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Villeneuve rips protesters, says 'go back to school'

By: Peter Rakobowchuk

Posted: 06/8/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS Jacques Villeneuve (inset) was critical of student protests as they flared up near the site of Montreal�s Grand Prix Thursday. (CP)

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Jacques Villeneuve (CP)

MONTREAL -- Quebec's student protesters have a new celebrity critic -- and he's firing away on all cylinders.

Jacques Villeneuve, the Quebec-born car-racing champion, is upset at a protest movement that has gone on for months and is now promising to turn up at Formula One Grand Prix events in Montreal all weekend.

In a five-minute exchange with reporters Thursday, Villeneuve urged the protesters to go back to school.

He suggested they were lazy. He called them an embarrassment to Canada -- especially to Quebec. He suggested they were badly raised, by parents who never learned to say, 'No.'

And he said they risked scaring away tourists and wealthy taxpayers, who would just pick up and invest elsewhere in a more stable climate.

The student protest movement has received the enthusiastic endorsement of many Quebec celebrities and near-unanimous support from the artistic community. But the Quebec-born, Monaco-raised driver just might have become the most famous, most virulent new critic of the movement.

"It's time for people to wake up and stop loafing about. It's lasted long enough," Villeneuve told reporters at a cocktail benefit that kicked off the four-day Grand Prix festivities.

"We heard them. We listened. They should stop. It's costing the city a fortune. It makes no sense."

As for their parents, Villeneuve said: "I think these people grew up without ever hearing their parents ever tell them, 'No.' So that's what you see in the streets now. People spending their time complaining. It's becoming a little bit ridiculous. They spoke, we heard, and now it's time to go back to school."

He said in a democracy, people can vote to turf governments and speak their mind between elections to make themselves heard -- but they have to know when to give it a rest.

"That's what democracy is. We vote for people -- and if you're not happy, then you vote for other people the next time around. And if you're not happy you complain, they listen, and that's it," he said.

"Same with your parents: 'Daddy, Mommy, I don't like this.' Well, go back to bed now." Villeneuve said he was raised to believe in hard work, and not imagine money will fall from the sky.

He also compared the students to the London rioters last year and said they were "rebels without a cause."

In the end, he said, the students are hurting themselves because they're pushing for things that aren't fiscally sustainable -- and they'll end up paying one day. Unfortunately, he said, if they keep it up there will be fewer taxpayers around to help foot the bill.

For weeks, protesters have been promising to disrupt the Montreal Formula One Grand Prix, which is perhaps the biggest annual tourist event in Canada.

Police immediately made clear, as the event was just getting underway Thursday, how determined they were to keep that from happening.

The riot squad moved in and cornered protesters so quickly that the first Grand Prix-related demonstration had barely begun and protesters were already being rounded up, with some being arrested.

A group of protesters, many of them masked or wearing black, had been approaching the site of a cocktail party kicking off four days of festivities.

Police swept in and surrounded them through the controversial tactic known as kettling.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 8, 2012 A18

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