Michel David, Le Devoir, May 19, 2012

The French text can be found here: http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/350476/le-pyromane

TRANSLATED COPY:

For weeks, Premier Charest has justified his refusal to negotiate with the student unions by saying that we must not fold in the face of violence. How can the student associations now sit down with the government after they’ve been dealt this truncheon blow?

From the moment when courses were suspended until mid-August, what was urgent about legislating the right to education of students who wished to return to class? This break leaves all the time needed to explore the opening made by FECQ, who seemed disposed to real compromise. To avoid the negotiations dragging on, the government could have fixed a time limit to the negotiations while brandishing the threat of a special law.

Far from ending the crisis, the special law assures that it will last until the next election, allowing Mr. Charest to pose as the champion of law and order. It is to Line Beauchamp’s honour that she renounced her role in this sinister story. Michelle Courchesne isn’t so scrupulous.

We’ve known for a long time that Jean Charest has dismissed the most elementary rules of public ethics, but we didn’t know he would show the same indifference to the rights guaranteed by the Charter.

Even those who don’t trust the apocalyptic rhetoric of the principal unions can’t but be troubled by the remarks of the President of the Quebec Bar Association who believes that this attack on fundamental rights leaves “lasting scars in Quebec’s democratic fabric”.

Even the Quebec Council of Employers couldn’t hide a certain discomfort, explaining it wasn’t their place to “measure the adequacy of the proposed legislative methods”. It equally underlines that the law doesn’t forsee “the framework for a constructive dialogue to obtain an exit from the crisis to the benefit of the whole of society”. We have to believe that wasn’t the goal. From the start, Mr. Charest has acted like a pyromanic who shouts “fire”.

***

The right to free expression by demonstration isn’t only a precious benefit of democratic societies. It’s also an outlet for the discontent of the population. If we limit that outlet, the discontent will be expressed otherwise.

Inevitably, the very strict rules that are supposed to contain demonstrations will be transgressed. The spokesperson for CLASSE, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, clearly let it be known that his association would recommend civil disobedience to its members.

Amir Khadir indicated that Québec Solidaire could see pacifist civil disobedience in the mode of Gandhi, but the law doesn’t take into account this kind of nuance. Police intervention to enforce the law brings with it a serious danger of escalation.

Moreover, what can we consider as an incitement to civil disobedience? Yesterday, at the National Assembly, the parliamentary leader of the opposition, Stéphane Bédard, asked the Minister of Education if wearing a red square could be considered as such. Ms. Courchesne preferred not to say.

The government’s jurists who wrote up this law know very well that its constitutionality is contestable, but they also know that it will be years before the question comes before the courts, if the Supreme Court is eventually called to judge on it.

At that moment, the law won’t have been in effect for a long time. From a government that sets itself up as a defender of the rule of law against student anarchy, this casualness with regard to fundamental rights doesn’t lack cynicism.

***

According to the president of the CSQ, Réjean Parent, the government wants to assure that its electoral assemblies won’t be disturbed by demonstrations. It is true that in principle, those who want to protest against the Plan Nord or the exploitation of shale gas on the passage of the Premier must now inform the police of their intentions eight hours in advance.

The next election could very well be the most eventful in a long time. The conflict has provoked throughout the population a polarisation that hasn’t been seen since the 1995 referendum. The debate on the rise in tuition fees, which has progressively transformed into a confrontation between “lucides” and “solidaires”, now gives a place for a battle for the defence of rights and liberties.

From the start, Mr. Charest has bet on the fear of disorder that has spread outside of the Montreal area, where a good number of voters think that it’s high time to rein in these troublemakers, who have turned the metropolis into a genuine rough area where it’s more and more risky to venture.

He will however share this role with Francois Legault, to whom the student conflict has given a visibilty that he cruelly lacked at the start of the year. As for Pauline Marois, who called for respect of the law, she must hope that Amir Khadir profits from the next weeks to lapse into his usual excess.

Translated from the original French by Translating the printemps érable.

*Translating the printemps érable is a volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media’s extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media that has been published in French into English. These are amateur translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be desired. If you find any important errors in any of these texts, we would be very grateful if you would share them with us at translatingtheprintempsderable@gmail.com. Please read and distribute these texts in the spirit in which they were intended; that of solidarity and the sharing of information.

(Source: ledevoir.com)