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MONTREAL – The province will help Montreal defray extraordinary costs related to the student protests, Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand said Friday.

Discussions involving cabinet ministers and Montreal’s mayor and other city officials are continuing, Bachand said.

“We will help the city of Montreal in a manner which has not yet been determined because it is a complex and very difficult” situation, Bachand said in an interview.

“But we will help the city of Montreal deal with this special situation.”

About 10 days ago, he and Quebec Public Security Minister Robert Dutil met with Mayor Gérald Tremblay to discuss the protests.

Bachand would not provide details about the various costs discussed.

A month ago, the union representing Montreal police officers pegged the cost of using specially trained units at the protests at $2.5 million to $3 million.

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The intervention unit, specially trained in last-resort crowd dispersal techniques had been called upon 150 times during the first 11 weeks of protests.

At that time, April 23, a spokesperson for Tremblay noted that Montreal has repeatedly asked Quebec to provide “a premium to Montreal of $35 million a year to pay for costs” related to events that require the use of the special intervention unit and the unit’s maintenance.

Since then, there have been daily or nightly protests including one that began Wednesday night and saw 518 people arrested in Montreal.

Bachand would not say whether the provincial aid would only cover policing or might extend to offsetting increased municipal court costs.

What he did detail was his concern that the student protests, which have attracted national and international media attention, could disrupt Montreal’s summer festival season and the bump in tourism that it brings to the city and province.

“My real concern is not the one-time costs of the demonstrations. My real concern is about the economy of Montreal,” he said.

Bachand distinguished between the “manifestations casseroles” – the pots-and-pans banging protesters whose nightly clanging is mainly to denounce recent controversial legislation to curb protests – and students protesting against tuition hikes.

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“Can we express our differences peacefully, which was the case for the past two days basically (with the casseroles protests) and also beware of the collateral damage we might be inflicting on the city?

“Tourism is fragile and … we have to protect that,” said Bachand, noting that travellers are not booking their holidays.

This week, the association representing hotels in the Montreal area said that some Montreal hotels are reporting that reservations and occupancy rates are down by about 10 per cent year-over-year. And a “few cancellations” were directly linked to the student protests.