Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Montreal on August 1. The protests came the day after the call for an election in the Quebec province by the Liberal Party government of Quebec Premier Jean Charest.
Quebec has been rocked this year by a large student strike against a proposed tuition fee hike and huge street demonstrations. In response, the Liberal government introduced the draconian Law 78, which severely restricts the right to protest.
On July 22, 80,000 people protested in Montreal, after the Quebec Human Rights Commission declared Law 78 unconstitutional on July 19.
Radio Canada and La Presse said many thousands took part in the August 1 march. Protesters gathered at Place Emilie-Gamelin in the centre of the city and marched from 9pm to close to midnight.
At about 10.30pm, Montreal police declared the march “illegal”, but that failed to deter anyone taking part. Radio Canada said 17 people were arrested, many for throwing firecrackers.
The co-leaders of the left-wing Quebec Solidaire, Amir Khadir and Francoise David, took part in the march. Earlier that day, they announced their party’s platform for the election. Along with other QS candidates, they wore the red-square symbol of the student movement.
A key feature of the march was a large group of about 500 people from the neighbourhoods of Villeray-Saint Michel-Parc Extension. They had gathered at a “casseroles” (pots and pans), noise-making rally and then marched along one of Montreal’s main arteries to join the larger rally at Place Emilie-Gamelin.
Hundreds more people from similar neighbourhood gatherings joined them along the way.
They carried a lead banner reading, “Villeray in defiance”, referring to Law 78, under which such marches and gatherings are illegal.
“Defiance” of the Charest government and Law 78 was the theme strongly expressed by the many protesters interviewed and reported in news and television reports of the evening’s protest actions.
Law 78 hangs over the student movement and the entire province like a Sword of Damacles, ready to fall if Charest’s Liberals should win the election.
Although police have used it to declare pro-student protests to be “illegal”, they have refrained, so far, from wielding it to charge anyone or impede and break up student groups.
The thousands of arrests by police since the outset of the student strike in February have been made using municipal regulations or highway traffic laws.
Trade union leaders have cited the draconian provisions in Law 78 as a reason to not mobilise members more significantly behind the student cause.
The opposition Parti Quebecois says it will immediately abolish the law if elected. However, the party has a record in office of enforcing harsh, anti-union legislation.
Student and human rights groups, trade unions and individuals are challenging the constitutionality of Law 78 in Quebec Superior Court. But it will take months, probably more than a year, to obtain a ruling.
Meanwhile, Jean-Pierre Lord, a sociology student at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, has applied to the Quebec Superior Court for permission to proceed with a class action lawsuit against the City of Montreal and its police force for the violent conduct of police at student demonstrations.
The lawsuit pertains to the arrest and abusive treatment by police of Lord and other protesters on May 23.
Two of the three large student federations in Quebec — the FEEQ and the FEUQ — are actively campaigning in the election to unseat the Liberal Party. The largest and most militant of the federations — CLASSE — is not directly campaigning in the electoral process.
CLASSE says it will maintain a focus on education and mobilisation during and after the election around its immediate aim of a freeze on university tuition hikes and for its longer-term goal of a society based on social justice.
The association’s aims were spelled out in a manifesto published in late July that is serving as a basis for an ongoing, province-wide speaking and conference tour during August.
Quebec’s student federations and their supporters will stage another of their massive monthly rallies in Montreal and other Quebec cities on August 22. The rally will follow by a few days the re-opening of the school year that was suspended by Law 78 at strike-bound, post-secondary institutions in May.
[Reprinted from www.rogerannis.com. You can also read more coverage on Quebec, including ongoing eyewitness reporting on the struggle, by Ethan Cox at Rabble.]
