July 18, 2012–For the second time in two months, a minister of education in Quebec has walked out of her job and out of political life. The first to go was Line Beauchamp, on May 14. She said she had failed to quell the student protest and couldn’t take the pressure anymore. Now it’s the turn of her replacement, Michelle Courchesne. She is also deputy premier of the province.
Courchesne has been a member of the National Assembly since 2003 and has announced she will not run for re-election. She will retain her posts until a writ is dropped, widely expected in early August. Below are two news articles reporting on the political shuffling taking place in expectation of an election in Quebec on September 4.
CLASSE student association Camille Robert told journalists that Courchesne’s decision to step out of politics has no effect on the student strike and campaign for a freeze on tuition fees. The struggle is against a government, she said, not any of its individual ministers.
CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois explained, “The problem for us is the ideology and the measures of the Liberal government.”
Further below is a news report on the meeting of the national congress of CLASSE that took place in Quebec City on July 14. The meeting resolved that mass meetings and votes will take place at strike-bound institutions as the date of the presumed resumption of the suspended school year approaches (August 17). Discussion of the exact strategies for the strike will continue at future congress meetings.
The record of the July 14 meeting (in French) can be read here.
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Charest looks to summer election as support drops, ministers exit
By Les Perraux, Globe and Mail, July 17, 2012
As more of Jean Charest’s key cabinet ministers made for the exit, the Quebec Premier returned from a European vacation to launch what is by all appearances the unofficial start of his re-election campaign. If anyone thought Mr. Charest might have lingering fears over initiating a mid-summer campaign with his low approval ratings and feeble support among the francophones who decide elections, his grin betrayed no hint of it.
“Elections, we’ve had elections on all kinds of dates. Why, I was first elected on a Sept. 4,” the Premier said Monday, mentioning unprompted the date he reportedly favours for the next election with a campaign kickoff of Aug. 1. But he refused to say whether any date has been picked.
“Quebeckers are quite capable,” he said. “We should have confidence in Quebeckers. Whatever the date of the election, Quebeckers will be able to handle it, and make their choice.”
Michelle Courchesne, the Education Minister who took over the portfolio in the spring in the middle of Quebec’s student crisis, announced she will not run for re-election as Mr. Charest was cutting a ribbon on an innovation institute at the University of Sherbrooke, in his home riding.
Mr. Charest’s own riding is just one of many he will strain to retake in the coming election – a campaign he could easily lose but still seems determined to launch as soon as possible for a number of reasons.
The last polls taken early in the summer showed Mr. Charest in a dead heat with the Parti Québécois but lagging among francophones.
But those voters were extremely volatile in the last federal and provincial elections and Mr. Charest is a deft campaigner – an attribute his chief opponents have yet to demonstrate. A quick election call would allow the Premier to avoid the daily pounding his government is likely to take starting Sept. 17, when the Charbonneau commission resumes examining corrupt contracting practices between government and the construction industry.
A quick election would also give him the chance to capitalize on the thin vein of sympathetic public opinion he found by taking a hard line against students fighting a tuition hike.
Parti Québécois Leader Pauline Marois, who backed the students and urged Mr. Charest to call an election on the student issue, has blasted him for preparing to campaign while Quebeckers are on vacation. “Mme. Marois must be confused,” Mr. Charest said. “She’s been asking for elections for a year. Now that there will be elections, she doesn’t want them.”
Ms. Courchesne, who will complete her mandate before retiring, is just the latest in a string of a half-dozen powerful ministers to quit, including two in the battleground Eastern Townships region where Mr. Charest’s own riding is always hotly contested. Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, a long-time cabinet stalwart and personal friend of the Premier, is also reportedly quitting, although spokesman Nicolas Rochette said the longtime minister “has not completed her reflection on her future.” The Canadian Press reported the Liberals have already picked her replacement.
Yvon Vallières, whose riding is also near Mr. Charest’s constituency, retired two weeks ago. Mr. Charest said the departures are all part of the normal turnover of a government that has been in power for nearly 10 years. He pointed out the PQ has lost a handful of prominent members of the legislature as well, including popular former actor Pierre Curzi and former cabinet minister Louise Beaudoin. “It’s part of political life,” he said. “There is talent growing behind those people.”
Ms. Courchesne, 59, had long been rumoured to be considering retirement from political life, but her departure may add to an impression that the education portfolio has become a political graveyard. Ms. Courchesne replaced Line Beauchamp, who resigned suddenly this spring during a student boycott over a tuition increase that paralyzed many Quebec postsecondary institutions and caused occasional chaos, mainly on the streets of Montreal.
The government passed an emergency law in an attempt to restore order. The government’s firm stand in favour of the tuition hike was popular with Quebec voters, while the emergency law was far less so.
The protests have gone quiet over the summer as Mr. Charest ramped up preparations for an election campaign and the students reconsidered strategy. Most of the student groups plan to hold votes in coming weeks to decide whether to pursue strikes into the fall. CLASSE, the more militant of three striking student groups, intends to stage rallies around the province that will carry into the upcoming election campaign.
Key Charest minister won’t seek re-election
Courchesne elected as star candidate for Liberals in 2003
By Brenda Branswell, July 17, 2012, The Gazette
She’s a high-profile minister who wears several hats in Premier Jean Charest’s government. But Education Minister Michelle Courchesne won’t be among the Liberal Party’s slate of candidates in the next provincial election campaign. Courchesne, who has faced opposition calls for her resignation, confirmed Monday she won’t seek re-election.
With the student tuition fee dispute still unresolved, Courchesne is the second Liberal education minister in two months to announce plans to leave provincial politics. Speculation is rife Charest might call an election this summer.
Line Beauchamp resigned abruptly as education minister in May and quit politics, saying she hadn’t succeeded in resolving a major conflict and was resigning because she had decided she wasn’t “part of the solution.”
Courchesne plans to keep serving citizens in her riding and to assume her functions of deputy premier, education minister and Treasury Board president until the end of the government’s mandate, Sébastien Lachaine, a spokesperson for Courchesne, told The Gazette. “After several months of reflection and nine years in the government, she won’t seek another mandate,” Lachaine said.
As education minister since mid-May, Courchesne has been at the centre of the longest student strike in Quebec history. Negotiations with student leaders over dispute over tuition fees resumed briefly when she took over as minister, but the impasse persisted. The Charest government adopted Bill 78, which aims to prevent striking students from blocking others from going to school. The controversial bill restricts protests and suspended the academic term. It also spelled out, for example, when classes should resume at strike-affected CEGEPs in August.
The law is being challenged in court by student groups. If there is an election in the next few months, they won’t ask their students to assess Courchesne’s record but that of the Liberal government – “and how Mr. Charest has resolved that crisis,” said Éliane Laberge, head of the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec.
The problem for the Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE) was never the person who occupied the education minister’s chair, said the group’s chief spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “The problem for us is the ideology and the measures of the Liberal government.” Whether Courchesne runs again or not, “if the Liberal policies remain the same, for us it makes very little difference,” he said.
Courchesne came under opposition attack late last year after her handing out of subsidized daycare places was questioned by AuditorGeneral Renaud Lachance. She was family minister in 2008 when Lachance said a flawed process was used in granting new $7-daycare places. Courchesne denied any wrongdoing but agreed that corrections were needed.
Charest praised Courchesne on Monday, calling her “one of the government’s best ministers since 2003.” She has held several portfolios since she was elected as a star candidate for the Liberals in 2003 in the eastern Laval riding of Fabre.
There is also media speculation veteran Liberal cabinet minister Monique Gagnon-Tremblay won’t seek re-election. Gagnon-Tremblay, 72, is the MNA for the St. François riding, which includes part of Sherbrooke. She was first elected in 1985. Her office issued a media advisory saying she plans to make an announcement in Sherbrooke on Tuesday about the next provincial election campaign.
CLASSE vows not to tell students what to do on voting day
The Montreal Gazette, July 17, 2012
As much as Quebec’s most outspoken student group wants to unseat the Liberals in the next provincial election, CLASSE plans to remain neutral in the election and not tell its members how to vote.
That was the decision reached at a meeting held by the Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante last weekend, where members confirmed their commitment to opposing “neo-liberal” politics and the privatization of public services as Quebec prepares for an anticipated election right after Labour Day.
“Our role is to defend the positions adopted by students and not to tell them what to do on voting day,” said CLASSE’s chief spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “We will defend certain principles and criticize others, but we will remain completely independent of political parties.”
Meeting at the Université Laval in Quebec, the group identified four key themes that it wants to pursue: democracy, ecology, feminism and social justice.
As for the return to classes in mid-August, which is a planned makeup session for departments that were on strike for much of the winter and spring, CLASSE will be organizing votes around that date to allow all its member associations to decide if they want to continue the strike.
A press aide to the association said it’s not known how many student associations will vote to continue the strike, or even how the strike will be handled now that Bill 78 prohibits students from blocking others from attending classes. Each assembly will have to discuss these issues and decide how to proceed, said the aide.
