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MONTREAL — Speaking to delegates this week, the president of one of Quebec’s largest labour groups warned the province is headed for yet another period of social upheaval.

The Liberal government’s plan to eliminate the deficit within two years is “cutting Quebec in two,” Jacques Létourneau told members of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux.

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Today’s Liberals, he lamented, seem to forget how trade unions and their allies brought the Jean Charest government to its knees in 2003, and how the 2012 protests over tuition increases drove it from power. If the Liberals under Premier Philippe Couillard try cutting social programs, they can expect more of the same. “We have to lead this battle,” Mr. Létourneau said.

The bellicose rhetoric elicited little more than a shrug from Mr. Couillard’s austerity point man, Treasury Board president Martin Coiteux. As he spoke by phone from Quebec City Thursday, students were tuning up outside the National Assembly for a musical protest against rumoured cuts to the provincial network of music conservatories. “Mobilization is a state of life here in Quebec whenever we’re making important changes, so this is really nothing new,” he said. “I don’t think we’re in any particular situation of excessive stress over what is going on.”