1
00:00:00,391 --> 00:00:05,898
Our next speaker, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the leader of the student movement.

2
00:00:24,621 --> 00:00:28,074
Welcome, welcome, thank you, this is a bit amazing. :)

3
00:00:28,074 --> 00:00:32,906
I'm Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, and for 54 days, today,

4
00:00:32,906 --> 00:00:35,858
I have been on strike.

5
00:00:36,673 --> 00:00:40,540
For 54 days, I have been fighting.

6
00:00:40,540 --> 00:00:44,658
54 days of fight, 54 days of police batons.

7
00:00:44,658 --> 00:00:49,941
of tear gas, of pepper spray, me, my friends, my comrades

8
00:00:49,941 --> 00:00:52,639
the students of Quebec.

9
00:00:52,639 --> 00:00:56,472
54 days of striking against the Liberals,

10
00:00:56,472 --> 00:01:02,758
against the bosses, against the cops, against contemptuous columnists

11
00:01:02,774 --> 00:01:07,191
54 days, and we have already won.

12
00:01:07,191 --> 00:01:09,227
Already, we have won over cynicism

13
00:01:09,227 --> 00:01:12,088
Already, we have won over powerlessness

14
00:01:12,088 --> 00:01:15,972
Against those who said just a few weeks ago

15
00:01:15,972 --> 00:01:18,239
that the people of Quebec were dead

16
00:01:18,239 --> 00:01:21,424
and that its youth were not much better.

17
00:01:21,424 --> 00:01:25,052
That is why, I believe, I'll use this platform that has been offered to me today

18
00:01:25,052 --> 00:01:29,621
to warmly thank the Prime Minister of Quebec

19
00:01:29,991 --> 00:01:32,677
Mr Jean Jean Charest. :)

20
00:01:37,292 --> 00:01:41,739
Thank you Mr Charest, you have given us

21
00:01:41,739 --> 00:01:44,729
an unshakable confidence in ourselves.

22
00:01:44,729 --> 00:01:53,053
Thank you Mr Charest to have shown us what we could do against you.

23
00:01:53,053 --> 00:01:56,189
But by now, by now, you are on probation

24
00:01:56,189 --> 00:01:59,707
You have declared war on an entire generation.

25
00:01:59,707 --> 00:02:03,814
We have marked the ground of the history with a permanent mark.

26
00:02:03,814 --> 00:02:08,825
From now on, Quebec's history will never be read without stopping here.

27
00:02:08,825 --> 00:02:18,073
You have shown us the violence of your world, to let us -- perhaps -- imagine ours a little bit better.

28
00:02:18,073 --> 00:02:21,960
Because we aspire to something more than your dying world.

29
00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:27,070
We aspire to more than your dollar-sign education, than your laboratory schools,

30
00:02:27,070 --> 00:02:30,953
and to more than your "Me Inc." society.

31
00:02:30,953 --> 00:02:33,020
By now, we trust ourselves

32
00:02:33,020 --> 00:02:35,873
By now, we trust the power of history

33
00:02:35,873 --> 00:02:38,741
We trust our classmates

34
00:02:38,741 --> 00:02:42,322
And by now trust the people of Quebec.

35
00:02:42,322 --> 00:02:43,850
And it won't stop here.

36
00:02:43,850 --> 00:02:49,441
Our anger, the students' anger, already resonates to the four corners of the province

37
00:02:49,441 --> 00:02:56,455
and the ears of our children, our nieces, of our cousins resonate with it.

38
00:02:56,455 --> 00:03:01,723
Striking is a school. For us, this spring, it will have been the best schooling.

39
00:03:03,416 --> 00:03:07,189
... and it will have been free no less :)

40
00:03:13,389 --> 00:03:15,814
Striking-school this spring will have been for us

41
00:03:15,814 --> 00:03:18,284
the best of training, a free training.

42
00:03:18,284 --> 00:03:21,658
We learned this spring, we learned for real.

43
00:03:21,658 --> 00:03:27,601
We learned what injustice is, what violence is, what the violence of a system is.

44
00:03:27,601 --> 00:03:32,453
We learned what cayenne pepper tastes like, we learned what tear gas smells like.

45
00:03:32,453 --> 00:03:35,950
And above all, we learned resistance.

46
00:03:35,950 --> 00:03:41,433
Hundreds of thousands of us leaned to fight harder than we ever had in our lives.

47
00:03:41,433 --> 00:03:45,869
to fight harder than anyone ever did in Quebec's history.

48
00:03:45,869 --> 00:03:48,457
Our strike, it is not merely the matter of a generation,

49
00:03:48,457 --> 00:03:50,191
It is not merely the matter of a spring.

50
00:03:50,191 --> 00:03:52,924
It is the matter of a people, it is the matter of this world.

51
00:03:52,924 --> 00:03:56,342
Our strike is not an isolated event. Our strike is just a step,

52
00:03:56,342 --> 00:03:59,588
It is just a moment along a much longer route.

53
00:03:59,588 --> 00:04:03,925
Our strike is already victorious. It is already victorious

54
00:04:03,925 --> 00:04:09,164
because it made it possible to see this road, that of resistance.

55
00:04:09,164 --> 00:04:11,615
This is the true meaning of our strike.

56
00:04:11,630 --> 00:04:18,819
250'000 people don't take to the streets just to avoid paying $1625 extra.

57
00:04:29,434 --> 00:04:36,540
This is the meaning of our strike. In perseverance, and in a continued disobedience.

58
00:04:36,540 --> 00:04:40,223
This spring, we planted the seeds of a revolt

59
00:04:40,223 --> 00:04:43,322
which, perhaps, might not grow for many years still.

60
00:04:43,322 --> 00:04:48,841
Yet already, we can say that the people of Quebec are not asleep.

61
00:04:48,841 --> 00:04:52,074
Nor are its youth.

62
00:04:52,074 --> 00:04:54,973
Maybe they have the hardest clubs.

63
00:04:54,973 --> 00:04:58,357
Maybe they wear the thickest armors.

64
00:04:58,357 --> 00:05:01,757
Maybe they own the largest newspapers.

65
00:05:01,757 --> 00:05:04,473
Maybe they have the thickest wallets.

66
00:05:04,473 --> 00:05:07,613
We, however, we have the toughest spirit.

67
00:05:07,613 --> 00:05:09,804
We have the courage of the oppressed,

68
00:05:09,804 --> 00:05:12,164
We have the force of the multitude.

69
00:05:12,164 --> 00:05:14,419
But above all, above all,

70
00:05:14,419 --> 00:05:17,139
We are, simply stated, right.

71
00:05:27,401 --> 00:05:31,040
We are right to stand. We are right to shout. We are right to protest.

72
00:05:31,040 --> 00:05:36,012
We are right to strike. We are right to block entry to our cegeps.

73
00:05:36,012 --> 00:05:37,834
To block entry to our universities.

74
00:05:37,834 --> 00:05:43,494
We are right not to be intimidated by the injunctions of a small-minded jerk

75
00:05:43,494 --> 00:05:47,514
who lost his debate in the House, and who has parents rich enough to buy him a lawyer.

76
00:05:47,514 --> 00:05:50,234
It is right to fight against this.

77
00:05:50,234 --> 00:05:52,462
Against a world...

78
00:05:59,908 --> 00:06:03,947
Right to fight against a world that tries to cut off our wings,

79
00:06:03,947 --> 00:06:07,457
who wants to discipline us through debt and work

80
00:06:07,457 --> 00:06:10,475
Yet this fight is not only the student's fight.

81
00:06:10,475 --> 00:06:14,380
It must not be only the student's fight.

82
00:06:14,380 --> 00:06:16,146
Because the individuals

83
00:06:16,146 --> 00:06:21,680
who want to increase tuition fees, who perhaps will increase tuition fees.

84
00:06:21,680 --> 00:06:25,959
the individuals who invented the health tax, the people who invented the 'Plan Nord'.

85
00:06:25,959 --> 00:06:29,771
The people who have laid off the workers at Aveos

86
00:06:29,771 --> 00:06:34,737
the people trying to lay off workers at Rio Tinto, Alcan, Alma

87
00:06:34,737 --> 00:06:39,716
the people trying to stop the Couche Tard workers from unionizing.

88
00:06:39,716 --> 00:06:42,723
All these individuals are the same.

89
00:06:42,723 --> 00:06:46,576
It is the same people, with the same interests, in the same groups, in the same political parties,

90
00:06:46,576 --> 00:06:48,285
in the same economic institutes.

91
00:06:48,285 --> 00:06:52,964
These individuals are a single elite, a gluttonous elite, a crass elite

92
00:06:52,964 --> 00:06:55,438
a corrupted elite.

93
00:06:55,561 --> 00:07:00,128
An elite who sees nothing in education but a human capital investment.

94
00:07:00,128 --> 00:07:03,017
who sees nothing in a tree but a sheet of paper

95
00:07:03,017 --> 00:07:05,797
and who sees nothing in a child but a future employee.

96
00:07:05,797 --> 00:07:08,238
These people have a plan...

97
00:07:14,930 --> 00:07:18,204
These people have convergent interests, converging political projects.

98
00:07:18,204 --> 00:07:20,146
It is against them that we have to fight.

99
00:07:20,146 --> 00:07:23,134
Not only against the Liberal Government.

100
00:07:23,134 --> 00:07:28,846
Today I can, I believe, give a voice to the wish,

101
00:07:28,846 --> 00:07:33,206
the dearest wish of the students currently on strike in Quebec

102
00:07:33,206 --> 00:07:38,779
to become a springboard. Let our strike be a springboard for the next protest

103
00:07:38,779 --> 00:07:40,089
a much broader protest

104
00:07:40,089 --> 00:07:43,447
much deeper and much more -- yes -- radical

105
00:07:43,447 --> 00:07:48,317
against the political direction of Quebec in recent years [bravo!]

106
00:08:04,548 --> 00:08:06,798
If there is a Quebec tradition to protect

107
00:08:06,798 --> 00:08:09,709
it is not poutine or xenophobia. :)

108
00:08:09,709 --> 00:08:14,579
If there is any Quebec tradition to protect,

109
00:08:14,579 --> 00:08:17,396
it is the one Quebec's students are carrying today. A tradition of fight,

110
00:08:17,396 --> 00:08:21,630
of union fights, of student fights, of the people's fights.

111
00:08:21,630 --> 00:08:27,511
And to speak of this fight, I could not finish my statement today...

112
00:08:27,511 --> 00:08:30,340
without offering you the words of Gaston Miron:

113
00:08:31,478 --> 00:08:35,764
"forward, forward, we are moving, our heads like a delta"

114
00:08:35,764 --> 00:08:37,803
Good-bye, farewell

115
00:08:38,787 --> 00:08:41,581
on our return, we will have the past on our back

116
00:08:41,873 --> 00:08:44,688
and after all this time throwing our hate at all forms of peonage

117
00:08:45,226 --> 00:08:48,236
we will have become terrible beasts of hope. "

118
00:08:48,505 --> 00:08:49,983
Thank you.