Our next speaker, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the leader of the student movement.
Welcome, welcome, thank you, this is a bit amazing. :)
I'm Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, and for 54 days, today,
I have been on strike.
For 54 days, I have been fighting.
54 days of fight, 54 days of police batons.
of tear gas, of pepper spray, me, my friends, my comrades
the students of Quebec.
54 days of striking against the Liberals,
against the bosses, against the cops, against contemptuous columnists
54 days, and we have already won.
Already, we have won over cynicism
Already, we have won over powerlessness
Against those who said just a few weeks ago
that the people of Quebec were dead
and that its youth were not much better.
That is why, I believe, I'll use this platform that has been offered to me today
to warmly thank the Prime Minister of Quebec
Mr Jean Jean Charest. :)
Thank you Mr Charest, you have given us
an unshakable confidence in ourselves.
Thank you Mr Charest to have shown us what we could do against you.
But by now, by now, you are on probation
You have declared war on an entire generation.
We have marked the ground of the history with a permanent mark.
From now on, Quebec's history will never be read without stopping here.
You have shown us the violence of your world, to let us -- perhaps -- imagine ours a little bit better.
Because we aspire to something more than your dying world.
We aspire to more than your dollar-sign education, than your laboratory schools,
and to more than your "Me Inc." society.
By now, we trust ourselves
By now, we trust the power of history
We trust our classmates
And by now trust the people of Quebec.
And it won't stop here.
Our anger, the students' anger, already resonates to the four corners of the province
and the ears of our children, our nieces, of our cousins resonate with it.
Striking is a school. For us, this spring, it will have been the best schooling.
... and it will have been free no less :)
Striking-school this spring will have been for us
the best of training, a free training.
We learned this spring, we learned for real.
We learned what injustice is, what violence is, what the violence of a system is.
We learned what cayenne pepper tastes like, we learned what tear gas smells like.
And above all, we learned resistance.
Hundreds of thousands of us leaned to fight harder than we ever had in our lives.
to fight harder than anyone ever did in Quebec's history.
Our strike, it is not merely the matter of a generation,
It is not merely the matter of a spring.
It is the matter of a people, it is the matter of this world.
Our strike is not an isolated event. Our strike is just a step,
It is just a moment along a much longer route.
Our strike is already victorious. It is already victorious
because it made it possible to see this road, that of resistance.
This is the true meaning of our strike.
250'000 people don't take to the streets just to avoid paying $1625 extra.
This is the meaning of our strike. In perseverance, and in a continued disobedience.
This spring, we planted the seeds of a revolt
which, perhaps, might not grow for many years still.
Yet already, we can say that the people of Quebec are not asleep.
Nor are its youth.
Maybe they have the hardest clubs.
Maybe they wear the thickest armors.
Maybe they own the largest newspapers.
Maybe they have the thickest wallets.
We, however, we have the toughest spirit.
We have the courage of the oppressed,
We have the force of the multitude.
But above all, above all,
We are, simply stated, right.
We are right to stand. We are right to shout. We are right to protest.
We are right to strike. We are right to block entry to our cegeps.
To block entry to our universities.
We are right not to be intimidated by the injunctions of a small-minded jerk
who lost his debate in the House, and who has parents rich enough to buy him a lawyer.
It is right to fight against this.
Against a world...
Right to fight against a world that tries to cut off our wings,
who wants to discipline us through debt and work
Yet this fight is not only the student's fight.
It must not be only the student's fight.
Because the individuals
who want to increase tuition fees, who perhaps will increase tuition fees.
the individuals who invented the health tax, the people who invented the 'Plan Nord'.
The people who have laid off the workers at Aveos
the people trying to lay off workers at Rio Tinto, Alcan, Alma
the people trying to stop the Couche Tard workers from unionizing.
All these individuals are the same.
It is the same people, with the same interests, in the same groups, in the same political parties,
in the same economic institutes.
These individuals are a single elite, a gluttonous elite, a crass elite
a corrupted elite.
An elite who sees nothing in education but a human capital investment.
who sees nothing in a tree but a sheet of paper
and who sees nothing in a child but a future employee.
These people have a plan...
These people have convergent interests, converging political projects.
It is against them that we have to fight.
Not only against the Liberal Government.
Today I can, I believe, give a voice to the wish,
the dearest wish of the students currently on strike in Quebec
to become a springboard. Let our strike be a springboard for the next protest
a much broader protest
much deeper and much more -- yes -- radical
against the political direction of Quebec in recent years [bravo!]
If there is a Quebec tradition to protect
it is not poutine or xenophobia. :)
If there is any Quebec tradition to protect,
it is the one Quebec's students are carrying today. A tradition of fight,
of union fights, of student fights, of the people's fights.
And to speak of this fight, I could not finish my statement today...
without offering you the words of Gaston Miron:
"forward, forward, we are moving, our heads like a delta"
Good-bye, farewell
on our return, we will have the past on our back
and after all this time throwing our hate at all forms of peonage
we will have become terrible beasts of hope. "
Thank you.