In this case what the mainstream media wants us all to focus on is how tuition fees in Quebec are the lowest in Canada not on why. If we allow ourselves to only follow this channel we inevitably end up saying something like, "What are they bitching about?". Instead of, "Why is the government raising the fees?"
Quebec, like every neo-liberal beholding government-even those with massive resource export economies, is caught in a trap whereby the cost of delivering services is rising and their revenues are dropping. Quebec, like the rest, is governed indirectly by the elites who control the re-election campaign purse strings for the wanna-be elites who we call politicians. So the only solution these guys can possibly advance for their predicament is cutbacks, austerity, less services-whatever you want to call it. Their solution, and the media's representation of their solution, is always on the outlay side, never on the income side because any talk of raising taxes would dictate a re-framing of the question into one of social justice, one of taxing those most able to pay which is of course the corporations and the elites, the whore masters.
The argument going on in Quebec is the same argument going on in Europe, the same argument that's been going on in Latin America for decades, in the Middle East, in Africa, in the tent cities of foreclosed Americans, in the doorways where the homeless sleep-it's the same argument that has caused every war, every economic depression and every revolution in history. The Quebec Spring is the Arab Spring, it's Europe's debt crisis, it's...it's why Arcade Fire, Mick Jagger and mr. mud are wearing red squares on their clothes today. “Their uprising is inspiring!” Micheal Moore said yesterday. In Montreal today thousands will march, Montreal today, tomorrow the world.
