Students in Quebec protested new tuition hike policy. Photo by Alexandre Guédon, Flickr

The road to political change in Ottawa goes through Victoria. The road map to follow comes from Quebec.

The B.C. capital would seem an unlikely place to expect any political action this fall, since lame duck Premier Christy Clark just announced there won’t even be a fall sitting of the Legislature.
No matter. Victoria will see some real politics instead ― political action with consequences that will resonate right across Canada.

On Monday, October 22, one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history will take place on the lawn of the B.C. legislature. Already well over 2,000 have pledged to participate. Hundreds, if not thousands, will risk arrest to send a strong and simple message: people are united in resolute, steadfast opposition to the pipelines planned by Enbridge and Kinder Morgan that seek to ramp up exports of raw bitumen from the Alberta tar sands.

October 22 will be a mass sit-in. It may also be the most significant public expression of an incipient mass movement against the Harper government, and the Big Oil interests it serves. The shocking and alarming record melt of Arctic ice cover adds even more urgency to the October 22 mobilization.

There will be a series of teach-ins, trainings and other protest actions throughout the week in Victoria. Organizers, representing a wide spectrum of First Nations and civil society groups, are calling for solidarity actions across the country on October 24.

This will be an important week for Canadian politics. It will be a chance to get us closer to the mass social movement that is desperately needed to challenge the corporate agenda, and energize the widespread anti-Harper sentiment.

If we fail to build a movement that can inspire and capture the imagination, Harper’s relentless and regressive agenda will grind inexorably ahead.

Speaking of which, last week Parliament resumed in Ottawa. Stephen Harper wasted no time announcing that his Conservative government would use the fall session to ram through another omnibus bill and, just like Bill C-38, this ominous omnibus sequel is expected to include additional rollbacks of environmental regulation.

So, despite widespread public outcry both about the undemocratic nature of C-38 and its regressive content, Harper is pressing on.

But while continuing to tear up the existing regime of environmental review and protection, Harper and his ministers have been conspicuously quiet about the big tar sands pipeline projects which everyone knows these changes are designed to facilitate.

To understand why, just look at the numbers. The past year has seen a remarkable drop in numbers for the proposed Enbridge pipeline. The latest poll shows overwhelming opposition to the Northern Gateway project: 60 per cent against and only 19 per cent in support. Even the Kinder Morgan proposal, less well known to the public, is opposed by a margin of 50 per cent to 22 per cent, according to this new poll.

Solidifying and capitalizing on these numbers requires sustained public protest action.
That brings us to Quebec. Last week new Quebec Premier Pauline Marois made good on a number of election promises; her first order of business was to cancel the tuition hike and to repeal the noxious attack on civil liberties and freedom of assembly known as Bill 78 (Law 12).

Marois made the announcement, but the dynamic, determined student movement and its social movement allies made it happen. Quebec’s “Maple Spring” made history. And they’ve made an example for the rest of us to happen.

Every 22 day of the month since March has seen a mega manif several times a quarter of a million people or more streamed through the streets of Montreal to defy the tuition increases and neo-liberalism in general. They were derided, smeared, mocked, dismissed. But in the end, they won.

Jean Charest’s gone. Maybe, Christy Clark’s is out the door soon, and day by day this is looking even more certain. But Stephen Harper should be next, and even though dislodging Harper is a monumental challenge, we can, and must, meet this challenge with strength.

Autumn has just started, but it is past time for our Canadian Spring.