Posts tagged Canada
2:00 pm - Thu, Nov 15, 2012
73 notes

“We don’t have any money!”

deservedness:

I hear this all the time, especially in this era of austerity in which governments are trying to limit their expenses. We get told over and over again that there’s no money, and so there’s nothing we can do about issues like homelessness.

There are a bunch of reasons why this excuse doesn’t hold up. Here are two of them:

(Note: This is incomplete and simplistic because, well, I’m not an economist.)


- It’s cheaper to house someone than for them to be homeless. Seriously.

I didn’t know this until recently, but the statistics speak for themselves.

Read More

2:00 pm - Fri, Nov 9, 2012
19 notes

MERITOCRACY 101

deservedness:

mer·i·toc·ra·cy [mer-i-tok-ruh-see] noun *


What is a meritocracy?

The idea of a meritocracy is simple: if you work hard, you will be rewarded and work your way up in society. Your success will be determined by your merit — your talent and ability — rather than anything else.

Why the idea of a meritocracy is kinda awesome in theory:

- It’s fundamentally about equality, and in particular, about equality of opportunities. It tells us that no matter who you are, what you look like or where you come from, you’ll be given the opportunity to succeed as long as you’re willing to work hard.

- It’s the logical foundation of the “American dream” — the idea that America (or Canada, in this case) is a land of opportunity as long as you’re willing to put in the work. I come from an immigrant family, and this idea is important to us. It’s what gave my family hope of a better life.

- Since hard work is rewarded, it makes us feel like we have some control over our lives.


Why the idea of a meritocracy is really problematic in practice:

- Working hard does not always equal success. Yes, there will be people who work hard and are rewarded for their efforts, but there are also people who work very hard and who are not rewarded for their efforts.

Consider the working poor. A majority of people in poverty in Canada work, they just don’t make enough money to adequately cover their costs of living, let alone escape poverty. For them, being in poverty has more to do with the shitty jobs available and the shitty wages that come with them than whether or not they’re working hard. And more and more people are working multiple jobs just to meet their basic needs. Their success has not been determined by the amount they’re willing and able to work.

- If working hard is what determines your success, then if you don’t succeed, it must be because you didn’t work hard enough to earn it. By the same token, if working hard is what determines your success, if you do succeed, then it is because you deserved it.

Thus, within a meritocracy, the poor deserve to be poor because they didn’t work hard enough. At the same time, the rich deserve to be rich because they must have earned it. In this way, the idea of a meritocracy serves a purpose: it maintains hierarchies.

The logic of a meritocracy tells us that all successful people must have worked hard and earned their success and this makes their success seem legitimate. We are not to question their prestige, status or wealth, even if they’re only rich and successful because they inherited wealth or because they’re really good at, say, exploiting cheap labour.

I’m not saying all successful people are bad or haven’t worked hard, I’m saying that this is the logic that allows us to believe that super rich people deserve to be rich. Considering that wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, to use Occupy’s terms, it’s a way to justify the 1%’s control of wealth.

And because the idea of a meritocracy also tells us that if we’re not successful, the fault is with us, not with anything else, it justifies our subordinate position in society.

- These ideas blame individuals for their failures. They make us think that if someone is unsuccessful, then it must be because they didn’t work hard enough to earn it. Not only does this make us blame ourselves when we don’t succeed, it makes us more like to blame other people when they don’t succeed.

When considering other people who haven’t been successful, in a meritocracy it’s easy to think: If only they worked harder they’d be successful. And because it’s their own fault they’re not successful, unsuccessful people are too often understood as undeserving of any help. We think: if they worked hard, they could get themselves out of their bad situation.

For instance, I’ve witnessed many people in my life walk by someone experiencing homelessness on the street and tell them to, “get a job”, as if the reason they were experiencing homelessness was because they were unwilling to work hard and as if escaping homelessness was as simple as being willing to work hard. This is overly simplistic and frankly BS. And it keeps the person walking by from even thinking about helping the person experiencing homelessness.

- The logic of a meritocracy assumes that everyone has an equal shot at the opportunities that will allow them to work their way up the ranks of society. However, in reality, there are all sorts of barriers that prevent people from accessing the opportunities they need to succeed.

For example, women are more likely to work jobs in the low-wage sphere and tend to earn less than men. Patriarchy and sexism limit the opportunities available to more than 50% of the population simply because they happen to be female. Racism also has a profound effect. A report from Statistics Canada in 2001 revealed that people of colour earn $6000 less a year than non-racialized group members, even though they are well educated and speak one of Canada’s official languages. Their credentials are there. They are just not being recognised.

Racism, sexism, ableism, cissexism, etc. all exist. Moreover, many people are affected by them in combination. These systems of oppression work to limit the opportunities available to many people.  It’s not simply hard work that determines success.

Moreover, these systems of oppression are not recognised. They go unexamined and unquestioned and it becomes easy to forget that they exist. And when it’s easy to forget that there are things other than hard work that determine success, it becomes even easier to blame individuals when they are unable to succeed.

Also, because systems of oppression become invisible, it makes it very difficult to challenge these systems of oppression, which is bad. If we really want it to be true that anyone who works hard has an equal opportunity to succeed, we need to be able to confront these systems of oppression, confront the barriers they create, and work together to dismantle them.



Sources:

Kallen, E. (2010). Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada. Canada: Oxford University Press.

Statistics Canada (2001). Visible Minorities in Canada (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Profile Series). Minister of Industry. Retrieved from: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/access_acces/archive.action?loc=/pub/85f0033m/85f0033m2001009-eng.pdf

Workman, T. (2009). If you’re in my way, I’m walking: the assault on working people since 1970. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

4:26 pm - Thu, Nov 8, 2012
37 notes

A Quick and Dirty Introduction to Considering the Structual Causes of Poverty and Homelessness

deservedness:

Causes of poverty and homelessness you hear about all the time:

- people making bad choices

- people not working hard enough

- something else that blames individuals even though there’s so much going on that is out of their control


Causes of poverty and homelessness you never hear about (a very incomplete list):

- Restructuring of the economy that makes it harder to get a decent job

You may be asking what this has to do with anything.

Read More

6:39 pm - Sun, Jul 1, 2012
12 notes

Milk in a bag, ladies and gentlemen. In case you weren’t aware that this is how most Canadian’s handle their dairy.

6:32 pm
11 notes

They’re not dents, they’re goals.

If you wanted to know what Canadian Patriotism looks like, 90% of it comes from Molson Beer Commercials.

9:52 pm - Sat, Jun 30, 2012
364 notes
toastheaven: a1879: jakface-stuff: skoptsy: I love Canada’s Day! * W * It’s my absolute favourite holiday ever. I wanted to do one for America’s 4th of July but I don’t think I’d finish it in time. :’(Anywho, have fun tomorrow my fellow Canadians!  Best Canada day picture EVER! Happy Canada Day (tomorrow), fellow Canadian artistas and friends! <3 oh wow :o CANADA, FUCK YEAH! …. Okay, I am so appreciating this more than the beaver with the flag BG and lensflare….
High-Res

toastheaven:

a1879:

jakface-stuff:

skoptsy:

I love Canada’s Day! * W * 
It’s my absolute favourite holiday ever.
I wanted to do one for America’s 4th of July but I don’t think I’d finish it in time. :’(

Anywho, have fun tomorrow my fellow Canadians! 

Best Canada day picture EVER! Happy Canada Day (tomorrow), fellow Canadian artistas and friends! <3

oh wow :o

CANADA, FUCK YEAH!

…. Okay, I am so appreciating this more than the beaver with the flag BG and lensflare….

(via sparkofspaceandtime)

6:12 pm - Thu, Jun 28, 2012
28,562 notes

abaldwin360:

Obamacare! Gay marriage! Legalizing drugs! I’m moving to Canada to get away from all of this shit!

Umm… guys, I think there’s some stuff about Canada we need to talk about.

(via nellasaur)

6:17 pm - Tue, Jun 12, 2012
2,201 notes
jumpingjacktrash: ceasesilence: [Image description: a photo of a shelf with cans of 7-Up and Sprite on it. The shelf has the price marked as 5.25. End description] spunkmate: So you’ve heard about Northern Canada and now you want to help. Cool. Let’s get started. First, it’s important to understand why this has happened. Food and other products, including female hygiene products, contraceptives, clothing, books, etc, have always been higher in Northern communities, at least since around the 1950s when an interest in northern oil blossomed, companies started diving into the high quality (and quantity) of fish and wildlife products that they’d overfished and hunted in the rest of the country and when integrating Canada’s north into the rest of the country was important for political reasons as it was the height of the Cold War and any Russian nuke would come through the North. Before this, Northern communities had been cut off from the rest of what was happening in Canada. Native communities could still rely on the principles of nomadicity, hunting and gathering and new generations could be taught how to do these things. After Canada “discovered” the North (read: discovered how they could exploit all the land they’d so far been ignoring), there were fewer and fewer resources to be hunted and gathered, and Native communities began to rely more and more on goods arriving from the South, as their traditional hunting and gathering culture was no longer sustainable. Eventually, the shipping of goods to these communities was subsidized. For a while, people even had semi-adequate housing. Food and product prices were still high, but they were almost affordable. This year, Prime Minister Harper waged a silent budget war on Canada’s Natives. Here’s what Harper’s said in the past about Canada, and I think it accurately reflects his approach to Canada’s Natives: We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them. Here’s some information about some of the cuts he’s made. There’s a lot out there. I’m not going to tell you how to use Google. Some of the biggest cuts he’s made have been to infrastructure. The communities facing sky-high food and product prices are communities with few roads and absolutely no commercial competition (which, by the way, is how Capitalism works. The free market, where competition keeps prices low). NorthMart is almost always the only store in these communities, so they’re able to set their prices as high as they want and they know people can’t just go to Wal-Mart and get it cheaper. People either have to pay the prices NorthMart sets, or they starve. Not so cool. But at least there were subsidies. The government paid a lot of money (NOTHING in comparison to all the jets Harper just bought) to make the cost of transporting goods to these communities cheaper so that the price tags would be affordable. That wasn’t a Harper thing, that was just a Canada thing for a long time. Not anymore. So now you want to sign a petition. I’m not going to stop you, but it’s not going to work. We’re talking about a guy who’s been found in Contempt of Parliament (and there are allegations he’s in contempt again). He’s also cutting funds to Elections Canada after they announced they were going to investigate what might be the biggest case of election fraud in Canadian history. Believe me, there were a LOT of petitions. This is a guy who just doesn’t care for rules and regulations (when it suits him not to). He does not care about petitions because he doesn’t care about people. Not to mention, 60% of Canada voted against him when he was re-elected.  So what can you do? If you’re a Canadian, write to your MP and let them know you want the high cost of living in Canada’s north to change so that families can access the food and products they need to survive and live healthy lives. Ask your MP to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, back to Canada to investigate food security - this time focusing on the North, which he completely skipped the last time he came. Call them over and over and over again. Make them want you to go away. Don’t go away. Then, write to Olivier de Schutter and invite him back.  If you’re NOT Canadian - continue to spread the word. Tell your friends IRL. You, too, can contact Olivier de Schutter and ask him to investigate Canada’s North. But you should also learn about your local Native communities. How is their access to food and healthcare? How can you help? Are there Native communities in your country that can’t access the things they need to live healthy lives?  normally, i dodge politics on my tumblr as much as i can. no matter how terrible the sob story or how bolded the allcaps in which you command me to stop scrolling, i roll past without reading, and if you post too many of them i unfollow you, because i am autistic and the anger of strangers causes me to bluescreen. the more sincerely you rage, the less i can handle it. but. this post? this kind of thing, we need more of. sure it’s kind of angry, but mostly it’s realistic and proactive. it contains actual suggestions of things you can really do in real life that may genuinely have some kind of effect. please, tumblr, take note. your activism-fu is weak, but this method will make you strong. This is one of the first of these posts I&#8217;m passing along because the information is relevant and the info is HELPFUL for how to do something, especially while Harper is in power. Ugh Canadian politics makes me sick.

jumpingjacktrash:

ceasesilence:

[Image description: a photo of a shelf with cans of 7-Up and Sprite on it. The shelf has the price marked as 5.25. End description]

spunkmate:

So you’ve heard about Northern Canada and now you want to help.

Cool. Let’s get started.

First, it’s important to understand why this has happened. Food and other products, including female hygiene products, contraceptives, clothing, books, etc, have always been higher in Northern communities, at least since around the 1950s when an interest in northern oil blossomed, companies started diving into the high quality (and quantity) of fish and wildlife products that they’d overfished and hunted in the rest of the country and when integrating Canada’s north into the rest of the country was important for political reasons as it was the height of the Cold War and any Russian nuke would come through the North. Before this, Northern communities had been cut off from the rest of what was happening in Canada. Native communities could still rely on the principles of nomadicity, hunting and gathering and new generations could be taught how to do these things. After Canada “discovered” the North (read: discovered how they could exploit all the land they’d so far been ignoring), there were fewer and fewer resources to be hunted and gathered, and Native communities began to rely more and more on goods arriving from the South, as their traditional hunting and gathering culture was no longer sustainable.

Eventually, the shipping of goods to these communities was subsidized. For a while, people even had semi-adequate housing. Food and product prices were still high, but they were almost affordable.

This year, Prime Minister Harper waged a silent budget war on Canada’s Natives. Here’s what Harper’s said in the past about Canada, and I think it accurately reflects his approach to Canada’s Natives:

We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.

Here’s some information about some of the cuts he’s made. There’s a lot out there. I’m not going to tell you how to use Google.

Some of the biggest cuts he’s made have been to infrastructure. The communities facing sky-high food and product prices are communities with few roads and absolutely no commercial competition (which, by the way, is how Capitalism works. The free market, where competition keeps prices low). NorthMart is almost always the only store in these communities, so they’re able to set their prices as high as they want and they know people can’t just go to Wal-Mart and get it cheaper. People either have to pay the prices NorthMart sets, or they starve. Not so cool. But at least there were subsidies. The government paid a lot of money (NOTHING in comparison to all the jets Harper just bought) to make the cost of transporting goods to these communities cheaper so that the price tags would be affordable. That wasn’t a Harper thing, that was just a Canada thing for a long time. Not anymore.

So now you want to sign a petition.


I’m not going to stop you, but it’s not going to work. We’re talking about a guy who’s been found in Contempt of Parliament (and there are allegations he’s in contempt again). He’s also cutting funds to Elections Canada after they announced they were going to investigate what might be the biggest case of election fraud in Canadian history. Believe me, there were a LOT of petitions. This is a guy who just doesn’t care for rules and regulations (when it suits him not to). He does not care about petitions because he doesn’t care about people. Not to mention, 60% of Canada voted against him when he was re-elected. 

So what can you do?


If you’re a Canadian, write to your MP and let them know you want the high cost of living in Canada’s north to change so that families can access the food and products they need to survive and live healthy lives. Ask your MP to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, back to Canada to investigate food security - this time focusing on the North, which he completely skipped the last time he came. Call them over and over and over again. Make them want you to go away. Don’t go away. Then, write to Olivier de Schutter and invite him back. 

If you’re NOT Canadian - continue to spread the word. Tell your friends IRL. You, too, can contact Olivier de Schutter and ask him to investigate Canada’s North. But you should also learn about your local Native communities. How is their access to food and healthcare? How can you help? Are there Native communities in your country that can’t access the things they need to live healthy lives? 

normally, i dodge politics on my tumblr as much as i can. no matter how terrible the sob story or how bolded the allcaps in which you command me to stop scrolling, i roll past without reading, and if you post too many of them i unfollow you, because i am autistic and the anger of strangers causes me to bluescreen. the more sincerely you rage, the less i can handle it.

but.

this post? this kind of thing, we need more of. sure it’s kind of angry, but mostly it’s realistic and proactive. it contains actual suggestions of things you can really do in real life that may genuinely have some kind of effect.

please, tumblr, take note. your activism-fu is weak, but this method will make you strong.

This is one of the first of these posts I’m passing along because the information is relevant and the info is HELPFUL for how to do something, especially while Harper is in power. Ugh Canadian politics makes me sick.

(Source: spunkmate, via vastderp)

12:30 pm - Fri, May 25, 2012
143 notes
thegrazing: Canada student protests erupt into political crisis with mass arrests More than 500 people were arrested in Montreal on Wednesday night as protestors defied controversial new law Bill 78 Protests that began in opposition to tuition fees in Canada have exploded into a political crisis with the mass arrest of hundreds of demonstrators amid a backlash against draconian emergency laws. More than 500 people were arrested in a demonstration in Montreal on Wednesday night as protesters defied a controversial new law – Bill 78 – that places restrictions on the right to demonstrate. In Quebec City, police arrested 176 people under the provisions of the new law. Demonstrators have been gathering in Montreal for just over 100 days to oppose tuition increases by the Quebec provincial government. On Tuesday, about 100 people were arrested after organisers say 300,000 people took the streets. But what began as a protest against university fee increases has expanded to a wider movement to oppose Bill 78, which was rushed through by legislators in Quebec in response to the demonstrations. The bill imposes severe restrictions on protests, making it illegal for protesters to gather without having given police eight hours’ notice and securing a permit. On Wednesday night, police in Montreal used kettling techniques – officers surrounding groups of protesters and not allowing them in or out of the resulting circle – before conducting a mass arrest. Police immediately declared Wednesday’s protest illegal, but allowed it to continue for about four hours before surrounding protesters and making arrests. Martine Desjardins, who represents more than 125,000 students in her role as president of the federation of university students in Quebec, said protesters had been “peaceful” on Wednesday’s march. “It makes a lot of people angry,” she said. “We fear that tonight, because there will be more demonstrations going on, people will become a bit more violent, because as you saw yesterday, when you are peaceful, you get arrested.” Police arrested 518 people at the demonstration, the largest number detained in a single night so far. Montreal police constable Daniel Fortier, who told reporters rocks were thrown at police, said most of those arrested would face municipal bylaw infractions for being at an illegal assembly. “I was so so scared,” said Magdalena, one of those arrested, who asked that her last name not be given. She told the Guardian that she had been taking part in the protests since February, and that Wednesday night’s action had actually seemed particularly peaceful. “This was one of the most jovial I’ve taken part in,” she said. “We were commenting how in good spirits we were, how everyone seemed in such great energy. There were families, children, women with strollers, which you don’t necessarily see at the night protests as much,” she said. Protesters were allowed to walk freely and briskly through Montreal, she added, but that changed when they came to certain intersection, the pace of the march slowing dramatically. “We didn’t think anything of it,” Magdalena said. “All of a sudden you just smelled tear gas and could see smoke, and people were running.” Magdalena said people from the front of the march came running back past her and her friend, who had been strolling with their bicycles. “We turned around and there was already a line of cops behind us. We tried to go on the other side but then there was cops there too. Police officers then tightened their ring around the “hundreds” of protesters, she said, not allowing anyone in or out. Magdalena said this situation continued for an hour, before everyone in the group was read their rights. After that, it was another “hour or two” before she was detained with plastic handcuffs and led to a city bus. She said they were then kept on the bus for “hours and hours” and were not allowed to go to the toilet. “I have some medical problems, and I wasn’t feeling well. I really needed some water and I needed some sugar, and they were really awful, they said they didn’t care,” she said. Magdalena said she was eventually charged with being part of an unlawful assembly, and given a ticket for $634, which she said she planned to contest. Protesters have vowed to continue the nightly protests that began on 14 February when Quebec’s liberal provincial government announced it would introduce tuition fee increases over a five-year period. The Quebec government’s department of education, leisure and sport says fees would go up by $325 (£200) per year for five years from autumn 2012, a total increase of $1,625. The protests have resulted in a backlash against the Quebec prime minister, Jean Charest, who has refused to back down over the tuition fee increase, and the new law. Students have been boycotting classes over the past three months, arguing that the increases would lead to an increased dropout rate and more debt. In response to the protests, the provincial government rushed through Bill 78 on 18 May. As well as the restrictions on protests, it suspends the current academic term and provides for when and how classes are to resume. Some student organisers said that the introduction of the bill, far from cowing the demonstrations, had actually brought more support for their cause. ‘This draconian law has revolted me’ Mathieu Murphy-Perron, who has been helping to organise demonstrations against tuition fees since last year, said: “I would say that I’ve seen more individuals come out and say: ‘You know what? I was neutral on the question of tuition fees, but to bring this draconian law has revolted me and I will take to the streets with you. “There have been more and more people who recognise that Bill 78 is a breach of the right of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and they’re not going to have it.” Some legal experts argue that the bill contravenes Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms. Montreal constitutional lawyer Julius Grey told the Vancouver Sun that Bill 78 was “flagrantly unconstitutional”. Opposition has come from the Quebec Bar Association and the Quebec human rights commission. In an appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live in the US on Saturday night, the Grammy award-winning band Arcade Fire, who come from Montreal, wore symbolic red squares of cloth on their chests during their performance, in support of the protests. Murphy-Perron said the red-hued, four sided shapes were visible “everywhere you go” in Montreal, adding that they show the “inter-generational aspect of this struggle”. “You see red squares on buildings, on homes, on children, on teenagers, on students, on bluehairs, you see them everywhere.” Desjardins said that she and other student representatives will meet with the government next week in Montreal or Quebec City to discuss tuition fees – the fourth meeting since strikes began. In the meantime the daily marches would continue, she said, adding that protesters were also planning a protest in Ottawa, around 150 miles west of Montreal, on 29 May. Ottawa is in a different province from Montreal, and so safe from the clutches of Bill 78 – introduced only in Quebec. “It’s something to ridicule the bill,” she said. “If we are restricted to have a demonstration in Montreal, or in the province, we are going to go outside the province, to Ontario, and have a big demonstration there.”
High-Res

thegrazing:

Canada student protests erupt into political crisis with mass arrests

More than 500 people were arrested in Montreal on Wednesday night as protestors defied controversial new law Bill 78

Protests that began in opposition to tuition fees in Canada have exploded into a political crisis with the mass arrest of hundreds of demonstrators amid a backlash against draconian emergency laws.

More than 500 people were arrested in a demonstration in Montreal on Wednesday night as protesters defied a controversial new law – Bill 78 – that places restrictions on the right to demonstrate. In Quebec City, police arrested 176 people under the provisions of the new law.

Demonstrators have been gathering in Montreal for just over 100 days to oppose tuition increases by the Quebec provincial government. On Tuesday, about 100 people were arrested after organisers say 300,000 people took the streets.

But what began as a protest against university fee increases has expanded to a wider movement to oppose Bill 78, which was rushed through by legislators in Quebec in response to the demonstrations. The bill imposes severe restrictions on protests, making it illegal for protesters to gather without having given police eight hours’ notice and securing a permit.

On Wednesday night, police in Montreal used kettling techniques – officers surrounding groups of protesters and not allowing them in or out of the resulting circle – before conducting a mass arrest.

Police immediately declared Wednesday’s protest illegal, but allowed it to continue for about four hours before surrounding protesters and making arrests.

Martine Desjardins, who represents more than 125,000 students in her role as president of the federation of university students in Quebec, said protesters had been “peaceful” on Wednesday’s march.

“It makes a lot of people angry,” she said. “We fear that tonight, because there will be more demonstrations going on, people will become a bit more violent, because as you saw yesterday, when you are peaceful, you get arrested.”

Police arrested 518 people at the demonstration, the largest number detained in a single night so far. Montreal police constable Daniel Fortier, who told reporters rocks were thrown at police, said most of those arrested would face municipal bylaw infractions for being at an illegal assembly.

“I was so so scared,” said Magdalena, one of those arrested, who asked that her last name not be given. She told the Guardian that she had been taking part in the protests since February, and that Wednesday night’s action had actually seemed particularly peaceful.

“This was one of the most jovial I’ve taken part in,” she said. “We were commenting how in good spirits we were, how everyone seemed in such great energy. There were families, children, women with strollers, which you don’t necessarily see at the night protests as much,” she said.

Protesters were allowed to walk freely and briskly through Montreal, she added, but that changed when they came to certain intersection, the pace of the march slowing dramatically. “We didn’t think anything of it,” Magdalena said. “All of a sudden you just smelled tear gas and could see smoke, and people were running.”

Magdalena said people from the front of the march came running back past her and her friend, who had been strolling with their bicycles. “We turned around and there was already a line of cops behind us. We tried to go on the other side but then there was cops there too.

Police officers then tightened their ring around the “hundreds” of protesters, she said, not allowing anyone in or out. Magdalena said this situation continued for an hour, before everyone in the group was read their rights. After that, it was another “hour or two” before she was detained with plastic handcuffs and led to a city bus. She said they were then kept on the bus for “hours and hours” and were not allowed to go to the toilet. “I have some medical problems, and I wasn’t feeling well. I really needed some water and I needed some sugar, and they were really awful, they said they didn’t care,” she said.

Magdalena said she was eventually charged with being part of an unlawful assembly, and given a ticket for $634, which she said she planned to contest.

Protesters have vowed to continue the nightly protests that began on 14 February when Quebec’s liberal provincial government announced it would introduce tuition fee increases over a five-year period. The Quebec government’s department of education, leisure and sport says fees would go up by $325 (£200) per year for five years from autumn 2012, a total increase of $1,625.

The protests have resulted in a backlash against the Quebec prime minister, Jean Charest, who has refused to back down over the tuition fee increase, and the new law.

Students have been boycotting classes over the past three months, arguing that the increases would lead to an increased dropout rate and more debt.

In response to the protests, the provincial government rushed through Bill 78 on 18 May. As well as the restrictions on protests, it suspends the current academic term and provides for when and how classes are to resume.

Some student organisers said that the introduction of the bill, far from cowing the demonstrations, had actually brought more support for their cause.

‘This draconian law has revolted me’

Mathieu Murphy-Perron, who has been helping to organise demonstrations against tuition fees since last year, said: “I would say that I’ve seen more individuals come out and say: ‘You know what? I was neutral on the question of tuition fees, but to bring this draconian law has revolted me and I will take to the streets with you.

“There have been more and more people who recognise that Bill 78 is a breach of the right of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and they’re not going to have it.”

Some legal experts argue that the bill contravenes Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms. Montreal constitutional lawyer Julius Grey told the Vancouver Sun that Bill 78 was “flagrantly unconstitutional”. Opposition has come from the Quebec Bar Association and the Quebec human rights commission.

In an appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live in the US on Saturday night, the Grammy award-winning band Arcade Fire, who come from Montreal, wore symbolic red squares of cloth on their chests during their performance, in support of the protests.

Murphy-Perron said the red-hued, four sided shapes were visible “everywhere you go” in Montreal, adding that they show the “inter-generational aspect of this struggle”.

“You see red squares on buildings, on homes, on children, on teenagers, on students, on bluehairs, you see them everywhere.”

Desjardins said that she and other student representatives will meet with the government next week in Montreal or Quebec City to discuss tuition fees – the fourth meeting since strikes began.

In the meantime the daily marches would continue, she said, adding that protesters were also planning a protest in Ottawa, around 150 miles west of Montreal, on 29 May. Ottawa is in a different province from Montreal, and so safe from the clutches of Bill 78 – introduced only in Quebec.

“It’s something to ridicule the bill,” she said. “If we are restricted to have a demonstration in Montreal, or in the province, we are going to go outside the province, to Ontario, and have a big demonstration there.”

(via followmyv0ice)

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