For the past few weeks students in Quebec have been taking to the streets to protest cuts to education funding by the Quebec provincial government. The numbers are being counted as anywhere between 150,000 to 230,000 CEGEP, University, and College students have walked out on strike across Quebec. They have been on strike from classes, marching through campuses and streets and filling government and University buildings.

The strike is in response to the Jean Charest government’s move to retroactively convert $103 million worth of student bursaries into repayable loans.

“It’s depriving the poorest people of access to education,” said Karen Isaacs, a first-year McGill University student from Toronto. “It’s important that we fight for a society where education is accessible for everyone.” Isaacs acknowledged that postsecondary education in Quebec is already the cheapest in the country, but said that the strike is to maintain those low fees: “The reason [Quebec fees are low] is that they have fought for it, and maybe the other provinces should be fighting for better deals too”.

The strikes have been going on at Quebec campuses since the end of February, but students at McGill, the province’s largest school, only began protesting seriously in the last few weeks. The unrest at McGill has manifested itself in a number of ways: At a General Assembly meeting on Wednesday, March 16, McGill students voted to strike and set up picket lines on their campus. After that meeting they joined over 60,000 Montreal students in a march down Sherbrooke Street. A number of student organizations including the Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSE) and The Quebec Federation of University and College Students (FEUQ/FECQ), have been heading up the organizing and mobilization since it began more than a month ago.

“What [the Provincial Government and McGill administration] are doing is totally unrepresentative of the student population,” said McGill student and activist Simon-Pierre Dupuis. “It’s authoritarian.” According to Dupuis, the administration at McGill has not done enough to lobby the province and has refused to listen to the students.

A press release on McGill’s website quotes Principal Heather Munroe-Blum as saying that “the university system in Quebec is seriously underfunded and the funding framework must be redesigned to achieve the highest levels of both accessibility and quality.” The press release also encouraged “dialogue” between students and the government

The McGill strike from classes took place on Friday, March 18, during which a large group of students tried to enter Premier Jean Charest’s office. They were stopped by building security.

Before the attempt to occupy the premier’s office, there had been a 103-hour “sleep-in” in front of it, which ended on Saturday afternoon. According to a number of organizers, March 30 is slated to be a big day for Quebec student’s fighting the cuts, because it is the anniversary of the decision to make the cuts.