Is Paris burning? Is the famous question asked in a screaming tone, by Adolf Hitler, to Dietrich Von Choltitz the German military governor and commander of Paris, August 1944. The governor realized Hitler had lost his mind and it was pointless to detonate the explosives already set. 

 

Today there are real fires in Paris and at 1000 high schools across France. Driven by anger and anxiety, students across the nation have burst into rebellion, as their anger has become fury at the state of French education. The causes may sound familiar to Canadians and Americans. The classes are too big, the teacher shortage is too acute, necessary courses to graduate are not available, and they are not well prepared for critical exams. Buildings are badly in need of repair. 

 

There is a strong class dimension to the anger and frustration felt by the working class students, as they point out that the students in the affluent areas are being better served by their public schools. The students are very angry to learn that ‘where they learn’ seems to determine the quality of their education and their admission to the better universities The schools in Paris, Saint Denis first took to the streets because their classes had reached 30-35 students which they saw as outrageous. 

 

There is an overhang of the natural environmental crisis, the future of work in an AI world, the possibility of war in Europe, and as Le Monde summed it up, ‘’fear of being left behind’’. 

 

The teachers have joined the students in protest and solidarity, saying ‘’the students are largely correct in their analysis’’. 

 

These demonstrations involve tear gas, fires, rocks and bottles, and have been joined by much of the French left and, of course, the black-clad anarchist left, that adds to the chaotic nature of the crisis. 

 

Adding to the strife, a vicious political drama has broken out in the National Assembly. The balance of forces in the NA is the following. The assembly has 577 seats, so 289 is needed to pass a bill. 

 

The RN National Rally of Marine Le Pen is a neofascist party with 118 seats. 

 

The Ensemble party of Emmanuel Macron has 90 seats.

 

France Unbowed is the dominant party of the left headed by Jean Luc Melenchon  with 70 seats, but he heads an ramshackle left alliance of the Socialist party with 67 seats and the Greens with 38 seats.   

 

The Republican party, the traditional Gaulist right of center party, has 47seats. 

 

The Prime Minister, the nominal head of the NA is from a small party called Renaissance, best seen as a break off of the Republicans. 

 

Next spring there will be a presidential election. Macron is termed out. It will be a two stage affair probably featuring 

LePen vs Melenchon, a neoFascist vs a party to the left of the Socialist Party. 

 

These demonstrations are powerful, reminiscent of 1968 in France. The government could make concessions to the students but it's hard to imagine the students being satisfied. If the NA passes strong austerity measures like the $60B USD on the table now for debate, the powerful CGT union is prepared to join the students perhaps in a General Strike. This is better understood as a labor center like the CLC in Canada or the AFL-CIO in the US. 

 

A third possibility is an early dissolution and an election for the NA which otherwise has a mandate to 2029. This suspends France in a kind of paralyzed state, between a neoFascist block and a socialist block, with an unpopular shrinking neoliberal center holding the balance of power. 

 

What does it all mean for Canada? The student’s frustrations and demands are almost totally congruent with those of other  nations in the west including Canada. Governments like Doug Ford’s Conservative government in Ontario want to underfund education and healthcare in pursuit of other priorities. His budget shows that his priorities are infrastructure, laudable, but also $7 billion in tax cuts from lowering the gas tax 5.7 cents, diesel 5.3 cents,  abolishing car license fees, cutting the HST of 8% on new homes, significant cuts in alcohol taxes, small business tax cuts, dropped from 3.5% to 2.2%, lowered business education taxes, accelerated capital writeoffs, and a cut to tolls on 407 East, the list goes on. 

 

Ford is about $6 Billion short in education and about $3.8 billion short of what would be required to maintain our healthcare system. When he makes a priority of infrastructure on top of that, we can all see that he simply cannot afford $7 billion in tax cuts, almost all to business. 

 

When Ontarians (and Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia) look down the road a bit, do you want to be like France, with open class warfare in the streets? The time to change course is now. Either slow down the infrastructure bonanza, or reign in the tax cuts if you want to remain the government. Your healthcare and education systems are showing the strain.