A crowd of about 100 people briefly blocked Rene Levesque Blvd. Friday during the lunch hour to protest so-called austerity measures being taken by the provincial government.

Union members, students, and others joined forces to denounce the across-the-board cuts being made to health care, municipality transfer payments, and other areas.

Joel Pedneault of the Coalition Against User Fees and Privatization said the government can expect to continue to see protests as it moves toward its goal of balancing the budget.

"They don't want to increase taxes on the very rich, the very wealthy or they don't want to increase them significantly on corporations or banks which have record profits year after year.

"The message that we're carrying today is that we we need to redistribute that wealth from the top of society down to the bottom," said Pedneault.

Martin Coiteux, the president of the provincial Treasury Board, was inside the Sheraton Hotel to deliver a speech about the state of public finances in Quebec.