The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Split the Difference

In memorializing the passing of the Great Vaclav Havel, Paul over at Celestial Junk noted:

Canadians may want to consider one of Havel's greatest accomplishments.  Instead of clinging to a Slovakia chaffing for economic and national autonomy, Havel cut the Slovaks loose faster than even the Slovaks could comprehend.  In his wisdom, he knew that being shackled to a disgruntled population would lead only to needless national expense and electoral manipulations and vote buying.  Had Havel been the Canadian PM ... Quebec would have long ago been cut loose ... whether it wanted to or not.

Not so simple. It's a question of geography and economics. Here is a map of the Czech and Slovak republics just before their break-up. Nice clean split. Can't happen here. This is a map of the 1995 referendum vote. Try to split that up into a coherent country, much less two coherent countries. Never mind Ontario and the West losing direct access to the Maritimes. 

Had the ancestors of the Quebecois settled in Newfoundland, rather than along the St Lawrence, it is rather unlikely that Quebec would have joined Confederation. There is also a chance that Canada might never have existed, its land mass having been absorbed during the post-Yorktown jockeying by the Americans. The French fact in Canada is ultimately a geographic one.

The economic and political heart of Canada is, and has always been, the St Lawrence-Lake Ontario waterway, what Donald Creighton called the Commerical Empire of the St Lawrence. Today it is usually described as the Windsor to Quebec City corridor. This region functions as a single economic unit. Throw up an international boundary at the Ottawa river and there is the high possibility of severing that unit. 

But don't the Quebcois depend as much on the corridor as do Ontarians? Yes they do. Economic rationality, however, is not a prominent feature of Quebec politics. Blackmailing the Rest of Canada is a common strategy of both federalist and separatist leaders in the province. Because of the corridor they can blackmail the ROC just as effectively out of Confederation as in it. 

There is a small group among the ethnic Quebecois that does believe in Canada. This group is, sadly, electorally insignificant. If it comprised say a third of the province's electoral rolls, a working alliance could be established with the Allophones and Anglophones. These would be people that the ROC could do business with, politically and economically. The overwhelming political fact of modern Quebec is that a provincial government cannot be formed without at least genuflecting to the province's ethnic nationalists. The lines between federalist and soft-nationalist are much fuzzier than often supposed.

The incessant rhetoric over language in Quebec masks the deep ethnic nationalism of its politics. Because of this the province integrates new comers poorly, driving the most talented to other parts of the country. Whereas the Quebec of the 19th century was able to integrate large numbers of Irish Catholics (such as Brian Mulroney's ancestors), the more aggressive ethnic nationalism of the last fifty years has made assimilating new groups much more difficult.

A lavish welfare state has rendered the traditionally large Quebecois family unsustainable. They are failing to breed and they are failing to assimilate. Future historians may regard the Quiet Revolution as the most remarkable act of cultural suicide in modern history. An entire group of civilized people voting and isolating themselves into languid oblivion. It's been a pleasant trip, in no small part financed by the taxpayers of Ontario and Alberta.

The approach of the ROC toward Quebec must be driven by this central understanding: For Quebecois ethnic nationalists the clock is ticking. For English Canada, then, time is very much on our side. Birth rates are somewhat higher than among the Quebecois and we do a better job, though hardly perfect, of integrating immigrants to Canadian standards. In fifty years time Quebec will not be recognizable, no matter what anyone in Quebec City does today. 

There is still a fairly good chance that the ROC will survive in tact. The West grows ever stronger and more politically important within Confederation, a long-term shift far more important than the rent seeking activites of the PQ, BQ and the dying Liberal Party. The West plus the more conservative bits of Ontario contain the nucleus of something very potent.

Whatever the shortcomings of Stephen Harper as a reformer, he has proven that a nominally conservative majority government can be formed. More importantly he has proven that a party can win a majority government without Quebec. Every electorally successful Prime Minister in Canadian history has understood that Quebec must be on side to form a stable government. Back in May of this year Stephen Harper junked 144 years of political strategy.

Letting Quebec go now would be a tragic mistake, weakening the country on the eve of what might be our greatest moment. The province of Quebec is a superb bit of real estate, rich with natural resources and having an excellent strategic position. Don't confuse the malcontents with everyone in Quebec, and don't confuse the land with the people. There is too much potential to be lost.

The hand of the ROC improves with every year, especially with every Census. That of the Quebecois ethnic nationalists weakens even faster. On the question of national unity now is the time to do nothing. They will insist on being bribed. Fine. The value of the Windsor-Quebec City corridor exceeds the Danegeld. Keep the bribe to a minimum, make it clear that no more special privileges are to be granted and wait.

Once the Quebecois nationalists are unable to maintain a working majority in the national assembly, thirty or forty years hence, better forces will come to power. All the while the province itself becomes less and less electorally important. Time and patience are needed.

Fifty years ago Quebec nationalism was a dangerous threat. Today it is an expensive nuisance. Tomorrow it will be a problem that will likely solve itself. Just wait.

 

Never Enough

The Quebecois are different from you and me. They're French:

The NDP is demanding Stephen Harper respect his own 2006 motion that recognized Quebeckers as a nation within a united Canada by changing its new bill to give the province more than three seats in an expanded Commons.

“That motion meant something. It was meant to mean something to the people of Quebec,” Opposition democratic-reform critic David Christopherson told The Globe recently. “But it will only mean something if they see that the House is respecting the spirit of what that was.”

For years we have complained that the NDP were just shrills for the unions. Times have changed. Now they are also shills for the province of Quebec too. No mystery as to the change of direction. With 58 Quebec seats in the NDP's 103 member caucus the electoral math is easy enough to do. You pander to your base and for the moment the party's base is in la belle province.

The Tories are not above this sort of special pleading, happily shoveling biofuel subsidies to burnish their Green credentials, entice corporate backers and funnel money to rural voters. Such is the game of politics. With the Tories it's just old fashioned pork barrelling. The few using their political influence to fleece the many. In pandering to Quebec's demands for entrenched over-representation something even less palatable is at work.

At the moment Quebec is actually slightly under-represented in the House of Commons. The electoral short-changing of the West and Ontario is mostly due to the gross over-representation of the Maritimes. Looking into the future we see little population growth in Quebec and the Maritime, while areas to the west of the Ottawa River will see between steady and strong growth. Should future governments keep to the ideal of rep-by-pop, then further seat allocations will be to the relative disadvantage of Quebec.

Quebec's demographic and economic weight in Confederation is being eclipsed by the West. In the decades ahead the major decisions in Canada will likely be taken by Ontario and the lead Western province, either British Columbia or Alberta. The winning of a majority government by the Harper Tories represents a watershed in Canadian history. For the first time a peacetime majority government has been formed without more than a token representation from Quebec. 

Winning Quebec has been the basis of majority governments since 1867. Mulroney's insistence on a strong Quebec strategy was essential to the Tory victories in 1984 and 1988. No matter the party or period la belle province has always been the arbiter of power in Canada. Now this is no longer the case. Having spent the last two decades engaged in futile protest voting for the Bloc, the Quebecois have now discovered they are simply no longer necessary to running Canada. They stayed out so long that everyone kind of moved on.

A weak economy, cratering demographics and limited ability to assimilate immigrants have possibly doomed Quebec. The Quiet Revolution, the defining moment of modern provincial history, was less a moment of cultural liberation and more one of cultural suicide. Caught in what is likely irreversible decline the leadership of the province is pressuring the NDP, their new agents in Ottawa, to do whatever they can to entrench Quebec's roughly 25% of the seats in the Commons.

With every Census comes bleak news for the Quebecois. More than just petulance and greed is at play here, the fight to maintain Quebec's "fair share' in the House is an act of desperation. Should it succeed the result will be the formal constitutional establishment of Quebec as a "special" province within Canada. A distinct society with far greater powers than were ever offered through Meech. Certainly far more than the vague sentimentality of "nation within a united Canada."

Should Quebec and its nominally federalist allies in the NDP succeed the fault will rest squarely with Stephen Harper. He has his majority, with little thanks to Quebec, why should he keep pandering? There is no electoral benefit, the new seats in the West and Ontario are likely to swing blue in most cases. At worst the Tories would lose their 5 seats in Quebec. There is no political, constitutional or public policy reason to entrench Quebec, de facto or de jure, with 25% of the seats in the Commons.

It's time the PM learns a new word in French: non

A Popular Guy

Lost in translation:

If a provincial election were held today, and if Duceppe was at the helm of the separatist Parti Quebecois, he would easily become the next premier.

The Leger poll revealed that 37% of Quebecers would vote for the PQ under his leadership, which is at least 12% more than any other party.

The governing Liberal party under Jean Charest would place third, with 21% of the vote, according to the poll.

The theoretical party of Francois Legault, a former PQ minister, would place second, according to the Leger poll. He is likely to announce his new party in mid-November.

Kelly McParland tries to make sense of this over at the Post. His conclusions?

My advice is, don’t try to understand it. They just do these things in Quebec to confuse the rest of the country.  And it works.

Distinct. That's definitely a word that could be used here. Schizophrenic might be another word with some applicability in this situation. This sudden return to popularity, the Bloc won 23.4% of the vote in the province in May's election, brings again to mind a suspicion I had during the campaign. Are the Quebecois voting for a party or a leader?

This is something of a muddled issued across Canada. To many voters the leader is the party. Yet in the ROC the sense is that the views of the leader are the party's views. The leader himself, or herself on those rare occasions, is not that important. They have to look presentable, sound vaguely intelligent and use key words that appeal to likely voters. It's why the word "family" is used in every second sentence of a typical politician's speech. Those who don't vote tend not to have families. 

The leader as a person is not really that important. No one voted for the Conservatives because of Stephen Harper's sparkling personality. Michael Ignatieff's rapier wit did not do much for the Liberal Party this spring. This was not the case with the Jack Layton led NDP. People who otherwise would not have given the Dippers a second glance marked their ballots orange because of the former Toronto Councillor.

This was painfully obvious in Quebec where instant Dipper MPs appeared by the dozens. They were not voting for people they'd never heard of, they were voting for Jack. The late NDP leader's French was more than fluent, it was common place speech filled with slang. A far cry from the stilted and very formal talk of the other Anglophone leaders.

Years of careful prep work, a superb campaign and some very successful TV appearances by Layton, especially on the popular talk show Tout Le Monde En Parle, led to the historic orange wave. The NDP is, of course, not a new party. Its organizational history stretches back to the Great Depression under its old CCF guise. Leaders including Tommy Douglas and in particular Ed Broadbent, made serious appeals to Quebec. The voters of la belle province have had some time to acquaint themselves with the party of the Left.

What changed is that they got to know Jack Layton, over four election campaigns, and at last saw a plausible alternative to the staleness of separatism. It was a matter of getting used to a new face who had cut his political teeth down the 401 in Toronto. They did not vote for the NDP, its platform, its ideology or anything else: They voted for Jack Layton himself.

With the Jack now in that great co-op in the sky, the Quebecois are left looking for another man of the Left. Rather than looking too hard they just looked back, at the man they discarded less than six months ago. Fickle is the heart of the French voter. They may not have much time for separatism, but you know what?  That Giles Duceppe, he's a nice guy too. Certainly much nicer that Jean Charest.

The old joke in politics is that elections are just popularity contests. In Ontario this is not really true. No one much likes Dalton McGuinty, they just don't trust his blue dyed clone, Tim Hudak. In Quebec it does seem that elections are popularity contests. Back in May Jack Layton was the coolest kid on the ballot. Now it's Giles, if only by comparison to his charisma deficient rivals. 

This leaves out poor old Stephen Harper. My advice to the Prime Minister, as it has been for several years now, is to ignore Quebec as far as possible. There is no point trying to pander, flatter or genuflect to the province's demands and tantrums. It is not that the PM's politics are too Right-wing, though that is certainly factor, it's that Harper just isn't cool enough for Quebec politics. Which might be the most flattering thing ever said about the Tory leader.

 

Leaning Backward

What a strange crop of conservatives they breed in Quebec:

The Conservative veterans affairs minister says he would have preferred it if the French had won on the Plains of Abraham.

That battle, in 1759, was a significant victory for the British and a milestone on the march to the English conquest of New France.

At an event Tuesday honouring those who fought and died in Canada's name, Blaney told a group of school children he was "a little bit" on the side of French General the Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm.

"I was not there, yet," Blaney told the kids with a chuckle, "but I was a little bit leaning for the French, at that time. And still, today."

So long as it was only a "little bit." Any more and he might have found himself in what's left of the Bloc Quebecois caucus. I know it's Quebec. We must always be sensitive to the feelings of the Quebecois. Albertans, Torontonians and Manitobans may be insulted with impunity but these are lesser Canadians. The French are different from you and me, they are French.

Having a distinct society also means being entitled to an especially thin skin. Point out that Quebec takes more than it contributes to the national fisc? Bigot! Demand that the laws of the Dominion apply to all Canadians equally, without special allowance for Quebec? Anti-French! Expecting a minister of the crown not to retroactively side with one of the Crown's enemies is, therefore, simply too much.

Let's put aside the French and English thing for a moment. New France was the colony of an absolute monarchy, one in which birth mattered far more than merit. Liberty was something intellectuals talked about under the Bourbons. On the other side of the Channel, however, liberty was something people actually lived.

Britain's mid-eighteenth century constitutional monarchy, though regressive by our standards, supported what was the freest political system in the world. There was no greater guarantee in that time than that sweet old phrase "the rights of Englishmen." The funny thing about the English was that they had a strange compulsion to share these liberties with others.

After having decisively beaten the French at Quebec in 1759, part of a string of victories in that Annus mirabilis, the terribly nasty British decided to extend civil liberties to their conquered foes. The Quebec Act of 1774 might have secure that province's allegiance to the crown, but it also helped aggrevate the situation in the thirteen colonies to the south. Had Montcalm, by some miracle, succeed in beating off Wolfe & Co, marched south and captured New York, would the same consideration have been extended to those English subjects?

General James Wolfe was not a conqueror but a liberator and, indirectly, a father of Canada. His exploits at Quebec were a triumph of arms justly celebrated for generations thereafter. The whole of the operations surrounding the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, as well as the overall global strategy of the Empire (masterminded by the Elder Pitt), were a textbook example of organization, skill and daring. 

M. Blaney should not be "leaning" toward Montcalm, the agent of an authoritarian system. It was true that the Canadiens fought bravely in 1759. Yet they had no idea what the future held for them, that British rule would allow them to participate in the creation a great new nation. Their old rights were maintain, new ones added and previously unimagined possibilities opened for all. 

The Minister of Veterans Affairs should follow in the footsteps of Etienne-Cartier and Laurier and declare that 1759 was a short-term disaster that, over the long-term, became a wonderful stroke of luck for the Quebecois. Leave the ethnic tribalism elsewhere. The Battle of Quebec was a victory for all Canadians.

Quitting Quebec

The Prime Minister tells Quebec to get stuffed, indirectly:

Quebec federalists and separatists lambasted the prime minister Friday for appointing a top aide who doesn't speak French and who once said there are too many francophones in government.

Liberal MP Denis Coderre described the hiring of former Toronto Star columnist Angelo Persichilli as director of communications at the Prime Minister's Office as "bullsh--t."

Ah, good ol' Denis Coderre. Even in the rarefied world of federal politics no one does feigned outraged like the fomer Minister of Immigration. You'd think the PM had appointed Goebbels to handle his communication work, rather than a mild mannered Italian from Toronto. Has M. Coderre ever ended a sentence without a profanity? I suppose so, though I have no proof to support that supposition.

Appointing Mr. Persichilli can be seen as just replacing the ever reliable Mr. Soudas. Angelo looks like he'll do a fine job and there is a long tradtion of appointing journalists to handle government PR work. Which says quite a lot about jouranlists and government, but we'll leave that for another time. What's interesting is that until recently Angelo was seen as a Blue Grit, hanging out as one of the more sane columnists at the Red Star. What's he doing in the PMO?

The cynical interpretation, that would be mine, is that Harper has drifted so far to Left he is basically running a Blue Grit government. With Bob Rae in "temporary" charge of the Liberals, the right-wing of the former Natural Government Party is gradually becoming the left-wing of the new Natural Governing Party. The times they have a changed. It therefore made sense for Angelo to get lost in Harper's Fluffy Blue Sweater. Metaphorically.

An Italian immigrant has replaced the son of Greek immigrants in the PMO PR Ops Room. It's a diverse country, so no one much notices these things, except in la belle province. Obsequious observance of the French Fact has not been made and the new communicator-in-chief is not fluent in la langue de Moliere and Levesque. Added to these manifest sins is that Mr. Persichilli has complained in the past about Quebec's special status in Confederation. Take this firebrand rhetoric:

"Many are tired of the annoying lament from a province that keeps yelling at those who pay part of its bills and are concerned by the over-representation of francophones in our bureaucracy, our Parliament and our institutions."

He continued: "The special treatment given to Quebec is balkanizing this country so that all the provinces are starting to consider Ottawa only as an ATM machine that dispenses money."

Which is the sort of thing Publius says on a mild day, under heavy sedation. These bigoted outbursts - i.e. statements of the blindingly obvious - has led a Quebec nationalist to call for the Grand Inquistors over at the CHRC to investigate Angelo's appointment. Those who complain about the prickliness of certain Muslims should note where this all began: Quebec. 

The ROC's misguided attempt to assuage Quebecois grievances slipped in the 1960s into outright appeasement. Long before anyone thought of hounding Ezra and Mark, the Great and Good of Pearson-Trudeaupia understood that any criticsm of French Quebec was tantamount to bigotry. Thus the Quebecois were tranformed into a superior class of Canadian. 

This process went far beyond the historic turning of a blind eye to the role of the Catholic Church in Quebec, which violated Canadian norms on the separation of church and state. Now the once frugal and isolationist Francophones would demand to live off the national largesse. For about two generations this worked well enough because it relied upon Canada's own version of white liberal guilt: WASP Liberal Guilt.

Well, the Liberals have seen better and brighter days, the WASPs are slowly fading into the Canadian tableau. Into the breech comes the swarty foreigners, like Angelo, Dmitri and Publius too. None of our ancestors fought with Montcalm or Wolfe. My monarchism and anglophilia is acquired not inheirted. Like the fella said, we the "ethnics" have no dog in this fight. The Two Solitudes are meaningless to those of us who grew up on College, St. Clair or the Danforth. 

The Canada we, or our parents, signed up for is not the one Denis "bullshit" Coderre seems to live in. The French-English thing is for the history book. It's very hard to feel sympathy for someone complaining about their grandmother not being served in English at Eaton's seventy years ago, especially when the people living around you have survived war and brutal poverty to become Canadian.

If there has one clear advantage to the muliethnic society it is that it has revealed the smallness of Anglo-French quarrelling. The bitchin' about Angelo's appointment is a final chapter in this smallness.

 

 

 

The Zombie Progress

The wandering Grits:

A year ago, then-leader Michael Ignatieff rolled into Winnipeg with a big bus and an army of staff and volunteers. Like Rae did Wednesday, Ignatieff partied at Folklorama pavilions and showed support for the Canadian Wheat Board. (Ignatieff toured the CWB while Rae attended a rally in Oak Bluff.)

On Rae's tour there is no WiFi-equipped bus and no red army. He is making his way on commercial flights and in rental cars with just one staff member. Rae says his party must develop and communicate better the policies that distinguish them from both the NDP and the Conservatives.

If only Mackenzie King could see the Liberal Party today. Who knows, they might have crystal balls where the Great Equivocator is at right now, so perhaps he is crying into his mother's lap. Since May 2nd your humble correspondent has been gleefully predicting the death of the Liberal Party. Sure the NDP would make the usual amateur screw ups. These sorts of things have happened before. The instant Tories that showed up in Parliament after Mulroney's 1984 smash win were a constant headache too.

The Brian, however, was a political animal who knew how to keep the backbench rabble in order. My thinking went that Jack Layton, who has been in politics most of his adult life, would do much the same as Mulroney had a quarter century earlier. Heck, Layton's father was one of Mulroney's cabinet ministers.  If he needed more inside tips the Jack could always pick up a copy of Peter C Newman's The Secret Mulroney Tapes. The Brian's trick was to be impeccably dressed while swearing under his breadth at opponents.

Jack, however, got sick and so now the NDP is without adult supervision. Libby Davies and Thomas Mulcair might have been more logical temporary replacements, being Jack's deputies and all, they were also potential leadership rivals. So enter Nycole Who. She seems to be a very nice lady. I won't even hold her public sector union credentials against her, if only because I recall just how annoying Leah Casselman was in Ontario. 

Ms Turmel has certain noted disabilities as a federal leader. Being the member of not one but two parties nominally committed to the break up of Canada would be the most stark of these handicaps. Her sudden elevation to Temporary Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the temporary perhaps also applying to the loyalty part, exposed these shortcomings. In the ROC the reaction was outrage. In the more sophisticated province of Quebec, the people gave the usual Gallic shrug. It's only puritans beyond the St Lawrence who are still obsessed with antiquated concepts like nationality and patriotism.

The selection of Turmel is one of those headscratchers the historians will spend decades trying to figure out. Perhaps she was the most experienced public personality without leaderships ambitions. Perhaps Olivia just picked a name out of Jack's beret. We may never know. The immediate question is how much damage has been inflicted on the NDP.

For the moment the polls are keeping steady for the Dippers. But who votes for the NDP? There are the unionists who would vote for a pair of stuffed overalls if it had an orange sign pinned on. The granola munchers in the large urban centers are fewer in number, but make up much of the party organizational strength. Finally there are the Quebecois. They don't much mind Turmel's turncoat approach to the national question. Most are as ambivalent about Canada as the interim NDP leader seems to be.

To us mere Canadians west of the Ottawa and east of the Gaspe, an ambivalence about the country you are, in theory, trying to run seems a disqualification for being a national party leader. These are, however, simple thoughts of linear minds. To the nuanced thinker new possibilities emerge. If nation states are just social service dispensing machines, does it really matter which one you've signed up for?

If the Quebecois seem to think of independence versus unity in the same way most of us think of Coke vs Pepsi, that's about right. For the bulk of the Quebec electorate it's a battle between brands, not between nations. This ambivalence goes both ways. They don't much care for Canada but they are not too crazy about an independent Quebec either. Separation isn't an ideal in la belle province, it's a bargaining tactic.

A people genuinely committed to their own independence would not have given up so easily. In the sixteen years since the near miss of the last referendum why has there been no serious talk of another one? Sure the PQ and BQ go through the usual motion about "winning conditions." But why did support drop so quickly after 1995? Most people when they come narrowly close to achieving a lifelong dream don't just give up, they catch their breadth and try again. That hasn't happened.

The 1995 referendum was a petulant whine after the failure of Meech and Charlottetown. Once the cathartic stuff was over, things returned to normal. The odd nationalist saber rattling from separatists meet with varying degrees of appeasement by the federalists. From time to time something resembling a national unity strategy would be put forth, as with the Clarity Act.

The routine, however, has been well established since the Sixties. They pretend to threaten and we pretend to believe them. The West and Ontario keep subsidizing Quebec's Euro-style welfare state, while Quebec mostly refrains from mucking up the Windsor to Quebec City corridor, the economic heart of the country.

Modern Canada is full of zombies. Half dead ideas from another generation that need to be put down forever. There is the zombie of Liberalism, the idea that splitting the difference on major national issues is a coherent political philosophy. There is the zombie of the Pearson-Trudeau welfare that will bankrupt us a decade or so after its counterparts take down Europe. Finally there is the zombie of Quebec separatism, an ethnic grievance mongering racket that has now passed from a languid middle age into a doddering senility.  

Break out the shovels.

 

No Way Out

Plus ca change:

During its early meetings, the group wrestled over how to break the divide between sovereigntists and federalists that has polarized political debate in Quebec. Lucien Bouchard had once promoted the idea of a third way. But instead, he went on to lead the PQ and found himself trapped between the two poles.

Mr. Legault, a former high-profile PQ cabinet minister who quit the party in June of 2009, is determined to succeed where Mr. Bouchard – his political mentor and the man who recruited him into politics – had failed. 

But of course this is Quebec. He's not so much leaving separatism as letting it digest slowly.

What’s needed before returning to the old debate, he said, is to generate new wealth, solve problems in health and education, and build a sense of pride by promoting “economic nationalism.” Then the issue of sovereignty or federalism can be revisited, he said.

“Once we get back the leverage and the bargaining power, maybe in 10 or 15 years, we can return to the debate,” he said. “But if we do nothing now, I’m afraid that choice will no longer be available to us.”

Points to M. Legault for grasping what nearly three generations of Quebec nationalists have missed, that the idea of an independent socialist Quebec is fiscal and economic nonsense. Unfortunately M. Legault has not yet figured out that for la belle province to have a better chance of becoming independent, it needs to become more like the rest of Canada.

That means less statism, lower taxes and - quelle horreur - more English. The language of Shakespeare and Milton is also the language of international business. In a globalized world the tongue of the hated oppressor is far more valuable than that of les habitant. How do you militantly protect an increasingly irrelevant language in a world that is becoming ever more integrated? You can't. The smart thing, economically, is to push the Quebecois young into becoming properly bilingual. 

This is, of course, unthinkable. Language is everything in the truncated world of Quebec politics. In the above article M Legault displays the classic Quebecois siege mentality, demanding more powers from Ottawa to protect French from perfidious English. The date on the calendar is 2011 here in Toronto. In Quebec City it's 1759 and the thin red lines are forming.

The Quebec nationalist movement is a motley collection of ethnic tribalists, political extortion artists and utopian day dreamers. The first are filled with hatred and contempt for that which is not French. Imagine a Toronto WASP trying to get away with the sort of casual bigotry that is direct at Eastern Township anglophones and Montreal allophones. The second group is just trying to exact the maximum amount out of the federal coffers until the ROC goes broke.

The third faction of Quebec nationalism, the utopian day dreamers, are what have made the idea of an independent Quebec impractical. Socialism, as Mrs Thatcher observed, works until you run out of other people's money. In Alberta very clever men with engineering degrees have figure out how to turn worthless sand into lots of money. Albertans just about tolerate funding a Quebec within Canada. A Quebec outside of Canada? They'll be reaching for those unregistered shotguns before the cheque book.

But isn't that M. Legault's implicit point? Quebec needs to get its act together before it can go it alone. To go it alone, however, it needs to become less politically distinct. Its financial and economic policies would need to move from Greek like incompetence to, in time, Ontario minded muddling. Sure the McGuinty years look like a trainwreck, but only to the somewhat higher standards of the Ontario electorate. 

A Quebec that looks more like the rest of Canada is a Quebec that will have less reason to leave. Why set up a new country that will look a lot like the old one, except in a different language. Quebec nationalism, however, has never made even the slightest economic sense. It's more than economics at issue, independence is ultimately a psychological force. 

As many of you know I live in Toronto, which I refer to jokingly as "the Imperial Capital" in my photographic posts. I travel on the TTC every day. While I own a car, driving in Toronto on a weekday is akin to being in line at the supermarket while being harassed by cyclists. Thus I crowd aboard the world's largest moving homeless shelter. 

What do I see there? Like the diversity enforcers tell you, Toronto is the world. English is the minority language to people chatting on the subway. There are advertising signs in French. In small letters you can see that they are paid for, in some way, by the government. Stepping out onto the streets a dazzling array of shop signs meet you. They are in every conceivable language. No one is particularly concerned in Toronto about English vanishing.

Almost every single one of those shopkeepers has children, most of whom are going to university. They in turn intend on working in some of those gleaming office towers in the downtown area. Guess what language they speak there? No points for getting it right.

English survives in Toronto because it makes sense to survive. So Toronto doesn't hide from the rest of the world, punishing the Chans and Guptas for having their Cantonese and Hindi font bigger than their English. A culture confident in itself doesn't have to resort to petty acts of repression. A neurotic culture passes Bill 101.

Quebec independence, even if it formally comes to pass, is doomed to failure. It is doomed because the culture of the Quebecois is doomed. They have doomed themselves, choosing parochialism in an increasingly cosmopolitan world. Whatever passport they may carry, the mentality of the Quebecois remains unchanging trapped in an impossible utopia. Their grandfathers' utopia was of a distant past, theirs of a never to be had future. 

 

The Price of Bilingualism

Is the continual extortion of the English speaking peoples of Canada:

On Wednesday the Federal Court of Canada ordered Air Canada to pay Mr Thibodeau $12,000, in part because in 2009, when he asked an English- speaking flight attendant for a 7 Up, he got a Sprite instead. That was only one of many other humiliations suffered by Mr Thibodeau and his wife Lynda in 2009 alone. There were occasions when they were not served in French at airports in Toronto, Ottawa and Atlanta (although they were evidently able to manage in English everywhere else in that town, unless they brought their own interpreter). They also complained about lapses in French-language services aboard Air Canada Jazz flights between Canada and the U.S.

A word of advice to M. Thibodeau, don't come to Toronto. There are vast stretches of this city where French is less spoken that Somali. Canada is not really a bilingual country. A point made eloquently in this 2001 column by some guy with the National Citizens' Coalition. Wonder whatever happen to him. Some great ideas there. If only someone like that could get into power. Ho-hum.

Most people who pick up a second language do so for practical reasons. It's not uncommon for Europeans to be multilingual because it's a small continent. In the distance it takes to drive from Winnipeg to Calgary one could, in Europe, cross dozens of national frontiers. This multilingualism emerges not from the edicts of bureaucrats, but ordinary people seeking to better their lot or expand their horizons.

French fluency, for those living anywhere west of the Ottawa river, is optional. Aside from the connoisseurs of Hugo and Balzac in the original, learning it is largely a waste of time. Unless you're interested in working for the federal government. For the productively employed, you're better off learning Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Portuguese, German, Russian, Arabic or any of another dozen or so languages. Today French is the world's 17th most spoken language. It ranks a little higher in terms of economic influence, a hold over from France's days as a Great Power, but that influence is slowly slipping away.

The phrase that best describes our bilingualism policy is this one: Idée fixe. No matter what evidence is provided the advocates of official bilingualism continue to purse their utopian ideal. It's ceased being a matter of national unity. Whatever levelling of the playing field needed to be done between the Two Solitudes, it was completed two generations ago. Demanding to be served fizzy beverages in the language of Moliere and Racine is not a constitutional right. It's pretence codified for political reasons.

For nearly two centuries Lord Durham has been the bogeyman of Quebec nationalism. The monstrous WASP who sought to destroy French Canadian culture. Hardly. Durham was looking ahead from 1839, to a vast settled continent that would be dominated by anglophones. If the Quebecois were unable to interact with that wider world, they would become increasingly irrelevant and backward. Something that would be dangerous to Canadians of both British and French descent.

Whatever you may think of Durham's view, and personally I think we was being too pessimistic, it was not malicious but driven by a humane consideration for the Quebecois, matched with a desire to see British North America become a strong and prosperous part of the Empire. He regarded the Quebecois as being trapped in a rapidly fading past. An analysis that would be echoed during the Quiet Revolution by Quebec nationalists. Half a century on the Quebec nationalists have again settled into that old parochialism, different in its way, but still as dangerously irrelevant as before.

 

PQ Loves AB

Love means always having to say you're sorry:

Quebecers don't hate Alberta, according to a poll released Thursday by a Montreal-based think tank trying to deepen a relationship between the two provinces rife with "bad blood."

The 1,000-person survey conducted by Léger Marketing on behalf of the Montreal Economic Institute found 61 per cent of those polled in Quebec held a positive view of Alberta. A further 71 per cent said the province should continue to develop the oilsands, provided efforts are made to limit the environmental impact.

Which means nothing. You cannot extract oil from oilsand through the power of rainbows. It's a very messy business. The price of an industrial civilization is seriously ruining some parts of the earth's surface. Hoping that mythical Green technologies - most of which are economically unsustainable - will make resource extraction of any kind smell like roses and wine is foolhardy.

The 71% who say that Alberta should continue to develop the oil sands might have assumed that "limit environmental impact" means one guy with a shovel and a small pick-up truck. Think I'm exaggerating the naivety of those surveyed? Here is what that same poll said about the future of oil:

“The majority of [respondents] (56%) think that Quebec will still need oil in 20 years,” the MEI reported.

Huh? What do the other 44% think the cars of La Belle Province will be powered by in a generation? Gallic arrogance? The fresh clear water of the St Lawrence? Jean Charest's special hair elixir? The MEI survey undertook to discover what residents of Canada's least loyal province think of Canada's most conservative province. The answer is not much.

Sure the official Leger Marketing report stated that "Quebeckers generally have a positive image of Alberta." Really? Is that image born out of intimate knowledge or hazy understanding? A former Quebec premier once declared to a federalist rival: "Well, if you still want your Rocky Mountains, keep them." That seems about as far as the thinking goes in Quebec. There are mountains, oil and cowboys in Alberta. It's like Dallas, except with more mountains. Ralph Klein was like a portly and somewhat vulgarian J.R. Ewing.

You cannot love what you don't bother trying to understand.

 

Vote for Stalemate

I've left you all on tenterhooks, haven't I? 

Here we are well into the first week of the writ period and Publius has yet to throw his support behind any of the parties. No doubt each of the party leaders are anxious.

Have the years of anger and frustration at last exploded? Will he demand the overthrow of Stephen Harper at all costs! Even supporting the NDP if necessary!

Or will your humble correspondent ask you to consider the overlooked virtues of Michael Ignatieff? As soon as I figure out what those might happen to be. It'll come to me. Just give me a few moments...

No. I ask you on May 2nd to vote for paralysis. Vote for the status quo. Let us keep going down this particular road to our Canadian version of perdition. Do nothing. In politics it's usually best.

Let us forget the pretence that ordinary MPs are anything but parliamentary cannon fodder. We have a presidential election campaign being conducted within a parliamentary system. We must measure the chefs according to their sins, both venial and mortal.

None of the leaders are very palatable. We face a three way choice (four ways if you live in La Belle Province) between a pragmatist, a political incompetent and an economic illiterate. By relative merits it would seem that Stephen Harper is the best choice. Though in the same sense that manure is preferable to toxic waste.

The Prime Minister has effectively demanded a majority government from the Canadian electorate. The alternative, he says, is a stark one: The Grand Coalition of Evil. Lord Iggy's has insisted that he would never join such a Coalition. Even though he signed - belatedly - the December 2008 Coalition Deal. Who knows? The Grits triggered this pointless election. They just might be dumb enough to form a Coalition with the two other opposition parties. Such a move would destroy the Liberal Party for a generation. It would drive Blue Liberals and Grit centralists into waiting Tory arms.

A more practical danger is Stephen Harper winning a majority government. At some level I'm tempted to give the Tories enough rope to hang themselves. We had to be all middle of the road because of the minority blah, blah, blah. Fine. Here's a big thumping majority. Perhaps the Wheat Board and long-gun registry would go. Perhaps. The problem with compromising your principles to win a majority government is that you then have to compromise your principles to keep that majority.

The Conservative Party of Canada needs new leadership. Since there is little chance of Harper losing the keys to 24 Sussex in this election - unless The Toronto Star finally does locate that hidden agenda in a cupboard somewhere - only another minority government might force his resignation. Even a few seats short of the majority mark would start the countdown clock. This will be Stephen Harper's fourth election as leader of the united Right.

This doesn't mean a quick exit. Instead something similar to the aftermath of Pearson's second failure to win a majority in 1965. After two years, and with the prospect of another election looming, the bow-tie wearing PM was forced to bow out. Had it not been for 1967 being the centennial year, it's likely the Grit caucus would have pushed out the Nobel Laureate sooner. 

I'll leave to another time a sorting out of Harper's likely successors. We are on the hustings now. While the Harper Conservatives have proven a disappointment, that does not mean the Conservative Party itself does not have potential for re-generation. With governments through out the world being forced to retrench, now is an excellent opportunity for a fresh face to present a fiscally sound and smaller government political platform. A new vision of national unity could be projected, stepping away from two generations of Quebec appeasement and would - among other things - strengthen this country's economic union and wind down the inter-regional beggar-thy-policies of the last half century.

This is unlikely to happen if Stephen Harper wins a majority. It will be interpreted by both party operatives and the grassroots as a vindication - albeit a belated one - of incrementalism. That there has been very little improvement in the fortunes of conservative ideas and policies, only in the fortunes of the Conservative Party, will not matter. Winning has a powerful impact on perceptions. Often we don't care what we win so long as we win something. That a Tory Majority now would be a shallow victory for the values its members have long claimed will not be immediately understood.

Whether it takes a few years, or a decade, the stoical Conservative base will begin to revolt as surely as they did in Mulroney's last years. They will do so for the same reason. The party has not lived up to its avowed principles. It will be better for all if that process happens in next two years rather than later.

Another Tory minority government will keep the incompetents in the Liberal Party away from the levers of government, while allowing time enough to choose a genuinely small c-conservative leader and reorient policy. After three hard fought elections in five years, the finances of the Grits are precarious and their fund raising apparatus has yet to be properly modernized in wake of the Chretien-era campaign finance reforms. The opposition will be at its weakest in years. The Conservative Party the most susceptible to change since Harper's accession in 2004.

My best recommendations is to vote strategically. This is something of a gamble but it seems the percentage swings in the popular vote from 2008 will be small in most parts of the country. In ridings where a sitting Conservative MP has little chance of being defeated, if possible consider voting for a Libertarian or independent candidate. Even a shift of a few hundred votes would signal to local riding associations dissatisfaction with the Tories' leftward drift.

Where the Liberals hold relatively safe seats, a vote for the Conservative or Libertarian candidate would weaken the Liberal party - less money through the vote subsidy scheme - but not aid Harper's bid for a majority in a significant way. In the so-called Big Fifty swing ridings is where the call becomes harder

My own instinct would be to maintain the riding in the hands of the incumbent. Change as little as possible the political landscape in the Commons. These swings ridings will be watched closely by the local and even national media. It should be possible to tell where the political wind is blowing in most them through out the campaign. Local candidates also do independent polling. A step up in the nasty-factor in tactics by these candidates - such as out of the blue accusations of fraud - may give pretty good clues as to who is getting desperate. Extensive lawn sign vandalism is often another tell-tale.

In these swing ridings vote Tory to keep a Tory in power, or vote Liberal to keep a Liberal in power. A vote for an independent might easily allow a vote split in the wrong direction, changing the make up of the House of Commons. I would, however, make an exception in the cases of especially egregious local candidates. Julian Fantino in Vaughan comes to mind quite readily.

This might seem all a bit excessive. A few hundred or a few thousand votes can hardly swing an election one way or another? In a first-past-the-post electoral system they can and do. Pierre Trudeau clung to power in 1972 by a margin of two seats and a few hundred votes. In 2008 six ridings were subject to recounts because of the narrow margin of the outcome. The Tories are a dozen seats short of majority. This will be a hard and close fought election. Don't imagine the votes of you and your friends cannot make a difference.

Ronald Reagan famously joked that status quo was Latin for the mess we're in. For the longer term future of Canada, the mess we're in is a good place to be. For now.

 

Harper or Chaos!

Let us get lost again, my friends, in the fluffy blue sweater:

“Let me be perfectly clear: unless Canadians elect a stable national majority government, Michael Ignatieff will form a coalition with the NDP and Bloc Québécois,” he said.

“Imagine a coalition of arch-centralists and Quebec sovereigntists trying to work together. The only thing they'll be able to agree on is to spend more money and to raise taxes to pay for it.”

Part of this blog's schtick is putting a historical perspective on current events. So here it is: Stephen Joseph Harper will be channelling William Lyon Mackenzie King during this election campaign. Not just in his do nothing by halves that can be done by quarters pragmatism, but in his actual campaign strategy as well.

In 1935 the then Liberal opposition leader campaigned on a slogan of King or Chaos! It meant absolutely nothing. As with most of King's rhetoric, it conveyed stability, progress and prosperity all at the same time without committing to any particular position, except keeping the Liberals in power. Who can argue with success? The King-St.Laurent Liberals ruled Ottawa for the next twenty two years. I don't think Stephen Harper and the Blue Boys - shall we drop the now largely inaccurate term "conservative" for honesty's sake? - will have such a run of good luck.  

Let me be frank and admit I have no idea what the hell Michael Ignatieff is thinking. In fact the Liberal Party has exhibited nothing resembling a coherent strategy since Papa Jean walked out of Rideau Hall seven plus years ago. Replacing a tough as nails political operator with a dithering technocrat was not an improvement. Replacing the dithering technocrat with an out of touch professor made even less sense. Replacing that out of touch professor with another out of touch professor - albeit one with better English - is another mellon scratcher. If Justin wasn't waiting in the wings I'd suspect the next Liberal leader - to be chosen sometime in the early Fall of 2011  - would be Warren Kinsella's cat.

Maybe Iggy figured that with the poll momentum going Harper's way, it was best to pull the trigger now, rather than in three or four months when a Harper Majority comes to be seen as an inevitability. Perhaps a tenured professorship at Harvard is opening up in the near future. Or maybe Mackenzie King's crystal ball is on the fritz. Whatever the reason, Iggy's melodramatic performance during  Friday's non-confidence/contempt of parliament vote is his swan song. He's done. Liberals like to win - it is in fact the sole unifying principle of modern Canadian Liberalism - and Iggy's is going to lose and lose badly.

Friend Gilles has a cushy job for life. Not surprisingly M. Duceppe was a trade union negotiator for many years, so running the Bloc Quebecois comes naturally. You make outrageous demands, threaten to leave and eventually decide to stick around a bit longer when the management offers a sweet deal. What Gilles was doing with Quebec's hospitals once upon a time, he is now doing with English speaking Canadian taxpayers. It's a profitable bluff. Quebec is a strategically placed, first world economy that keeps crying poverty. No one seriously believes that Quebec is a "have not" province, certainly not in the way the Maritimes have been historically cash strapped. Transfers and equalization funding to Quebec is simply political bribery to let the rest of us go on with our lives.

Jack Layton wants to be Prime Minister. I want to be paid a million dollars a year to write these blog posts. The odds on millionaire Publius are a heck of a lot better. In addition to dreams of political glory, the former Toronto City Councillor is also looking to better the country:

“What does all this mean?” he asked. “Ottawa is broken. And it’s time for us to fix it.”

Very true. Unfortunately neither you, nor any of the party leaders, have the temerity to admit what is actually wrong with Ottawa. Let me give you a hint. It's not Stephen Harper's pragmatism. It isn't Lord Iggy's incompetence. Not even Jack Layton's spend till you're broke ideology. The problem with Ottawa is Quebec. Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois are merely the symptoms. Our national democracy is broken because part of the electorate refuses to participate.

In the 2006 and 2008 federal elections there were 308 seats up for grabs. That's 75 in Quebec and 233 in the Rest of Canada (ROC). The 2006 election saw the Conservatives win 114 seats in ROC and 10 in Quebec. The Conservatives did better in the ROC in 2008 winning 133 seats and holding on to their seats in Quebec. If we were to remove Quebec's 75 seats from Parliament a majority government could be formed with 117 seats. On that basis, including only their ROC seats, the Harper Tories would have won a strong minority government in 2006 and a clear majority in 2008. To say, as the opposition parties and the MSM have, that Harper has failed to seal the deal with Canadians is only partially correct. 

For all his faults, chronicled in some detail on this blog over the years, Stephen Harper has in fact convinced a critical mass of the interested Canadian electorate of his fitness to lead us. Those who vote for the Bloc Quebecois have declared their disinterest in Canada as a working proposition.

The Bloc Quebecois are not political party in any meaningful sense but merely a pressure group that has won election to parliament. It is because of this we find ourselves in a series of weak hung parliaments. The BQ offers no vision for Canada, only its potential destruction. It's bargaining position with the other parties in recent parliaments has been of routine blackmail. Vote what is in the best interests of Quebec, or else. 

As Edmund Burke observed in his Address to the Electors of Bristol:

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. 

Yet in our Parliament today there are members who proclaim themselves openly, and without any reservation, to be ambassadors from an interest hostile to the well being of a whole and united Canada. The Bloc Quebecois have no interest in achieving any conception a general good, or of participating in " the general reason of the whole."

If we want to fix our democracy, a very good first step would be for the three federalist leaders to declare their belief in the equality of all Canadians. From that principle they would promise to restore representation by population and oppose any policy of asymmetric federalism (granting favours to one province, or group of provinces, at the expense of the others). Such a declaration would signal clearly to the Quebec electorate that the ROC will no longer be blackmailed. It will be federalism calling the bluff of separatism. An independent Quebec is a fiscal impossibility today, unless the Quebecois were to become overnight libertarians, and over the long-term it is doomed by demographic trends. The pure laine are dying out.

I do not imagine that our political leadership will have the courage, or vision, to make such a declaration on their own initiative. Instead the people of Canada must force it upon them. It will come from the understanding that the succession of hung parliaments, myopic partisanship and politics of trivia is unlikely to end until we have a working and workable parliament. That cannot happen, not for any great length of time, with the continued presence of the Bloc Quebecois.

Update: Former Harris Cabinet Minister John Snobelen is pretty much on the same page regarding the traitors.

Disturbing - or Revealing - Sentence of the Week

From Bloomberg:

Talks between Quebec and Canada on the melding of their sales taxes are advanced enough for the parties to reach agreement, the Canadian Press reported, citing Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand’s spokeswoman.

While the article goes onto clarify that this is a federal-provincial agreement, why did the writer begin the article with "talks between Quebec and Canada." Would the phrase "talks between Virginia and America" make any sense? The reporter is based out of Montreal. Just a Freudian slip there?  This deal seems to be part of a scheme to buy the support of the Bloc Quebecois. Is it just me or is Quebec already enjoying "sovereignty association?" They just haven't bothered telling us Anglos about it.

An Old Idea and a New Word?

This sounds familiar:

Amid increasingly strident criticisms of multiculturalism, both in Canada and abroad, a group of Quebec intellectuals is proposing an alternative that could save an idea that has become part of the national fabric.

Interculturalism is being branded as a new model for integration and a solution to some of the anti-immigrant backlash that has accompanied the debate in Quebec over the accommodation of minorities.

Interculturalism takes for granted the centrality of francophone culture. From there it works to integrate other minorities into a common public culture, all while respecting their diversity.

Where have I heard this before. Let me think. Oh, right. It's the melting pot. Except without all those nasty American connotations. The respecting minorities addendum is just politically correct boilerplate for the anglophone market. The Quebecois have never bought into multiculturalism.

They believe that Quebec Francophone culture is superior to the pale-imitation Americanism of the ROC. You don't want to know what they think of the non-European cultures that have washed up along the St Lawrence. Politically correct does not translate well into French. Still, it's good to see the melting pot being dragged out of the closet, even if it is to appease Quebec nationalists. To those victims of modern public education in the audience, let us recall the origin of the term:

What then is the American, this new man?" that the American is one who "leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, 1782

Not every culture melted quickly or completely. The blacks were, of course, largely excluded from the process. Still there was a recognizable type called American. Back in 1945 Frank Sinatra, then rather young and very liberal, sang The House I Live In:

The house I live in,

My neighbors white and black,

The people who just came here,

Or from generations back;

The town hall and the soapbox,

The torch of liberty,

A home for all God's children;

That's America to me.

The song became a hit in 1945. A film featuring the song earned a special Academy Award and Golden Globe. Both film and song certainly recognized diversity - no one had any doubts that Sinatra was Italian - but everyone was ultimately American. The one in the many. A little bit earlier in 1908, the playwright Israel Zangwill gave the melting pot its textbook definition:

Understand that America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, your fifty languages, and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won't be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you've come to – these are fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.

Boilerplate stuff in 1908. Today, in our more tolerant era, monologue like that might get you in front of a Human Rights Tribunal, along with any stray rotten tomatoes from the Toronto Star crowd. The God stuff alone would likely generate a class action from the Canadian Association of Village Atheists. All that "fires of God" stuff is obvious incitement to religious warfare. Unless the author was clearly from a non-Judeo-Christian background. 

The idea of a melting pot was, at least initially, trying to make a virtue out of a necessity. In his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson was sceptical of encouraging immigration. The new comers would not understand the American way of life, leading to political instability. Jeffersonian caution soon gave way to demographic necessity. The northern Europeans taming the New World were certainly fecund - unlike their modern day descendants - but not fecund enough. The vastness of the continent was going to require pretty much anyone who was willing to show up. The preference was for white Christians, but in a pinch Jews and Chinese might do.

The Canadian experience was similar, with the notable difference that the immigrants were expected to become British. By 1867 Canada had achieved about the same critical mass as the American colonies in 1776. We hung around in the British Empire for about another eighty years, eventually graduating from low-level colonial flunky to senior partner. When the Empire collapsed the general Canadian reaction was of bewilderment. We didn't leave the Empire, the Empire left us. This meant that it look longer for a Canadian identity to form. It was still in the process of coming together when multiculturalism struck. Thus the greater damage it has done to us compared to the United States.

Does "interculturalism" have legs? In Quebec probably. It's respectable cover for dumping Trudeau-era multiculturalism, something which even the son of Pierre seems to be cool with doing. In the ROC it would only be a half-way house. A step to assuage the squeamish before the whole idea of multiculturalism is put into the ashcan of history. The choice that we face is a stark one. Either we are to accept Diefenbaker's ideal of One Canada, or we elect for ourselves the fate of a vast sub-arctic Balkans. Without a common cultural center, this is a house that cannot stand.

 

The Lawyers Strike

Seulement dans la belle province:

Quebec prosecutors, among the lowest paid in Canada, have launched an unprecedented legal strike in a last-ditch effort to force the government to fill the gap.

At Montreal’s courthouse, the gears of justice all but ground to a halt Tuesday with cases being postponed and rescheduled now that 450 Crown prosecutors and nearly 1,000 government civil lawyers have walked off the job. Quebec’s judicial system is already suffering with some of the worst backlogs in the country.

Prosecutors, who are paid far less than their Ontario counterparts, are demanding a pay hike of 40 per cent — something the government says is impossible.

Another fascinating data point, on the downward curve that is modern Quebec. My sympathies, in this case, are mostly with the lawyers. While I'm sure some of these prosecutors spend their days hounding Jewish delicatessen owners, and their insufficiently French store signs, quite a few are doing useful work. Crown prosecutors are responsible for keeping the violent and fraudulent behind bars. Something more socially useful than whatever the paper pushers over at the Office for the Protection of Transgendered Francophones are doing.

Lawyers - cheap jokes aside - are highly skilled professionals. It only makes sense to pay them a prevailing wage, which looks to be roughly what their counterparts make in Ontario. Sure, cost of living is lower in Montreal than in Toronto. 40% lower? Perhaps not. What about the chaps living in Ottawa vs those living in Gatineau?

The penny pinching with lawyers' salaries reveals something of the priorities of modern Quebec. Speedy trials and locking away criminals are not as important as fattening unionized bureaucrats pay stubs. And what do Quebec's enormously powerful unions do with their members' dues? Why, they harass bloggers:

Last Friday, the teachers’ union, the Centrale des syndicats du Quebec (CSQ), sent a formal demand to the web managers of the right-wing blog, lesanalystes.ca — with which I am associated — asking them to withdraw comments made by three ’net surfers that union bosses found offensive.

The “crime” of the two anonymous ’net surfers and one collaborator? Writing the left is mainly made of “old ladies” and “effeminate men,” a bad taste joke similar to many we find too often on the Internet.

Yes. In Quebec you can get into trouble for calling union leaders "old ladies." I can think of descriptions far less pleasant and far more accurate.

For individuals involved in providing - what we are told - a public service like education, harassing bloggers doesn't really fall into their mandate. How about weeding out incompetent teachers? No, of course not, because every sub-par drone with a stick of chalk is also a dues paying member. While the competent and dedicated might find teachers unions appalling, look at it from the mediocrity's point of view.

Knowing that your completely useless colleague cannot get fired, short of physically or sexually assaulting a student, is very reassuring. You think to yourself: "Hey, I'm not as bad as Jacques and he's been teaching for twenty years." It gives you room to relax. Take things in a leisurely way. No need to kill yourselves. After all, you work for the government.

C'est Quebec dans le temps moderne, mes amis, et c'est incroyable. A cultural  trajectory that went - in a few generations - from tough as nails coureur de bois to cowardly union leaders, terrified of a comment on a blog. There was less decadence and sensitivity at the Court of Louis XIV.

 

O Quebec!

The refrain remains:

A Parti Quebecois delegate, who doesn’t want his name published because he is a civil servant, told a weekend PQ meeting that an independent Quebec, rather than commissioning a new national anthem, could adapt the one Quebecers are used to: O Canada.

He would simply replace the word “Canada” with “Quebec.”

Never in history has there been so silly an "independence" movement. Can't even come up with your own national anthem? Or currency? Will sovereignty association mean Quebec leaves the Equalization Program? Of course not. It's like being a fully independent adult in every way, except you've never bothered - or are seriously planning - to leave your parents' basement.

It's time to call their bluff.