Impacting Whose Rights?

Impassioned Quebec student union members who deplore their government's insistence that it is about time university students be prepared to pay a more elevated share of their education costs revile the unshakable conviction of the government, while celebrating their own.  Perhaps they forget that it is the duty of a government to invest itself through democratic action to represent the interests of all the people whom they govern.

A far greater proportion of students from middle-class and well-off backgrounds attend university than do students from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds.  Parents who have attended university usually anticipate that their children will do the same.  French-Canadians are also unique in their outlook on life and those who govern them.  They believe in greater numbers than elsewhere in Canada, that the state has an obligation to provide them with social advantages far superior to those provided elsewhere.

This social-cultural belief leads them to be less receptive to requests from charities for contributions from French Canadians who traditionally are far less responsive to such appeals than other Canadians.  And it would appear that French Canadians of comfortable means are less likely to fund their children's university educations than are parents of students from other parts of Canada.  Expecting that the state will pick up the costs.

Which it does, to a huge degree.  Each of the provinces and the federal government, support education and higher education is largely underwritten by tax funding.  The amount of tuition that university students pay for their own education represents a small proportion of what it really costs to obtain that university education.  And Quebec university students pay far less in tuition fees than any other province charges.

A gradual increase in tuition fees of $325 annually over the next five years will only bring the student fees up to where they were in the late '60s.  And the argument that this increase will impact deleteriously on students from low-income backgrounds holds little water since the province at the same time as it is increasing tuition, is also increasing bursaries available for low-income students.

What the militantly belligerent students involved in the current protests against rising tuition in Quebec - estimated at around 50% of the student body - are doing is defying authority, enraged that their government which has the legitimate democratic right to impose an increase, is unwilling to solve the impasse to the satisfaction of student protesters who believe it is their right to deter and forestall the  process.

What they are also doing is creating a two-tier class of students; those who are willing to forgo their university year in favour of continued protests and those who deplore the activities of the students in actively challenging government, and who desperately want to complete their year.  Even though the Superior Court of Quebec (asked to intervene by students themselves) imposed an injunction, student activities have defied it.

Instead they have forced classes to be cancelled, disadvantaging those students who wish to continue taking their classes.  There are quite a few teachers who are vocally supporting the student activists, who have taken it upon themselves to close down classes.  And the students who are invested in continuing their education have been vilified, intimidated and threatened.

The increasingly violent nature of the boycott defeats the very notion of university student intelligence.  One student described his experience as a non-boycotting student:

"I went down to leave and all the strikers were right there trying to get into the school.  They locked down the school so we had to stay inside until about 2:30 (p.m.).  They broke into the cafeteria.  They broke windows, they broke doors, they threw microwaves.  It was really bad."

 Hundreds of non-striking students have joined a Facebook group opposing the strike, and hundreds have donated money to help pay the legal fees that were required to get the injunction.  "The only reason we did this is because of the right to education.  We just wanted to go back to school and finish our semester."