MONTREAL - Some believe that a committee designed to deconstruct the last year’s student protests was a good idea, but it has become increasingly clear that many think the opposite.
The commission, headed by former MP and MNA Serge Menard, has had a hard slog getting everybody to testify, with two major players declining the invitation: the ASSE student group and local police officers.
While police brass has participated, the police brotherhood told CTV Montreal Friday that they consider the event a waste of time.
A spokesperson for ASSE student association was hardly more flattering.
He said that former leader Gabriel Nadeau Dubois has refused to participate.
“The fact that there’s a former PQ minister at the head of it is suspicious to start and of course they're not putting a whole lot of effort into it, they don't have the ability to subpoena people,” said ASSE spokesman Benjamin Gingras.
One pundit said the exercise has a credibility issue.
“This commission has been compromised from the start because it was seen by so many people as being partisan operation by the Parti Quebecois to blame the former Liberal government for its handling of the student crisis last year,” said Gazette political pundit Don MacPherson. “ A lot of people don't trust it, the police don't trust it.”
But one student leader had a more charitable view.
“We don't think the structure is perfect or the mandate of this commission is perfect but it is now the platform that we've got to talk about our discontent with what happened this spring,” said FECQ President Eliane Laberge.
Menard, who has interviewed 36 people so far, said that he doesn’t believe that the commission is adrift, but he said that he returned from blue skies and of a sea cruise to return to perform the duty.
“I was in the middle of the ocean and then they announced my name,” said Menard. “They could have waited 10 days for me to come back and we could have started differently.”
