© CBC News
CLASSE spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois arrives for the second day of negotiations with Quebec government officials.
Canada - The Quebec government is willing to modify its plans to hike university tuition, student leaders said Tuesday night as they exited a second day of talks aimed at ending the province's student strike.
"We are staying at the bargaining table because it's worth it - which is to say that yes, evidently, we're talking about tuition fees," said Martine Desjardins, president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, one of four umbrella student associations participating in the talks.
Asked whether a deal is imminent, Desjardins told reporters outside the Education Ministry's offices in Quebec City, "We'll be discussing for all of tomorrow, so it depends on what you mean by 'imminent.'"
Both sides introduced proposals on Tuesday to end the impasse, with "several scenarios around the table from the different parties," according to Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, spokesman for the more hardline student group CLASSE. "We'll take the night and probably the morning tomorrow to evaluate them," Nadeau-Dubois said.
The two sides haven't yet set a time for discussions to resume on Wednesday.
It's the first sign the talks might be nearing a deal to end a student strike and a wider social uprising, which has seen tens of thousands of people rally in the streets of Montreal, Quebec City and other communities over the past 3½ months. Nightly protests, the most intense of which involved the mass arrests of hundreds of people and clashes with police, have gone on for the last 36 days.
