Montreal students stage rolling protests

Tens of thousands of Quebec university students staged rolling demonstrations throughout Montreal Thursday to protest impending tuition increases. Earlier in the day, one group of demonstrators briefly obstructed truck traffic into the Port of Montreal as police observed other groups emerging from various subway, or metro, stations and holding rallies at several locations, The (Montreal) Gazette reported. The crowd included young children and older participants as well, evidently parents and grandparents of the students, the newspaper said. The protest began as a group of smaller protests, with demonstrators converging for a mass rally in the downtown core to protest the provincial government's plans to impose $300 per year tuition increases in each of the next five years. One marcher carried a sign that said, "Sorry for the inconvenience. We are trying to change the world." Police said there were no arrests. The student union, representing about 127,000 students, last staged an independent rally March 7 that turned violent. Last Thursday, some students also joined in the city's annual anti-police brutality demonstration, where there more than 100 arrests, the Gazette said. Despite the pending tuition hikes, Quebec will still have the cheapest university fees of all 10 Canadian provinces.