‘Biggest Act of Civil Disobedience in Canadian History’ May 23, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Civil Liberties, Criminal Justice, Education, Quebec.Tags: bill 78, Canada, civil disobedience, civil liberties, classe, jean charest, montreal, montreal protest, quebec, quebec government, quebec students, roger hollander, student strike, student tuition, tuition hike
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Published on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 by Common Dreams
Marchers defy Bill 78; Neighborhoods fill with sound of banging pots and pans
“The single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.”
That’s how yesterday’s Montreal protest is being described today. Hundreds of thousands red-shirted demonstrators defied Quebec’s new “anti-protest” law and marched through the streets of downtown Montreal filling the city with “rivers of red.”
Tuesday marked the 100th day of the growing student protests against austerity measures and tuition increases. In response to the spreading protests, the conservative Charest government passed a new “emergency” law last Friday – Bill 78.
Since Bill 78 passed, people in Montreal neighborhoods have appeared on their balconies and in front of their houses to defiantly bang pots and pans in a clanging protest every night at 8 p.m.Bill 78 mandates:
- Fines of between $1,000 and $5,000 for any individual who prevents someone from entering an educational institution or who participate in an illegal demonstration.
- Penalties climb to between $7,000 and $35,000 for protest leaders and to between $25,000 and $125,000 for unions or student federations.
- All fines DOUBLE for repeat offenders
- Public demonstrations involving more than 50 people have to be flagged to authorities eight hours in advance, include itinerary, duration and time at which they are being held. The police may alter any of these elements and non-compliance would render the protest illegal.
- Offering encouragement for someone to protest at a school, either tacitly or otherwise, is subject to punishment. The Minister of Education has said that this would include things like ‘tweeting’, ‘facebooking’, and has she has implied that wearing the student protest insignia (a red flag-pin) could also be subject to punishment.
- No demonstration can be held within 50 meters of any school campus
Bill 78 not only “enraged civil libertarians and legal experts but also seems to have galvanized ordinary Quebecers.” Since the law passed Friday, people in Montreal neighborhoods have appeared on their balconies and in front of their houses to defiantly bang pots and pans in a clanging protest every night at 8 p.m.
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* * *
The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) reports:
CLASSE spearheaded Tuesday’s march, aided by Quebec’s largest labor federations. The province’s two other main student groups, FEUQ and FECQ, also rallied their supporters.
CLASSE said Monday it would direct members to defy Bill 78, Quebec’s emergency legislation.
The special law was adopted last Friday, suspending the winter semester and imposing strict limits on student protests. Organizers have to submit their itinerary to authorities in advance, or face heavy fines.
CLASSE spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said the special legislation goes beyond students and their tuition-hike conflict.
“We want to make the point that there are tens of thousands of citizens who are against this law who think that protesting without asking for a permit is a fundamental right,” he said, walking side by side with other protesters behind a large purple banner.
“If the government wants to apply its law, it will have a lot of work to do. That is part of the objective of the protest today, to underline the fact that this law is absurd and inapplicable.”
* * *
The Montreal Gazette reports:
A protest organizers described as the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history choked the streets of downtown Montreal in the middle of Tuesday’s afternoon rush hour as tens of thousands of demonstrators expressed outrage over a provincial law aimed at containing the very sort of march they staged.
Ostensibly Tuesday’s march was to commemorate the 100th day of a strike by Quebec college and university students over the issue of tuition increases. But a decision last Friday by the Charest government to pass Bill 78 – emergency legislation requiring protest organizers to provide police with an itinerary of their march eight hours in advance – not only enraged civil libertarians and legal experts but also seems to have galvanized ordinary Quebecers into marching through the streets of a city that has seen protests staged here nightly for the past seven weeks.
“I didn’t really have a stand when it came to the tuition hikes,” said Montrealer Gilles Marcotte, a 32-year-old office worker who used a vacation day to attend the event. “But when I saw what the law does, not just to students but to everybody, I felt I had to do something. This is all going too far.”
Tuesday’s march was billed as being two demonstrations taking place at the same time. One, organized by the federations representing Quebec college and university students and attended by contingents from the province’s labor movement, abided by the provisions of the law and provided a route. The other, overseen by CLASSE, an umbrella group of students associations, deliberately did not.
By 3: 30 p.m., a little more than 90 minutes after the marches began to snake their way through downtown, CLASSE, which estimated the crowd at 250,000, described the march as “the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.”
Other crowd estimates varied between 75,000 and 150,000 protesters. Montreal police do not give official crowd estimates but the Place des festivals, which demonstrators easily filled before the march began, holds roughly 100,000 people.
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Sea of red as hundreds of thousands protest Quebec’s austerity cuts and new anti-protest law, May 22, 2012. (Photo by @philmphoto on instagram)
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The Canadian Press reports:
[...] Shortly before the evening demonstration commenced, supporters in central Montreal districts came out onto their balconies and in front of their homes to bang pots and pans in a seeming call-to-arms.
As well, the powerful Montreal transit union also gave protesters a boost when it called on its members to avoid driving police squads around on city buses during the crowd control operations. Montreal police have for several years used city buses as well as their cruisers to shuttle riot squad officers around to demonstration hotspots and as places to detain prisoners. [...]
The daytime march was considered to be one of the biggest protests held in the city and related events were held in New York, Paris, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. [...]
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, co-spokesman for the hardline CLASSE group, described Tuesday’s march as a historic act of civil disobedience and said he was ready to face any legal consequences.
“So personally I will be ready
Montreal streets turn chaotic as protesters clash with police May 21, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Democracy, Education, Quebec.Tags: benjamin shingler, graham hughes, michael moore, mick jagger, montreal police, montreal protest, police brutality, quebec, quebec liberals, quebec strike, roger hollander, snl, student strike, student tuition
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Protesters opposing Quebec student tuition fee hikes demonstrate in Montreal, Sunday night. The protest led to clashes with police and more than 300 arrests.
Graham Hughes/THE CANADIAN PRESS
For the second night in a row, police clashed with protesters repeatedly into the late hours Sunday in a chaotic scene that left at least 300 arrested and 20 injured, including 11 police officers. At least one person was taken to hospital with what emergency services called “non-life threatening injuries.”
Windows were smashed, construction cones and signs tossed into the streets, and there were reports a fire hydrant was burst open at the same spot where a bonfire was lit a night earlier.
Riot police used tear gas and sound grenades to try to break up the protest, which was deemed illegal moments after it began for not complying with the new law. The result was a series of violent exchanges between small groups of protesters and police in pockets throughout the downtown core.
One video circulated online captured what appeared to be a police cruiser moving forward briefly with a protester on the hood, before the protester jumped off to the side and the cruiser sped away. Police later denied a rumour that a person had been run over.
Two journalists from local newspapers also reported being arrested and later released.
The legislation passed Friday was intended to put an end to three months of student protests, but it appears only to have given the movement momentum.
“I think the government put the police in a difficult situation,” said protester Nino Gabrielli, who got his Master’s last fall at a Montreal university. “I think the population is mobilizing around this thing.”
As the scenes of unrest played out in the city the movement also gained some celebrity support.
Montreal’s Arcade Fire wore the movement’s iconic red squares during an appearance with Mick Jagger on Saturday Night Live. Activist and filmmaker Michael Moore also gave his support to the students, featuring links about the issue prominently on his website.
“Their uprising is inspiring,” he tweeted to over a million followers. “One of the most amazing mass protests of the year.”
The global hacker collective Anonymous took an interest as well, releasing two videos denouncing the legislation and the planned tuition increases. The group, which regularly hacks into government websites around the world, warned of future actions in Quebec.
“Resistance is futile,” a computer-modulated voice stated in one video. “The hour of war has come.”
The website for the Quebec Liberal party and the province’s Education Ministry were down for portions of the weekend in an apparent cyber attack. Anonymous, however, did not claim responsibility.
The newfound support came during a weekend marked by violence and vandalism. The unrest reached a climax with a blaze of plastic traffic cones and construction materials lit Saturday during a melee on a busy downtown street.
Meanwhile, police came under criticism on Sunday over an altercation caught on video that shows patrons on a bar patio getting pepper sprayed.
Surveillance footage, played in a loop on one of Quebec’s all-news stations, shows several people sprayed by riot police at close range. Customers are seen scrambling to get inside the bar as a police officer knocks over tables and chairs.
Another video from a local TV station shows the officers took action after one was hit by a flying chair. The chair was then flung back toward the patio. The bar owner said police went too far and he’s considering taking legal action.
“People were falling on each other running inside to get away from the pepper spray, breaking things, and then people left by the back exit,” said Martin Guimond, who runs the Saint Bock brasserie in the city’s lively Latin Quarter. His waitress was initially going to call 911 after it happened.
“And then she said, ‘But wait, it’s the police that are doing this,’” Guimond recalled. “That’s when you realize there’s a total loss of security.”
Police didn’t return a request Sunday for comment about the incident, which occurred only steps from where the fires were set.
Police were newly armed on the weekend with Bill 78, which lays out regulations governing demonstrations of over 50 people. It includes requiring organizers to give eight hours’ notice for details such as the protest route, the duration and the time at which they’re being held.
The City of Montreal also adopted a new bylaw that threatens protesters who wear masks with heavy fines. But it failed to deter dozens of protesters from wearing masks Saturday or Sunday night, and police said they would use the new law with discretion.
Montreal police took a tougher stance on the weekend than previously seen during the nightly marches. The march was almost immediately declared illegal on both Saturday and Sunday because, police said, they weren’t provided with a protest route and bottles and rocks were thrown at police.
Massive Student Protest Fills Streets of Montreal after Proposed ‘Emergency’ Law May 17, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Education, Quebec.Tags: Canada, charest, education, jean charest, montrea; demonstration, montreal protest, quebec, quebec government, quebec police, quebec students, roger hollander, student arrests, student protest, student strike, student tuition
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Published on Thursday, May 17, 2012 by Common Dreams
Thousands of student protesters flooded the streets in Montreal last night after Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced a proposal for a new ‘emergency law’ in a bid to end the ongoing 14 week old student uprising and strike.
Students protest in the downtown streets of Montreal against tuition hikes on May 17, 2012 (Photo: Rogerio Barbosa/AFP/GettyImages)
The proposed legislation would halt the spring semester, push up the summer holidays, and restart classes in August. The move would maneuver around the current student strike and walkouts, moving classes to later in the year, in an effort to ‘restore calm’.
The government also hinted at severe penalties for anyone who tries to picket or prevent students from entering classrooms; further details about the extent of the law and its penalties will be released today.
The demonstrations on Wednesday night followed this announcement, as several thousand students met with police, who have started cracking down on the protests across Quebec. Up to 122 students were arrested, as “the acrid scent of police crowd-control chemicals billowed in the cool nocturnal air,” National Post/CA reports. “This on a night when Charest shared plans to clean things up.”
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CBC News: Montreal student protest ends with 122 arrests
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National Post/CA: 122 Quebec protesters arrested in raucous night before proposed student-strike breaking legislation
The unrest on Wednesday night followed the Quebec government’s announcement it would suspend the current academic session for striking students in an effort to calm things down.
It also hinted at more punitive measures, without sharing details. [...]
In that charged atmosphere, thousands of chanting students spilled into the streets of Montreal, marching straight to the city’s main commercial district. Their demonstration was peaceful until some rocks apparently thrown at police resulted in riot squad charges to clear Ste-Catherine Street. [...]
Authorities reported 122 arrests, three injured police officers and also some injured protesters.
Charest’s legislation would temporarily halt the spring semester for the minority of faculties paralyzed by the walkouts; push up the summer holidays; and reconvene students in August so they can complete their session before starting the fall one in October.
The government also hinted at severe penalties for anyone who tries to picket or otherwise prevent students from entering classrooms.
Charest did not answer when asked about reports of stiff fines. He simply said those details would be revealed when the legislation is tabled — perhaps as early as Thursday.
He did make it clear the legislation will target the crowds of protesters who have blocked access to schools and even stormed into classrooms in an attempt to enforce what they call a legal strike.
* * *
Associated Press: Emergency law considered in Quebec student protest
Quebec was set to consider emergency legislation Thursday aimed at calming weeks of student protests over rising tuition costs, after thousands took to the streets once again and more than 100 were arrested.
Authorities said 122 were arrested late Wednesday as thousands of demonstrators spilled into the streets of Montreal, with some smashing bank windows and hurling objects at police.
Legislation could be introduced as early as Thursday amid student strikes. Dozens of protesters on Wednesday stormed into one Montreal university for the first time, breaking up classes.
Premier Jean Charest said he would table emergency legislation aimed at ending the disorder, while sticking to the planned tuition hikes.
In appreciation of the Quebec student strike May 8, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Education, Quebec.Tags: anne lagace-dowson, Canada, education, elise moser, quebec, quebec government, quebec strike, roger hollander, student protest, student strike, student tuition, students, tuition hikes, youth unemployment
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| May 8, 2012
Like sap rising in spring, the printemps érable showcases the talents and humour of Quebec students. Here are some examples:
Red-clad students board subway cars during the morning rush hour on the orange line of the metro. One per car, they stand silently looking straight ahead. When the car stops they get out, position themselves at equal intervals along the platform so that when the metro pulls out of the station passengers see a blur of red.
Red, the colour of radical movements, has been taken over by the students, who wear red knitted or crocheted squares, or squares of red felt, attached with a safety pin. Or just a plain old square of red duct tape.
Music students perform a professional calibre “Sacre du printemps” by Igor Stravinsky to cheer the protesters, a piece that sent the Paris establishment into paroxysms of rage when it was first played in the spring of 1913.
Students build red cubes, using them as part of a piece of street theatre at the Earth Day demonstration, the biggest demonstration in the history of Canada and Quebec.
Videos, installation art, signs brandished by philosophy students in Latin and Greek. Fine arts students make picket signs with wonderfully detailed portraits of Quebec politicians.
Poems, songs, videos and music clips. If the purpose of an education is to learn how to think creatively, then the education system is working.
For 40 years, older people have lamented self-absorbed, apolitical youth. Now that so many have taken their ideas to the streets, many of those same observers are outraged, calling them spoiled, pointing to their iPads and Starbucks coffees as evidence.
The unemployment rate for young people is at 14 percent and most of them end up burdened with huge debt when they graduate. Many students work while studying — 20 or more hours per week. They may have a Starbucks coffee from time to time. So what?
Supporters of the Occupy movement in New York speak admiringly of the Quebec student mobilization.
The Occupied Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of the movement, writes: “A deep democratic movement, something most of us have never seen and scarcely imagined, turned a small park near Wall Street into the centre of a global storm. Everybody knows the deck is stacked. But it turns out not everyone is willing to put up with it.”
Beautifully written, and who would have thought that the Quebec branch of this worldwide mobilization, with 300,000 people in the streets, would have become the most stupendous of all? Quebecers in the streets are united, with the world marching. Everyone knows something is profoundly wrong — with the economy, with the environment, with the political system, corrupted with cash.
André Pratte, chief editorialist of La Presse, who is in favour of the tuition fee increase, compares the upheaval to May 1968. Students around the world protested against the war in Vietnam and demanded a voice in their education. In 1970, four students were shot down and killed at Kent State University in Ohio. You have probably heard the song by Canadian Neil Young that starts with the line, “Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming…”
When it was all over, students had a say in the running of educational institutions.
Quebec’s student strike perplexes, annoys, thrills. Montreal writer Elise Moser says she supports it for three reasons:
a) The more accessible education is, the fairer, more stable and richer a society is, because we can develop the resources of all our people, not just the thin layer of entitled wealthy who can pay for education. That seems obvious, doesn’t it?
b) The strike is not just against a tuition hike, it’s for a much broader vision of an equitable society.
c) The investment in an undergrad degree produces much higher economic returns to the state than an equal amount in subsidies to industry.
On March 22, at least 100,000 people protested peacefully in the streets of Montreal against the tuition fee hike. That was the first sign that something really big was underway. In another song of the 60s, Bob Dylan sang, “Something is happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?”
The tuition fee hike amounts to a 75 per cent increase over five years – $325 per year for five years. About $325-million in all. The cost of the fiasco of a new building constructed by the Université du Québec à Montréal called L’Îlot Voyageur: $500-million. So why the insistence on the fee hike?
Ideology. An election promise. The need to be seen to be fiscally responsible.
After the World Trade Center attacks, social activism declined. The gap between the 1 per cent and the 99 per cent grew. Now over ten years later a new generation of activists is looking around and saying, ‘Wait a minute, this system is not so great. The neo-liberal model led to a worldwide financial crisis that brought the world economy almost to its knees. Just what is so great about the status quo?’
It has always been easier to stand back, cross your arms and do nothing. To go along with things as they are. But the reason we have public education, votes for women, public healthcare, libraries and paved roads is because people who didn’t just go along with the status quo built systems that defended the interests of the people.
They were called names too — “communists,” “anarchists,” “agitators.”
I was struck by an interview I saw with a government minister who said she doesn’t like demonstrations. No one likes demonstrations, Minister. It’s just that sometimes demonstrations are the only tool people have to make themselves heard.
Let the last word go to filmmaker Hugo Latulippe, excerpted from the poem he wrote called Nous sommes des millions, published in Voir:
“Puis, raillé nos enfants insurgés.
Minimisé l’envergure du geste, la largeur des idées.
Minimisé les milliers d’entre eux dans la rue.
Grave erreur.”
[...]
“Nous sommes arrivés à ce qui commence.
Le feu a pris pour de bon.
Nous sommes des millions.”
Anne Lagacé-Dowson is director general of the anti-bullying Tolerance Foundation. She is an award winning broadcast journalist and political analyst.
This article was originally published in The Hour and is reprinted here with permission.
Quebec Students Ignite the Popular Imagination May 3, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Education, Quebec.Tags: air canada, Canada, charest, classe, education, montreal police, quebec, quebec liberal, quebec strike, roger hollander, social justice, stefan christoff, student protest, student strike, student tuition, uqam
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By Stefan Christoff, rabble.ca | Report
Thursday, 03 May 2012 09:32
(Photo: Robin Dumont / Flickr)
Vibrant nightly protests over the past week in downtown Montréal, in solidarity with the Quebec student strike, are sparking global attention. As the Quebec-wide strike continues – it has now been going for over 11 weeks – a new energy is apparent in the city.
All across the city spotting the symbolic red square patches is easy; on any city bus or métro car patches are proudly pinned on jackets or backpacks.
Despite repeated incidents of police brutality, strikingly hostile mainstream media coverage and a sustained refusal by the Quebec Liberal government to negotiate in good faith, popular support and energy toward the strike is growing. Beyond surveys, or poll numbers, the Quebec student strike is historic in nature, a sustained mass protest movement creating political space to debate not only rising tuition fees but also fundamental questions of social justice.
A clear shift is occurring on the streets, as protests are now expanding to highlight environmental justice and the growing economic inequities in Quebec at a time of austerity-driven economics.
Today in Quebec the earning gap between the wealthy and the rest sits at a 30-year high, according to a recent study by Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-economiques. Economic injustice in Quebec is increasingly a focus of student protests and the upcoming May Day protests will illuminate points of unity between striking students and larger social movements on the streets.
Last week Aveos airline maintenance workers in Montréal, fired last month without due process, joined with striking students in a morning protest outside a shareholders meeting of Air Canada in downtown Montreal. On the streets, la Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), a major union federation in Québec with a history of strong links to grassroots activism, has consistently joined striking students on the street.
In Québec the student strike is igniting the popular imagination.
Despite the growing protests, the movement does face incredible challenges, beyond just the usual cynical commentators across the mainstream media in Quebec and Canada.
Police repression has at times been extreme, with hundreds of students arrested and disturbing physical violence by police toward the protest movement. On the streets police often launch flash bang grenades. To take just one example, last week in Montreal one of these grenades exploded over a night demonstration, unleashing toxic CS gas on the protest.
Montreal police use the flash bang weapon, made by Defense Technologies, a subsidiary of the world’s second largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, despite the obvious danger to student protesters. Striking student Francis Grenier suffered a serious eye injury in early March due to an explosion close to the eye while playing harmonica and is still recovering.
Unity within the student movement is another major challenge, the more institutional Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) and Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) are consistently facing divide and conquer offers by the Québec government pushing to exclude the protest-driven Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE) from any negotiations. Despite a history of division in previous student mobilizations, the major student unions today are remaining strongly united in this mobilization to halt tuition hikes in Quebec.
Calls for a broader social strike, an effort to transfer the energy of student protests into larger struggles for social justice is strongly backed by CLASSE, a network of student unions that supports direct action and openly rejects the capitalist economic system.
Over recent years CLASSE has actively supported anti-poverty struggles in Quebec and international solidarity campaigns like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in solidarity with Palestine.
Protests will continue in Quebec over the next days, from May Day to the upcoming Liberal Party general council meeting, scheduled to take place later this week. The Liberals have in fact announced they are moving their meeting from Montreal to Victoriaville, due to fears of mass protest.
As the momentum of the Quebec student strike continues to grow, with nearly 180 000 students remaining on strike, many open questions ring out beyond Québec.
Can the Quebec student movement, clearly a collective struggle against austerity-driven economics, spark or inspire broader mass struggles for social justice in Canada?
Stefan Christoff
Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer, musician and community activist who contributes to rabble.ca. You can find Stefan at http://www.twitter.com/spirodon/
The Big Banks’ Big Secret in Canada May 1, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Economic Crisis.Tags: bailout, bank CEOs, Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal, banksters, Canada, canadian banks, cibc, cmhc, david macdonald, Economic Crisis, roger hollander, royal bank, scotiabank, td bank
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The CCPA today released my report: “The Big Banks Big Secret” which provides the first public estimates of the emergency funds taken by Canadian banks. The report bases its estimates on publicly available data from CMHC, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, as well as quarterly reports from the banks themselves.
The conventional narrative about the performance Canada’s big banks during the financial crisis goes as follows: while American banks bet heavily on sub-prime real estate and had extensive shadow bank holdings, Canadian banks did not.
However, the details of exactly how much each Canadian bank received, when they received it, and what they put up as collateral, has remained locked away at CMHC and the Bank of Canada. Not even Access to Information requests have been able to free this information.
In this study I estimate that, at their neediest, Canada’s banks had received $114 billion in support, a figure equal to 7% of the size of Canada’s economy in 2009.
This is equivalent to $3,400 for every man woman and child in Canada.
It is almost 10 times more than the auto bailout for which Canadians put up $14 billion and for which the loan portion has been repaid.
During the financial crisis, Canadian banks accessed three separate programs from both the Canadian and U.S. governments. Canadian banks received $33 billion dollars (converted to $CDN) through the U.S. Federal Reserve programs. At the same time, they also accessed $41 billion at the peak of the crisis through a nearly identical Bank of Canada loan program. Finally, they received $69 billion selling mortgages to CMHC for cash. These peaks occurred at different times.
Canada’s Big 5 banks drew on government support programs for an extended period from October 2008 through June 2010. In other words, Canadian banks continued to rely on government supports for one and a half years, well after the financial crisis had subsided.
The largest recipients of aid were Scotiabank, Royal bank and TD Bank. They received an estimated $25-26 billion at their peak. CIBC received somewhat less money: an estimated $21 billion at peak. BMO received an estimated $17 billion. Most of these peaks, except for TD occurred in the early months of 2009. TD peaked much later in September 2009. (See charts below)
The banks are very different sizes in terms of market capitalization. Royal is the biggest and BMO is about a third the size or Royal. So I’ve also adjusted the figures for the size of the banks.
On the relative side, three of Canada’s biggest banks, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal and CIBC, received estimated peak support that at some point was equal or greater than the value of the company itself. That is to say that at some point during the financial crisis, it would have cost less money for the Canadian and U.S. governments to have bought every single share in these companies rather than providing them with support.
CIBC in particular received estimated aid worth at peak 1.5 times the value of the company, it spent the better part of the first three months of 2009 underwater.
The federal government claims it was offering the banks ‘liquidity support’ but it looks an awful lot like a bailout to me. Whatever you call it, government aid for the country’s biggest banks was far more substantial than the official line would suggest.
It is worth noting: Over the entire aid period, Canada’s banks remained profitable, reporting $27 billion in total profits between them and the CEOs of each of the big banks were among the highest paid Canadian CEOs. Between 2008 and 2009, each bank CEO even received an average raise in total compensation of 19%.
In the U.S., they called these sorts of programs: bailouts, in Canada we call them backstops. In the US, they have released the full details of the support, in Canada those details remain secret. It is time for the government to come clean with the actual figures of how much support each bank received, when they received it and what they put up as collateral.
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David MacDonald is an economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
Student Protesters in Montreal Stage ‘Marathon’ Day of Action April 11, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Constitution, Education.Tags: Canada, montreal, quebec students, quebec universities, roger hollander, student fee increase, student protest, student strike, student tuition
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Published on Wednesday, April 11, 2012 by Common Dreams
On strike over tuition fee increase, organizers commit to “marathon of intensive vindication”
University students in Montreal are staging a 12-hour ‘marathon’ protest as their ongoing demonstrations over a tuition fee hike come to a critical point.
Students protesting in Montreal on March 22. (photo: Tina Mailhot-Roberge)
Organizers have waves of students heading out on the streets of downtown Montreal every hour, from seven this morning until 7 this evening. Today’s protest follows months of actions on the streets of Montreal in addition to boycotting classes.
Now Quebec’s longest student strike ever, it is widely supported with 185,000 students striking — nearly half the university body. The strike began in February with students demanding the government drop their plan for a $1,625 tuition increase over five years.
Student leader Jeanne Reynolds said bluntly, “There’s only one way to end this strike: cancel the tuition fee increase.”
Protesters today have cited police use of pepper spray on protesters, and the Montreal Media Co-op tweeted this earlier today:
Overheard from @SPVM officer as protesters pepper sprayed at BN: ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’ #ggi #non1625 #shitmtlcopssay
Coop média Montreal@mtlmediacoopAnd Montreal City and Press reports that police have used “chemical irritants” on protesters.
* * *
CBC News: Student protest ‘marathon’ underway in Montreal
A day of rolling student protests in downtown Montreal started off with police declaring a blockade at the Banque Nationale illegal.
The demonstrations Wednesday will take place over 12 hours in what organizers are calling a “marathon of intensive vindication.”
A new march will start every hour, originating from Victoria Square, and will take different routes through the city’s core.
* * *
Montreal Gazette: Quebec students’ tuition fight reaches crucial point as semester runs out of time
MONTREAL – It’s a crucial week in what is now historically the longest student strike in Quebec’s history, but there is no resolution in sight to the dispute over tuition fees or to the social unrest it has sparked.
Exams and final papers are just around the corner for Quebec’s university and CÉGEP students, but students and government officials are still at an impasse – and despite student leaders saying it was important the two sides meet this week, a government spokesperson said on Monday there were no talks planned. [...]
There are about 185,000 students on strike now – almost half the university and college population of 400,000. About 90,000 of them have agreed to an unlimited strike that won’t end until the government rescinds its plan for a $1,625 tuition increase over five years. [...]
The government has repeatedly said it would not enter into negotiations with students until they accept a tuition increase.
Recalling Reagan, Canada’s Harper and His Team Have Good ‘Austerity’ Laugh April 11, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Economic Crisis.Tags: austerity, Canada, canada budget, canada government, f-35 jets, linda mcquaig, peter mackay, roger hollander, ronald reagan, Stephen Harper, trickle down
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Published on Tuesday, April 10, 2012 by The Toronto Star
There’s a striking photo of Ronald Reagan and members of his inner circle, cocktails in hand, practically doubled over with laughter.
A clever wag attached a caption to the bottom of the photo: “We told them the wealth would trickle down!”
With that caption, the photo has gone viral on the Internet. One can imagine the photo capturing a 1980s scene inside the White House, as someone pulled back the curtain and caught the Reagan team in flagrante, celebrating how successfully they’d fooled the public about their “trickle down” theory.
With the revelations presented last week by Canada’s Auditor General Michael Ferguson, it’s easy to imagine a similar scene here: members of the Harper cabinet buckled over with laughter, celebrating how they successfully hid from the public $10 billion in costs connected to the purchase of dozens of fighter jets, even as they sold gullible Canadians on the need for “austerity.”
Ha ha ha!
As the auditor general made clear, Stephen Harper’s government failed to be honest with Canadians about the true costs of buying 65 of the pricey, U.S.-made jets, which were always much more popular with Canada’s military brass, the Harper cabinet and the aerospace industry than with the general public.
Indeed, even before Ferguson’s damning report, the public had good reason to be wary of plans to purchase the Lockheed Martin F-35 jets, without a tendering process open to competitors.
Costs of military contracts are notorious for escalating wildly, on average by triple the announced price, notes Peter Langille, a defence analyst formerly employed by Canada’s defence department, who now teaches peace studies at McMaster University.
Langille says that the F-35 program, if it proceeds, will draw scarce government resources into preparing for war-fighting abroad, and away from public programs like health care and education — a development Canadians would likely resist if they thought much about it.
Anxious to prevent the public from thinking much about it, the Harper team deliberately lowballed the costs, suggesting Canada could acquire the planes for $15 billion.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay, right, and then industry minister Tony Clement in front of an F-35 fighter during a news conference in Ottawa July 16, 2010. (CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS)
As the auditor general has revealed, Harper cabinet ministers continued to insist that $15 billion would be the cost, even after our defence department provided them with confidential information in June 2010 showing that the true costs would be $25 billion.
But Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page smelled a rat, and produced his own estimate in March 2011 showing that the planes would cost $29 billion.
The Conservatives quickly dissed this annoying parliamentary watchdog as well as opposition critics, and insisted ever more vigorously that the price tag would not exceed $15 billion.
Still, some unpatriotic types remained skeptical. The government’s refusal to provide a fuller accounting was, in part, what led to the non-confidence motion that prompted last spring’s election.
Throughout that campaign, Harper and his ministers stuck adamantly to the $15 billion estimate — while knowing it wasn’t true — and won a majority government.
Ha ha ha! What a knee slapper! And did you hear the one about the two Canadians who walked into a polling station, only to discover it was the wrong one!
But, while a $10 billion cost overrun is apparently no big deal to the Harperites (who, oddly, present themselves as sound fiscal managers), they quickly shifted into “austerity” mode after the election, lecturing Canadians on the dire need to reign in government spending.
Just last week, citing “challenging fiscal times,” the Harper team ended a program that provides Internet access at libraries and community centres, giving low-income Canadians — about half of whom lack Internet access — a lifeline to the world, as well as a way to apply for jobs.
The nationwide program, which costs only $15 million, operates with the help of volunteers.
This example of generous Canadians volunteering to help Canada’s most vulnerable citizens is enough to restore one’s belief in the goodness of this country. But, suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, it was wiped out by the Harper cabinet, in the name of austerity.
Ha ha ha! High fives, boys!
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Linda McQuaig is a columnist for the Toronto Star. She first came to national prominence in 1989 for uncovering the Patti Starr Affair, where a community leader was found to have used charitable funds for the purpose of making illegal donations to lobby the government. McQuaig was awarded the National Newspaper Award for her work on this story. The National Post has called her “Canada’s Michael Moore”.
Fidel Castro attacks Stephen Harper over environmental damage from oilsands April 11, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Cuba, Energy, Environment, Latin America.Tags: athabaska, canada government, canadian mining, evnrionment, fidel castro, Latin America, mining, oakland ross, oilsands, roger hollander, Stephen Harper
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Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, seen here late last month, has criticized Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper over “irrparable” environmental damage from Alberta’s oilsands.
In a column that appeared Monday in Granma, official organ of the Cuban Communist Party, the island’s former ruler says he believes the Prime Minister goes by the name Stephen Harper — but it’s hard to be sure.
In other words, Stephen Who?
Devoting his 1,100-word column almost entirely to Canada and its alleged shortcomings, Castro, 85, finds much to criticize and lament about this “beautiful and extensive country.”
Are we a colony, a republic, or a kingdom? According to the man with the famous beard, we apparently don’t know ourselves — and neither does he.
Worst of all, however, is the human and environmental damage that Castro says is being inflicted upon many Latin American countries by rapacious Canadian mining companies.
“I became really depressed when I deepened my understanding of the facts about the activities of Canadian transnational companies in Latin America,” writes Castro.
He implies that Canadians, of all people, ought to know better than to exploit the natural and human resources of other countries, considering what the United States is supposedly doing to Canadians.
“I knew about the damage that the yanquis are imposing on the people of Canada,” Castro writes, in reference to the development of the Athabaska oilsands in northern Alberta. “They are obliging the country to seek petroleum, extracting it from large extensions of sand impregnated with this liquid, causing irreparable damage to the environment.”
That experience makes it all the more reprehensible, he suggests, when Canadian mining companies turn around and cause “incredible damage” to “millions of people” in the search for “gold, precious metals, and radioactive material” in Latin America.
Canada’s refusal to arrest George W. Bush cited in Amnesty’s human rights report May 24, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, First Nations, George W. Bush, Human Rights.Tags: aboriginal, amnest international, amnesty, Canada, First Nations, George W. Bush, Guantanamo, human rights, john bryden, native women, roger hollander, toronto g8, torture
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The report also takes issue with Canada’s treatment of aboriginal people, refugees and terrorism suspects and its refusal to hold a public inquiry into the arrests of more than 1,000 protesters during the 2010 G8 summit in Toronto.
Canada’s record of alleged human rights violations pales in comparison to the litany of torture, mass executions, and violent suppression of protests cited against countries like Syria and Uganda.
But Amnesty Canada spokesman John Tackaberry says the organization makes no attempt to rate the magnitude or seriousness of human rights abuses among the 155 nations listed in the 2012 report.
Rather, it includes any country in which there’s a “constellation” of violations that cause concern.
In Canada’s case, Tackaberry says Amnesty has “serious concerns” that the country is failing “in a number of cases” to meet its international obligations to protect human rights.
Among the cases mentioned is Canada’s failure last fall to arrest Bush when he visited British Columbia, “despite clear evidence that he was responsible for crimes under international law, including torture.” Amnesty had campaigned for Canada to arrest and prosecute the former president.
The demand for Bush’s arrest “was certainly not a frivolous action on our part,” Tackaberry said in an interview Wednesday.
“We knew that there was little likelihood of this actually taking place but the important principle is that George (W) Bush has been implicated in serious human rights violations and Canada has a responsibility to ensure that people within their jurisdiction who are alleged to have been involved in serious human rights violations … that they be brought to justice.
“It’s imperative that when there are serious human rights violations that individuals be held to account,” he added.
At the time of Bush’s visit last October, Amnesty maintained the former president authorized the use of torture against detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, in Afghanistan and Iraq as the U.S. pursued its war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
The report, which documents alleged violations during 2011, also chides Canada for its treatment of aboriginal people on a number of fronts, including its failure to adopt a national action plan to address high levels of violence facing native women. It notes that a federal audit last summer found a majority of drinking water and waste water systems in First Nations communities constitute a health risk.