There were at least four arrests on the ground and the whiff of pepper spray in the air Thursday as hundreds of protesters took to the streets near Montreal's stock exchange.

Students, unions and women's groups held a joint protest over increasing fees for tuition, healthcare, and other services.

They gathered in the area around the local stock exchange, and access to a hotel was cut off.

Riot police were called in and things became tense as officers unloaded the contents of some pepper spray cans into the crowd.

Some demonstrators were arrested and placed in police vans, which caused other participants to chant for their release while attempting to block the vehicles' path.

A cameraman from one TV network was surrounded by protesters who shouted at him.

Tens of thousands of university students are also planning strikes in a throwback to the kind of protests in the 1990s that kept the then-Parti Québécois government from raising tuition fees.

Student tuition rates have been largely frozen in Quebec, for most of the last 40 years. But the current Liberal government of Jean Charest wants to change that.

With files from the Canadian Press