Quel qu’en soit le dénouement, la crise aura aussi eu du bon. Elle aura sorti le Québec de son silence et de son inertie en redonnant le goût de débattre, même de manifester, pour une société plus juste. L’éducation en étant un élément central.
Au point où selon le prestigieux quotidien britannique The Guardian, les étudiants québécois et leurs carrés rouges sont devenus le symbole de la plus puissante remise en question du néolibéralisme en Amérique du Nord. [...]
In the painful tumult of daily protests, an entire generation of Québécois youth is learning a political lesson no class would ever teach: violence underlies all of society’s inequalities, and power doesn’t yield an inch without a fight.
The students’ courage and creativity in the face of such brutality has lit a fire under Quebec. Their achievement has been to begin to clarify for a broad swath of society that a tuition hike is not a matter of isolated accounting, but the goal of a neoliberal austerity agenda the world over. Forcing students to pay more for education is part of a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-class to the rich – as with privatization and the state’s withdrawal from service-provision, tax breaks for corporations and deep cuts to social programs.
The fault-lines of the struggle over education – dividing those who preach it must be a commodity purchased by “consumers” for self-advancement, and those who would protect it as a right funded by the state for the collective good – has thus sparked a fundamental debate about the entire society’s future.
Quebec is, in some ways, uniquely disposed for such a debate. During the long struggle to maintain a French identity under pressure of English Canadian domination and the homogenizing force of the market, Québécois have developed a strong sense of social solidarity. While neoliberalism has captured the two main political parties and incrementally encroached on the economy, its cultural victory – instilling values of rampant individualism and competition – has only been partial.
Chronique d’un gâchis annoncé
Josée Legault, Voir, 10 mai 2012
Quebec student protests mark ‘Maple spring’ in Canada
Martin Lukacs, The Guardian, 2 May 2012
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