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It’s a sure sign of spring in Quebec when students come out of the woods and onto the streets of Montreal.

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Timely, thousands of college and university students are striking for the remainder of this week to kick off this annual season of protest.

They will meet at Place du Canada at 1 p.m. Tuesday — 10 years to the day after the biggest event of Maple Spring, the uprising that marked the contemporary history of Quebec. Nearly 100,000 students marched through Montreal that day in 2012 wearing red squares to denounce planned tuition fee hikes and demand the abolition of graduate fees. By the summer, the movement had helped overthrow the Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest after nine years and expressed a deep social malaise that caused ordinary citizens to bang pots and pans every night.

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This time it’s not just about tuition. On Wednesday, the focus will be on internship compensation. On Thursday, students will push back a recent intervention of the Financial Markets Authority to block automatic contributions to student-sponsored insurance plans. (They will also leave Place Émilie Gamelin after dark, following in the footsteps of the students who demonstrated the 50 consecutive nights in 2012, under the traveling spotlight of a police helicopter). And on Friday, students will demand action against the existential threat of the climate crisis, an issue where young people have shown leadership locally and globally beyond their years. They will leave from the Sir Georges-Étienne Cartier monument at 2 p.m.

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“All of these issues go together,” said Jérémie Lamarche, a social work student at Cégep du Vieux Montréal, and one of the thousands who will be on strike this week. “They fall into the category of a social transformation necessary to provide a more secure future for young people.”

Free education is an unfinished business from ten years ago. Education is a right, not a commodity, or so the rallying cry says. Even though the fees in Quebec are still among the lowest in Canada, the price of a diploma has continued to increase over the past 10 years due to indexation. In addition to soaring housing prices and rampant inflation, students say tuition fees remain a significant barrier to post-secondary education for many.

Quebecers pay about $2,700 per year for a full course load. A host of other incidental fees bring the annual cost of higher education closer to $3,500 (not including living expenses). Non-residents of Quebec and international students must pay higher tuition fees. By contrast, the average annual cost of an undergraduate degree in Ontario is nearly $8,000, while in Nova Scotia it is nearly $9,000. The Canadian average hovers around $6,500.

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The issue of unpaid internships required to obtain a degree is related to the cost of post-secondary education. Lamarche said some investments are remunerated, thanks to the generous tax credits the government gives to private companies. But many are not, including those in the public sector, including health and social services. Exacerbating inequalities, unpaid working conditions tend to disproportionately affect female-dominated professions.

It’s not just about the money, Lamarche said. The redeployment of workers within the healthcare system during the pandemic has resulted in the exploitation of many interns who do not have the same protections as regular employees.

“We were valuable members of the team, but we don’t have the same status,” he said. “If we’re not here this week, it will show how important we are.”

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In addition to the successes and failures of Maple Spring, whose this week’s protesters are inspired, Montreal students were instrumental in organizing a mobilization of 150,000 people on March 15, 2019. It was one of the largest events organized in the world on this day. The event caught the eye of teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who launched the youth-led climate movement with her own weekly strikes outside Sweden’s parliament. She joined the Montrealers in September of that year for a massive assembly that drew half a million people.

Although the Quebec student movement is highly decentralized, eschewing traditional organizational structures and dispensing with permanent figureheads, it has proven to be a force to be reckoned with.

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Although the students did not get everything they asked for, the movement had a disproportionate impact on the 2012 Quebec elections. concerns about the climate emergency in the mainstream. Their influence has moved the needle on public opinion which, in turn, has reshaped the current Quebec government’s response to the impending ecological disaster – but perhaps not as far as some had hoped.

It is difficult to say where the actions of the next few days will lead. But it would be foolish to underestimate the power of Quebec students.

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