OTTAWA—Is the Quebec’s spring of discontent just the latest manifestation of a distinctive micro-climate or is it the harbinger of an angry Canadian season?

As the confrontation between premier Jean Charest and the Quebec student movement continues to spiral out of control, the tentative answer is a little of both.

While the Quebec circumstances are unique, no one should presume that the rest of the country and, in particular, major cities like Toronto are immune to the kind of social unrest that has overtaken Montreal.

Quebec does have a distinctive history of cyclical social crisis. Most of its elder statespersons earned their stripes by successfully challenging the status quo at the time of the 1960s Quiet Revolution.

A decade later, the language battle that led to Bill 101 was fought in the streets long before it was won in the National Assembly and students who are the parents and the grandparents of many of today’s demonstrators were at the forefront of the movement.

Against that historical backdrop, the street has always had greater legitimacy in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada and its enduring appeal is not limited to the younger generation.

To wit, the hundreds of thousands who marched against the war on Iraq in the winter of 2003 or, just a few weeks ago, the quarter of a million people who took to the streets of Montreal on Earth Day

By the same token, the history of the application of the rule of law in the province is not a glorious one.

The 1964 Samedi de la Matraque that saw the police indiscriminately club dozens of demonstrators on hand to protest against a royal visit to the National Assembly; the summary arrests of scores of artists and intellectuals at the time of the 1970 October crisis remain seminal events in Quebec’s collective memory.

The student standoff happens to be unfolding at a time when the province is undergoing what may be its most acute leadership crisis in living memory. It is hard to think of a time when Quebecers have been so uninspired by their political leaders.

Jean Charest was already an unloved premier, over the past year his moral authority has been massively eroded by allegations of corruption.

But Quebecers are equally underwhelmed by the premier’s main opponents.

Quebec, of course, is hardly the only province whose political stars don’t shine overly brightly these days. But it is the only one that is also undergoing a fundamental shift in the alignment that has traditionally defined its political life.

The debate over sovereignty versus federalism that polarized Quebec along the constitutional divide for almost half a century forced each camp to accommodate forces from the left and the right under its respective tent. Seeking consensus was a necessity.

As the coalitions of the past splinter, the consensual glue that held Quebec society together is evaporating.

But as Quebec disengages from the constitutional front, the issues that mobilize its activists also increasingly have legs in the rest of Canada:

Until it moved sideways unto the field of nationalism, Quebec was often a leading force for social change in the country. Many progressive thinkers are hoping that its unexpected embrace of the NDP last spring was a prelude to a return to that role. From the perspective of social peace, that may be a best-case scenario.

What is certain is that the roots of the current Quebec crisis are grounded in soil different from that of the recent past.

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The Quebec student movement draws its inspiration not from the nationalist manifestos of its elders but from the Occupy movement. For many young activists, the tuition fee debate is a side show. They see themselves as foot soldiers in a more global battle.

The view that Quebec is just one front in a larger war for a different social order is one that has resonance outside the province’s borders.

The seeds of discontent that have sprung up in Quebec this spring could still find fertile soil to root themselves in elsewhere in Canada.

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