Charest’s “re-engineering of the state” is a fancy new name for the war on the poor. It’s the same war that’s being fought across the rest of Canada and the world. What’s happening in Quebec right now is what’s happening in British Columbia under Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government, it’s the “common-sense revolution” that broke the back of poor and working people in Ontario over the last ten years. It’s called “globalization” these days, but Paul Martin calls it “fiscal responsibility,” and Brian Mulroney just called it “free trade.” It could also be called “Thatcherism” or “Reaganomics,” if you want to go that far back. It’s about right-wing governments with their boot on the neck of poor and working people, sucking every last penny into the pockets of their rich backers. Same shit, different pile.

It’s taken some time to come fully and openly to Quebec, but it’s here now, and we need to fight it, right now, as hard as we can, because they will not stop. They will not stop until they’ve squeezed every last penny from us, until they’ve squeezed the life out of many of us. They will not be swayed by morals arguments, they will not be convinced, they can only be fought, and fought hard. And if we’re are going to fight them effectively, then we need to learn from what they’ve done before.

On June 8, 1995, the Conservative government of Mike Harris was elected in Ontario under the banner of “The Common Sense Revolution”. Their promise was to deliver a 30% income tax reduction, and they kept their promise. The wealthiest citizens of Ontario became dramatically wealthier, while average working people saw maybe $200 a year more on their paychecks. They achieved this tax cut by making spending cuts in the billions, at the expense of services, social welfare, housing, and public employees. And the province was decimated.

Schools and hospitals across the province were shut down, and front-line staff cut to the bone. Teachers’ and nurses’ unions fought back hard, but were divided and crushed. Of course while these services were being slashed, more than ever before was being spent on policing and the construction of new mega-jails, to regulate the growing ranks of the poor. Conservative labor legislation made it easier for employers to use scabs to break strikes, changed health and safety laws and agricultural labor laws resulting in a massive increase in on-the-job injuries, and instituted an official 60 hour work week. The last time there was a 60 hour work week in Ontario was in the 1800s, under a piece of legislation called “the master and servant act.” Post-secondary tuition increased by 70%, and professional programs (like Law) were deregulated, seeing increases up to 700%. The big cuts were to housing and social welfare: social housing was radically slashed and rent control was completely eliminated in Ontario. Can you even imagine that in Quebec? Average rent in Ontario in 2002 was $836 – much more in large cities like Toronto. Social assistance (welfare) was cut by 22% and frozen – with inflation over the last ten years, that meant a real cut of 40%. People on welfare in Toronto simply cannot afford housing, and can barely afford to eat. “Workfare” forced people on welfare, including single parents and disabled people, into government-controlled workplaces (usually partnered with private industries), in slave-labor conditions. Special legislation made it illegal for workfare workers to join or start unions.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and these are just some of the statistics. The real story is about death. In the town of Walkertown, thousands of people were poisoned by E. Coli in their drinking water. Seven people, maybe more, died as a result. The water processing and testing had been privatized by the Conservative government. Kimberly Rogers died in her apartment in Sudbury in August 2001. She was pregnant, confined to her house during a heat wave. She was under house arrest (and had been cut of welfare) for “welfare fraud” – she’d been receiving welfare while attending school. In September 1995, unarmed native activist Dudley George was shot dead when the Ontario Provincial Police invaded native land in Ipperwash Provincial Park. The orders to take out the warriors with extreme force came from the highest levels of the provincial government. And on the streets of Toronto and other cities in Ontario, hundreds have died, forced out of their homes, forced out of over-crowded shelters by violence and tuberculosis, beaten in alleys by cops and left to freeze. The horror of what has happened to poor people in Ontario over the last ten years cannot easily be described.

What I’ve described here is what’s happening right now in British Columbia, and it’s what Charest has in store for Quebec over the next four years. This war on workers and the poor was fought in Ontario, just as it is being fought here. As is happening in Quebec right now, the major Ontario public and private sector unions, under the banner of the Ontario Federation of Labor (OFL), organized a massive, province-wide fight-back against the Conservative government. “Days of Action”, one day general strikes, shut down cities across Ontario, in a wave of actions that saw thousands on the streets. This culminated in the Toronto Day of Action, in October 1996, where Canada’s largest city was completely shut down, with more than three million people on the streets. To stand in a crowd of three million people who are chanting “General Strike!” is to experience something powerful.

But it never happened. A power struggle within the OFL was taking place – a struggle between unions that wanted a province-wide general strike, (led by the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Canadian Auto-Workers), and the “pink paper” unions (led by the Steelworkers) who wanted to put their effort into fighting the Conservatives at the elections and supporting the New Democratic Party (NDP). The pink paper unions won the battle. The days of action were scrapped, and the unions retreated from the streets. This didn’t happen without a fight: a strong and militant cross-section of workers who had become politically active during the days of action continued to press for a general strike. But through a concerted campaign of co-optation, that saw radical local union executives and shop stewards purged, the union bureaucracy regained control. For all the good it did them – in the next election the Conservatives were voted back to power with a massive majority and the NDP were crushed.

This is easily the path the fight-back against Charest could take in Quebec. The union movement seemed strong and militant in December, but it’s not hard to imagine that the FTQ and the CSN will want to throw their support behind re-electing the PQ, rather than continuing to fight Charest in the streets. But re-electing the PQ will not be a solution. The new Liberal government in Ontario is not reversing the cuts of the Conservative era – they are making their own. A PQ government in Quebec will not reverse the damage that Charest will do to this province; it’s not in their interest. To be taken seriously by those in power, to make our voices heard, we must fight them, not vote for them. In Ontario, on June 15, 2000, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) organized a march on the Ontario Legislature with a demand to address the legislature on the topic of the effects of the “Common Sense Revolution” on the poor. They were refused entry, and fought police for two hours on the lawns of Queen’s Park. It was the beginning of a new and powerful and hopeful fight-back against the Conservative government, but it was too little, too late. The spirit of the working people who had been ready to shut down the province four years earlier had been broken. We in Quebec must be ready and prepared to make certain that this does not happen here. When the union bureaucracy here inevitably sells-out its most radical members we must be there. We must be ready to work with them and to fight with them, and to overthrow this government. The social peace is over! This government must be fought.