Quebec Premier Jean Charest on Sunday threw cold water on speculation that he would call a spring election, vowing to carry on in government hours after reaching a tentative deal with student protesters who were angered by proposed tuition hikes.
Charest said a June election was "not part of the program." He made his comments to reporters after giving a speech at a Liberal convention in Victoriaville.
The Quebec premier spoke hours after it was announced that the government and students had reached a tentative deal that could see a temporary freeze on tuition hikes and altered student fees.
The deal -- the result of a 22-hour marathon negotiating session with the government, would in effect hike tuition rates for students but have universities decrease administrative fees to offset the increase.
This proposed arrangement would stay in place for six months. After that, the government could proceed with its plan to raise tuition by $254 annually for seven straight years, but students hope savings can be found to limit that increase.
A sense of calm settled over Quebec after the deal was announced in the hopes it would bring about an end to nearly three months of student protests.
Most of the protesters who clashed with police outside the convention in Victoriaville had scattered by Sunday afternoon.
Charest blamed students for the prolonged battle, saying his government had wanted to negotiate with students before they agreed to come to the table.
"When it lasts this long, it takes two to tango," Charest said.
"We can't sit down with people if they don't want to sit down with us."
Another part of the deal included the creation of a council made up of representatives from student groups, teachers' unions, universities and the government. The council would be responsible for overseeing university spending and finding ways to pass on savings to students to help cover the tuition fee hike. The council would submit its recommendations in a report to the government by the end of the year.
Students are expected to vote on the proposal later this week.
The tentative deal allowed both the government and student groups to emerge from the meeting claiming victory over the three-month old strike.
"It is a fair approach -- and it is going to be not on tuition fees but on administrative fees that are charged to students," Charest said.
"The fact is we have maintained the policy, and in fairness we are going to look if we can do better on the administration fees."
But student leaders used different language, saying "they got what they wanted -- a tuition freeze or a moratorium," said CTV Montreal's Maya Johnson.
Student leader Leo Bureau-Blouin called the proposed deal a success at a press conference Sunday.
"I think it will have a real impact on accessible post-secondary education," he said. "I think that overall Quebec students can be proud of what they did."
Political analyst Jean Lapierre attributed the difference in the government's choice of words and the student's choice of words to spin.
"Obviously you're going to have a lot of spins because the students have to sell it and the government will let them say whatever they want because at the end of the day they want the whole thing settled," he said.
If approved by students, the deal would put an end to Canada's longest student protest that at times resulted in violent clashes with authorities.
The weekend's clashes saw more than 100 people arrested and at least two protesters taken to hospital in serious condition. One protestor is reported to have lost an eye on Friday.
But leaders of the student unions stressed that the deal has not yet been accepted by students and a vote in the coming days would determine the future of the protest movement.
"This is not the end (of the conflict) -- but it's the beginning of the end," Martine Desjardins, one of the three main student representatives, told The Canadian Press.
The leader of CLASSE, the most militant of the student groups, said as far as he was concerned the boycott is still on, according to CTV Montreal's Cindy Sherwin.
For more than 80 days, demonstrators have been rallying against a tuition hike of $1,625, which would be implemented over several years.
During the strike, polls indicated that while the majority of Quebecers agreed with the government's position, they disapproved of the way the crisis was handled by authorities.
On most occasions, the student protests included demonstrators who object to other economic policies of the Liberal government, including a northern development plan known as the Plan Nord.
In his speech to party faithful Sunday, Charest defended the plan, saying it would create 500,000 jobs.
"The Plan Nord is a project that meets our ambitions," he said. "The Plan Nord is Quebec's future."
