0:00 - 0:06 Our next speaker, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the leader of the student movement.

0:25 - 0:28 Welcome, welcome, thank you, this is a bit amazing. :)

0:28 - 0:33 I'm Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, and for 54 days, today,

0:33 - 0:36 I have been on strike.

0:37 - 0:41 For 54 days, I have been fighting.

0:41 - 0:45 54 days of fight, 54 days of police batons.

0:45 - 0:50 of tear gas, of pepper spray, me, my friends, my comrades

0:50 - 0:53 the students of Quebec.

0:53 - 0:56 54 days of striking against the Liberals,

0:56 - 1:03 against the bosses, against the cops, against contemptuous columnists

1:03 - 1:07 54 days, and we have already won.

1:07 - 1:09 Already, we have won over cynicism

1:09 - 1:12 Already, we have won over powerlessness

1:12 - 1:16 Against those who said just a few weeks ago

1:16 - 1:18 that the people of Quebec were dead

1:18 - 1:21 and that its youth were not much better.

1:21 - 1:25 That is why, I believe, I'll use this platform that has been offered to me today

1:25 - 1:30 to warmly thank the Prime Minister of Quebec

1:30 - 1:33 Mr Jean Jean Charest. :)

1:37 - 1:42 Thank you Mr Charest, you have given us

1:42 - 1:45 an unshakable confidence in ourselves.

1:45 - 1:53 Thank you Mr Charest to have shown us what we could do against you.

1:53 - 1:56 But by now, by now, you are on probation

1:56 - 2:00 You have declared war on an entire generation.

2:00 - 2:04 We have marked the ground of the history with a permanent mark.

2:04 - 2:09 From now on, Quebec's history will never be read without stopping here.

2:09 - 2:18 You have shown us the violence of your world, to let us -- perhaps -- imagine ours a little bit better.

2:18 - 2:22 Because we aspire to something more than your dying world.

2:22 - 2:27 We aspire to more than your dollar-sign education, than your laboratory schools,

2:27 - 2:31 and to more than your "Me Inc." society.

2:31 - 2:33 By now, we trust ourselves

2:33 - 2:36 By now, we trust the power of history

2:36 - 2:39 We trust our classmates

2:39 - 2:42 And by now trust the people of Quebec.

2:42 - 2:44 And it won't stop here.

2:44 - 2:49 Our anger, the students' anger, already resonates to the four corners of the province

2:49 - 2:56 and the ears of our children, our nieces, of our cousins resonate with it.

2:56 - 3:02 Striking is a school. For us, this spring, it will have been the best schooling.

3:03 - 3:07 ... and it will have been free no less :)

3:13 - 3:16 Striking-school this spring will have been for us

3:16 - 3:18 the best of training, a free training.

3:18 - 3:22 We learned this spring, we learned for real.

3:22 - 3:28 We learned what injustice is, what violence is, what the violence of a system is.

3:28 - 3:32 We learned what cayenne pepper tastes like, we learned what tear gas smells like.

3:32 - 3:36 And above all, we learned resistance.

3:36 - 3:41 Hundreds of thousands of us leaned to fight harder than we ever had in our lives.

3:41 - 3:46 to fight harder than anyone ever did in Quebec's history.

3:46 - 3:48 Our strike, it is not merely the matter of a generation,

3:48 - 3:50 It is not merely the matter of a spring.

3:50 - 3:53 It is the matter of a people, it is the matter of this world.

3:53 - 3:56 Our strike is not an isolated event. Our strike is just a step,

3:56 - 4:00 It is just a moment along a much longer route.

4:00 - 4:04 Our strike is already victorious. It is already victorious

4:04 - 4:09 because it made it possible to see this road, that of resistance.

4:09 - 4:12 This is the true meaning of our strike.

4:12 - 4:19 250'000 people don't take to the streets just to avoid paying $1625 extra.

4:29 - 4:37 This is the meaning of our strike. In perseverance, and in a continued disobedience.

4:37 - 4:40 This spring, we planted the seeds of a revolt

4:40 - 4:43 which, perhaps, might not grow for many years still.

4:43 - 4:49 Yet already, we can say that the people of Quebec are not asleep.

4:49 - 4:52 Nor are its youth.

4:52 - 4:55 Maybe they have the hardest clubs.

4:55 - 4:58 Maybe they wear the thickest armors.

4:58 - 5:02 Maybe they own the largest newspapers.

5:02 - 5:04 Maybe they have the thickest wallets.

5:04 - 5:08 We, however, we have the toughest spirit.

5:08 - 5:10 We have the courage of the oppressed,

5:10 - 5:12 We have the force of the multitude.

5:12 - 5:14 But above all, above all,

5:14 - 5:17 We are, simply stated, right.

5:27 - 5:31 We are right to stand. We are right to shout. We are right to protest.

5:31 - 5:36 We are right to strike. We are right to block entry to our cegeps.

5:36 - 5:38 To block entry to our universities.

5:38 - 5:43 We are right not to be intimidated by the injunctions of a small-minded jerk

5:43 - 5:48 who lost his debate in the House, and who has parents rich enough to buy him a lawyer.

5:48 - 5:50 It is right to fight against this.

5:50 - 5:52 Against a world...

6:00 - 6:04 Right to fight against a world that tries to cut off our wings,

6:04 - 6:07 who wants to discipline us through debt and work

6:07 - 6:10 Yet this fight is not only the student's fight.

6:10 - 6:14 It must not be only the student's fight.

6:14 - 6:16 Because the individuals

6:16 - 6:22 who want to increase tuition fees, who perhaps will increase tuition fees.

6:22 - 6:26 the individuals who invented the health tax, the people who invented the 'Plan Nord'.

6:26 - 6:30 The people who have laid off the workers at Aveos

6:30 - 6:35 the people trying to lay off workers at Rio Tinto, Alcan, Alma

6:35 - 6:40 the people trying to stop the Couche Tard workers from unionizing.

6:40 - 6:43 All these individuals are the same.

6:43 - 6:47 It is the same people, with the same interests, in the same groups, in the same political parties,

6:47 - 6:48 in the same economic institutes.

6:48 - 6:53 These individuals are a single elite, a gluttonous elite, a crass elite

6:53 - 6:55 a corrupted elite.

6:56 - 7:00 An elite who sees nothing in education but a human capital investment.

7:00 - 7:03 who sees nothing in a tree but a sheet of paper

7:03 - 7:06 and who sees nothing in a child but a future employee.

7:06 - 7:08 These people have a plan...

7:15 - 7:18 These people have convergent interests, converging political projects.

7:18 - 7:20 It is against them that we have to fight.

7:20 - 7:23 Not only against the Liberal Government.

7:23 - 7:29 Today I can, I believe, give a voice to the wish,

7:29 - 7:33 the dearest wish of the students currently on strike in Quebec

7:33 - 7:39 to become a springboard. Let our strike be a springboard for the next protest

7:39 - 7:40 a much broader protest

7:40 - 7:43 much deeper and much more -- yes -- radical

7:43 - 7:48 against the political direction of Quebec in recent years [bravo!]

8:05 - 8:07 If there is a Quebec tradition to protect

8:07 - 8:10 it is not poutine or xenophobia. :)

8:10 - 8:15 If there is any Quebec tradition to protect,

8:15 - 8:17 it is the one Quebec's students are carrying today. A tradition of fight,

8:17 - 8:22 of union fights, of student fights, of the people's fights.

8:22 - 8:28 And to speak of this fight, I could not finish my statement today...

8:28 - 8:30 without offering you the words of Gaston Miron:

8:31 - 8:36 "forward, forward, we are moving, our heads like a delta"

8:36 - 8:38 Good-bye, farewell

8:39 - 8:42 on our return, we will have the past on our back

8:42 - 8:45 and after all this time throwing our hate at all forms of peonage

8:45 - 8:48 we will have become terrible beasts of hope. "