Photo by Peter McCabe, The Gazette
The Quebec student strike is now in its eighth week and has gathered nearly half the higher education population in the province. There are about 185,000 students on strike out of 400,000. “About 90,000 of them have agreed to an unlimited strike that won’t end until the government rescinds its plan for a $1,625 tuition increase over five years.” The students have sustained a series of demonstrations, protests, and strikes against the tuition hike. Monday April 9 saw mass demonstrations and “Wednesday will be another big day for protesting students as they launch a 12-hour-long demonstration that will begin at 7 a.m. at Victoria Square. The “unlimited protest” is supposed to show the students’ unlimited resolve in the face of tuition increases and the Quebec government’s unwavering stance on the issue. A continual loop of students will take turns marching for an hour at a time throughout the day.”
Today, the resolve of striking students at the Université de Montréal was tested, “as the university sent out an email last week saying if students aren’t back in class by then, they can’t guarantee that all courses can be completed by June 15, the end of the extended semester. That means some classes could simply be suspended, as the university asserts there will be “no compromise” on the quality of the education.”
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