bergeron, he argued that the structure of the associations interfered with the freedom of expression of their members. The Superior Court dismissed the claim in 2015.
“Student associations still have a power of pressure on the government in society, stronger than many business lobbies,” says Laurent Proulx. On the other hand, I think that a limit has been drawn, notwithstanding the fact that we have not succeeded in bringing down the compulsory contribution. There is still an uncontested legal limit. »
There are many, many improvements to be made in the management of public funds before going into the student portfolio.
For or against?
On the merits of the case, Laurent Proulx was “not necessarily” for the increase in tuition fees decreed by the Charest government in the spring of 2012.
Would it be today? “There are many, many improvements to be made in the management of public funds before going into the student portfolio,” he says. The former politician still believes that going to higher education, “it does not cost much” in Quebec.
” [Le Printemps érable], at some point it literally became a debate about free education. I wasn’t there at all either,” he says.
Laurent Proulx assures us that his “activist side” is still there and always will be. “It’s just that now it’s framed by gray hair,” he jokes. In June 2020, he threatened to reopen the terrace of his restaurant despite the health restrictions imposed by the government of François Legault. Quebec changed its instructions a few hours later.
Despite his political experience, he is not tempted by a second leap into the arena. The entrepreneur calls himself a “political orphan”. “I thought I wasn’t anymore,” he said. But ultimately, a certain political party that holds the power [lire la CAQ] is much closer to a version 2.0 of the very interventionist Parti Québécois. »
The Conservative Party of Quebec does not attract him more than that, despite the chemistry he says he has with leader Éric Duhaime. “I’m pretty much a free spirit. »