Someone recently asked me: "When did people like Stockwell Day start getting taken seriously in national politics? Used to be people this right wing were seen as a joke."
It's a good question.
He's anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-union, anti-Native, anti-immigrant, favours cuts to education and healthcare, privatization of social services, and huge tax breaks for corporations and the rich.
To top it off, he's offensive beyond belief. It's bad enough that we have to listen to him. Do we also have to watch him on national television half-naked -- barefoot in a wet suit -- when he speaks to the press?
It was the precursor of the Canadian Alliance party, the Reform Party, that launched this extreme right wing political platform on to the national scene.
The open door was not a shift in the public towards the right wing agenda of the bigots. In fact, on issues like reproductive choice or same-sex spousal benefits, all the major polls indicate that a majority of the population are opposed to the policies of the Alliance.
It was the Reform Party's opposition to Quebec's right to inclusion in the Constitution during the 1980s and early 1990s that set the stage.
Anti-Quebec
Quebec is a province unlike any other in Canada. It represents the remnants of a nation forced into Confederation by military conquest and denied basic democratic rights to linguistic and cultural self-determination.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Quebec, and French speaking Canadians in the other provinces, found themselves at the centre of a massive backlash.
No force benefited more from this than the Reform Party and the far right. They used anti-Quebec sentiment as the open door, and then walked through that door with anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-immigrant policies.
They have paved the way for a shift-right on all these policies by the governing Liberals.
Here's the story in brief.
In 1982, then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau re-patriated the Canadian Constitution, formerly still under the jurisdiction of the Crown in the United Kingdom. With Jean Chrétien closely at his side, Trudeau ensured that the terms of the new Constitution could not be acceptable to any Quebec governmental party, including the Liberals.
The whole idea of a constitution in liberal democracies is that it is the rule of the majority by consent. That Quebec citizens are subject to the law of the land but have never agreed to be part of this law, is a slap in the face.
An agreement called "The Meech Lake Accord" was designed to provide a correction to this. The recognition of Quebec as a "distinct" society was a token gesture only, but it was the minimum necessary to allow the federalist Liberals in Quebec, led by Robert Bourassa, to sign on to the Constitution.
The Meech Lake Accord was originally signed in 1987 at a constitutional conference of all ten premiers and the federal Conservative Government led by Brian Mulroney. At the time, the Tories held a clear majority in Parliament with significant support in Quebec.
After the original signing of Meech Lake, there was a three year period during which it was to be approved by the provincial governments.
But a tide of anti-Quebec chauvinism emerged that found the signers on the defensive. One by one, they abandoned ship and refused to defend the Accord.
Right organizes
The bigots were not a majority. But they were extremely well organized, and had a clear agenda.
In 1989, the Confederation of Regions Party (COR), was organized with an explicitly anti-French, anti-Quebec platform. They met at a conference in New Brunswick which attracted 5,000 participants.
When COR met in Ottawa in the same year, they were joined by numerous small right wing groups, including the Christian Heritage Party, REAL Women, and the Canadian Christian Anti-Communist Crusade.
The Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada compared the spread of French instruction in Ontario schools to the AIDS epidemic. Even as more and more parents in English Canada were demanding more support for French immersion in the educational system, the bigots were campaigning against official bilingualism.
In 1990, the Meech Lake Accord failed when Clyde Wells, Premier of Newfoundland, withdrew his province's support, followed by the withdrawal of Gary Filmon's minority government in Manitoba.
By the time the next amendment, the Charlottetown Accord, was put forward for approval in a national referendum on October 26, 1992, the confidence of the right wing was in full swing. This amendment would have seen Quebec recognized as a distinct society, and at the same time recognize Native people's inherent land rights.
Once again it was the far right that led the charge.
Critical 'Yes'
The International Socialists called for a critical "yes" to the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords. But we were tragically isolated on the left. Many progressive forces provided the "no" side of the campaign with a left cover. Even the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) fell for the anti-Charlottetown propaganda.
Most opposed the deals because they saw them as weakening the federal state, and hence weakening social programs.
We argued that the key to both deals was the issue of Quebec. Anti-Quebec policies, we argued, were a Trojan horse which would, if unopposed, shift the whole official spectrum of politics to the right.
We have, tragically, been proven right. Stockwell Day is the rotten fruit of this history of anti-Quebec politics.
But the tide has not only gone in one direction.
There is also now a massive, public and confident anti-capitalist mood.
Activists are drawing the links between the struggles to save the environment and the fight against corporate greed. They are linking the struggles against racism, sexism and anti-gay bigotry with the fight for better education and quality health care.
We also need to link these struggles with the fight to defend Quebec's right to self-determination. This does not mean endorsing the reactionary policies of the Parti Québécois or the Bloc Québécois, parties that are also opposed by tens of thousands of activists in Quebec.
But it means insisting that whatever arrangement between Quebec and the rest of Canada is decided, it will be based on the fullest freedom of choice for the Québécois, without the threat of coercion, sanctions or force.
This is the type of solidarity that can choke off the lifeblood of Stockwell Day and his ilk, and send him back to the lunatic fringe where he belongs.