Wouldn’t it be something if we all got out and made some noise about the slaughter of children in Syria? Or the imprisonment of rape victims in Afghanistan for “moral crimes”? What about the gulag in North Korea, or censorship in China?
Doesn’t anyone want to make a joyful national noise to support Aung San Suu Kyi?
Maybe Montrealers want to save their moral outrage for human-rights violations closer to home. Fine. I get that many Montrealers don’t like Bill 78. I don’t much like Bill 78 either, or the Montreal bylaw banning masks during protests. But of all the many and real threats to civil liberties we as a people should be fighting, a law requiring protesters to give notice of large demonstrations is way down the list. I don’t remember huge crowds banging frying pans together for Montreal resident Abousfian Abdelrazik, to support his right to live his life free of the restrictions of a terrorism blacklist — restrictions that were totally unjustified and made his life almost impossible, even after he returned to Canada.
We do sometimes have demonstrations in Canada to support the rights of individuals who have been severely mistreated by authorities. People like Maher Arar and Omar Khadr. But they never get close to the scale of the protests Montreal has seen recently.
It’s perfectly valid to argue that everyone’s tuition fees should be paid almost entirely — or even entirely — by taxpayers. I’d argue against that position, but it’s a reasonable one.
But for heaven’s sake, people, get some perspective. Even if you think it’s wrong for Quebec tuition to increase from $2,168 a year now to $3,793 a year in 2017, is that the single biggest injustice you can see in the world right now? An injustice worthy of bringing Quebecers out into the streets for 108 days and counting? One that justifies throwing Molotov cocktails? Or mobs roving classrooms screaming “scab” at their fellow students, jumping up on desks like chimps asserting their dominance at the zoo? One that should spark solidarity protests across the country?
I started my undergraduate degree in 1995, in Ottawa. That year, Ontario tuition was about $3,400 (in 2012 dollars); it grew to $4,700 (again, in 2012 dollars) by the time I graduated four years later. I didn’t like it, and I’m still paying for it. But never once did I feel the urge to scream at my fellow students, or throw an incendiary device.
I do remember, though, how easy it was to get sucked into the gravitational force of a big social movement. In October 1995, I got on a bus along with many other young people to attend the No rally in Montreal, before the referendum. I can’t explain why I did that. I have never been a staunch or emotional federalist. But I was a first-year political-science student in Ottawa, and everybody around me seemed to care so deeply. There was never any question of not going. I remember standing in that crowd — as Jean Charest was speaking, incidentally — and feeling like an observer at best, at worst a fraud.
Was that the one political cause I cared the most about in 1995? Certainly not. But that’s the biggest, and probably the most influential, demonstration I’ve ever attended. The forcefulness of our political activity is not always a representation of how deeply we care.
As a nation, Canadians’ capacity for outrage seems to be completely out of proportion to the seriousness of the issue. Contempt of Parliament? Complicity in torture? Detention of child soldiers? We shrug. One province bringing its low tuition fees closer to the national average? To the barricades!
One more point about perspective, as the banging of pots and pans spreads to other parts of Canada. This particular method of protest is largely inspired by similar protests in Chile, particularly against the Pinochet regime that outright banned political parties, and disappeared, tortured and executed dissidents.
I hope the people banging pots and pans over tuition fees in Quebec are paying homage to courageous people in repressive states, not presuming an equivalence between their causes. But a recent hyperbolic op-ed by two Montreal professors in The New York Times suggests some Quebecers, at least, do think they’re living in a police state.
The other day, my toddler was freaking out over not having a favourite toy in the car with him. I tried various calming tactics, from the front seat. Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion and desperation, I tried reason. “Let’s think about this. Is this a big problem, or a little problem?”
There was a silence, as the tears stopped, and then a small voice. “A little problem.”
If a two-year-old can manage that level of analysis, so can we all.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Kate Heartfield
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