Pauvre imbécile colonisée jusqu'à la moëlle.
Looking at the world through French eyes
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, December 12, 2006
It has become fashionable lately to insult the French. Or perhaps it never really went out of style, I don't know. I'll just jump in anyway, even though I'm sort of in the middle, what with being born on one side while having chosen to live primarily in the other. But no, I don't want to talk about Stephane Dion's dual citizenship. I'm after a newer kind of French news that's a lot more amusing.
That's right: Mr. Dion's French-Canadian citizenship isn't news. I'm not sure when I first heard about it (it could have been during Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean's own French citizenship kerfuffle), but when Ezra Levant brought it up again recently my first reaction was slight bafflement. Like, uh, what's the big deal, all of a sudden?
For the record, I don't think a self-respecting country ought to allow its citizens to hold dual citizenship at all. But since Canada does, it seems rather unfair to pick on some dual citizens and not others. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a big deal if Mr. Dion wasn't a citizen of France but of Britain, like John Turner, who was not bothered about his dual citizenship and potentially divided loyalties during his 20-minute tenure as Canada's prime minister.
It's not just the French who suffer from a mild form of tribalism, you know -- though it's hard to beat them on the aggravation front when they go about bashing anglos in a rash but pitifully inept way, as for instance last week, when launching French President Jacques Chirac's long-desired 24-hour news channel France 24.
Mr. Chirac had been pressing for a "French CNN" since at least 9/11. So when the thing was launched last week, monsieur le president was of course on hand to emit deep-sounding noises on the necessity for "un grand pays comme la France" to broadcast its world view -- by definition very different from other people's world views, given France's super-special eyes or something. (You can watch Mr. Chirac's hilarious interview at http://www.france24.com/france24Public/ ... France-24- visite.html .)
I found it a bit odd. Is there really a distinctively Gallic perspective on, say, planes deliberately flying into buildings or a tsunami destroying Asian villages or European Union rules governing the curvature of bananas? Maybe the dark evil anglo news sources already got to me. After all, France 24's mission statement is "All the news you're not supposed to know." See, there's this Bush-Israel conspiracy and ...
Then I read in a Boston Globe story that "Alain de Pouzilhac, a former advertising executive who heads France 24, said the channel would be editorially independent and nonpartisan, despite receiving about $35 million in startup funds and $112 million in annual subsidies from the French government."
Right. So a news network dedicated to competing with "Anglo-Saxon" news networks by spreading the French point of view using French tax money, broadcasting simultaneously in French and English (with Arabic and Spanish to follow) will not be influenced in its editorial line. Now there's a French concept.
To avoid confusion, I decided that instead of relying on other people's news stories I would go straight to the source. France 24 isn't available in Ottawa just yet. But you can access a lot of what it has to offer for free on its website, http://www.france24.com, including the video, the print version and the English and Arabic translations of news stories and features, which is extremely cool if, like me, you enjoy going around saying you're learning different languages when in fact you're just bluffing. But if you're after breaking news, you'll have to wait.
While poking around France 24 on Sunday afternoon I noticed their "derniere heure" bulletin saying Chilean television was claiming Augusto Pinochet had died. That was the extent of their coverage as of 13:46. So I checked what http://www.cnn.com had to say and sure enough, there was a complete news story from Associated Press, last updated at 13:37, on a high-profile death that occurred at 12:15. (At 15:00 when I checked again, France 24 had a complete story from Agence France-Presse on its front page.) Perhaps waiting for breaking news is distinctly French; it's certainly exactly what them nasty Anglo-Saxons over at CNN or BBC or Fox don't ask you to do.
I'm not saying my day wouldn't have been complete had I been forced to wait an extra hour to learn that Pinochet had died. After all, he then stayed dead. But when you go into business boasting that you will give CNN a run for its money and annoy the Anglo-Saxons with how superior you are, the least you can do is show up on time.
Otherwise, you'll get insulted.
Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2006
La pire colonisée!
49 messages
• Page 2 sur 2 • 1, 2
de Delenda » Jeu Déc 14, 2006 10:24 am
De plus en plus épaisse, Brigitte Pellerin, et haineuse à l'endroit du Québec. Quelle obsession! Elle ne doit pas dormir la nuit pour trouver des raisons de vômir sur le Québec, au grand plaisir des lecteurs anglos du Citizen.
Quebec yields on store hours
Brigitte Pellerin
Ah, Christmas. Time to relax and enjoy the company of loved ones, or at any rate the food they prepared and the booze they’re willing to share. After all, as TLC’s Life Lesson #40 so wisely mandates, “If you’re not in the holiday spirit, just fake it.” (It’s easier than trying to explain why you hate Christmas, trust me.) But it’s hard to do when your quest for the perfect last-minute gift is hampered by ridiculously restrictive shopping laws. (parle pour toi)
With 11 days until Christmas and all this shopping left to do, when will you possibly find time to drive across town, not find a parking spot within four miles of the mall door, and run frantically from one similar store to another hoping the small hand you’re clutching belongs to your boot-dragging, mitt-losing four-year-old not somebody else’s? That’s why I was pleased recently to learn that some 50 Wal-Mart stores (including two in Ottawa) would be open 24 hours a day next week. As the company’s chief operating officer, Vi Konkle, explained: “Whether it’s an hour here and there or ’round-the-clock openings, our customers have told us that extending store hours is the best service improvement we can offer before Christmas”. (et bien passe ta vie chez WalMart si tu veux!)
You betcha. (le joual c'est colon, mais l'anglais colloquial, elle s'en délecte) I, for one, take great pleasure in living within walking distance of a large drugstore that’s open around the clock every day of the year. (cou donc, le Citizen est-il si en mal de columnist que ça? On se fout des sautes d'humeur et des habitudes de magazinage de cette vendue) Not that I ever shop in the middle of the night. But what if I needed to? (fais comme tout le monde. Attend le lendemain matin) Some of us can’t always shop during business hours because we work late or have to drive the kids from hockey to piano lessons after dinner or simply because we can’t stand crowds. And sometimes we forget stuff. Plus this ought to be a free country where adults are left alone to decide when they shop and whether they want to accept night-time employment. Why should the government get involved in our shopping habits? But it does. Especially you-know-where. (petit commentaire mesquin et dégradant, comme d'habitude)
The Wal-Mart press release takes pains to explain that “due to local restrictions”, none of their stores in Quebec will be open around the clock. Provincial law there dictates that most stores can only open between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. weekdays, and 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekends. (pis? Me semble que ça laisse assez de temps à tout le monde pour magasiner) There are exceptions, notably for bookstores, drugstores, corner stores, grocery stores and liquor stores. But outside the aforementioned hours, they can only operate with a maximum of four employees.
Obviously that leads to wretched service – or more precisely, wretched lack thereof – especially agonizingly long checkout queues at the grocery store. If you realize too late that you’ve forgotten to buy some cretons (mais c'est sûrement pas ton cas, alors laisse tomber) for the non-Québécois friend who’s coming over Saturday night, chances are you’ll have to wait half an hour for the privilege of buying groceries at 5:45 p.m. (And once you finally reach the cash register you’re liable to encounter an employee who’s extremely surly from being yelled at and abused by even surlier customers and just isn’t managing to fake the holiday spirit.) (jamais lu quelque chose d'aussi vide et niaiseux. Elle garde sa job à cause de son Quebec-bashing inégalé. Pas pour ses analyses intelligentes.)
So in order help Quebecers fake it better, the Liberal government of Jean Charest recently suggested the law should be relaxed a bit to give people more choices about when they go grocery shopping. Which of course raised howls of outrage throughout the land – well, the bits of it occupied by union activists and their political friends over at the Parti Québécois. Apparently freedom of shopping choice is a totally anti-solidarity thing. (changer les heures pour que Wal mart puisse ouvrir 24 heures? Tu rigoles!)
Why? Because it would amount to giving precedence to the right to the 11 p.m. veal cutlet at the expense of Quebec’s famous – at least in theory – “conciliation travail-famille” (family-work balance). Or so said Henri Massé, president of the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec, the province’s largest union.
See, if grocery stores were convenient places to shop, it would ruin Quebecers’ family life. Apparently most people would be forced to work in supermarkets late into the night so a handful of people could shop there. Or, to put it another way, in order to deprive folks of the chance to get jobs they badly need, the union wants thousands of Quebecers to spend an extra hour away from their children in the evening stuck in an unnecessary line at the grocery store. Yeah, that makes sense.
To its credit, the government ignored the opposition and imposed closure this week to pass a new law “liberalizing” grocery shopping. So now the four-employee limit will only kick in after 8 p.m. on weekends and 9 p.m. on weeknights.
This year, Quebecers will at least be able to experience, or fake, the early evening holiday spirit at home with their family instead of in a grocery store lineup. Yay.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday December 14, 2006 (A-16)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
Quebec yields on store hours
Brigitte Pellerin
Ah, Christmas. Time to relax and enjoy the company of loved ones, or at any rate the food they prepared and the booze they’re willing to share. After all, as TLC’s Life Lesson #40 so wisely mandates, “If you’re not in the holiday spirit, just fake it.” (It’s easier than trying to explain why you hate Christmas, trust me.) But it’s hard to do when your quest for the perfect last-minute gift is hampered by ridiculously restrictive shopping laws. (parle pour toi)
With 11 days until Christmas and all this shopping left to do, when will you possibly find time to drive across town, not find a parking spot within four miles of the mall door, and run frantically from one similar store to another hoping the small hand you’re clutching belongs to your boot-dragging, mitt-losing four-year-old not somebody else’s? That’s why I was pleased recently to learn that some 50 Wal-Mart stores (including two in Ottawa) would be open 24 hours a day next week. As the company’s chief operating officer, Vi Konkle, explained: “Whether it’s an hour here and there or ’round-the-clock openings, our customers have told us that extending store hours is the best service improvement we can offer before Christmas”. (et bien passe ta vie chez WalMart si tu veux!)
You betcha. (le joual c'est colon, mais l'anglais colloquial, elle s'en délecte) I, for one, take great pleasure in living within walking distance of a large drugstore that’s open around the clock every day of the year. (cou donc, le Citizen est-il si en mal de columnist que ça? On se fout des sautes d'humeur et des habitudes de magazinage de cette vendue) Not that I ever shop in the middle of the night. But what if I needed to? (fais comme tout le monde. Attend le lendemain matin) Some of us can’t always shop during business hours because we work late or have to drive the kids from hockey to piano lessons after dinner or simply because we can’t stand crowds. And sometimes we forget stuff. Plus this ought to be a free country where adults are left alone to decide when they shop and whether they want to accept night-time employment. Why should the government get involved in our shopping habits? But it does. Especially you-know-where. (petit commentaire mesquin et dégradant, comme d'habitude)
The Wal-Mart press release takes pains to explain that “due to local restrictions”, none of their stores in Quebec will be open around the clock. Provincial law there dictates that most stores can only open between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. weekdays, and 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekends. (pis? Me semble que ça laisse assez de temps à tout le monde pour magasiner) There are exceptions, notably for bookstores, drugstores, corner stores, grocery stores and liquor stores. But outside the aforementioned hours, they can only operate with a maximum of four employees.
Obviously that leads to wretched service – or more precisely, wretched lack thereof – especially agonizingly long checkout queues at the grocery store. If you realize too late that you’ve forgotten to buy some cretons (mais c'est sûrement pas ton cas, alors laisse tomber) for the non-Québécois friend who’s coming over Saturday night, chances are you’ll have to wait half an hour for the privilege of buying groceries at 5:45 p.m. (And once you finally reach the cash register you’re liable to encounter an employee who’s extremely surly from being yelled at and abused by even surlier customers and just isn’t managing to fake the holiday spirit.) (jamais lu quelque chose d'aussi vide et niaiseux. Elle garde sa job à cause de son Quebec-bashing inégalé. Pas pour ses analyses intelligentes.)
So in order help Quebecers fake it better, the Liberal government of Jean Charest recently suggested the law should be relaxed a bit to give people more choices about when they go grocery shopping. Which of course raised howls of outrage throughout the land – well, the bits of it occupied by union activists and their political friends over at the Parti Québécois. Apparently freedom of shopping choice is a totally anti-solidarity thing. (changer les heures pour que Wal mart puisse ouvrir 24 heures? Tu rigoles!)
Why? Because it would amount to giving precedence to the right to the 11 p.m. veal cutlet at the expense of Quebec’s famous – at least in theory – “conciliation travail-famille” (family-work balance). Or so said Henri Massé, president of the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec, the province’s largest union.
See, if grocery stores were convenient places to shop, it would ruin Quebecers’ family life. Apparently most people would be forced to work in supermarkets late into the night so a handful of people could shop there. Or, to put it another way, in order to deprive folks of the chance to get jobs they badly need, the union wants thousands of Quebecers to spend an extra hour away from their children in the evening stuck in an unnecessary line at the grocery store. Yeah, that makes sense.
To its credit, the government ignored the opposition and imposed closure this week to pass a new law “liberalizing” grocery shopping. So now the four-employee limit will only kick in after 8 p.m. on weekends and 9 p.m. on weeknights.
This year, Quebecers will at least be able to experience, or fake, the early evening holiday spirit at home with their family instead of in a grocery store lineup. Yay.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday December 14, 2006 (A-16)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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Delenda - Ministre
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- Inscription: Ven Oct 22, 2004 11:41 am
de Delenda » Jeu Déc 28, 2006 9:56 am
Rise of the eco-hypocrites
Brigitte Pellerin
Santa is probably too busy dealing with his leftover milk and cookies to take 2007 requests. But I’ll ask anyway. If I promise to be a very good girl all year, will you please bring me an end to smug hypocrisy on the environment and the so-called “climate change” issue? It’s wretched and I hate it.
See, despite being an awful heartless capitalist reactionary war-monger conservative anti-feminist heteronormative kind of bigot, I’ve always been a strong environmentalist. I have cringe-inducing memories of growing up among people who didn’t think twice before tossing garbage out the car window. Or anywhere else for that matter.
That was long before the world had heard of Al Gore, back when green was just another colour and fashionable folks worried about the earth getting too cold unless they fretted about overpopulation. Still, I couldn’t believe it was OK to litter the place thoughtlessly. What’s so hard about putting your garbage in a garbage bin?
I like nature, its plants and animals. I enjoy fresh air, clean water and crisp white snow. I like humans, too – some of them anyway. I also enjoy electrical light, my furnace, my computer, and a whole bunch of modern, energy-consuming amenities. Environmentalism rightly understood means each of us doing our best to leave as small a footprint as possible including being smart about our energy use. It means getting the incentives right in public policy and doing our own little bit, unprompted, in our personal lives. At least, if you care about results like, say, helping the environment.
What it shouldn’t mean is people sanctimoniously talking our ears off about their pro-environment superiority and making a collective green pest of themselves even though they reliably and consistently fail to lift the tiniest of fingers to help, you know, environmental causes.
Or does it? The above-the-fold front-page story in the Dec. 23 edition of La Presse trumpeted the discovery that “Planet’s fate worries Quebecers”. Wow. A recent survey found that Quebecers “remain the most preoccupied about their planet’s future in the world”. Yes, in the world. Fully 90% of them “are now convinced of the dangers connected with global warming.”
Convinced, you say. Except the same poll found that a majority (56 per cent) are against any kind of tax increase to help fight climate change. But hey, 58.5 per cent say they wouldn’t mind a special tax on SUVs and other high-powered vehicles – you know, the kind of vehicle nasty rich people own. As long as it’s some other chump’s wallet that’s getting hit…
Think I’m being unnecessarily mean? Then consider a Pollara survey published in the Dec. 4 Maclean’s that showed a certain, ah, disconnect between saying you’re concerned for the environment and being prepared to do anything useful about it. “Quebecers,” it said, “were the least willing to cut back on air conditioning or turn down the heat – only 37 per cent would. With 62 per cent, Ontario led.”
Or take another recent front-page headline, also in La Presse, about a study by Quebec’s public health institute showing Quebecers react to well-publicized smog alerts by immediately and determinedly doing… nothing whatsoever. They go right on using their wood stoves and cars – including remote starters – the way they normally do despite being asked specifically to abstain from burning wood, to drive slowly and not to leave their engines idling during smog alerts.
I don’t get the idling bit at all. The only time I do it is when there’s a thick coat of ice all over the windows or it’s -25C. Unlike all the people I see in my pleasant, NDP-voting, progressive neighbourhood sitting in their idling cars doing I know not what – even when the weather is mild (eco-hypocrites are not all in Quebec). But bad retrograde bigots like me don’t get credit for acting in an environmentally-friendly way. Whereas virtuous pro-Kyoto people can behave like hooligans and get away with it.
As David Ljunggren wrote here after the Liberal leadership convention in Montreal (won by the guy who named his dog Kyoto), those who can’t shut up about the environment are disgusting litter-bugs. After the crowds had gone home, the empty hall wasn’t empty at all. “This wasn’t just a little bit of garbage or some garbage or even quite a lot of garbage,” David noted. “You could not move without stepping in a pile of something that people had discarded.”
Wonderful.
True, global warming and littering aren’t the same. But thinking globally and acting locally doesn’t mean haranguing nasty conservatives like me about Kyoto then leaving piles of trash behind.
Please, Santa, take this hypocrisy away. I’ll be really nice. I promise.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday December 28, 2006 (A-16)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
Brigitte Pellerin
Santa is probably too busy dealing with his leftover milk and cookies to take 2007 requests. But I’ll ask anyway. If I promise to be a very good girl all year, will you please bring me an end to smug hypocrisy on the environment and the so-called “climate change” issue? It’s wretched and I hate it.
See, despite being an awful heartless capitalist reactionary war-monger conservative anti-feminist heteronormative kind of bigot, I’ve always been a strong environmentalist. I have cringe-inducing memories of growing up among people who didn’t think twice before tossing garbage out the car window. Or anywhere else for that matter.
That was long before the world had heard of Al Gore, back when green was just another colour and fashionable folks worried about the earth getting too cold unless they fretted about overpopulation. Still, I couldn’t believe it was OK to litter the place thoughtlessly. What’s so hard about putting your garbage in a garbage bin?
I like nature, its plants and animals. I enjoy fresh air, clean water and crisp white snow. I like humans, too – some of them anyway. I also enjoy electrical light, my furnace, my computer, and a whole bunch of modern, energy-consuming amenities. Environmentalism rightly understood means each of us doing our best to leave as small a footprint as possible including being smart about our energy use. It means getting the incentives right in public policy and doing our own little bit, unprompted, in our personal lives. At least, if you care about results like, say, helping the environment.
What it shouldn’t mean is people sanctimoniously talking our ears off about their pro-environment superiority and making a collective green pest of themselves even though they reliably and consistently fail to lift the tiniest of fingers to help, you know, environmental causes.
Or does it? The above-the-fold front-page story in the Dec. 23 edition of La Presse trumpeted the discovery that “Planet’s fate worries Quebecers”. Wow. A recent survey found that Quebecers “remain the most preoccupied about their planet’s future in the world”. Yes, in the world. Fully 90% of them “are now convinced of the dangers connected with global warming.”
Convinced, you say. Except the same poll found that a majority (56 per cent) are against any kind of tax increase to help fight climate change. But hey, 58.5 per cent say they wouldn’t mind a special tax on SUVs and other high-powered vehicles – you know, the kind of vehicle nasty rich people own. As long as it’s some other chump’s wallet that’s getting hit…
Think I’m being unnecessarily mean? Then consider a Pollara survey published in the Dec. 4 Maclean’s that showed a certain, ah, disconnect between saying you’re concerned for the environment and being prepared to do anything useful about it. “Quebecers,” it said, “were the least willing to cut back on air conditioning or turn down the heat – only 37 per cent would. With 62 per cent, Ontario led.”
Or take another recent front-page headline, also in La Presse, about a study by Quebec’s public health institute showing Quebecers react to well-publicized smog alerts by immediately and determinedly doing… nothing whatsoever. They go right on using their wood stoves and cars – including remote starters – the way they normally do despite being asked specifically to abstain from burning wood, to drive slowly and not to leave their engines idling during smog alerts.
I don’t get the idling bit at all. The only time I do it is when there’s a thick coat of ice all over the windows or it’s -25C. Unlike all the people I see in my pleasant, NDP-voting, progressive neighbourhood sitting in their idling cars doing I know not what – even when the weather is mild (eco-hypocrites are not all in Quebec). But bad retrograde bigots like me don’t get credit for acting in an environmentally-friendly way. Whereas virtuous pro-Kyoto people can behave like hooligans and get away with it.
As David Ljunggren wrote here after the Liberal leadership convention in Montreal (won by the guy who named his dog Kyoto), those who can’t shut up about the environment are disgusting litter-bugs. After the crowds had gone home, the empty hall wasn’t empty at all. “This wasn’t just a little bit of garbage or some garbage or even quite a lot of garbage,” David noted. “You could not move without stepping in a pile of something that people had discarded.”
Wonderful.
True, global warming and littering aren’t the same. But thinking globally and acting locally doesn’t mean haranguing nasty conservatives like me about Kyoto then leaving piles of trash behind.
Please, Santa, take this hypocrisy away. I’ll be really nice. I promise.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday December 28, 2006 (A-16)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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Delenda - Ministre
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- Inscription: Ven Oct 22, 2004 11:41 am
de Delenda » Jeu Jan 04, 2007 2:13 pm
La folle recommence en 2007!!!
Le Québec est pauvre et gnagnagna...
A rough year ahead for Harper
Brigitte Pellerin
2006 was an exciting year. At least, if you’re the kind of person to get excited by Quebec politics. And 2007 promises lots of thrills. Just not in a good way.
In 2006 the Conservatives got elected nationally with 10 seats from Quebec. This was followed by a long and ridiculous “nation” debate, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in Quebec for Saint-Jean-Baptiste, dismissing it as mere semantics only to shove recognition of the spectacularly ill-defined Québécois nation down everybody’s throats a few months later. Uh, OK.
I have already predicted the nation motion would come back to haunt Mr. Harper and I’m sticking to it. Certainly it hasn’t helped his party in Quebec, where recent polls show support down almost 10 percentage points from 25 per cent in last January’s election. I know at least one annoying loudmouth who has repeatedly used this particular newspaper space to warn the Tories – and anybody who’ll listen – against cozying up to nationalist Quebecers because it never brings anything except trouble. But as usual Mr. Harper thought he knew better.
Meanwhile the prime minister managed to alienate Quebecers (which admittedly didn’t require much effort) with his staunch support of Israel in its conflict against Hezbollah, also with the Afghan mission, his coldness vis-à-vis global warming, his reluctance to embrace popular causes like the Montreal Outgames and the Toronto AIDS conference, his now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t stance on gay marriage and his refusal, so far, to send truckloads of unconditional money to the Quebec government just because. Things aren’t going too well on that side of the Ottawa River.
I’m not saying Quebecers are right to dislike Mr. Harper. Certainly I’m with him when it comes to supporting Israel against fanatical murderers. I also like his skepticism on whether implementing Kyoto would be such a dandy idea, and his refusal to attend fashionable gabfests in the hope that media natterers might perhaps shut up. But none of that matters; at best Quebecers are playing hard to get and at worst they regret having supported the Conservatives last time round. Either way it’s bad news for Mr. Harper.
What can the Conservatives do to increase their support in Quebec and win more seats there to increase their chances of winning a majority nationally next time? Other than pray for a miracle, I mean?
Personally, I wouldn’t start from where they are. It’s unfortunately too late to undo the nation motion, it would be most immoral suddenly to start calling Israel names (plus it doesn’t always work, as Michael Ignatieff demonstrated), and totally unwise to follow Kyoto targets blindly.
Mr. Harper can’t even count on any provincial allies. Premier Jean Charest will be in campaign mode pretty soon and his own prospects are awful. The only thing that might save his career is Parti Québécois leader André Boisclair being even worse than he’s been this past year, which is unlikely though not technically impossible.
Even if Mr. Charest somehow manages to not lose his re-election bid, his tattered coat-tails offer no ride. And what if the PQ wins? Ah, then methinks committed federalist Quebecers, especially those in the Montreal region, will hold their noses and vote for the unpopular Stéphane Dion – Mr. Clarity Act – and his Liberals not the Tories.
Should Mr. Harper follow in the footsteps of Brian Mulroney by further cozying up to the nationalists, or start another round of constitutional talks, or send billions of your dollars to Quebec City – or, egad, all of the above? Depends how much he wants a repeat of the 1993 election.
Apparently he can’t resist. I expect Mr. Harper’s government to deliver a budget soonish that will aim to “solve” the “fiscal imbalance” by sending who knows how much money to some provincial governments (which won’t be enough to satisfy Quebec but will be enough to annoy Alberta and Ontario). Canada’s New Government is also itching to mess with the Constitution to bring in half-baked Senate reforms and limits to the federal spending power.
As for further cozying up to nationalists, it’s hard to top what Mr. Harper told supporters in the Saguenay region last month. “When you are part of a nation, it is perfectly normal to be nationalist,” he said. He also implied that it was wrong to believe that “the Quebec nation and Canadian unity do not go together.” Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe ought to complain; after stealing his nation-motion thunder, the prime minister is stealing some of his lines.
Do I really need to explain – again – why Mr. Harper is on the wrong track? I didn’t think so. Yep, 2007 is liable to be eventful. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday January 4, 2007 (A-14)
© Copyright The Ottawa Ctitzen
Le Québec est pauvre et gnagnagna...
A rough year ahead for Harper
Brigitte Pellerin
2006 was an exciting year. At least, if you’re the kind of person to get excited by Quebec politics. And 2007 promises lots of thrills. Just not in a good way.
In 2006 the Conservatives got elected nationally with 10 seats from Quebec. This was followed by a long and ridiculous “nation” debate, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in Quebec for Saint-Jean-Baptiste, dismissing it as mere semantics only to shove recognition of the spectacularly ill-defined Québécois nation down everybody’s throats a few months later. Uh, OK.
I have already predicted the nation motion would come back to haunt Mr. Harper and I’m sticking to it. Certainly it hasn’t helped his party in Quebec, where recent polls show support down almost 10 percentage points from 25 per cent in last January’s election. I know at least one annoying loudmouth who has repeatedly used this particular newspaper space to warn the Tories – and anybody who’ll listen – against cozying up to nationalist Quebecers because it never brings anything except trouble. But as usual Mr. Harper thought he knew better.
Meanwhile the prime minister managed to alienate Quebecers (which admittedly didn’t require much effort) with his staunch support of Israel in its conflict against Hezbollah, also with the Afghan mission, his coldness vis-à-vis global warming, his reluctance to embrace popular causes like the Montreal Outgames and the Toronto AIDS conference, his now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t stance on gay marriage and his refusal, so far, to send truckloads of unconditional money to the Quebec government just because. Things aren’t going too well on that side of the Ottawa River.
I’m not saying Quebecers are right to dislike Mr. Harper. Certainly I’m with him when it comes to supporting Israel against fanatical murderers. I also like his skepticism on whether implementing Kyoto would be such a dandy idea, and his refusal to attend fashionable gabfests in the hope that media natterers might perhaps shut up. But none of that matters; at best Quebecers are playing hard to get and at worst they regret having supported the Conservatives last time round. Either way it’s bad news for Mr. Harper.
What can the Conservatives do to increase their support in Quebec and win more seats there to increase their chances of winning a majority nationally next time? Other than pray for a miracle, I mean?
Personally, I wouldn’t start from where they are. It’s unfortunately too late to undo the nation motion, it would be most immoral suddenly to start calling Israel names (plus it doesn’t always work, as Michael Ignatieff demonstrated), and totally unwise to follow Kyoto targets blindly.
Mr. Harper can’t even count on any provincial allies. Premier Jean Charest will be in campaign mode pretty soon and his own prospects are awful. The only thing that might save his career is Parti Québécois leader André Boisclair being even worse than he’s been this past year, which is unlikely though not technically impossible.
Even if Mr. Charest somehow manages to not lose his re-election bid, his tattered coat-tails offer no ride. And what if the PQ wins? Ah, then methinks committed federalist Quebecers, especially those in the Montreal region, will hold their noses and vote for the unpopular Stéphane Dion – Mr. Clarity Act – and his Liberals not the Tories.
Should Mr. Harper follow in the footsteps of Brian Mulroney by further cozying up to the nationalists, or start another round of constitutional talks, or send billions of your dollars to Quebec City – or, egad, all of the above? Depends how much he wants a repeat of the 1993 election.
Apparently he can’t resist. I expect Mr. Harper’s government to deliver a budget soonish that will aim to “solve” the “fiscal imbalance” by sending who knows how much money to some provincial governments (which won’t be enough to satisfy Quebec but will be enough to annoy Alberta and Ontario). Canada’s New Government is also itching to mess with the Constitution to bring in half-baked Senate reforms and limits to the federal spending power.
As for further cozying up to nationalists, it’s hard to top what Mr. Harper told supporters in the Saguenay region last month. “When you are part of a nation, it is perfectly normal to be nationalist,” he said. He also implied that it was wrong to believe that “the Quebec nation and Canadian unity do not go together.” Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe ought to complain; after stealing his nation-motion thunder, the prime minister is stealing some of his lines.
Do I really need to explain – again – why Mr. Harper is on the wrong track? I didn’t think so. Yep, 2007 is liable to be eventful. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday January 4, 2007 (A-14)
© Copyright The Ottawa Ctitzen
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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de Sebb » Mar Jan 09, 2007 1:48 pm
I refuse to believe that Quebecers in general are racist. But at the same time, where I grew up an unspeakably dumb idea was universally known as "un plan de negre," something only a Negro (or the even more offensive "n" word, there being no distinction between the two in French) would devise.
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On utlise les références nord-américaines anglo-saxonnes pour juger la société québécoise ! Problème ! Désinformation !
Les USA ont connu un problème noir, pas le Québec (bien qu'il y avait oui de l'esclavagisme en Nouvelle-France aussi) !
On peut se demander en effet si les "nègres blancs d'Amérique" évoquaient un "plan de nèg'" pour parler d'eux-mêmes ? Ne pas connaître l'Histoire du Québec c'est ne pas connaître le Québec.
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On utlise les références nord-américaines anglo-saxonnes pour juger la société québécoise ! Problème ! Désinformation !
Les USA ont connu un problème noir, pas le Québec (bien qu'il y avait oui de l'esclavagisme en Nouvelle-France aussi) !
On peut se demander en effet si les "nègres blancs d'Amérique" évoquaient un "plan de nèg'" pour parler d'eux-mêmes ? Ne pas connaître l'Histoire du Québec c'est ne pas connaître le Québec.
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de Yukiwi » Mar Jan 09, 2007 2:29 pm
this is the first time I have read someting on this thread & this is the last time - what vomit & useless discussions for frustrated nationo-quebecois who see that their fantasy world is crumbling around them - things are not going as "planned", not going as per the Québec nationalist marketing efforts of the last 40 years had fantasized.....- la société québécoise est en déroute en grand parti grâce aux valeurs des socialiste-nationaliste-québécois, ces valeurs qui ont miné la société francophone, les familles traditionelles... & etc...
Prends garde à ce que tu pense au fond de toi-même: c'est plus important que tout, car ta vie en dépend.
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de Lachapelle » Mar Jan 09, 2007 6:01 pm
Yukiwi a écrit:this is the first time I have read someting on this thread & this is the last time - what vomit & useless discussions for frustrated nationo-quebecois who see that their fantasy world is crumbling around them - things are not going as "planned", not going as per the Québec nationalist marketing efforts of the last 40 years had fantasized.....- la société québécoise est en déroute en grand parti grâce aux valeurs des socialiste-nationaliste-québécois, ces valeurs qui ont miné la société francophone, les familles traditionelles... & etc...
Aide nous à améliorer le contenu de ce fil en partageant avec nous la direction dans laquelle, selon toi, la société Québecoise devrait se diriger.....
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de Delenda » Jeu Jan 11, 2007 2:57 pm
Situation normal…
Brigitte Pellerin
Perhaps you think you’ve heard enough about our public sector “sustainability crisis”. But if you think I’m running out of examples of things going awfully wrong with various government programs, with no way to fix them, well, think again.
This week’s crisis consists of two elements. One, a Quebec government plan to deal with school violence, is semi-serious whereas the other, a province-wide outbreak of virulent gastroenteritis, is semi-urgent. Both are systemic failures, which means we can’t pin the blame on anyone in particular and fire his sorry carcass, and neither is likely to be resolved anytime soon despite the injection of yet more money and other resources. Bummer, huh?
Start with violence in Quebec schools. Nobody has reliable scientific data on the problem but everyone, including union officials, seems to agree the situation is dire. Weird; I once reduced a particularly pompous French teacher to tears and probably caused several others to rip their hair out in frustration. (pas juste à l'école, dans tes colonnes imbéciles aussi) But even in the depths of my troubled adolescence I never came close to getting physical with any of them, even though by 16 I was certainly big, strong and athletic enough to intimidate my mostly tiny, frail female teachers. (who cares?)
As for student-on-student violence, yeah of course it happened – did I tell you about the time I scared off Donald Brashear during recess? Ha, those were the days. But it was usually pretty benign. Once in fifth grade I managed to get attacked by an entire class and escaped with a slap across the face, a scratch or two and a few dozen shouted insults. (attention, la même chose va t'arriver avec ton non-stop Quebec-bashing)Nowadays you routinely hear scary stories about really young children pounding the stuffing out of their classmates.
From a manageable annoyance, school violence seems to have become a genuine problem – and not just in Quebec. However it happened, public schools now have to deal with it, which means governments have to deal with it. But how? And with what money? It’s not as though they don’t have other priorities.
Ministry of Education spokeswoman Marie-Claude Lavigne told Quebec City’s Le Soleil she “could not talk about a budget or a deadline” for her minister’s plan to deal with school violence because his priority these days is his upcoming policy against junk food in school. I’d say that can wait; other kids don’t fatten you at recess. But what about the well-documented qualified-teacher-shortage crisis, or the equally well-documented lack-of-adequate-budget-to-buy-library-books crisis?
These are serous issues – what’s more important to a society than its children? Oh, I don’t know, its health? In between worrying about different types of deadly, drug-resistant superbugs (to wit: Clostridium difficile and the charmingly named community-associated methicillin-resistant staphylococcus), Quebec hospitals and long-term care facilities are currently grappling with an epidemic of viral gastroenteritis at least one expert claims is the worst in 10 years – and it hasn’t peaked yet.
Gastroenteritis is usually not the end of world; two or three days of vomiting and diarrhea and it goes away. At least if you’re reasonably robust and healthy. But pile it on top of other medical problems and it might be you that goes away instead. Plus to contain the spread of this highly contagious virus, health officials have to isolate stricken patients and ask relatives not to visit, depriving them of needed and often healing comfort. (tu te prends pour une experte en santé, on dirait)
It gets worse. How can you isolate contagious patients in facilities that are already so overcrowded there are waiting lists for just about every medical procedure? At the very least elective surgeries have to be cancelled or postponed. In Gatineau, a gastroenteritis outbreak at the Foyer du bonheur long-term care facility has forced authorities to stop admitting new patients. That means those who were scheduled for a transfer from the hospital are staying put, becoming “bed-blockers” through no fault of their own. (t'es allée la chercher loin, celle-là. Combien de patients se sont trouvés dans une telle situation? 1? )None of that is helping emergency rooms deal with their customary patient overflow. And overcrowded hospitals are prone to outbreaks of disease…
What if the gastroenteritis outbreak spreads out of control? Or what if there’s an epidemic of influenza, or a new C. difficile episode, or some other superbug decides to strike two weeks from now? Where will the authorities put those patients? Who will care for them?
School violence is an important issue. But it’s not nearly as urgent as dealing with the crumbling health-care system, especially not in an age of drug-resistant superbugs. (c'est quoi ton point? Arrêter de fonctionner, et couper tout ce qui n'a pas trait au système de santé?) Yet in both cases we are dealing with systemic problems and failures for which we are unable to fire anyone in particular (too bad, 'cause you would've been the first one to go) and, more importantly, find a suitable solution. Especially not by doing more of what got us into this mess.
Unsustainability an exhausted topic? Don’t you believe it.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday January 11, 2007 (A-14)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
Brigitte Pellerin
Perhaps you think you’ve heard enough about our public sector “sustainability crisis”. But if you think I’m running out of examples of things going awfully wrong with various government programs, with no way to fix them, well, think again.
This week’s crisis consists of two elements. One, a Quebec government plan to deal with school violence, is semi-serious whereas the other, a province-wide outbreak of virulent gastroenteritis, is semi-urgent. Both are systemic failures, which means we can’t pin the blame on anyone in particular and fire his sorry carcass, and neither is likely to be resolved anytime soon despite the injection of yet more money and other resources. Bummer, huh?
Start with violence in Quebec schools. Nobody has reliable scientific data on the problem but everyone, including union officials, seems to agree the situation is dire. Weird; I once reduced a particularly pompous French teacher to tears and probably caused several others to rip their hair out in frustration. (pas juste à l'école, dans tes colonnes imbéciles aussi) But even in the depths of my troubled adolescence I never came close to getting physical with any of them, even though by 16 I was certainly big, strong and athletic enough to intimidate my mostly tiny, frail female teachers. (who cares?)
As for student-on-student violence, yeah of course it happened – did I tell you about the time I scared off Donald Brashear during recess? Ha, those were the days. But it was usually pretty benign. Once in fifth grade I managed to get attacked by an entire class and escaped with a slap across the face, a scratch or two and a few dozen shouted insults. (attention, la même chose va t'arriver avec ton non-stop Quebec-bashing)Nowadays you routinely hear scary stories about really young children pounding the stuffing out of their classmates.
From a manageable annoyance, school violence seems to have become a genuine problem – and not just in Quebec. However it happened, public schools now have to deal with it, which means governments have to deal with it. But how? And with what money? It’s not as though they don’t have other priorities.
Ministry of Education spokeswoman Marie-Claude Lavigne told Quebec City’s Le Soleil she “could not talk about a budget or a deadline” for her minister’s plan to deal with school violence because his priority these days is his upcoming policy against junk food in school. I’d say that can wait; other kids don’t fatten you at recess. But what about the well-documented qualified-teacher-shortage crisis, or the equally well-documented lack-of-adequate-budget-to-buy-library-books crisis?
These are serous issues – what’s more important to a society than its children? Oh, I don’t know, its health? In between worrying about different types of deadly, drug-resistant superbugs (to wit: Clostridium difficile and the charmingly named community-associated methicillin-resistant staphylococcus), Quebec hospitals and long-term care facilities are currently grappling with an epidemic of viral gastroenteritis at least one expert claims is the worst in 10 years – and it hasn’t peaked yet.
Gastroenteritis is usually not the end of world; two or three days of vomiting and diarrhea and it goes away. At least if you’re reasonably robust and healthy. But pile it on top of other medical problems and it might be you that goes away instead. Plus to contain the spread of this highly contagious virus, health officials have to isolate stricken patients and ask relatives not to visit, depriving them of needed and often healing comfort. (tu te prends pour une experte en santé, on dirait)
It gets worse. How can you isolate contagious patients in facilities that are already so overcrowded there are waiting lists for just about every medical procedure? At the very least elective surgeries have to be cancelled or postponed. In Gatineau, a gastroenteritis outbreak at the Foyer du bonheur long-term care facility has forced authorities to stop admitting new patients. That means those who were scheduled for a transfer from the hospital are staying put, becoming “bed-blockers” through no fault of their own. (t'es allée la chercher loin, celle-là. Combien de patients se sont trouvés dans une telle situation? 1? )None of that is helping emergency rooms deal with their customary patient overflow. And overcrowded hospitals are prone to outbreaks of disease…
What if the gastroenteritis outbreak spreads out of control? Or what if there’s an epidemic of influenza, or a new C. difficile episode, or some other superbug decides to strike two weeks from now? Where will the authorities put those patients? Who will care for them?
School violence is an important issue. But it’s not nearly as urgent as dealing with the crumbling health-care system, especially not in an age of drug-resistant superbugs. (c'est quoi ton point? Arrêter de fonctionner, et couper tout ce qui n'a pas trait au système de santé?) Yet in both cases we are dealing with systemic problems and failures for which we are unable to fire anyone in particular (too bad, 'cause you would've been the first one to go) and, more importantly, find a suitable solution. Especially not by doing more of what got us into this mess.
Unsustainability an exhausted topic? Don’t you believe it.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday January 11, 2007 (A-14)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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de Delenda » Jeu Jan 25, 2007 3:28 pm
A Royal tempest in a teapot
Brigitte Pellerin
Hey, what’s this French politician doing on the front page of my newspaper? Turning herself into a Joe Clark en talons hauts? Making a fool of herself on the international stage, most recently by appearing to endorse Quebec’s “sovereignty and liberty” after meeting in Paris with visiting Parti Québécois leader André Boisclair? Oh, lala.
It’s too bad, really. I was hoping Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate, would give Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wingish perceived front-runner, a run for his money in the upcoming French presidential election. Not because I dislike Mr. Sarkozy, particularly. But I dislike Royal coronations that don’t take place in Westminster Abbey.
I’m sorry, what? You’d rather I dispensed with the silly puns and endeavoured instead to explain why her intervention is bad for Canadian unity? I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. This is not a “Vive the Brittany libre” column. Ms. Royal’s remarks aren’t bad, or good, for Canada or Quebec or André Boisclair or anybody other than Ms. Royal. She shot herself in the foot and she’s the only one hurting.
Mr. Boisclair is not the first PQ leader who feels he has to get a French politician to say something nice about Quebec sovereignty. They all did, starting in the 1970s with René Lévesque and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (last seen failing to get the telephone book known as the European Constitution ratified). As though Quebecers cared what French politicians think or French politicians cared about Quebec’s future. It’s all so very air-kissy in its sincere fakery. So why are folks in English Canada, along with federalist Quebec politicians, scrambling to climb into the nearest set of drapes?
OHMYGODOHMYGOD!!OH!!!MY!!!GOD!!!!! They shriek and yelp and protest from atop their curtain rods and then… not much. The offending French politician is made to look silly at home, the PQ leader thinks he has another reason to feel insufferably smug, one or two Quebec journalists extract a trip to Paris out of their editors to study this latest potential alliance and that’s about it.
Trust me, it would have been OK to laugh Ms. Royal’s pronouncement off the front page. It’s certainly fine to let it go now. Please.
Her sovereignty-related ideas won’t exactly carry a lot of weight. While she’s doing reasonably well among French voters on domestic issues (breaking with her party’s stale orthodoxy, she strongly criticized the 35-hour work week and proposed young delinquents be treated in a harsh manner reminiscent of military boot camp), she can’t seem to leave the country without making a giant gaffing idiot of herself.
For instance, touring the Middle East last December she failed to react when Hezbollah politician Ali Ammar compared the Israeli-Palestinian relationship to the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War. She says she didn’t hear that part (an explanation reportedly backed by the French ambassador to Lebanon).
Then earlier this month Ms. Royal went to China and praised their justice system as a lot “faster” than France’s. Someone ought to have reminded her that their rapidity is among the drawbacks of summary executions, human-rights-wise.
Ms. Royal was also ridiculed for inventing a new word, “bravitude” (instead of bravoure), to describe the courage one goes to the Great Wall to acquire. Her aides insist she invented the word deliberately but it sounded just as natural as asking about the totality of a farmer’s acreage. She also wore white on her visit, apparently the colour of mourning in China (who knew?). It’s like losing your luggage; on its own it wouldn’t matter but added to other faux-pas...
Still, there’s no reason for us to share her foreign foolishness by making a big stink about her Quebec remarks. We don’t have to huff and puff in confusing ways, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper chiding her by saying that “Experience teaches that it is highly inappropriate for a foreign leader to interfere in the democratic affairs of another country”. What does he mean, “foreign leader”? Right now, she’s only running for the job.
Besides, it would have stung more if he’d smirked and said, “Surely you don’t expect me to comment every time a French politician says something inappropriate and annoying. I have a country to run.” Mr. Harper is very good at smirking; he would have made his point and infuriated many a separatist at the same time. But no, Canadian politicians don’t understand the power of understatement. They prefer the mighty rhetorical power of inane platitudes, such as Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s “The future of Quebec will be decided by Quebecers – no one else”. Blech.
Lighten up. Ségolène Royal increasingly looks like France’s answer to Joe Clark. She should be taken equally seriously.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday January 25, 2007 (A-14)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
Brigitte Pellerin
Hey, what’s this French politician doing on the front page of my newspaper? Turning herself into a Joe Clark en talons hauts? Making a fool of herself on the international stage, most recently by appearing to endorse Quebec’s “sovereignty and liberty” after meeting in Paris with visiting Parti Québécois leader André Boisclair? Oh, lala.
It’s too bad, really. I was hoping Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate, would give Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wingish perceived front-runner, a run for his money in the upcoming French presidential election. Not because I dislike Mr. Sarkozy, particularly. But I dislike Royal coronations that don’t take place in Westminster Abbey.
I’m sorry, what? You’d rather I dispensed with the silly puns and endeavoured instead to explain why her intervention is bad for Canadian unity? I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. This is not a “Vive the Brittany libre” column. Ms. Royal’s remarks aren’t bad, or good, for Canada or Quebec or André Boisclair or anybody other than Ms. Royal. She shot herself in the foot and she’s the only one hurting.
Mr. Boisclair is not the first PQ leader who feels he has to get a French politician to say something nice about Quebec sovereignty. They all did, starting in the 1970s with René Lévesque and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (last seen failing to get the telephone book known as the European Constitution ratified). As though Quebecers cared what French politicians think or French politicians cared about Quebec’s future. It’s all so very air-kissy in its sincere fakery. So why are folks in English Canada, along with federalist Quebec politicians, scrambling to climb into the nearest set of drapes?
OHMYGODOHMYGOD!!OH!!!MY!!!GOD!!!!! They shriek and yelp and protest from atop their curtain rods and then… not much. The offending French politician is made to look silly at home, the PQ leader thinks he has another reason to feel insufferably smug, one or two Quebec journalists extract a trip to Paris out of their editors to study this latest potential alliance and that’s about it.
Trust me, it would have been OK to laugh Ms. Royal’s pronouncement off the front page. It’s certainly fine to let it go now. Please.
Her sovereignty-related ideas won’t exactly carry a lot of weight. While she’s doing reasonably well among French voters on domestic issues (breaking with her party’s stale orthodoxy, she strongly criticized the 35-hour work week and proposed young delinquents be treated in a harsh manner reminiscent of military boot camp), she can’t seem to leave the country without making a giant gaffing idiot of herself.
For instance, touring the Middle East last December she failed to react when Hezbollah politician Ali Ammar compared the Israeli-Palestinian relationship to the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War. She says she didn’t hear that part (an explanation reportedly backed by the French ambassador to Lebanon).
Then earlier this month Ms. Royal went to China and praised their justice system as a lot “faster” than France’s. Someone ought to have reminded her that their rapidity is among the drawbacks of summary executions, human-rights-wise.
Ms. Royal was also ridiculed for inventing a new word, “bravitude” (instead of bravoure), to describe the courage one goes to the Great Wall to acquire. Her aides insist she invented the word deliberately but it sounded just as natural as asking about the totality of a farmer’s acreage. She also wore white on her visit, apparently the colour of mourning in China (who knew?). It’s like losing your luggage; on its own it wouldn’t matter but added to other faux-pas...
Still, there’s no reason for us to share her foreign foolishness by making a big stink about her Quebec remarks. We don’t have to huff and puff in confusing ways, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper chiding her by saying that “Experience teaches that it is highly inappropriate for a foreign leader to interfere in the democratic affairs of another country”. What does he mean, “foreign leader”? Right now, she’s only running for the job.
Besides, it would have stung more if he’d smirked and said, “Surely you don’t expect me to comment every time a French politician says something inappropriate and annoying. I have a country to run.” Mr. Harper is very good at smirking; he would have made his point and infuriated many a separatist at the same time. But no, Canadian politicians don’t understand the power of understatement. They prefer the mighty rhetorical power of inane platitudes, such as Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s “The future of Quebec will be decided by Quebecers – no one else”. Blech.
Lighten up. Ségolène Royal increasingly looks like France’s answer to Joe Clark. She should be taken equally seriously.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday January 25, 2007 (A-14)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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de Delenda » Jeu Mar 15, 2007 9:33 am
Charest might squeak through
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Quebec election campaign is finally taking shape. With less than two weeks until voting day, it's about time. So is Liberal Premier Jean Charest's strategy. About time, I mean. Or rather, timing. It should work.
That's right. So here's my tepid prediction: Charest's Liberals will win small. We're as likely to have a narrow Liberal majority government (between 63 and 66 of Quebec's 125 ridings) as we are to have a Liberal minority propped up by Mario Dumont's Action democratique du Quebec (a Parti Quebecois minority with ADQ support wouldn't last long because Mr. Dumont wants no part of another referendum). What we will not see is a PQ majority win. It won't happen because leader Andre Boisclair just doesn't seem to connect with voters no matter what he does.
I say that even though he's getting a little bit better these days. I thought he performed very well in the televised leaders' debate on Tuesday. He didn't freak out once and actually looked almost poised at times. He asked good questions, relatively short and to the point. But it's too little, way too late.
Before you break out the champagne, even a catastrophic meltdown for the PQ (which I don't see happening) won't mean an end to separatist nonsense. Folks such as the Dominion Institute's Rudyard Griffiths, who wrote in Tuesday's Calgary Herald that "the threat of Quebec separatism is over and gone for good," are out to lunch. This thing will never die. It probably won't succeed either, at least not directly, but if you heard all three leaders professing loyalty to Quebec first, last and only in the debate you'd know it will never be a province like the others. And the ADQ can't replace the PQ as the other main party.
A few weeks ago I said of Mario Dumont that "unless he really sticks to his guns this time, expect him to remain entertainingly irrelevant, drawing voters from both main parties." It appears he listened. He has not backed down, even from the most controversial of his proposals, such as abolishing school boards. That's good; there is a political market for this stuff, and he shouldn't be afraid of believing his own beliefs. But he still has a serious credibility problem.
He has no team worthy of the name. He lost two candidates to foot-in-mouth disease, always tough to recover from -- ask Stephen Harper about his party's problems with this malady in 2004. Mr. Dumont has been in politics a long time without getting anywhere close to government, and he's never managed anything in the private sector, either.
He's also dangerously weak when it comes to specifics. On Sunday, as a guest on the popular Radio-Canada show Tout le monde en parle, he bombed hideously. The hosts wheeled out a blackboard with the other parties' costed-out promises and asked Mr. Dumont to add his party's numbers. He couldn't and the board remained painfully incomplete. On Tuesday, he began the leaders' debate by promising to release the ADQ financial plan the day after Monday's federal budget. That's just not serious, and the ADQ will most likely finish third again.
Mr. Charest, I must say, is running the best campaign he could under the circumstances -- three years of unfavourable polls, and a giant zero on 2003's main promises to improve health and education while re-engineering the state and reducing taxes by $1 billion every year for five years. His campaign is nothing spectacular, but it sure is in keeping with the situation. After all, he is the incumbent. He might as well look the part.
I suppose it's also a good idea to distract everybody's attention away from the Liberal record by talking about the PQ's lack of "referendum" in its roadmap, or Mr. Boisclair's foolish promise to guarantee transfer payments from the federal government even after a Yes vote. His divisible/indivisible partition "gaffe" also managed to monopolize the media's attention for almost a week. A cynic might think the mistake was awfully convenient; debates over partitioning an independent Quebec can't help the PQ.
Clever? You bet. Devious, too. But to a man in Mr. Charest's position, it's dashed useful. And so is federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's budget on Monday, which is expected to "solve" the so-called fiscal "imbalance" with the Ritual Throwing of Money Across the Ottawa River.
March 19, you may have noticed, happens to be just one week before voting day. So Quebecers will have enough time to feel the love, but probably not enough time to start feeling offended at having been temporarily bought once again.
It's enough for Mr. Charest to squeak through.
Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Quebec election campaign is finally taking shape. With less than two weeks until voting day, it's about time. So is Liberal Premier Jean Charest's strategy. About time, I mean. Or rather, timing. It should work.
That's right. So here's my tepid prediction: Charest's Liberals will win small. We're as likely to have a narrow Liberal majority government (between 63 and 66 of Quebec's 125 ridings) as we are to have a Liberal minority propped up by Mario Dumont's Action democratique du Quebec (a Parti Quebecois minority with ADQ support wouldn't last long because Mr. Dumont wants no part of another referendum). What we will not see is a PQ majority win. It won't happen because leader Andre Boisclair just doesn't seem to connect with voters no matter what he does.
I say that even though he's getting a little bit better these days. I thought he performed very well in the televised leaders' debate on Tuesday. He didn't freak out once and actually looked almost poised at times. He asked good questions, relatively short and to the point. But it's too little, way too late.
Before you break out the champagne, even a catastrophic meltdown for the PQ (which I don't see happening) won't mean an end to separatist nonsense. Folks such as the Dominion Institute's Rudyard Griffiths, who wrote in Tuesday's Calgary Herald that "the threat of Quebec separatism is over and gone for good," are out to lunch. This thing will never die. It probably won't succeed either, at least not directly, but if you heard all three leaders professing loyalty to Quebec first, last and only in the debate you'd know it will never be a province like the others. And the ADQ can't replace the PQ as the other main party.
A few weeks ago I said of Mario Dumont that "unless he really sticks to his guns this time, expect him to remain entertainingly irrelevant, drawing voters from both main parties." It appears he listened. He has not backed down, even from the most controversial of his proposals, such as abolishing school boards. That's good; there is a political market for this stuff, and he shouldn't be afraid of believing his own beliefs. But he still has a serious credibility problem.
He has no team worthy of the name. He lost two candidates to foot-in-mouth disease, always tough to recover from -- ask Stephen Harper about his party's problems with this malady in 2004. Mr. Dumont has been in politics a long time without getting anywhere close to government, and he's never managed anything in the private sector, either.
He's also dangerously weak when it comes to specifics. On Sunday, as a guest on the popular Radio-Canada show Tout le monde en parle, he bombed hideously. The hosts wheeled out a blackboard with the other parties' costed-out promises and asked Mr. Dumont to add his party's numbers. He couldn't and the board remained painfully incomplete. On Tuesday, he began the leaders' debate by promising to release the ADQ financial plan the day after Monday's federal budget. That's just not serious, and the ADQ will most likely finish third again.
Mr. Charest, I must say, is running the best campaign he could under the circumstances -- three years of unfavourable polls, and a giant zero on 2003's main promises to improve health and education while re-engineering the state and reducing taxes by $1 billion every year for five years. His campaign is nothing spectacular, but it sure is in keeping with the situation. After all, he is the incumbent. He might as well look the part.
I suppose it's also a good idea to distract everybody's attention away from the Liberal record by talking about the PQ's lack of "referendum" in its roadmap, or Mr. Boisclair's foolish promise to guarantee transfer payments from the federal government even after a Yes vote. His divisible/indivisible partition "gaffe" also managed to monopolize the media's attention for almost a week. A cynic might think the mistake was awfully convenient; debates over partitioning an independent Quebec can't help the PQ.
Clever? You bet. Devious, too. But to a man in Mr. Charest's position, it's dashed useful. And so is federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's budget on Monday, which is expected to "solve" the so-called fiscal "imbalance" with the Ritual Throwing of Money Across the Ottawa River.
March 19, you may have noticed, happens to be just one week before voting day. So Quebecers will have enough time to feel the love, but probably not enough time to start feeling offended at having been temporarily bought once again.
It's enough for Mr. Charest to squeak through.
Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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Delenda - Ministre
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de gaulois » Ven Mar 16, 2007 12:29 pm
Her morning story "Quebec holds an election and logic is the first casualty" published by Canwest out here is particularly irritating. I have responded par la bouche de mes canons to Canwest!
We will see if it get published.
The defense of "truth and logic"
Re: "Quebec holds an election and logic is the first casualty"
Your Quebec politics columnist Brigitte Pelerin was asking who will rise to the defense of "truth and logic" in regards to the ongoing Quebec campaign events. The casualty certainly does not seem unique to Quebec politics judging from what is happening pretty much everywhere one looks nowadays. In regards to someone that has mastered the art of Quebec bashing by spreading innuendos and recycling the same material of ethnic cleansing, linguistic squabbles, and the Canada break-up hot buttons, I wonder too if readers that really wish to understand the tectonic plate changes occurring in Quebec politics will rise and seek better alternatives than getting it from an Ottawa based writer somewhat disconnected from what is happening in the regions where real people actually live. Hearing about the defense of "truth and logic" from our political spin town seems particularly orwellian. Will I be the only one rising to "déjà-vu"?
We will see if it get published.
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de Delenda » Dim Mar 18, 2007 3:22 pm
gaulois a écrit:Her morning story "Quebec holds an election and logic is the first casualty" published by Canwest out here is particularly irritating. I have responded par la bouche de mes canons to Canwest!The defense of "truth and logic"
Re: "Quebec holds an election and logic is the first casualty"
Your Quebec politics columnist Brigitte Pelerin was asking who will rise to the defense of "truth and logic" in regards to the ongoing Quebec campaign events. The casualty certainly does not seem unique to Quebec politics judging from what is happening pretty much everywhere one looks nowadays. In regards to someone that has mastered the art of Quebec bashing by spreading innuendos and recycling the same material of ethnic cleansing, linguistic squabbles, and the Canada break-up hot buttons, I wonder too if readers that really wish to understand the tectonic plate changes occurring in Quebec politics will rise and seek better alternatives than getting it from an Ottawa based writer somewhat disconnected from what is happening in the regions where real people actually live. Hearing about the defense of "truth and logic" from our political spin town seems particularly orwellian. Will I be the only one rising to "déjà-vu"?
We will see if it get published.
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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Delenda - Ministre
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de Delenda » Jeu Mar 22, 2007 9:31 am
Toujours la même rengaine, le Québec extorque de l'argent d'Ottawa et gnagnagna...
Appeasement never works
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, March 22, 2007
When you see them on television or in the House of Commons making speeches, they look like grown men. But they act like children playing with matches. You warn of the dangers -- to themselves and to others -- but they refuse to listen. Sooner or later they get burned, and when they do they don't understand how it happened. What a tragedy.
How often have you heard it said that it would be dangerous and foolish for the federal government to pander to Quebec nationalists by giving Quebec special status within the federation and by throwing inordinate amounts of money across the Ottawa River? How frequently have you been reminded that this sort of behaviour (coupled with out-of-control spending and patronage excesses) is exactly what killed the political legacy of Brian Mulroney?
More times than you can count, right? I even remember this guy, a certain Stephen Harper, who used to be a pretty strong libertarian when he was running the National Citizens Coalition, and who used to be very much opposed to the federal government's using tax dollars from Ontario and Alberta to bribe Quebecers into suddenly starting to love Ottawa. Wonder what happened to him?
Me, too.
He ought to be ashamed of himself. Instead he, and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, looked awfully pleased with themselves on the front pages of newspapers. Why, their budget is perfectly crafted to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters who can't count. (Did I miss something during last year's campaign? Did we somehow vote the Liberals back in?) Oh yeah, Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty were also mighty happy with their "historic" settlement of the so-called fiscal "imbalance." "It's the end of the discussions," exulted Mr. Flaherty. "C'est fini."
[Here we take a quick break to laugh uncontrollably.] (le pire, c'est qu'elle se trouve probablement drôle) True, the feds are promising to send just under $40 billion in the next seven years to selected provincial governments, particularly the one that will not, under any circumstances, shut up about said "imbalance." But if you think that money will be enough to end the "discussions," you are not mature enough to be put in charge of managing my backyard shed, never mind the federal treasury.
It's quite simple: No matter how much money the federal government sends to Quebec City, it will never be enough to stop Quebec politicians -- no matter how theoretically "federalist" they pretend to be -- from demanding more.
According to a nifty pie chart in Tuesday's La Presse, Quebec will be getting 30.8 per cent of federal transfer payments in 2007-2008, even though it has well under a quarter of the country's population. How has this been described by most politicians and commentators, including "autonomist" Mario Dumont?
As a step in the right direction.
Nobody, not even Liberal Premier Jean Charest, who is gloating about his admirable success in federal-provincial extortion relations, believes "c'est fini." In the Montreal Gazette on Tuesday, I read that Mr. Charest, "who was counting on Flaherty to hand over more money in equalization payments and increased transfers for post-secondary education, said there will be more talks on post-secondary funding." (I also noticed that he promised to use $700 million of this year's extra money to cut Quebecers' taxes, thereby showing that he doesn't even take his own fiscal-imbalance theory seriously. Wasn't the problem meant to be too much tax revenue in Ottawa and too many spending needs in the provinces?)
So, other than yet more demands for more money, what will Mr. Harper's government get for its troubles? It may well help Mr. Charest get re-elected and who knows, itself as well later this year.
If that's the ultimate goal, then I guess Mr. Harper has a decent shot at success by behaving exactly like those Liberals he insisted did not deserve re-election. Congratulations, you have been Ottawashed.
If there's more to the Conservative party than power for power's sake, things aren't so rosy. Especially when the prize, such as it is, comes at the cost of further annoying provinces such as Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.
And, ahem, what's going to happen when -- not if -- Quebecers decide to elect the Parti Quebecois or some other sovereigntist party? How many more times will the feds have to help the nominally federalist party by "solving" the fiscal "imbalance"?
Every time federal politicians try to appease Quebecers by throwing money and special status (hello, nation motion) at them, they only manage to increase the price of keeping them sort of temporarily not too unhappy -- without ever making the threat of separation go away. Especially not from the West.
I say it again: Please put those matches down or you'll set the place on fire.
Appeasement never works
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, March 22, 2007
When you see them on television or in the House of Commons making speeches, they look like grown men. But they act like children playing with matches. You warn of the dangers -- to themselves and to others -- but they refuse to listen. Sooner or later they get burned, and when they do they don't understand how it happened. What a tragedy.
How often have you heard it said that it would be dangerous and foolish for the federal government to pander to Quebec nationalists by giving Quebec special status within the federation and by throwing inordinate amounts of money across the Ottawa River? How frequently have you been reminded that this sort of behaviour (coupled with out-of-control spending and patronage excesses) is exactly what killed the political legacy of Brian Mulroney?
More times than you can count, right? I even remember this guy, a certain Stephen Harper, who used to be a pretty strong libertarian when he was running the National Citizens Coalition, and who used to be very much opposed to the federal government's using tax dollars from Ontario and Alberta to bribe Quebecers into suddenly starting to love Ottawa. Wonder what happened to him?
Me, too.
He ought to be ashamed of himself. Instead he, and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, looked awfully pleased with themselves on the front pages of newspapers. Why, their budget is perfectly crafted to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters who can't count. (Did I miss something during last year's campaign? Did we somehow vote the Liberals back in?) Oh yeah, Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty were also mighty happy with their "historic" settlement of the so-called fiscal "imbalance." "It's the end of the discussions," exulted Mr. Flaherty. "C'est fini."
[Here we take a quick break to laugh uncontrollably.] (le pire, c'est qu'elle se trouve probablement drôle) True, the feds are promising to send just under $40 billion in the next seven years to selected provincial governments, particularly the one that will not, under any circumstances, shut up about said "imbalance." But if you think that money will be enough to end the "discussions," you are not mature enough to be put in charge of managing my backyard shed, never mind the federal treasury.
It's quite simple: No matter how much money the federal government sends to Quebec City, it will never be enough to stop Quebec politicians -- no matter how theoretically "federalist" they pretend to be -- from demanding more.
According to a nifty pie chart in Tuesday's La Presse, Quebec will be getting 30.8 per cent of federal transfer payments in 2007-2008, even though it has well under a quarter of the country's population. How has this been described by most politicians and commentators, including "autonomist" Mario Dumont?
As a step in the right direction.
Nobody, not even Liberal Premier Jean Charest, who is gloating about his admirable success in federal-provincial extortion relations, believes "c'est fini." In the Montreal Gazette on Tuesday, I read that Mr. Charest, "who was counting on Flaherty to hand over more money in equalization payments and increased transfers for post-secondary education, said there will be more talks on post-secondary funding." (I also noticed that he promised to use $700 million of this year's extra money to cut Quebecers' taxes, thereby showing that he doesn't even take his own fiscal-imbalance theory seriously. Wasn't the problem meant to be too much tax revenue in Ottawa and too many spending needs in the provinces?)
So, other than yet more demands for more money, what will Mr. Harper's government get for its troubles? It may well help Mr. Charest get re-elected and who knows, itself as well later this year.
If that's the ultimate goal, then I guess Mr. Harper has a decent shot at success by behaving exactly like those Liberals he insisted did not deserve re-election. Congratulations, you have been Ottawashed.
If there's more to the Conservative party than power for power's sake, things aren't so rosy. Especially when the prize, such as it is, comes at the cost of further annoying provinces such as Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.
And, ahem, what's going to happen when -- not if -- Quebecers decide to elect the Parti Quebecois or some other sovereigntist party? How many more times will the feds have to help the nominally federalist party by "solving" the fiscal "imbalance"?
Every time federal politicians try to appease Quebecers by throwing money and special status (hello, nation motion) at them, they only manage to increase the price of keeping them sort of temporarily not too unhappy -- without ever making the threat of separation go away. Especially not from the West.
I say it again: Please put those matches down or you'll set the place on fire.
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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de Delenda » Jeu Mar 29, 2007 9:45 am
The wisdom of Quebecers
Brigitte Pellerin
If you look at election results too closely you lose track of what’s happening. It wasn’t until 11 p.m. Monday night that I understood what was actually going on in Quebec. Turns out voters there managed to produce something interesting and perhaps even good. How clever of them.
I am most grateful to the caller to the CPAC election-night show on which I was a panelist, who asked whether Mario Dumont, whose Action démocratique du Québec was at that point elected or leading in 42 seats to the Liberals’ 47 and the Parti Québécois’s 36, would be mature enough to do a good job as leader of the opposition. As I mumbled something about giving him the benefit of the doubt because with sufficient resources he might do something decent, the beauty of those bizarre results suddenly became clear.
Hang on a minute, I thought out loud, who said Mr. Dumont would be the one and only opposition leader? Look at the results again: Given that 63 seats out of 125 is a majority, any combination of two parties can pass any given piece of legislation. Thus, as premier, Jean Charest (or whoever leads the Liberals) can cooperate with the ADQ on economic reform measures, but ignore Mr. Dumont’s objections to, say, bigger cultural subsidies to avant-garde theatre companies by teaming up with Mr. Boisclair (or whoever leads the PQ) to increase them. For that matter, if the PQ and the ADQ agree on something they could do an end run around the “governing” Liberals and pass, for instance, a motion forcing Mr. Charest to invest federal transfer payments in public hospitals instead of giving the money back to Quebec taxpayers.
Cool, huh?
To everyone who’s ever wished to vote for bits of different platforms instead of having to choose one political package at the expense of all others, Quebecers just showed you how to do it. Not every issue will lend itself to such maneuverings, but what the heck, at least Quebecers will enjoy politicians most interested in their concerns and particularly responsive to their demands. Quebec voters wanted a bit of the three leaders, and by golly, that’s exactly what they voted for. Three governments in one, and as a bonus, no pesky referendum in the short term. I am thoroughly impressed. As La Presse’s Vincent Marissal noted Tuesday, Quebecers showed electoral reformers that there’s no need to change this first-past-the-post system. They’re quite capable of using it as is, thank you.
I’m not saying Quebec will get the sort of government I favour (it wasn’t on offer and even if it was, Quebec voters wouldn’t want it). I’m saying this result shows how dynamic and flexible our parliamentary system can be.
I didn’t see this result coming. I correctly predicted a Liberal victory, however tiny, and had ruled out a PQ victory. But I thought Mr. Dumont’s support would collapse at the last minute. Obviously Quebecers were not scared enough by the ADQ’s lack of experience (or dearth of quality candidates) to run back towards the two traditional parties. Their temerity will be rewarded.
Quebec politics will be bumpy, at least in the short term while the new ADQ MNAs learn the ropes. But as I wrote in this space on April 17, 2003, after the Liberals won a clear majority, if Quebecers had elected a minority government, “Jean Charest’s Liberals would have had to negotiate every significant measure with their opponents. While the PQ couldn’t have been expected to collaborate much (for both political and policy reasons), in most cases their agreement with the ADQ would have led the Liberals towards imaginative downsizing and away from their darker big-government impulses.”
Both Mr. Dumont and Mr. Charest seem to have lost much of their enthusiasm for downsizing government, and I expect they will work together to implement the super-popular ADQ proposal to send $100 a week to parents of pre-school children who aren’t in $7 daycare. So I don’t expect this minority government to reduce public spending. But then, I wouldn’t expect it from a majority government either. Everybody’s a big spender now.
And since this configuration will probably deliver more thoughtful and less extravagant government than any other, methinks Quebecers will be a lot happier with their politics than at any time in a generation. Even if this government doesn’t last more than 15 to 18 months, they’ll be good months.
It took me a while to notice it, busy as I was poring over minute details of the electoral race. But it’s there for all to see, and – who knows – maybe even imitate.
I mean, if we are clever, too.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday March 29, 2007 (A-16)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
Brigitte Pellerin
If you look at election results too closely you lose track of what’s happening. It wasn’t until 11 p.m. Monday night that I understood what was actually going on in Quebec. Turns out voters there managed to produce something interesting and perhaps even good. How clever of them.
I am most grateful to the caller to the CPAC election-night show on which I was a panelist, who asked whether Mario Dumont, whose Action démocratique du Québec was at that point elected or leading in 42 seats to the Liberals’ 47 and the Parti Québécois’s 36, would be mature enough to do a good job as leader of the opposition. As I mumbled something about giving him the benefit of the doubt because with sufficient resources he might do something decent, the beauty of those bizarre results suddenly became clear.
Hang on a minute, I thought out loud, who said Mr. Dumont would be the one and only opposition leader? Look at the results again: Given that 63 seats out of 125 is a majority, any combination of two parties can pass any given piece of legislation. Thus, as premier, Jean Charest (or whoever leads the Liberals) can cooperate with the ADQ on economic reform measures, but ignore Mr. Dumont’s objections to, say, bigger cultural subsidies to avant-garde theatre companies by teaming up with Mr. Boisclair (or whoever leads the PQ) to increase them. For that matter, if the PQ and the ADQ agree on something they could do an end run around the “governing” Liberals and pass, for instance, a motion forcing Mr. Charest to invest federal transfer payments in public hospitals instead of giving the money back to Quebec taxpayers.
Cool, huh?
To everyone who’s ever wished to vote for bits of different platforms instead of having to choose one political package at the expense of all others, Quebecers just showed you how to do it. Not every issue will lend itself to such maneuverings, but what the heck, at least Quebecers will enjoy politicians most interested in their concerns and particularly responsive to their demands. Quebec voters wanted a bit of the three leaders, and by golly, that’s exactly what they voted for. Three governments in one, and as a bonus, no pesky referendum in the short term. I am thoroughly impressed. As La Presse’s Vincent Marissal noted Tuesday, Quebecers showed electoral reformers that there’s no need to change this first-past-the-post system. They’re quite capable of using it as is, thank you.
I’m not saying Quebec will get the sort of government I favour (it wasn’t on offer and even if it was, Quebec voters wouldn’t want it). I’m saying this result shows how dynamic and flexible our parliamentary system can be.
I didn’t see this result coming. I correctly predicted a Liberal victory, however tiny, and had ruled out a PQ victory. But I thought Mr. Dumont’s support would collapse at the last minute. Obviously Quebecers were not scared enough by the ADQ’s lack of experience (or dearth of quality candidates) to run back towards the two traditional parties. Their temerity will be rewarded.
Quebec politics will be bumpy, at least in the short term while the new ADQ MNAs learn the ropes. But as I wrote in this space on April 17, 2003, after the Liberals won a clear majority, if Quebecers had elected a minority government, “Jean Charest’s Liberals would have had to negotiate every significant measure with their opponents. While the PQ couldn’t have been expected to collaborate much (for both political and policy reasons), in most cases their agreement with the ADQ would have led the Liberals towards imaginative downsizing and away from their darker big-government impulses.”
Both Mr. Dumont and Mr. Charest seem to have lost much of their enthusiasm for downsizing government, and I expect they will work together to implement the super-popular ADQ proposal to send $100 a week to parents of pre-school children who aren’t in $7 daycare. So I don’t expect this minority government to reduce public spending. But then, I wouldn’t expect it from a majority government either. Everybody’s a big spender now.
And since this configuration will probably deliver more thoughtful and less extravagant government than any other, methinks Quebecers will be a lot happier with their politics than at any time in a generation. Even if this government doesn’t last more than 15 to 18 months, they’ll be good months.
It took me a while to notice it, busy as I was poring over minute details of the electoral race. But it’s there for all to see, and – who knows – maybe even imitate.
I mean, if we are clever, too.
This column first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday March 29, 2007 (A-16)
© Copyright The Ottawa Citizen
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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de Delenda » Jeu Avr 05, 2007 9:21 am
Au revoir, said Quebec
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, April 05, 2007
Is it clear by now that we are living in historic times? That the latest Quebec election was historically historic so we who cover it must be saying Really Important Things? Good. Now maybe we'll be able to pay attention to what history actually tells us.
First, we should stop reading tea leaves trying to figure out exactly how every event in the Canada-Quebec relationship might affect the Canada-Quebec relationship. What good has that ever done anybody? Instead, let's admit that a relationship where one partner talks endlessly about "us" while the other watches TV is in big trouble, and govern ourselves accordingly.
I said last week, and I maintain, that Quebec voters were very clever in electing this particular minority government. But not for the reason most Anglo commentators seem to think. The sheer number of columns claiming a "realignment" of Quebec politics along "left-right" lines instead of the old "sovereigntist/federalist" lines has made me snap.
Three-year-old Beatrice Landry waved a Quebec flag in last year's Fete Nationale parade in Montreal. In a few years, she'll enter a school system that teaches her about the Plains of Abraham but skips Vimy Ridge.
One, this famous realignment happened after the last referendum more than 10 years ago. If it were good for Canadian unity, we'd know by now. Two, while countless Rest of Canada denizens genuinely care what Quebecers are up to and how they're feeling about the relationship, Quebecers don't give a hoot about the welfare and happiness of Rest of Canada denizens. And three, well, there's that "autonomist" thing.
I understand teenagers who want independence as long as Mommy continues to cook lunch, do the laundry and provide an allowance along with high-speed Internet. It's a bit odd coming from Mario Dumont, a 36-year-old professional politician. But this is Quebec, where such things are common, even from politicians who try to pass themselves off as "proud Canadians" in Ontario while promising to defend Quebec's interests against the nasty federal government when campaigning in Quebec City. I mean you, Jean Charest.
That's why it doesn't matter whether the tea leaves say the PQ or any other party will manage to hold yet another referendum on sovereignty. The whole sovereigntist/federalist debate has ceased to be of consequence. Instead, the notion that Quebec ought to be semi-independent, or at least enjoy a privileged status somewhere inside or outside Canada (or, more likely, right on the fence waiting for ever more money and special privileges) is so dominant among French-speaking Quebecers that every Quebec politician is, by now, a sovereigntist-autonomist-style nationalist.
Remember the saying about Ronald Reagan winning the Cold War without firing a single shot? Well, Quebec nationalists managed to win their little war without firing a single referendum victory.
I know. It's kinda sad. I have Anglo friends who are scared and horrified at the same time. For them, Canada without Quebec is unthinkable so they cling to the notion that somehow we're all in the same boat fighting those darn nationalists. I feel sorry for them; they may love Quebec dearly, but Quebec is flipping channels.
Even the time to say goodbye is behind us. My husband, John Robson, wondered in this space on Friday whether "Quebec quietly left and we missed it." Yes indeed. It hadn't quite sunk in for me until I noticed the deafening silence from Quebec commentators failing to talk about what the latest Quebec election might mean for the future of Canada. Quebecers are still here physically and monetarily, but certainly not emotionally and psychologically.
It's most obvious with small things. For instance, very few in Quebec celebrate Canada Day or Victoria Day (the latter is now called Journee nationale des Patriotes) (et la colonisée doit célébrer très fidèlement Victoria Day) ? or, this week, the 90th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge -- where, the story goes, Canada became a nation. This newspaper has been full of stories about it for a solid week. The French papers? In La Presse and Le Devoir, a short Agence France-Presse wire story earlier this week. A search on the Journal de Montreal website yielded a big fat nothing. They're just not interested.
According to a 2005 Dominion Institute survey, as the Citizen reported, "49 per cent of respondents from Western Canada could identify Vimy Ridge as an important battle of the First World war, but that number dropped to six per cent in Quebec." I certainly don't remember hearing anything about it in school. The Plains of Abraham? Oh, yeah. But you know, we didn't like English wars so we kinda skipped them.
That was 20-odd years ago, in a part of Quebec that went on solidly to vote No in 1995. Imagine what's going on in separatist circles. (c'est quoi ton point? Faire changer les cours d'histoire au Québec? Enterrer le fait qu'on a été conquis?)
So you see, instead of talking about historic elections and suchlike, maybe we ought to listen to what history is desperately trying to tell us.
It sounds like "Au revoir."
Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
Et après l'Au revoir définitif, t'auras probablement plus ta job de Quebec-bashing dans les journaux ROCiens.
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, April 05, 2007
Is it clear by now that we are living in historic times? That the latest Quebec election was historically historic so we who cover it must be saying Really Important Things? Good. Now maybe we'll be able to pay attention to what history actually tells us.
First, we should stop reading tea leaves trying to figure out exactly how every event in the Canada-Quebec relationship might affect the Canada-Quebec relationship. What good has that ever done anybody? Instead, let's admit that a relationship where one partner talks endlessly about "us" while the other watches TV is in big trouble, and govern ourselves accordingly.
I said last week, and I maintain, that Quebec voters were very clever in electing this particular minority government. But not for the reason most Anglo commentators seem to think. The sheer number of columns claiming a "realignment" of Quebec politics along "left-right" lines instead of the old "sovereigntist/federalist" lines has made me snap.
Three-year-old Beatrice Landry waved a Quebec flag in last year's Fete Nationale parade in Montreal. In a few years, she'll enter a school system that teaches her about the Plains of Abraham but skips Vimy Ridge.
One, this famous realignment happened after the last referendum more than 10 years ago. If it were good for Canadian unity, we'd know by now. Two, while countless Rest of Canada denizens genuinely care what Quebecers are up to and how they're feeling about the relationship, Quebecers don't give a hoot about the welfare and happiness of Rest of Canada denizens. And three, well, there's that "autonomist" thing.
I understand teenagers who want independence as long as Mommy continues to cook lunch, do the laundry and provide an allowance along with high-speed Internet. It's a bit odd coming from Mario Dumont, a 36-year-old professional politician. But this is Quebec, where such things are common, even from politicians who try to pass themselves off as "proud Canadians" in Ontario while promising to defend Quebec's interests against the nasty federal government when campaigning in Quebec City. I mean you, Jean Charest.
That's why it doesn't matter whether the tea leaves say the PQ or any other party will manage to hold yet another referendum on sovereignty. The whole sovereigntist/federalist debate has ceased to be of consequence. Instead, the notion that Quebec ought to be semi-independent, or at least enjoy a privileged status somewhere inside or outside Canada (or, more likely, right on the fence waiting for ever more money and special privileges) is so dominant among French-speaking Quebecers that every Quebec politician is, by now, a sovereigntist-autonomist-style nationalist.
Remember the saying about Ronald Reagan winning the Cold War without firing a single shot? Well, Quebec nationalists managed to win their little war without firing a single referendum victory.
I know. It's kinda sad. I have Anglo friends who are scared and horrified at the same time. For them, Canada without Quebec is unthinkable so they cling to the notion that somehow we're all in the same boat fighting those darn nationalists. I feel sorry for them; they may love Quebec dearly, but Quebec is flipping channels.
Even the time to say goodbye is behind us. My husband, John Robson, wondered in this space on Friday whether "Quebec quietly left and we missed it." Yes indeed. It hadn't quite sunk in for me until I noticed the deafening silence from Quebec commentators failing to talk about what the latest Quebec election might mean for the future of Canada. Quebecers are still here physically and monetarily, but certainly not emotionally and psychologically.
It's most obvious with small things. For instance, very few in Quebec celebrate Canada Day or Victoria Day (the latter is now called Journee nationale des Patriotes) (et la colonisée doit célébrer très fidèlement Victoria Day) ? or, this week, the 90th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge -- where, the story goes, Canada became a nation. This newspaper has been full of stories about it for a solid week. The French papers? In La Presse and Le Devoir, a short Agence France-Presse wire story earlier this week. A search on the Journal de Montreal website yielded a big fat nothing. They're just not interested.
According to a 2005 Dominion Institute survey, as the Citizen reported, "49 per cent of respondents from Western Canada could identify Vimy Ridge as an important battle of the First World war, but that number dropped to six per cent in Quebec." I certainly don't remember hearing anything about it in school. The Plains of Abraham? Oh, yeah. But you know, we didn't like English wars so we kinda skipped them.
That was 20-odd years ago, in a part of Quebec that went on solidly to vote No in 1995. Imagine what's going on in separatist circles. (c'est quoi ton point? Faire changer les cours d'histoire au Québec? Enterrer le fait qu'on a été conquis?)
So you see, instead of talking about historic elections and suchlike, maybe we ought to listen to what history is desperately trying to tell us.
It sounds like "Au revoir."
Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
Et après l'Au revoir définitif, t'auras probablement plus ta job de Quebec-bashing dans les journaux ROCiens.
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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Delenda - Ministre
- Messages: 8383
- Inscription: Ven Oct 22, 2004 11:41 am
de Frank » Jeu Avr 05, 2007 11:54 am
Delenda a écrit:
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
(...)
But this is Quebec, where such things are common, even from politicians who try to pass themselves off as "proud Canadians" in Ontario while promising to defend Quebec's interests against the nasty federal government when campaigning in Quebec City. I mean you, Jean Charest.
That's why it doesn't matter whether the tea leaves say the PQ or any other party will manage to hold yet another referendum on sovereignty. The whole sovereigntist/federalist debate has ceased to be of consequence. Instead, the notion that Quebec ought to be semi-independent, or at least enjoy a privileged status somewhere inside or outside Canada (or, more likely, right on the fence waiting for ever more money and special privileges) is so dominant among French-speaking Quebecers that every Quebec politician is, by now, a sovereigntist-autonomist-style nationalist.
Remember the saying about Ronald Reagan winning the Cold War without firing a single shot? Well, Quebec nationalists managed to win their little war without firing a single referendum victory.
I know. It's kinda sad. I have Anglo friends who are scared and horrified at the same time. For them, Canada without Quebec is unthinkable so they cling to the notion that somehow we're all in the same boat fighting those darn nationalists. I feel sorry for them; they may love Quebec dearly, but Quebec is flipping channels.
Elle voit donc dans la situation actuelle du Québec une victoire des nationalistes. Intéressant, et plutôt à contre-courant de ce qu'on peut lire ces jours-ci dans la presse anglophone.
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Frank - Modérateur senior
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de Delenda » Jeu Avr 12, 2007 9:21 am
Comparative politics
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, April 12, 2007
(Franchement, le Citizen doit être en manque de columnist sur le Québec rare, pour publier les niaiseries de cette supercolonisée)
Who woulda thunk? While we were hyperventilating over whether Action dmocratique du Qubec leader Mario Dumont was the next Maurice Duplessis, we failed to notice that the closest thing to the old bogeyman of Quebec politics was in fact Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Think I'm exaggerating? Hey, I'm not the one who started it.
I'm all for metaphors. And comparing relative unknowns to only-too-well-knowns can be useful. Especially for an audience busy doing other things such as raising kids or cleaning windows. Case in point: Don Imus.
In the past few days I saw numerous references to the controversy he created without having any idea what it was or indeed who on Earth Don Imus might be. So I was grateful to reporter Richard Hetu, who explained in La Presse yesterday that the man, at 66 years of age, was a somewhat less potty-mouthed precursor to Howard Stern who got in trouble for saying something about black female basketball players I have no intention of repeating here.
Too-clever-by-half pundits who want to compare Mario Dumont to Maurice Duplessis or Nicolas Sarkozy are way off-base, Brigitte Pellerin writes. Duplessis won the occasional election; Sarkozy could be president of a nuclear power.
The comparison with Mr. Stern is, I am sure, imprecise. But it gives me a way to start thinking about who Mr. Imus is; if I care enough to pursue the matter I can investigate how much he's like Mr. Stern or whether he really is. It gives me a place to start. By the same token, knowing that many commentators have compared Mario Dumont to Maurice Duplessis (and George W. Bush, and French politicians Jean-Marie LePen and Nicolas Sarkozy) is useful to people vaguely following Quebec affairs from, say, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, or Cazouls-les-Beziers, a quaint small village between Montpellier and the border with Spain. It gives them a place to start, namely looking up Duplessis on Wikipedia.
It's not nearly as good for Quebec-based commentators to keep making the comparison for the benefit -- and I use the term loosely -- of Quebecers. For those interested in the details, it's the differences that matter.
It's like the people who have compared me, more than once, to American polemicist Ann Coulter. I mean, except for the fact that I'm not as tall, thin or blond as she is, that I don't wear skimpy little dresses in public, that even though I am not known for pulling punches I try, on the whole, to hit above the belt, and that I sure as the sky is blue don't make half as much money as she does, we're exactly the same. (who cares about you???)
Yes, "right-wing female writer who can hit pretty hard" is a description that applies to both Ms. Coulter and me. And if that's all you care to know about either, fine. But it's not the entire story.
I understand that commentators who don't like Mr. Dumont are tempted to compare him to other politicians they find distasteful. But it gets a bit repetitive after a while. And silly. Like yesterday's op-ed in La Presse by a prominent political scientist comparing the situations of Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Dumont, one of whom may well end up leading a nuclear power while the other isn't premier of Quebec.
Or scholar Stephen J. Farnsworth in Tuesday's Montreal Gazette explaining that one major difference between Mr. Dumont and Mr. Bush "is that Dumont does not control the levers of power after this election, as Bush did in the United States once the recounts stopped in Florida in 2000. To that, one can only say, we will see what happens during the Quebec equivalent of the Florida recount -- the fate of what is now a highly unstable minority government in the National Assembly." That's not what "equivalent" means.
There are a few interesting broad similarities between Mario Dumont and Maurice Duplessis. High levels of support among rural and semirural voters, shamelessly populist stands, and a brand of "autonomy" vis-a-vis the federal government that appeals, in Conrad Black's phrase, to "non-separatist nationalists and conservatives" alike.
But there are also a few similarities between Stephen Harper and the man everybody called "the Chief." A most unusual, and at times downright rude, disregard for those whose opinions he doesn't share or who can't be won over (hello, Press Gallery), the ability to hold a grudge, and a faithful garde rapprochee that has the uncanny ability to sideline, by pure amazing coincidence, inside-the-tent critics or anybody who makes the Dear Leader look bad. Hello, Rona. Or rather, goodbye.
Does that make Mr. Harper a new Duplessis? No. Nor Mr. Dumont. Not least because the Chief won five elections including four in a row. An appropriate Duplessis comparison surely has to include extraordinary political success.
Metaphors are good. Wild exaggerations, not so much. Let's govern ourselves accordingly, shall we?
Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, April 12, 2007
(Franchement, le Citizen doit être en manque de columnist sur le Québec rare, pour publier les niaiseries de cette supercolonisée)
Who woulda thunk? While we were hyperventilating over whether Action dmocratique du Qubec leader Mario Dumont was the next Maurice Duplessis, we failed to notice that the closest thing to the old bogeyman of Quebec politics was in fact Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Think I'm exaggerating? Hey, I'm not the one who started it.
I'm all for metaphors. And comparing relative unknowns to only-too-well-knowns can be useful. Especially for an audience busy doing other things such as raising kids or cleaning windows. Case in point: Don Imus.
In the past few days I saw numerous references to the controversy he created without having any idea what it was or indeed who on Earth Don Imus might be. So I was grateful to reporter Richard Hetu, who explained in La Presse yesterday that the man, at 66 years of age, was a somewhat less potty-mouthed precursor to Howard Stern who got in trouble for saying something about black female basketball players I have no intention of repeating here.
Too-clever-by-half pundits who want to compare Mario Dumont to Maurice Duplessis or Nicolas Sarkozy are way off-base, Brigitte Pellerin writes. Duplessis won the occasional election; Sarkozy could be president of a nuclear power.
The comparison with Mr. Stern is, I am sure, imprecise. But it gives me a way to start thinking about who Mr. Imus is; if I care enough to pursue the matter I can investigate how much he's like Mr. Stern or whether he really is. It gives me a place to start. By the same token, knowing that many commentators have compared Mario Dumont to Maurice Duplessis (and George W. Bush, and French politicians Jean-Marie LePen and Nicolas Sarkozy) is useful to people vaguely following Quebec affairs from, say, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, or Cazouls-les-Beziers, a quaint small village between Montpellier and the border with Spain. It gives them a place to start, namely looking up Duplessis on Wikipedia.
It's not nearly as good for Quebec-based commentators to keep making the comparison for the benefit -- and I use the term loosely -- of Quebecers. For those interested in the details, it's the differences that matter.
It's like the people who have compared me, more than once, to American polemicist Ann Coulter. I mean, except for the fact that I'm not as tall, thin or blond as she is, that I don't wear skimpy little dresses in public, that even though I am not known for pulling punches I try, on the whole, to hit above the belt, and that I sure as the sky is blue don't make half as much money as she does, we're exactly the same. (who cares about you???)
Yes, "right-wing female writer who can hit pretty hard" is a description that applies to both Ms. Coulter and me. And if that's all you care to know about either, fine. But it's not the entire story.
I understand that commentators who don't like Mr. Dumont are tempted to compare him to other politicians they find distasteful. But it gets a bit repetitive after a while. And silly. Like yesterday's op-ed in La Presse by a prominent political scientist comparing the situations of Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Dumont, one of whom may well end up leading a nuclear power while the other isn't premier of Quebec.
Or scholar Stephen J. Farnsworth in Tuesday's Montreal Gazette explaining that one major difference between Mr. Dumont and Mr. Bush "is that Dumont does not control the levers of power after this election, as Bush did in the United States once the recounts stopped in Florida in 2000. To that, one can only say, we will see what happens during the Quebec equivalent of the Florida recount -- the fate of what is now a highly unstable minority government in the National Assembly." That's not what "equivalent" means.
There are a few interesting broad similarities between Mario Dumont and Maurice Duplessis. High levels of support among rural and semirural voters, shamelessly populist stands, and a brand of "autonomy" vis-a-vis the federal government that appeals, in Conrad Black's phrase, to "non-separatist nationalists and conservatives" alike.
But there are also a few similarities between Stephen Harper and the man everybody called "the Chief." A most unusual, and at times downright rude, disregard for those whose opinions he doesn't share or who can't be won over (hello, Press Gallery), the ability to hold a grudge, and a faithful garde rapprochee that has the uncanny ability to sideline, by pure amazing coincidence, inside-the-tent critics or anybody who makes the Dear Leader look bad. Hello, Rona. Or rather, goodbye.
Does that make Mr. Harper a new Duplessis? No. Nor Mr. Dumont. Not least because the Chief won five elections including four in a row. An appropriate Duplessis comparison surely has to include extraordinary political success.
Metaphors are good. Wild exaggerations, not so much. Let's govern ourselves accordingly, shall we?
Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
" Le mot «méprisant» ne suffit pas pour décrire ce que j'ai rencontré jusqu'à date" - Thomas Mulcair, à propos de Dion
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