Montreal police arrested ten people and fined dozens more at the end of Tuesday's demonstration for free university tuition.

A noisy but peaceful crowd of about 2,000 people rallied at Emilie-Gamelin park around 8 p.m. Monday before marching throughout the downtown core and the Plateau for almost two hours.

Police officers kept a close eye on the crowd, but after several protesters smashed windows and vandalized cars and buildings, they ordered the crowd to disperse.

Unlike last year's protests, police are now using paint themselves, shooting vandalism suspects with paint pellets so they cannot easily run away into the crowd.

At 10:15 p.m. the riot squad started making arrests. They are recommending ten people be charged with mischief, assaulting an officer, and breach of conditions. Two of those people are expected to appear in court Tuesday.

Many more people were stopped an hour later and fined for taking part in an illegal protest under municipal bylaw P-6.

Police said two officers were injured during the confrontations, both suffering facial injuries, while one protester needed medical treatment after being cut on his lower body.

Tuition hikes linked to cost-of-living increase

Demonstrators -- many calling for free tuition -- are opposed to tuition increases announced by Premier Pauline Marois at the Higher Education Summit last week.

Saying the social crisis is behind Quebecers, Marois announced a cost-of-living hike of about 3 per cent per year. That would amount to $70 for the coming school year.

Student group ASSE, which had refused to take part in the education summit, has rejected any notion of tuition hikes or a tuition freeze, saying Quebec must provide free university tuition for all.

Last Tuesday thousands of students took to the streets last week in an outpouring of frustration. That was a mostly calm march, though there were some tense moments between demonstrators and riot police on St-Denis St near St-Louis Square.

Last year thousands of students and supporters took to the streets in nightly protests for months, battling the then-Liberal government over a proposed tuition increase of increase of $1,625 over five years.

While most of those protests were incident-free, some were wrought with violence, as a minority of protesters smashed windows and lit bonfires and riot police charged with pepper spray and struck some protesters with batons.

The Liberals then proposed the planned $325 tuition hike over five years would become $254 per year for the next seven years, resulting in a total increase by 2019 of $1780.

Former premier Charest and the Liberals were defeated in the Sept. 4 election by the Parti Quebecois and Pauline Marois, who swiftly called for an end to the proposed hikes.

With reports from Kevin Gallagher and Cindy Sherwin