---
Canadian socialist David Camfield on the victorious student movement in Quebec
[ New Socialist ] In 2012 Quebec has been shaken by the most important social movement in the Canadian state [1] since the 1970s. What began as a strike by students in Quebec's universities and Collèges d'Enseignement Général et Professionnel (CEGEPs, which most young people attend after high school) against a major increase in university tuition fees - part of capital's international austerity drive -- has become a broader popular movement against the government of the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), headed by Premier Jean Charest, and against neoliberalism.
Universities in Quebec Society To understand this movement, we need to look at the place of universities in Quebec society. The Canadian constitution makes education a responsibility of provincial governments. Before the 1960s, only a tiny percentage of the francophone majority in the province of Quebec attended university; university education was more common for members of the anglophone minority, whose universities were better-funded. At the time, the capitalist class in Quebec was largely anglophone - one feature of the national oppression of Quebec within the Canadian state. In the 1960s, a section of the francophone middle class launched an effort to modernize Quebec society that became known as the "Quiet Revolution." One of its key features was the creation of a secular education system including new francophone universities that charged low tuition fees. This reform was linked with popular aspirations for national self-determination in an era that also saw a high level of working-class struggle. Accessible university education continues to be widely seen in Quebec as a valuable distinguishing feature of the Quebec nation.