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The Quebec student protests: challenging neoliberalism one pot at a time

On 23 May 2012, Montreal police arrested 518 protesters, making use of controversial 'kettling' techniques (1) that had been condemned just the week before in Toronto for their use against G8/G20 protesters in 2010. This date marked the 100th day of student protests against proposed tuition hikes in Quebec, Canada's majority Francophone province. The arrests took place five days after the Quebec provincial government passed a controversial new law, Bill 78, that levies severe financial penalties for protesters blocking access to secondary schools and requires organisers to inform police eight hours in advance of any planned actions. Contrary to the government's intention, the introduction of this legislation, designed to further criminalise dissent, erupted in widespread popular support for the Quebec students. Tens of thousands of ordinary Quebec residents took to the streets, banging pots and pans in what has come to be called the 'casseroles', a political technique previously used in Chile (where they were called the cacerolazos), Argentina, Iceland and Spain. The casseroles rapidly spread to cities across Canada, as other Canadian student groups, social justice organisations, and unions expressed their solidarity with the striking Quebec students, displaying on their lapels the small red felt square that had come to symbolise the strike. Montreal band, Arcade Fire, wore the red squares during their performance with Mick Jagger on Saturday Night Live, bringing international attention to the protests. During the summer months, Quebec student leaders toured throughout the neighbouring English-speaking province of Ontario to help educate student groups there about the means and modes by which to organise such a massive student movement. By August 2012, student leaders had returned to Quebec to remobilise students for their ongoing struggle, which included keeping issues related to the tuition hikes in the public eye, as the province began a provincial election campaign to choose its future premier. On 4 September 2012, the incumbent Liberal party, under Premier Jean Charest, lost its majority and was replaced by a minority government in which the most seats were held by the left-leaning separatist party, the Parti Quebecois. On 5 September 2012, premier-designate, Pauline Marois, declared that her party would cancel the tuition hikes that had set off the student protests, and repeal Bill 78. On the same day, former premier, Jean Charest, who had lost his seat in the election, announced that he was resigning from the leadership of the Liberal party. While the past two decades have seen widespread organising amongst Canadian young people on an array of issues related to neoliberalism and the increasing stratification of the rich and poor, many of the most spectacular protests have been largely symbolic in nature. Young Canadians were at the receiving end of police pepper spray during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit protests in Vancouver in 1998; they participated in tearing down the fence that surrounded the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) summit in Quebec City in 2001; mobilised massive anti-war rallies throughout the country as Canada joined the 'war on terror' after the 9/11 attacks; were arrested in record numbers during the 2010 anti-G20 protests in Toronto; and occupied hundreds of public parks and city squares across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street in the fall of 2011. Each of these protests was the result of hundreds of hours of careful organising, networking and planning, and each succeeded in politicising more young people, as they were exposed first-hand to the complex and difficult work of social movements. But none actually enacted democracy in such an immediate and insistent manner, engaging directly with the governments of the day to demand that their concerns be recognised and addressed, while making use of direct democracy principles within their own organisations to ensure the broadest possible representation of voices. …