Why Andrew Coyne Needs to Visit Montréal

My favourite Canadian polemist, Andrew Coyne of National Post and At Issue fame, penned a short commentary on the Quebec student strike this past Thursday. Maybe it's because of the distance he lives to the actual situation on the ground, but I would suggest that his comments, and that of others at the Post and other Canadian media organizations, suffer from a lack of context.

Coyne et al state that the students have evolved the strike to a never-ending protest, that focusses less on actual demands than on the act of protest itself, a sort of 'protest for protest's sake'. They invoke comparisons to literature, namely the Unbearable Lightness of Being, equating what is happending in Quebec now to The Grand March of that book.

Allow me to take issue with that conclusion.

I will agree that some of the demands of the students go beyond the issue of tuition fees. But that's normal, as the issue itself is a tad complicated when you start mixing in how Universties of financed, how they use their money, who governs them and what their role should be - all legitimate questions for society as a whole to debate.

But where the arguments of Coyne et al fall apart is the moment the Province passed Bill 78. It was if a straw broke somewhere and ordinary people had had enough. The Provincial Liberals have been stirring anger on the part of the population for months, if not years, on sensitive subjects such as shale gas extraction, the development of Northern Quebec and how much money is extracted from mining and petroleum companies for the privelege of operating in the Province. In these files, they just haven't shown a huge willingness to sit down and debate the issues.

And then they passed Bill 78. It caught in the throat of more than just the students. It caused a lot of ordinary people who were quietly on the sidelines of the student protest to sit up, take notice and not like what they saw. They saw the arrogance again, and the unwillingness to even consider a conversation with the students. A familiar pattern.

Enter François-Olivier Chené, a CEGEP professor of politics in Ste-Hyacinthe. Inspired by the not-so-quiet protests in Chile and Argentina, he asked people on his Facebook page to go out on their balconies at 8pm every night and bang their pots and pans to show their disagreement with Bill 78.

And they did. In record numbers. Every night now, in most neighbourhoods in Montreal, Sherbrooke, Quebec City and elsewhere, ordinary citizens take a break from whatever they're doing, step outside and bang pots and pans. The sound resonates across Montreal when it happens.

So, yes Andrew, the protests are about more than just tuition fee increases. They're about a citizenry angry at their government for a whole range of issues and further, they're not willing to wait for the next election to show their displeasure. The student protests were a flashpoint. The 'Casseroles' movement is humerous, peaceful way to show how you feel about your government.

I wonder if citizens in other provinces could be so moved.