Think the Quebec student strikes aren’t about you?

By Alison@Creekside

A one minute time lapse of the start, last week, of the student strike against austerity in Montreal:

Austerity — that’s when your government impoverishes its citizens by decimating public services like education and health in order to balance its lining of corporate pockets with tax breaks.

“Our services are worth more than your profits” is the slogan of the march.

Quebec police declared the march illegal before it began — itself an illegal move on their part in Quebec — highlighting why the Cons didn’t want to fix that bit about *illegal* strikes in Bill C-51.

Ricochet: Everything you need to know about Quebec’s latest student strike

Flashback to G&M last May: Canadian businesses accumulating “dead money” faster than other G7 countries:

“Statistics Canada data shows Canada’s corporate cash hoard was $626 billion in the last quarter of 2013, a jump of six per cent over the previous quarter — more than the federal debt and almost a third of the country’s gross domestic product.”

Let’s hear that once again: “Canada’s corporate cash hoard was $626 billion . . . more than the federal debt and almost a third of the country’s gross domestic product.”

“The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has found that CEO pay for Canadian public companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange has ballooned by 73 per cent between 1998 and 2012, the latest figures available.”

So naturally we really really need to bring in a half a million temporary foreign workers who will eventually have to join the underground workforce as Canadian graduate students intern for free and the many of the rest of us struggle to make ends meet with several part time jobs with no benefits.

Think the Quebec student strikes aren’t about you?

We will now go to our corporate sponsored media who will interview someone stuck in traffic whining about being inconvenienced by the strike, followed up by Dan Kelly, head of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, whining about how expensive TFWs are.

Meanwhile I’m trying to remember when 75,000 people showed up in the streets of any other Canadian city for something other than a funeral.

h/t Kev @ Trapped in a whirlpool for G&M and Ricochet links