A Sea of Defiance: Montreal floods the streets against the CAQ agenda

Montreal erupted against the ruling Quebec CAQ government on Saturday as close to one hundred thousand people filled the streets in one of the largest social mobilizations in years. 

 

A massive march turned the downtown core into a sea of popular anger in response to the governments accelerating this shift to the right and its systematic dismantling of social gains public services and collective rights - particularly union rights.

 

Bill 89, already passed, first threatened a dismantling of the entire legal framework of union rights. It makes it easier to end strikes with back to work legislation by designating broadly what is an « essential service ». Then came an attack on unions’ control over their own financial security under the Rand formula: Bill 3 makes union dues optional if they go to « social justice issues » instead of « regular union business ».

 

Tens of thousands of workers, nurses, teachers, public sector employees, students and neighbourhood residents marched together in a unified front made up of the nine major labour federations representing hundreds of thousands of workers. They were joined by more than four thousand community organizations forming an unusually broad popular coalition against the CAQ agenda which seeks to remake Quebec along a hard right political line.

 

The chants were clear: the health system is collapsing, emergency rooms are overcrowded, waiting times are longer than ever, and classrooms do not have enough teachers. Bottom line, social services are breaking down and industrial workers live in permanent insecurity while the government attacks unions and restricts their ability to defend workers, turning collective bargaining into an empty technical exercise without real power.

 

Protesters accused the Legault government of dragging Quebec toward an extreme right political direction by draining social funding pushing public services into crisis weakening democratic checks and turning unions into a direct political target.

 

In a fiery joint statement the unions declared that the prosperity of society is measured by the strength of its public services by the dignity of its labour conditions and by its ability to care for every member. They warned that the government’s current policies amount to a sweeping assault on the entire society and represent an attempt to impose an economic and social model that serves corporate profit at the expense of decent living conditions.

 

A major source of public anger was also Bill fourteen which comes into force today granting the Labour Minister the authority to impose minimum service requirements during strikes a measure seen as breaking the only tools workers have to exert pressure on employers and the state.

 

Today’s demonstration was not a passing event but a political warning delivered loudly by the crowd. The CAQ now faces a moment of deep popular isolation and any continuation of its attack on workers and public services will only push Quebec toward larger social explosions because the people of Quebec will not allow their society to become a testing ground for a hard right project nor will they allow their rights to be crushed without resistance.

 

However, the CAQ’s attempt to continue targeting the Muslim community under the fake guise of secularism, with new laws that stigmatize religious freedom, also shows their desperation and need for scapegoats.

 

This is part and parcel of the anti-immigrant scapegoating that is fueling the right everywhere. But there were voices at the anti-labour protest in Quebec that opposed those politics of division, that in the end should unite this rising movement and struggle against the potential to divide it.