In less than a month, we could be back in the thick of student protests, with disgruntled professors grieving the “unilateral imposition” of makeup classes and protesters blocking access to classes.
Looming in the background is the possibility of a provincial election, and disruption of campaign events as well. Resolution of renewed conflict won’t be easy, but resolution is what Quebecers want.
Last week, leaders of two students associations, the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec and the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec, announced that on Aug. 17, the date that classes are set to resume at 14 CEGEPs in the province, there will be students marching through the streets of Quebec’s cities. They’ll be protesting the tuition-fee hike, $1,778 over seven years, all over again. CLASSE, considered the largest and most militant of the three main student associations, is planning its own large demonstration in Montreal and other cities across the province much earlier, on July 22.
More ominously, a website, grevesociale.info, is urging protesters to “prevent the return to class.” They want to block entrance to schools and force the cancellation of makeup courses, despite risking thousands of dollars in fines under Quebec’s Bill 78, passed last spring.
Students, or at least their leaders, seem determined to ignore the fact that after several months of protests, they have been slipping in the battle for public opinion. A Léger Marketing poll on June 16 found that 56 per cent of Quebecers backed the government’s position, with only 35 per cent in favour of the boycotting students. It’s unlikely Quebecers will find the student cause any more compelling next month, now that the Charest government has brought into effect in time for the fall session the more generous system of loans and bursaries that it had promised last spring.
Heading back into a raucous, no-end-in-sight impasse is the last thing most Quebecers want. We have the right, after all the disruption to date, to expect that all parties to the dispute will come one more time to the negotiating table in a spirit of good faith. And they should be prepared to bring with them some new ideas.
In recent days, professors have begun complaining about having to conduct a teaching “marathon,” about squeezing three semesters into a year instead of teaching the usual two. They’re questioning how academically feasible such a condensed pedagogical calendar is, although it could be argued that fast reading and tight deadlines is part and parcel of what graduating students who find jobs can expect to experience in the real world.
Student leaders also need to recognize a whole new cohort of students is moving from high school into CEGEP, and from CEGEP into university, beginning next month, and these newcomers never “voted” for class boycotts. They must be asked not just for their views but also for their endorsements before any street protests should be contemplated. And voting should be by secret ballot.
Professors understandably don’t want to give up their summer holidays to come back to work several weeks early. Teachers are still in negotiations about whether they’ll be paid extra for this new, squeezed-in schedule. But given the social dimensions of this conflict, it would be unseemly for teachers and their unions not to act in good faith and do what they can to facilitate a makeup semester. It’s true the government didn’t consult the unions over the logistics of implementing a makeup semester, and so it’s incumbent on the government to listen to the unions’ concerns. If no easy agreement is possible, then both sides need to agree to quick arbitration of their differences well before Aug. 10, the first scheduled date for resumption of classes.
It’s important for Quebecers not to lose sight of the fact that historic low tuition has left Quebec’s universities underfunded while generous taxpayer subsidization of higher education and all social programs have left Quebec with the highest per-capita provincial debt in Canada. The government’s proposed tuition increases are reasonable under the circumstances. Continued underfunding will undermine the ability of the province’s schools to provide top-quality higher education. We will all be the losers in that case – individuals, society, the marketplace, businesses and government. A modern knowledge economy lives or dies by the education of its workforce.