Montreal metro system smoke bombed

[BlackEleven]

It's chaos this morning in Montreal. The entire metro system (all four lines) is shutdown due to smoke bombs.

I ended up walking to work because the buses were filled to capacity. Traffic is a total gridlock as well.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montre...-shutdown.html

Speculation is student protestors may have done it but no one knows for sure.

[CaptainCrunch]

I would give an ultimatum to the Students, get back to class by Friday or we fail you all and yank your student loans and scholarships and suspend your higher education eligibility for 10 years you can go dig ditches for a living.

Bunch of punks

[BlackEleven]

It's not for sure it was student-related.

They already tried disrupting traffic once before by blocking the Champlain bridge, which majorly backfired on them. It would seem stupid to try another similar tactic again.

But then again, people that advocate such methods may not be the sharpest tools in the shed to begin with...

[CaptainCrunch]

Maybe its not for sure, but when one group CLASS has pretty much openly advocated violence, then I'm going to settle down to one group being the main suspect.

If it was Islamic Terrorists or Domestic Terrorists and they had an opportunity to plant bombs, they wouldn't be smoke bombs.

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Should be easy enough to find out who did it, just check to see who called in sick to Starbucks this morning.

[CaptainCrunch]

I would think that there are video camera's like crazy in the metro line, and this isn't mere mischief, the person or people that planted the smoke bombs are probably looking at felonies and terrorist related charges. Congratulations your life is over.

You stood have stayed in school finished your worthless woman's study degree or Eastern Philosophy degree and gotten ready for your exciting career driving a cab while you b$tch that there are no jobs in your chosen field.

[Ozy_Flame]

^^^ ... because McGill and other Quebec universities certainly don't produce scientists, engineers or businessmen. People only go there for liberal arts degrees.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

^^^ ... because McGill and other Quebec universities certainly don't produce scientists, engineers or businessmen. People only go there for liberal arts degrees.

How many studying the above diciplines are out protesting though?

[Ozy_Flame]

I'm not sure. Is there a poll anywhere that would indicate?

I haven't bothered to look, but I doubt there is one done (at least not yet).

[Ozy_Flame]

There is an article in the Globe about the face of the protests (history major Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois) and how he represents the student angst, but that isn't doesn't even remotely answer whether certain types of disciplines are protesting more than others.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle2425572/

[OffsideSpecialist]

Not necessarily related to the smoke bombing, but after all the crap going on in Quebec this year, I'm rather pleased I didn't go to McGill. I'm working with someone who goes to McGill starting in a couple of weeks, I will need to get his take on the situation...especially as someone from Ontario who has to pay much more in tuition than the Quebecers. I feel especially sorry for the international students in Quebec.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by OffsideSpecialist

Not necessarily related to the smoke bombing, but after all the crap going on in Quebec this year, I'm rather pleased I didn't go to McGill. I'm working with someone who goes to McGill starting in a couple of weeks, I will need to get his take on the situation...especially as someone from Ontario who has to pay much more in tuition than the Quebecers. I feel especially sorry for the international students in Quebec.

If I remember right, most of the classes and exams were cancelled or delayed, there's a core group of students that are anti protesters that while unhappy about the tuition increases have come to the realization that investing in their education and getting it done so they can get into the work force is way more important then marching in the street, whipping pool balls through windows and beating on cops.

Quebec needs to forget about negotiation and get to street sweeping and sentencing these students to cleaning up their own mess.

I personally don't care about which dicipline the students come from, I was being snarky about that.

But these aren't peaceful protests, they are now becoming disruptive protests and they are breaking the law.

To me they've broken any code of conduct based around being a student and they should be expelled from whatever school they're attending so that they don't have to get up in arms about tuition that they won't need to pay anymore.

[MarchHare]

I just can't believe how ridiculously stupid and short-sighted the protesters are being. Since they've been "on strike" (i.e. skipping class) for pretty much the entire semester, I assume that they will not get credit for this term. So they'll have to attend university for at least one extra semester to complete their degrees, paying an extra term's worth of fees and delaying their graduation and entry into the workforce by half a year.

Say a protester is in his or her second year of studies for a four-year Bachelor's degree. Let's further assume that the protestors are successful and the QC government caves to all their demands, freezing tuition at $2800 per year ($1400 per semester). The math looks like this:

Savings from not having to pay tuition increase during third and fourth years of study: +$975

Cost of having to pay tuition for an extra semester because Spring/2012 was lost to protesting: -$1,400

Lost income because entry into the workforce was delayed by six months because of lost Spring/2012 semester (assumes $45k/year starting salary): -$22,500

So someone in their second year would be sacrificing nearly $24,000 to save less than $1000. I assume the math and economics students were smart enough to figure this out and are attending classes.

[Reaper]

Does anyone else have zero sympathy for the Quebec university students who say things like "you're making education out of reach for people"?

In Quebec, university tuition is less than half of what is paid by the students of six Canadian provinces and the lowest in the country. It's time for Quebec university students to start pulling their own weight.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tabl...duc50k-eng.htm

[OffsideSpecialist]

I just heard it suggested on the radio that it may have been some kind of extremist group, which has taken advantage of the situation involving the students to do some damage of their own. Of course, I have heard that same excuse for some of the other riots in Quebec, and I'm not sure I buy it entirely.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by OffsideSpecialist

I just heard it suggested on the radio that it may have been some kind of extremist group, which has taken advantage of the situation involving the students to do some damage of their own. Of course, I have heard that same excuse for some of the other riots in Quebec, and I'm not sure I buy it entirely.

It's all those professional rioters from Surrey, I bet.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by OffsideSpecialist

I just heard it suggested on the radio that it may have been some kind of extremist group, which has taken advantage of the situation involving the students to do some damage of their own. Of course, I have heard that same excuse for some of the other riots in Quebec, and I'm not sure I buy it entirely.

Usually when they say this it goes back to the Black Bloc, the thuggish anarchy group that gained prominance in Toronto during their riots there.

But for the most part the so called Black Bloc are either bored protestors and bored morons who have nothing better to do and little to do with the cause at hand and just want to destroy things.

The riotors in Quebec haven't really taken steps to stop violent acts, they've stood back and watched it happen while that moron that runs CLASS basically cheers from the sidelines and pretends he's the next great counter-revolutionary.

I'm sorry, people can bleat that its not the student groups themselves, but its not like they're taking an active role in stopping the violence, so they've just as bad.

Frack em.

Bring out the big van with the brown noise speakers, or the van with the microwave emitter that makes you feel like you're on fire.

[Hilch]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I just can't believe how ridiculously stupid and short-sighted the protesters are being.

Unless they are fighting for the future students, and not just themselves.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Hilch

Unless they are fighting for the future students, and not just themselves.

If that's the case, then I hope that once they enter the workforce they never complain that their tax dollars are being used to keep tuition artificially low for Quebec students.

[Hilch]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

If that's the case, then I hope that once they enter the workforce they never complain that their tax dollars are being used to keep tuition artificially low for Quebec students.

Who knows. Honestly I'm on neither side of this debate and haven't paid much attention to it but just throwing that out there. However, in all the things the govenment wastes money on education should be the least of our issues.