{"id":14304,"date":"2012-03-27T10:30:10","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T15:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14304"},"modified":"2012-03-27T10:30:10","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T15:30:10","slug":"the-quebec-student-protests-as-a-harbinger-of-the-coming-entitlement-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/03\/27\/the-quebec-student-protests-as-a-harbinger-of-the-coming-entitlement-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quebec student protests as a harbinger of the coming “entitlement wars”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Morrison<\/a> in the National Post<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

This past week, the streets of Quebec have been full of marching students, displaying a degree of anger and solidarity the likes of which have not been seen in Canada for many years. The fact that this protest is focused on naked self-interest \u2014 maintaining the province\u2019s ridiculously low tuition fees rather than world peace, global poverty or even the inchoate agenda of the Occupy movement \u2014 speaks volumes about the emergence in Canada of an inter-generational struggle over entitlements.<\/p>\n

Everyone knows that a clash over entitlements is in the offing in Canada as a whole. It may come, as the political right argues, because government coffers are close to empty, and cutbacks have to be made. It may be, as the left suggests, that governments have been hijacked by low-tax, pro-corporation policies, and no longer care about equality and social safety nets. It even could be, as still others argue, that the public usage of our core institutions \u2014 hospitals, colleges and universities \u2014 has simply outstripped our capacity or willingness to pay.<\/p>\n

As for the specific example of tuition, the simple fact is that university education is underpriced in Canada, particularly for the middle and upper classes that benefit from impressive tax savings along the route of getting their children to and through university. It is a much smaller subset of the total student body \u2014 children from low-income families \u2014 that deserves greater financial support and attention. Instead, and in a mix of self-interest and a commitment to equality, students demand the same concessions for all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Morrison in the National Post: This past week, the streets of Quebec have been full of marching students, displaying a degree of anger and solidarity the likes of which have not been seen in Canada for many years. The fact that this protest is focused on naked self-interest \u2014 maintaining the province\u2019s ridiculously low […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,79,84],"tags":[720,113,504,764],"class_list":["post-14304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-education","category-government","tag-protest","tag-quebec","tag-teenagers","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3II","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14306,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14304\/revisions\/14306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}