Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The election of the right-populist Doug Ford government in Ontario, as well as the CAQ government in Quebec, share similarities with the experience of class struggle in Ontario in the 1990s. In July of this year Fightback editor Alex Grant spoke on the lessons of the 1990s for the struggles of today. This is a forgotten history that needs to be reclaimed by the movement against the vitriol of the right wing, and the apologism of the reformists and labour bureaucrats.
The victory of the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec, or Coalition for the Future of Quebec) in the Oct. 1 elections in Quebec marked the end of an epoch in the province. The Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois (PQ) who had held power interchangeably for nearly half a century were pummeled at the polls, receiving their worst electoral results in history. The political landscape in Quebec is increasingly polarized on the left with Québec solidaire and on the right with the CAQ, while the establishment parties in the “centre” have been punished.
The yellow vest movement entered its “fourth act” this weekend, with another round of radical protests by well over the officially cited 130,000 people (possibly as many as 500,000). This time, the state response was even more brutal, with 89,000 gendarmes mobilised across France in an attempt to prevent the yellow vests from demonstrating – peacefully or otherwise – resulting in over 2,000 arrests.
[VIDEO] Bob Rae, Mike Harris, and the fight against Doug Ford (Part Two)
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In part two of his history of Ontario in the 1990s, Alex Grant details the experience of the fight against the Mike Harris Conservatives. In response to government poor bashing and massive attacks on organized labour, a series of citywide general strikes, the “Metro Days of Action,” were organized across Ontario. At its height this movement brought out more than one million workers in the 1996 Toronto general strike, and yet this event is almost totally forgotten today. This movement had the potential to bring down the Harris government, but it was sold out by the labour leadership and the opportunity was missed. Facing similar attacks today, militant workers and youth need to assimilate this history in order to build a new movement that does not commit the mistakes of its predecessors.
The Vancouver municipal elections on Oct. 20 saw a big shift. Vision Vancouver, which had ruled for 10 years—a period which saw 
On Nov. 15, Finance Minister Vic Fideli delivered Ontario’s fall economic statement. Premier Doug Ford likely expected a certain degree of backlash, considering the statement included tax breaks for the rich and ending rent controls on new properties. Indeed, riding out backlash has become routine for the still-fresh Progressive Conservative government. However, there is one front where Ford seems to have been taken off guard by the scale and intensity of the resistance he is facing: cuts affecting Franco-Ontarians.
