MONTREAL – A timeline of events in the tuition dispute between the Quebec government and student federations, which has sparked over 100 days of unrest in the province.
1990
?Robert Bourassa’s Liberal government increases tuition from $500 to $1,600 -a $280 annual hike over four years. Thousands of students hit the streets, but Bourassa remains steadfast.
1996
?Strike involving some 100,000 students begins in October when then-Parti Quebecois education minister Pauline Marois tries to implement about a 30 per cent increase. She backtracks soon amid protests, reinstating tuition freeze until at least 2007.
2005
?Liberal government seeks to cut $103 million from financial aid. By mid-March, more than 200,000 students are on strike and, within a few weeks, the Liberals backtrack and restore the full amount.
2007
Liberals announce tuition fee increase of $500 over five-year period.
August 2010?
Line Beauchamp becomes education minister in cabinet shuffle.
March 2011 ?
Finance Minister Raymond Bachand announces Quebec’s intention to raise tuition fees, beginning in September 2012. Plan is to raise tuition by $325 a year over five years. Total increase will amount to an additional $1,625, raising Quebec tuition to $3,793 in 2017. Will remain among lowest in Canada.
August 2011 ?
Students formally begin campaign against tuition hikes, trying to convince government to back down.
November 10, 2011
Massive peaceful rally held in Montreal with promise from common front of student groups to ratchet up the pressure.
February 13, 2012 ?
Student action officially begins with first groups voting in favour of a walkout.
February 20
?Student strikes roll out across Quebec.
February 23 ?
Students pepper-sprayed after occupying Montreal’s Jacques Cartier Bridge.
March 7 ?
Several violent clashes between police and protesting students. During an altercation with police, student Francis Grenier is badly hurt in the eye. Students allege it is from a police stun grenade, although it is never confirmed. Grenier becomes rallying point for students who begin wearing patches over their right eyes in addition to red squares marking their protests.
March 21 ?
Students begin to increase pressure tactics aimed at disrupting Quebec economy. One group occupies Montreal’s busy Champlain Bridge during rush hour. Each student fined $494.
March 22
Massive, peaceful protest draws attention to growing student movement. More than 100,000 take part.
March 27 ?
Protesters block access to Quebec Liquor Board offices as students began to target economic symbols. The mayor of Montreal asks Quebec government for $35-million to help with extra police costs.
April 2 ?
The outside of Beauchamp’s Montreal office is painted red. The building becomes popular rallying point during marches.
April 5?
Protesters block access to Quebec Liquor Board distribution centre.
April 16
Co-ordinated effort sees Montreal’s subway system shut down after protesters threw bags full of bricks on to the tracks. Offices of four Quebec cabinet ministers vandalized, some with Molotov cocktails.Quebec government says its prepared to work with student groups to discuss university finances.
April 18-19 ?
More than 300 people arrested in Gatineau, Que., during confrontations between police and protesters at Universite du Quebec’s Outaouais campus.Universite de Montreal stops holding classes in striking departments for students who do not support the boycott. Student union representatives say they will not attend talks with the Quebec government without CLASSE.
April 20-21
Police and protesters clash in front of Montreal’s convention centre where a job fair is being held on Premier Jean Charest’s legacy project – a plan to develop northern Quebec. More than 100 protesters arrested during two days of violent skirmishes with riot police.
April 23 ?
Beginning of talks start, aimed at ending the protest, now into its 11th week.
April 25
Talks break off abruptly, sparking massive protest on Montreal streets. Eighty-five people arrested by police, with damage to banks, cars and businesses.
April 26 ?
Students say they will return to the negotiating table but government refuses, saying student plan to allow two members of the most radical group a seat at the table is unacceptable.
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April 27
Government reveals offer to students: a slightly slower phase-in period for the hikes, more generous loans and bursaries, and future hikes indexed to inflation. It asks students to take time to consider the plan, but also go back to class. Students respond by taking to the streets once again.
April 29
One of three Quebec student groups votes against Charest’s revised offer on tuition fees.
May 3
CLASSE presents a counter-offer to the government. It is not accepted.
May 4
Ugly scenes in Victoriaville, Que., outside a Liberal convention. Multiple injuries, including critical ones, during confrontation between crowd and provincial riot police. A young protester loses an eye. Some people kick and beat a police officer.
May 5
After marathon negotiating session, student groups and government reach tentative deal to delay increases in cost of education for a few months pending a study by a new body. Student assemblies massively reject the offer, while some student faculties vote to end walkout and return to school.
May 9
Calls for an independent inquiry into the Victoriaville protests.
May 10
Smoke bombs set off at various points on the Montreal metro system during the morning rush hour, disrupting subway service on a rainy morning. Police release pictures of suspects snapped by other passengers’ cellphone cameras. Four people arrested and detained for days. Supporters hold demonstration at Montreal courthouse, shoving aside media trying to cover event. The Surete du Quebec defends its actions during the Victoriaville protests.
May 14
Line Beauchamp resigns as education minister and is replaced by ex-education minister Michelle Courchesne.
May 16
Protesters, many covering their faces with masks, storm into a university and move through hallways in pursuit of classes to disrupt. There are angry confrontations with students who want to be at school.
Premier Charest announces plans for special law that will include pause in academic year for institutions affected by the walkouts.
May 17
Government tables special legislation. It includes severe financial penalties for people blocking schools along with rules about how to protest. Protesters must inform police of their plans eight hours in advance, and police have the right to move a protest location.
May 18
Special law passes, prompting opposition to declare a dark day in Quebec’s history. On the same day, Montreal bylaw passes that would impose fines for wearing masks at certain protests. No fines have yet been imposed under either of those new rules, which are being habitually flouted.
May 19
Montreal protest gets ugly, with molotov cocktails, bonfires and barricades in the street. Police accused of using excessive force on peaceful members of the crowd, such as pepper-spraying a patio full of bar patrons. On ”Saturday Night Live,” Montreal-based rock band Arcade Fire takes to the stage wearing red squares, next to icon Mick Jagger.
May 20-21
Huge nightly protests continue during Victoria Day weekend. C.L.A.S.S.E. group takes tougher stand on the special law, announcing plans to defy it.
May 22
On 100th day of the student strike, tens of thousands of people participate in huge Montreal march. Many intentionally flout provincial law by wandering off pre-announced path. Solidarity demonstrations are held in Paris, New York, Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. Labour unions outside Quebec pledge continued support of strikers’ cause. Over 100 protesters were arrested in evening marches.
Quebec government says that they are open to continuing talks with student representatives, as long as there is no talk of a tuition freeze and no question of scrapping a newly enacted emergency law. During a mainly peaceful march in downtown Montreal, police surrounded hundreds of demonstrators before taking at least 400 of them into custody.
May 23
A peaceful evening march that began with people banging pots and pans in support of protesting students ended in the early morning hours with police kettling demonstrators and arresting 518 after officers were pelted with projectiles. Federal political parties reiterate position not to involve themselves in provincial matters.
May 24
Student unions across Canada begin to signal solidarity with Quebec student federations against Bill 78. The government and student representatives continue to talk about talking. Illegal pot and pan protests ring out in cities across the province denouncing Bill 78, ending in the early hours of the morning with just four arrests. Montreal police and mayor hold a a press conference to discuss the impact of the ongoing protests on the city.
May 25
Quebec student federations launch legal challenges to controversial Bill 78, and demonstrations have started to pop up in cities not known as hotbeds of activism.
May 26
Quebec student leaders signalled they may be ready to compromise on the topic of tuition fees, if the government is prepared to do so as well. Peaceful protests continued with thousands in Montreal, though the focus shifted from proposed tuition increases to Bill 78, Quebec’s controversial emergency law designed to limit the scope of student demonstrations.
May 28
For the first time in weeks, the government and students are back at a negotiating table. Outside the meeting place, 84 people are arrested and ticketed for illegal assembly by Quebec City police. Among those hauled away: a mascot in a banana costume.
May 29
Charest confirms that he attended previous night’s negotiation, marking the first time the premier is involved in a face-to-face discussion with protest leaders. He says the conversation is respectful and that everyone wants to “turn the page” on the conflict. Among those attending the meetings is student spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dublois who, during his stay in Quebec City, also appears in court to plead not guilty to contempt-of-court charges for allegedly inciting students to block schools.
June 7
New York, Chicago, Berlin – it appears the clanging of pots and pans in protest isn’t just a Quebec thing anymore.
While about 1,000 protesters struck pots in Montreal at the peak of a demonstration on June 6, there were similar, smaller events held abroad in solidarity with Quebec students decrying hikes in tuition fees.
The Montreal-based organizer of the event dubbed Casserole Night in Canada says photos and videos of pots and pans protests held last night have been coming in from all over – Europe, South America, the United States as well as elsewhere in Canada.
June 22
Students and supporters staged mass rallies Montreal and Quebec City once, drawing thousands to what has now become nearly five months of protests.
July 22
Thousands of students took to the streets of Montreal with a renewed sense of determination, as the possibility of a fall election looms on the horizon.
July 24
Former student leader Leo Bureau-Blouin confirms his candidacy for the Parti Quebecois.
July 27
Tourism numbers are released and despite concerns about how tourism in Montreal would be affected by the student protests, the numbers are up.
July 30
The Coalition For Quebec’s Future (CAQ), led by Francois Legault, says it would reduce planned tuition hikes by about one-quarter and set them at $200 per year over five years.
July 31
Students launch a class action lawsuit against the city of Montreal worth up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, linked to the mass arrests that took place on May 23 when over 500 people were arrested at a mass demonstration against proposed tuition fee hikes. The proposal was resoundingly rejected by the student associations.
August 1
The premier of Quebec, Jean Charest, calls an election for September 4, and within hours of his words being uttered, Montreal’s streets erupted into a cacophony of clanging pots, honking horns, rattling drums and vulgar chants telling Charest where he could put his tuition fee hikes.
August 2
The Parti Quebecois says it plans to scrap controversial tuition hikes within its first 100 days in office, after a massive student protest marks the election announcement.
August 3
Quebec’s largest student group CLASSE says during a press conference where it unveiled its plan of attack for the coming month that it wants the mobilization that began this spring to continue, regardless of who comes to power in the coming election.
August 6
Students in CLASSE, the more militant student association, will vote over a nine-day period, starting Tuesday, August 7, on whether to head back to school when it reopens in mid-August.
August 9
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois resigns as co-spokesperson for Quebec student group CLASSE.
August 13
CEGEP students vote to return to class.
August 22
Students and supporters flood the streets for their monthly demonstration against proposed tuition hikes.
September 20
At her first cabinet meeting, newly elected Premier Pauline Marois announced that she will cancel tuition-fee hikes – returning fees to $2,168 – the lowest in Canada.
– With files from Canadian Press
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