The social always returns, like the repressed in Freudian theory. The more you try to stuff it away, out of sight, and pay attention elsewhere, the more virulently it will arise and reassert itself, in some form.

I mean the social in a particular, conflictual sense: the issues that roil a society and reveal its divided soul. External threats unify a society and so do issues such as health care and education, because nearly everyone has a stake in them.

The social as I’m talking about it reflects the most divisive issue — division itself. The space between the wealthy and the rest. When that space is relatively mild, or narrowing, or when there’s a large body, a “middle” class to bridge it, the social recedes as a source of conflict and debate; when it is expanding, or galloping in opposite directions, as it has for years now, the social returns. How is it raising its head currently?

Minimum wage: Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty just announced he’d raise the provincial minimum to $10.25. He lost a recent by-election over it. It may even be increased in the U.S., where the rate, in real terms, is lower than it was in the 1950s. There’s been no mass campaign for this, no groundswell. People seem to sense the gap getting out of control, but what can be done? Where to start? The minimum wage is one place, it’s concrete and also symbolic. Eventually, even governments catch the drift.

Union rights: Why unions? If you’re wealthy, you can use your wealth to acquire more wealth. If you’re not — and fading — you have only others like you. So you unite in unions. The rich tend to prosper by making unions weaker and harder to form. The weaker they are, the weaker they get. Currently, they are at historic lows in membership.

The U.S. Congress recently passed a rare bill that would make it less arduous to organize unions there. George W. Bush says he’ll veto it. In Ottawa, a law to outlaw scabs in federally regulated industries was narrowly defeated. The National Post warned that, where scabs are illegal, “union wages rise out of proportion to market forces.” Yes, exactly. Especially when those market forces are blatantly biased.

Anti-poverty: Mr. McGuinty says he’ll run in the coming election on anti-poverty and the environment. Everyone agrees on the latter, but campaigns don’t normally focus on poverty. It touches relatively few people, and others would often rather not think about it. That changes when the numbers rise dramatically, and when far more voters find themselves facing possible poverty and can’t manage not to think about it. The best way to get their minds off poverty, then, is to do something about it, or say you will.

Cuts or not: A Globe poll before Monday’s federal budget showed a large majority prefers spending on social programs to personal tax cuts. I take this to mean many people feel so down on their luck that no additional income, short of winning the lottery, would solve their problems. They opt for social spending by default.

In turn, there is a minority doing so well that their main worry is someone might stop them from grabbing even more. In Quebec, Jean Charest, who often sounds as if he’s never visited his province, announced that all the booty from the federal budget will go to tax cuts, despite a unanimous vote in his legislature to put it into social spending and not tax cuts. We’ll see how this plays out in Monday’s election.

But why now? Hasn’t the wealth gap been growing for years? Think back to 9/10. For a year, mass protest against globalization had been spreading worldwide. It was the social question — rich versus poor — on a global scale; 9/11 took attention off that. But the social always returns.

What about last Monday’s budget? Did it recognize the return of the social? In a backhanded way. There were no serious tax cuts, and it spread a lot of money around. But Stephen Harper is a man of principle, in an anti-social (as I’m using it) way. The spending did nothing to solve our structural problems, close the income gap or otherwise contribute to dreaded Canadian socialism. If I were Mr. Harper, I’d have slept well Monday night.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.