From the Quebec Student Strike to the Movement Against Neoliberalism

Canada’s “Maple Spring”: From the Quebec Student Strike to the Movement Against Neoliberalism By Socialist Project Region: Canada Global Research, December 31, 2012 Theme: History Socialist Project by Ingar Solty The 2012 student strike in Quebec is a lesson in successful struggle against austerity policies. The strike was sparked by the announcement by the governing Parti Libéral du Québec (PLQ) of Premier Jean Charest that tuition fees would increase 75 per cent, from $2168 per year to $3793 by 2017. This was not the first time a liberal government decided on such an increase. During the neoliberal high point of 1994, the PLQ pushed through a drastic increase. Tuition fees had been frozen at $540 since 1968. Now at a stroke they rose to $1668. Subsequent attempts to raise tuition fees in 1996 and 2005 failed in the face of resistance from students, but there were nevertheless smaller increases in tuition, most recently by the Charest government in 2007. [Photo by Brian Lapuz/flickr] In the latest attempt, the government argued universities were underfinanced and that Quebec’s global competitiveness required increased funding through a tuition increase. This argument set the students against the government. The fact that the government justified the increase by referring to a budget shortfall added a new quality to the matter. This made it clear that the government’s actual aim was to shift the costs of the economic crisis onto the students. Resistance emerged mainly out of two groups. The first group consists of the students who saw a long-term neoliberal agenda at work in the tuition increase. This agenda’s aim is the lasting transformation of education into a commodified service and the reorientation of universities and colleges toward the interests of the private capitalist economy.[1] However, these students argued that education is a social right and that democracy requires free access to education. They counterposed a “humanistic education” to a “commercialized” one.[2] In doing so, the students could point out that Canada had ratified the 1976 United Nations “International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,” in which the right to tuition-free education is anchored. This first group does not accept that future wage earners should indebt themselves to cover the costs of qualifying their labour power as a commodity. They represent an anti-neoliberal, indeed, an anti-capitalist perspective. Yet even for the students from the second group, who are not fundamentally opposed to | 1 neoliberalism, the government’s argument was not valid. For if education, as neoliberals gladly emphasize, is the key to social mobility in the “knowledge society,” then it should not be dependent on the pocketbooks of parents, and even under the logic of the neoliberals, investment by “labour power entrepreneurs” in their education is no longer worthwhile. Years of stagnation in the incomes of post-secondary graduates has contributed significantly to the emergence of an academic precariat. In the face of declining opportunities for well- paying jobs, even these students see no point in paying more for an education just to indebt themselves. The Relationship Between Student Debt and Precarisation This relationship is particularly dramatic in the United States. In the U.S., tuition fees increased by 1120 per cent between 1978 and 2011; since 2000 in particular, the curve shoots steeply upwards.[3] At the same time, real wages for 25-34 year olds with a bachelor’s degree fell dramatically: for men by 19 per cent since 2000, for women by 16 per cent since 2003.[4] This is also related to the fact that only 21 per cent of those jobs lost in the crisis, but 58 per cent of newly created jobs, are found in the low-wage sector.[5] In the meantime, the student debt bubble has grown to a total level of more than one trillion U.S. dollars and is already being treated by economists as potentially the next mortgage crisis. Even in Canada, where tuition is not nearly as high, almost sixty per cent of graduates leave college or university with debt. The average level of debt is about $28,000, and repayment requires 14 years.[6] Given the immense cost of education, half of all students under thirty still live with their parents. In Germany, in contrast, the share is still “only” about a quarter. That conservatives also see an urgent need for action in view of student debt is related to its effects on the economy and to the crisis of social reproduction. According to Canada’s most prominent conservative newspaper, The Globe and Mail: “A mix of a weak economy, changing tastes and shifting demographics has been cited in the U.S. to explain a decline in home and car buying by twenty- and thirtysomethings. Student debt is likely to ensure this trend continues. You can’t become a fully functioning player in the economy if a big piece of every paycheck goes toward student debts. We need today’s students to become tomorrow’s big earners, and it’s not just to support the housing market, keep the retail sector afloat and supply customers to the financial services industry. Someone has to pay the taxes that fund social programs for the aging baby boom generation.”[7] The government has constantly pointed out that tuition fees in Quebec are the lowest in North America, and in point of fact, as the media never tires of emphasizing, tuition fees and debt levels here are “only” half the national average. Evidently the government in Quebec City nevertheless failed to realize that the population considers these circumstances to be the basis of a more democratic access to higher education. Indeed, in every age cohort, the number of degree holders is ten per cent higher in Quebec than in Canada overall. The CÉGEPs (community and vocational colleges) are particularly important with regard to the training of skilled workers. As a result, the government’s argument failed to catch on – either in Quebec or in the other Canadian provinces. In an opinion poll, 62 per cent of Canadian students indicated that they would also likely participate in a student strike in their respective provinces.[8] | 2 The Organizations Behind the Student Strike Against this backdrop, protests against the government’s measure began shortly after its announcement. On February 13, 2012 the student organizations went on strike. The students formed strike committees, held general assemblies, organized alternative education events, and built alliances with organizations and social movements outside of the post-secondary institutions. By the middle of March, out of an entire student body of 400,000 in Quebec, 300,000 were on strike. Of particular importance was the fact that strike participation did not remain passive. Massive demonstrations took place regularly. The biggest occurred on March 22 when over 200,000 people marched through the streets of Montreal, the largest ever in Quebec’s history.[9] Nevertheless, the dynamic of the student strike did not represent a spontaneous outbreak of protest. Without the support of democratic student associations it would have never come into existence. The crucial organization was the Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE), whose local organizations initiated the strike. The three other student organizations – Fédération étudiante collêgiale du Québec (FECQ), Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ), and Table de concertation étudiante du Québec (TaCEQ) – only decided to participate in the strike three weeks later. CLASSE emerged out of the anti-globalization movement in 2001 (under the name of ASSE) and represents, within the self-management structures of the eighteen post-secondary institutions, about 44,000 students, or eleven per cent of all students in Quebec. The Coalition is not only the most active but also the most democratic student association. While FECQ and FEUQ function according to the principles of representative democracy and ascribe comparatively little importance to local plenary assemblies, CLASSE operates on the principle of grassroots democracy. Decisions are taken in local plenary assemblies and then coordinated through the national delegate assembly as an imperative mandate. The strategic approach of the organization can be characterized as such: “CLASSE rejects lobbying, as it perceives the interests of the state as irreconcilable with those of the students; it believes in creating leverage against the government through grassroots mobilization and various means of escalating pressure.”[10] Behind this approach lies the realistic understanding that the state under capitalism does not represent the common good. In the name of global competitiveness, the neoliberal state cuts taxes for capital and firms, privatizes the services necessary for social reproduction (education, child-care, health and senior-care, etc.), and shifts them onto (working-class) families – in particular onto women. From this perspective, the goodwill of the government is not to be expected, and only resistance and countervailing power can be used to oppose these policies. The success of the Quebec student strike resulted not least from the lessons of previous conflicts, above all from the failure of the 2007 attempt to organize a general strike against tuition fee increases. The movement drew two conclusions from that time: First, for success to be achieved a unified movement was needed, and second, broader alliances would have to be organized. In order to facilitate the collaboration of smaller local student associations,

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