Quebec student protesters resurface, briefly, during election campaign

MONTREAL – Student protests are making a reappearance after having dropped off the radar early in the Quebec election campaign.

Thousands of students are marching in Montreal — just as they have on the 22nd of every month, for the last six months.

The event has been peaceful, at times even festive, although in some cases people have been tearing down a number of political campaign posters.

The protests have faded as an election issue, mere weeks after they were attracting international news coverage and dominating the political conversation.

The student unrest didn’t even come up once in the only election debate to have featured all four leaders of the biggest parties.

Part of that absence has to do with a strategic decision made by many students: most have returned to class, citing a desire to avoid making themselves a campaign issue.

Premier Jean Charest has been accused by opponents of manipulating the calendar to ensure that the strikes would be a top-of-mind issue for voters. His emergency law set the mid-to-late August dates for the return to colleges and universities, and then he called an election for that period.

If so, few students appear to be playing their assigned part in Charest’s supposed campaign script. The number of students on strike has diminished by more than four-fifths since the peak of the movement.

That doesn’t mean the issue has disappeared completely; universities are set to reopen in the coming days and it’s unclear how smooth that process will be.