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Allowing student protests to continue threatens Quebec democracy

The can of worms has been decanted. The sleeping dog kicked. A Quebec that six months ago was puzzling over nothing more spectacular than the future of the Mulcair NDP while anticipating the soap opera of investigation into union corruption is plunged into turmoil.

Turmoil over … a modest rise in the cheapest university tuitions in North America. An increase described as the equivalent of a daily bottle of designer water.

For several months, the continued university student strike demanding cancellation of the projected tuition increases appeared ritualistic. It was generally viewed benignly — anyone demonstrating during a Quebec winter had to garner some sympathy, even if it appeared to be metastatic remnants of the "Occupy" movement from summer 2011. And Quebeckers had been indulgent toward student strikers, enduring nine strikes since 1958, sometimes resulting in tuition increases; sometimes not.

But the current strike always had an arrogant edge by preventing those that desired to learn (and had paid for the opportunity) from learning. Certainly, there was an intellectual disconnect (CP Snow's Two Cultures comes to mind) with students engaged in science, engineering, business wanting to return to their classes. And it was a Francophone phenomenon as native English speakers were much less engaged.

[ Counterpoint: Students exercising their democratic right - David Kilgour ]

Polls demonstrated that Quebeckers were not in sympathy with the strikers — and they were increasingly irritated at action that was rising in violence. A turning point in early May demonstrated that the strikers wouldn't take "yes" for an answer when the Charest government offered a variety of concessions which student leaders declined to endorse conclusively and students subsequently rejected.

The downward spiral accelerated. Demonstrations and violence increased, but "kid gloves" were still the uniform of the day for police. Unfortunately, Quebec police never learned the lessons absorbed by U.S. police during the 1968 city burning riots, to wit, graduated escalation works neither in war nor in countering civil disturbance. All such an approach does is teach combatants how to counter security force tactics. If you want to end demonstrations/wars, you need overwhelming force with mass arrests, quick trials (no "catch and release" policy), and jail sentences for anyone engaged in violence. Demonstrators quickly learned violence had real costs.

But instead of employing security tactics already on the books, the Charest government unveiled a "nuclear weapon" — Bill 78, with measures sufficiently draconian regarding assembly and association to prompt a plethora of legal challenges from lawyers that would prefer to see cities burn than rights violated. Is Bill 78 unconstitutional? Got me — a non-lawyer certainly not versed in Canadian constitutional niceties. Its constitutionality is for the courts to decide. More importantly, it backfired — Quebeckers now are as unhappy with Bill 78 as they are with the student strikers.

Essentially Bill 78 was a desperate attempt by the government to get control of a movement beginning more to resemble les evenements in 1968 Paris than a rational protest about educational costs. Because what Canadians watched during the Grand Prix weekend no longer has anything to do with tuition fees but rather it is directed at the seizure/displacement of power. Free tuition is a red herring the size of a crimson whale; it is the legitimacy of Quebec's governing authority that is at stake and radical students, supported by union funding and presumably organizers, are seeking to force the resignation of the Charest government and early elections. (Such elections, incidentally, might jettison the work of the Charbonneau commission whose investigations may well reveal union-associated corruption that would make the Augean stables look like a mud puddle.)

Whether the now suspended "negotiations" between government/strikers come to agreement is barely relevant. The strikers have learned how to maximize leverage over a feckless government now teetering on calling a fall election. The greater Canada question will be whether students elsewhere determine Quebec has provided a "learning experience."

David T. Jones is a retired State Department Senior Foreign Service Career Officer and a frequent contributor to American Diplomacy. During a career that spanned over 30 years, he concentrated on politico-military issues, serving for the Army Chief of Staff. He is co-author of Uneasy Neighbor(u)rs, a study of American-Canadian bilateral concerns and has published several hundred articles, columns, and reviews on U.S. - Canadian bilateral issues and general foreign policy.