REPORTERS covering the disruption of classes at the Université du Québec à Montréal this week noted that some of the masked louts causing the disturbance seemed lost in the school surroundings.
It raised suspicions that they might not even be students at the university….
More probably they were some of the wannabe anarchist types who have infiltrated the student protest movement …
But even if that’s what they were, the greatest service they performed with their disruptive tactics was on behalf of the Liberal election campaign. What their rampage did was reinforce the point that the Liberal government did the right thing in imposing a relatively modest tuition increase ... and in standing fast against the mob tactics that were intended to intimidate it into backing down.
Certainly nothing has helped [more] to … put the party at least into serious contention for this election, than the student revolt that broke out last spring….
Opponents have accused the Liberals of cynically seeking to profit from the ... hooliganism of the anti-tuition hike protests. But if the Liberals did indeed gain from the movement … the protesters had only themselves to blame for their presumption in seeking to dictate to a democratically elected government through mob tactics….
And even if the Liberals are secretly welcoming the latest student outbursts, they are not alone in cynically exploiting the movement for electoral gain….
Although they were right … to increase tuition, the Liberals have shied away from vigorously defending their position this campaign. The other parties, meanwhile, have sought to profit from the student unrest by offering solutions that would perpetuate the chronic underfunding of Quebec universities.
What no party seems prepared to say ... is the hard truth that cash-starved universities, as Quebec’s are increasingly becoming, will inevitably provide second-rate education. It is something the protesting students seem ignorant of, to the long-term peril of themselves and the well-being of this province.—(Aug 28)