Are we headed towards social unrest in Canada?

It`s not just distress, unemployment, etc. that are factors. Good political leadership is required.

Political leadership, for example, that sidetracks people into praying to Jesus, or preying on each other, won`t help. It takes good leadership to help focus the outrage of the citizenry on the appropriate targets. Unfortunately, we have far too much of the wrong kind of leadership in this country. Good subversives are hard to find.

"Are we headed towards social unrest in Canada?"

Absolutely.  Everything has changed.  

Now would be a very good time to bring in a guaranteed income.  I can't see Harper doing that. 

I am not aware of any social unrest in Canada in the past. I doubt any will occur in the future. It would just be repressed if it did occur, with little benefit. I am a sceptic I guess.

My back has been bothering me lately.

Catch: Put some ice on it.

Don't they teach this stuff in school any more? How about the Winnipeg Strike?  http://www.histori.ca/peace/page.do?pageID=347  (sorry, the url linky thing doesn't work)  Or the On to Ottawa Trek http://history.cbc.ca/history/?MIval=EpisContent.html&series_id=1&episode_id=13&chapter_id=3&page_id=4&lang=E [8]

" On July 1, 1935, the simmering tensions of the Great Depression boiled over in Canada as police and jobless protesters clashed in the streets of Regina.

When it was over, one policeman was dead, 40 protesters and five citizens were wounded, and 130 men were arrested. The city was a ruin, the sidewalks covered in broken glass.

It was Canada's worst riot during the Depression."

Regardless of the past, when the pain gets bad enough, there will be social unrest.  

I tremble to imagine what it would take for Canadians to stand up.

When they do stand up, the Confederation will be over and the country will have collapsed.

There will be a number of new regional states or blocs.

______________________________________________________________________________________________ We are like cloaks, one thinks of us only when it rains.

Talk to people who lived through the Depression, particularly in the Prairies,  and you will hear what it takes.

Canada has survived over 125 years being a branch plant for the USA. And we will stick together to do their bidding for the next few decades at least. It seems though that all countries are losing their independence, and now we all worship the multinational corporate Gods. Canada: RIP Welcome:Wal-Mart 

Chretien used to say that 15% unemployed was the threshhold, the breaking point, beyond which violence would break out. The stats are all skewed now however because of all the McJobs that Stats Can throws into the mix to deceive us. 

No.

That was before television. 

unrest uncanadian

Depends ... how much energy does it take?

It's vitamin D depletion time of year, ya know ... zzz maybe think about it in spring, summer... but not if it's raining or too hot ...

I think we do internet UNREST!!!

Whose site do we jam ... or spoof?

 Old hippies do it by internet ... !

I sense a higher crime rate coming: B&Es, shoplifting etc.

The unions are poor at organizing the unorganized at this moment, doing so will be the key to a movement that channels unrest towards something.

Unions are under attack, and Right wing ideology is turning the public against unions, precisely because unions are successful at retaining good pay and working conditions, like at the big 3 automakers, steel, etc. Old school.

The problem is those examples are the last of the good jobs left behind after all the off shore out sourcing, Free Trade and fostering of union free environments in the Southern States.  So a good union job sticks out like a sore thumb and the crab bucket that is Canada's public will drag it down.  This is the danger of not organizing the unorganized.  Toyota is laughing.

 But massive unemployment brings frustration, and that is the base on which history is made. 

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why is it that polling booths look like cattle chutes?

Preferrably coupled with the formation of something like the Winnipeg soviet...

Oh, it is certainly coming. I just don't know what shape it will take.

Short answer: No

Long answer: Heck no

Is it 4:20 yet?

Interesting.  How would you envision the separation? 

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

Ah, yes...the great anesthetizer.

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

Don't they teach this stuff in school any more? Canada has not been a branch plant for the USA for 125 years, it was sold off by the British along with most of the rest of the empire just after WWII.

CD Howe was supposed to have been a Liberal. It was Howe, a transplant from the US, and Louis St Laurent who began pawning off Canada's valuable resources and industries to Canadian and American capitalists. The CCF wanted workers councils and public input into important economic decisions across Canada. Nothing doing said the Liberals.

More Disturbing Legislation Emanating From Congress

January 28, 2009

There were some very militant but rather "localized" demonstrations against EI cuts in New Brunswick during the 1990's.

That lead to the election of NDP MP Yvon Godin in the 1997 federal election...and the general "upswing" in NDP support in Atlantic Canada.

The system does it's best to make unemployment an "individual" rather than a collective problem.    Even if you look at the rather meagre access there is to retraining, the system actively discourages any kind of collective approaches to retraining issues.    To gain access to the system you have to have an individual "employment action plan"...there's no room at all for collective actions.

This is just one small example.

IMHO this is no accident.   It's important for our ruling elites to keep people divided.   The more people unite, the more they see the elites as "the" problem and start organizing.

Maybe the real thing stopping social unrest in Canada is the left itself.  Identity politics has not exactly brought people together, like a class analysis would.   And, our infatuation with pacifism has certainly made us something to not be worried about in establishment circles.

There are too many pacifiers in today's society for people to engage in the kind of mass unrest of the 1930's. TV, computer games,, clebrity worship, sex,  drugs, junk food, Medicare, EI, welfare. All of these things incent people toward indulging themselves to forget their problems rather than doing something about it.

I think even if you could get the voter turnout back up to 70% that would be saying something.

I don't think so. The real issue is that the consumer economy has been so effective at separating us from each other and our interests. For me, the definitive period was the first wave of market deregulation when the selling point to lost jobs was cheaper consumer goods and that proved highly effective. People were prepared to see their neighbours lose their jobs if it meant they could buy things cheaper. Soon we had the first wave of plant closures, amalgamations, and strikes were Canadians decided it was greedy workers earning $15  dollars an hour who were to blame and not well meaning, altruistic corporate executives earning several million per year.

Now, the same political and social elite want workers to reduce their incomes to those of right to work states such as Tennessee and in return for what? Well, nothing at all. We already sold out everything of value for cheap salad spinners from China. Now were in debt up to our ears and with a huge mortgage on the McMansion. We need any job we can get just to keep up with the payments to the profitable banks the taxes we pay our bailing out.

You see, the problem is that we have demonstrated that you can fool all the people all of the time if you just keep dangling the carrot in front while the TV distracts from the periphery filling the victim with messages of how good the carrot will taste once they finally get it.

I'd agree with that, Frustrated Mess, but I also think that there is no cohesive voice against it for the reasons I cited above.

I think some Canadians may consider themselves "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" I think Wood Guthrie said it.

But they know they cant return to treating people the way they did in the US at turn of the last century with cops shooting down protesters in the streets and sic'ing Pinkertons on striking workers. They have to be pretty careful today about spilling blood. We'll know the last card's been dealt when some czar orders throngs of hungry protesters shot to death at the palace gates as they entertain wealthy people in grand opulence. That kind of "contageon" they've learned to avoid at all costs.

I think that identity politics is utter BS, and "class analysis" needs to be taken to the level of class struggle.

But, again, I don't think so. The reason to me is that most people support the system and believe the worst aspects of the system "will not happen to me". Few people concern themselves with cancer until they have been diagnosed, and likewise, few people concern themselves with the failure of the consumer market model until it fails them. And even then, many will tell themselves it will get better.

The same goes for wider issues such as the environment, for example. No matter the sheer magnitude of the problem, people beleive that if left alone everything will work out okay.

We live in a culture where a book called The Secret - premised on the idea that you can wish for what you want and you'll get if you only wish hard enough - is a best seller, where lottery tickets replace savings and frugality, and where ideas have been replaced with prejuidces.

How deep into the dark ages are we? Have a look:

http://www.aclu.org/religion/schools/16295prs20001026.html [35]

And ...theGuardian tells us:

Meanwhile ...

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/conservation/4409407/Darwins-Galapagos-species-under-threat.html

I am afraid of unrest, to be truthful. I think we've been steadily moving backwards and we are just as likely to turn to brown shirts for redemption as red flags.

I'm worried, too. I can't help but think that when the former middle-class folks (economically speaking) find themselves facing destitution through job loss and lack of support (running out or coming to the end of EI and then few will qualify for income assistance), there will be unrest. Whether or not we can organize those affected in ways to bring about positive change remains to be seen.

If Iceland can have unrest, so can we.

Compared to the last recession in the 80s, we have more personal debt, less savings and a social safety net in tatters.

I talk to my co-workers, people making average incomes, who have nothing once they pay their mortgage on their condo. They can't afford to miss a single paycheque, or they WILL go hungry.

Once those who are capable of working full-time jobs, are flung onto the streets with the hardcore street people, we'll create volatile situation. There are no social services to spare.

When we have 100,000 newly laid off workers aimlessly wandering the streets of our cities, watch out, it will begin.

I'm imagining molotov cocktails that have been set alight with the pages of peoples resumes.

"I am afraid of unrest, to be truthful. I think we've been steadily moving backwards and we are just as likely to turn to brown shirts for redemption as red flags."

I think it is more likely right now that the brown shirts will start the social unrest, because we have given them a nicely vacated playing field.

There is agreement on that. Here is one:

Chris Hedges: It's not going to be okay

I don't think there's much in terms of prospects for "the extreme right" (fascists) in the US, simply because of an ever-dwindling WASP demographic, and because the US has yet to lose an inter-imperialist war (even Russia is able to keep its fascists under control).  How can WASPs rant over immigration when especially Hispanic minorities will point out that they rough-shodded over the natives?

As for "libertarians," they have too much of a fetish for decentralization to be effective.

Now, in terms of you two sobbing over "the left" here in Canada, I again ask: Why are we lagging the "far left" in the US?  Why is there no multi-tendency political party to the left of the class-collaborationist NDP?

Well, Tommy says it's because of identity politics. I say it is because of TV and if you read the article I linked:

There's no reason both of us can't be right, with me being slightly more right than you.

What if someone, say, fairly high up in the local school board, said to you that they have been assessing contingency plans to deal with biological warfare, and specifically a biological contaminant expected to wipe out a third of the population before enough of a vaccine is manufactured to be of any use? Local schools are designated morgues, police and local authorities all on the same page...