Imagine if students grades 12 and above effectively shut down nearly every University and College across the entire U.S.

On March 22, 2012: 200,000+ students from across Québec protest in Montréal.

Difficult to fathom?

That is exactly what is happening here. Hundreds of thousands of students from Universities and Cégeps all across the Province of Québec have been on strike for 12+ weeks.

Why go on strike?

Québec’s latest Provincial budget included a 75% increase in tuition costs for University-level education. That sure sounds like a lot. But let’s look at the numbers:

March 22, 2012: 200,000+ Cégep and University students protest in Montréal

• Currently, students pay an average of $2,519 for one year of full-time University tuition in Québec.
• This cost will rise to $4144 a year over the next 5 years ( a rise of $325 per year).
• Compare this to the province of Ontario, where tuition is currently $6,640 a year.
• Compare this to the U.S., where tuition of public Universities was around $15,000 a year in 2010.

So while Québec students are protesting a 75% increase in tuition, Ontario University students already pay 3 times that of their French brothers and sisters across the Provincial border.

A timeline of events:

• March 18, 2011: Official Québec budget published, announces rise in University tuition.
• November 10, 2011: 30,000 students protest in Montréal
• February 13, 2012: Students vote to strike at the University of Laval
• February 16, 2012: The students of the Cégep of Vieux-Montréal are the first Cégep  to vote to strike
• February 20, 2012: Cégeps and Universities (totalling about 30,000 students) have voted to strike
• February 27, 2012: About 65,000 students have voted to strike
• March 5, 2012: About 125,000 students have voted to strike
  

  Montréal police horses during the March 22 protest

• March 22, 2012: Over 300,000 students (from about 400,000 total) have voted to strike
• March 22, 2012: 200,000 students protest in Montréal
• April 20, 2012: Jean Charest (Prime Minister of Québec), mocks students as they protest outside
• April 24, 2012: A protest of several thousand, this time marked by violence and vandalism.

A Funny Urban Legend (don’t know if it’s true):

As several thousand students blocked traffic on the Jacques Cartier bridge, motorists yelled “Get out of the way! I’m the one paying for your education!”

Students responded: “Get back in your car! I’m the one that will pay for your retirement!”

This week is crucial:

Apparently (and my understanding is based on a few conversations here and there), this is the last possible week students can return and still recover the current session. If, however, students vote to continue the strike, this session will be cancelled. All classes will be forwarded to this Fall. And a massive bottle-neck will occur when graduated high-school students enter their first year of Cégep this September.

There is also talk of a massive general protest May 9 to target not only the rise in tuition, but to bring down the entire Liberal Party government. We’ll see.

My Take:

Québeckers seem fairly divided on this issue. Many are passionately for the strike. Many others refuse to talk about it saying it’s “a waste of saliva”.

For me as an interested bystander, it has been fascinating to see the French-socialist underpinnings of Québecker culture rise to the fore in a young generation that one day will lead this Province.

Bottom line? I’m not here to politic. I’m praying that the Gospel permeates every aspect of Québecker society, regardless of political viewpoint.