As the strike drags on, its leaders have suffered from blatant overconfidence and failed to engineer an adequate exit strategy
By HENRY AUBIN
The Gazette
April 24, 2012
The debate over the pros and cons of a tuition increase has raged since February. Everyone has an opinion by now, so let's put that matter aside and focus on the students' strategy and tactics.
They've made six errors, many of them inter-related.
--The student leadership let history determine its strategy. The thinking: Boycotts ("strikes") have always worked in the past, so this one would, too. Automatically.
By mid-March, a month into the boycott, the spokesperson for the largest of the three student groups, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois of CLASSE, was still overconfident. "It is impossible that a semester could be annulled," he told La Presse. "There have been eight unlimited (student) strikes in Quebec, this is the ninth, and (the loss of a semester) has never happened. From a financial and logistical viewpoint, it's impossible."
Famous last words? Rule 1 for anyone wanting to start a conflict is to imagine the other side's reaction. The students overlooked this.
Nadeau-Dubois, now citing more recent history, said that since the Charest government had reversed itself on the shale-gas issue and on the creation of an anti-corruption inquiry, it would change its mind this time, too.
The students failed to take into account that the government had staked out a position on tuition after years of pondered deliberation, and it had to be aware of the risk of a traditional boycott.
As well, the students failed to consider what it was that helped the Charest government change its stance on shale-gas exploitation and a public inquiry: strong public opinion. A CROP poll in 2010 suggested 76 per cent of Quebecers had little or no confidence in the Charest government's handling of the gas file. And last October, days before the government announced a public inquiry into corruption, a Léger poll put the share of Quebecers wanting one at 77 per cent.
--The student leadership has failed to court public opinion systematically.
True, there are exceptions, notably the peaceful, feelgood march of more than 100,000 people on March 22. That event would push support for the students to 44 per cent several days later, the high point of Léger's five polls on the boycott.
Why not greater support? The students forfeited majority approval when they made low tuition their boycott's raison d'être. Rightly or wrongly, this has made the movement vulnerable to the perception that it's all about petty self-interest.
The government says it must raise tuition because universities need the revenue. Yet many universities are wasting money - more money than they'll get in tuition hikes
- on real-estate grandiosity, obese administration and internal management practices. Had the student groups done more to press for an end to such profligacy, they might have reduced (if not eliminated) the government's rationale for tuition increases - and done the treasury a favour as well.
--Some campus associations belonging to the student federations sullied the movement's reputation with a perverse interpretation of democracy. They held "strike" votes by a show of hands rather than by secret ballot, as the law requires of unions, and made it hard for dissidents to attend such meetings.
La Presse asked Nadeau-Dubois in mid-March what he had to say to anti-boycott students who risked losing their semester. Such students, he said, "must respect the democratic decision that was taken" to boycott. Excuse me? How about mobocratic?
--CLASSE's failure to cat-egorically condemn violence has had two effects.
First, it has served to encourage masked anarchists - presumably outsiders - to join the demonstrations.
Their destructive tactics have further contaminated the public's perception of the movement. Léger's latest poll, published April 17, projects public support at 38 per cent, down seven points from three weeks before.
Second, a weak stance on violence can only harden Quebec in the current negotiations. Poli Sci 101: No government can let itself be seen as bowing to street violence.
--Finally, the student groups have had no Plan B, no exit strategy.
To be sure, the government has had no Plan B, either. It had assumed that once it had demonstrated its firmness on tuition, student leaders would have a light-bulb moment, settle for a face-saving "victory" on some peripheral matter and go back to class after Easter. That expectation was perfectly reasonable.
Except for one thing. The government failed to factor in the bewildering quality of student leadership.
haubin@montrealgazette.com
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