BY JOE YOUNG

MONTREAL - Up to 5,000 people protested October 29 outside the Economic Summit held at the Sheraton Center here. The gathering, sponsored by the ruling Parti Québécois, was aimed at drawing the labor movement into deeper class collaboration with big business to fend off resistance to the provincial government's austerity program.

A sizable contingent of college students, who are on strike against the imposition of fees undermining the principle of free public education, was prominent in the action. Hundreds of students returned to the Sheraton on October 31 to raise their demands once again. Many others, representing welfare rights groups and women's and other organizations, took part. Trade unions were scarcely represented.

Several summits of this kind have been organized in Quebec since the 1970s. They have usually been organized when the Parti Québécois (PQ) heads the Quebec government. These meetings bring together representatives of the government, big business, trade unions, student groups, and organizations active on social issues. Their major aim has been to promote union collaboration with big business in solving the economic crisis of capitalism in favor of financiers, industrialists, and landlords.

The Parti Québécois is a capitalist party that demands sovereignty for Quebec. It is based on a layer of Quebecois businessmen and professionals who want more powers for the Quebec government in order to increase their wealth. This brings them into conflict with the federal regime. For this reason, the PQ is portrayed and perceived by many as a defender of the national rights of the Quebecois, an oppressed nationality in Canada. This is why this party's leadership is more successful in bringing employers and union officials around the table when other provincial government officials in Canada have a more difficult time in their attempts.

At the last economic summit held in March, an agreement was reached, with the union officials present, that the budget deficit would be reduced to zero in four years. Since that meeting, the Quebec government has unleashed growing attacks on social programs. It has announced additional cuts of CAN$880 million (US$632 million) in health care funding.

The central theme of this summit was "job creation." Projects were announced that are supposed to create 74,000 new jobs. The summit adopted the objective of bringing Quebec's unemployment level down to the average in Canada as a whole by the year 2000. Presently, Quebec's official unemployment rate is 12.6 percent, compared to 10 percent throughout Canada. For the last 35 years, joblessness in Quebec has hovered some 3 percent higher than the Canadian average. This reflects the national oppression of the Quebecois.

The summit participants agreed that the legal work week will be reduced from 44 to 40 hours a week. The gathering proposed tax breaks for employers who hire new people if their labor force has agreed to work less hours with a cut in pay. New taxes the government will levy were falsely justified as needed to raise funds to create jobs for those on welfare. The summit also voted to ease regulations on wages and working conditions in a number of industries.

Union leaders coming out of the summit were ecstatic. Lorraine Pagé of the Quebec Teachers Federation (CEQ) said, "We have just lived though a moment of exceptional solidarity." Clément Godbout of the Quebec Federation of Labor who had earlier called the meeting "a summit of the bosses" proclaimed it in the end, "a summit which creates hope."

At a CEQ general council meeting just before the summit, however, there was opposition to participation. Jocelyne Wheelhouse, a member of the sociopolitical action committee of the teachers union, spoke against attending. Referring to the March summit, she said, "They used our participation to legitimize cuts in the two big budgets of health and education."

On the second day of the October summit, student representatives walked out because the government would not commit itself to freezing education fees. They were followed on the last day by some representatives of community and women's groups, including the Quebec Women's Federation, who left when the government refused to guarantee halting cutbacks on welfare.

At the summit, business representatives demanded a loosening of laws that promote use of the French language. Their report said, "Although political uncertainty is growing around the world, Quebec is the only place in North America where there is such uncertainty." They were referring to the fight of the Quebecois for their national independence. Last year, a proposition favoring Quebec sovereignty came within 1 percent of the vote of winning.

The Quebec government promised the business representatives that the language laws will be applied in a more flexible fashion for business executives and their families who move to Montreal.

As the summit closed, the strike in the community colleges against cutbacks in education was growing. At the beginning of November thousands of students had walked out of 19 colleges.  
 
 
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