It’s Time for Alan Shepard and the Rest of Concordia to Stand Up

OpinionsPierce Nettling — Published November 25, 2014

At their general assembly on November 18, GEOGRADS, the graduate student association for the department of Geography, Planning and Environment, unanimously passed a motion denouncing the austerity agenda of Premier Philippe Couillard.

Standing united as an association, we firmly believe in a more just and equitable society and strongly disagree with the austerity-driven politics and policies of the Liberal Party of Quebec.

These policies, which were solely devised to—in the words of the Montreal Gazette and the previous Liberal government—“re-engineer” Quebec society, are disproportionately targeted at the middle and working class, with legislation aimed squarely at public service workers, labour unions, university students and education funding, healthcare services and universal daycare.

We believe this society is worth defending. In this hour of crisis, we need leaders from across Quebec to stand up against the politics of privatization.

While neoliberal fiscal policies have been implemented by political regimes around the world since the early 1970s, their origins, within the context of Canada, trace back to the federal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, and provincially in Ontario under Mike Harris in the 1990s.

Put into practice, this agenda leads to the privatization of social services and provides tax breaks to corporate entities rather than providing for society at large.

In selling austerity to the public, these policies have been framed as kindling “entrepreneurship” within the province.

This positive image is merely political cover for reorganizing society away from focusing on the welfare of the people to the welfare of corporate power.

In other words, what’s happening in Quebec today is an agenda to create a corporate welfare state. Building a society on such a premise is the road to a dystopian serfdom.

GEOGRADS therefore officially calls on those in positions of power, particularly Alan Shepard, the president and vice-chancellor of Concordia University, to unite with the growing number of student associations, staff and faculty in denouncing the now $17.2 million in budget cuts the Liberals have proposed for this university alone.

In uniting at Concordia, we firmly believe other universities in Montreal and Quebec, who face similar budgetary measures, will join us in saying “NO” to the politics of austerity.