Ron Maclean’s new book needs a better subtitle

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, October 14, 2011 at 12:55 PM - 4 Comments

How’s about “Cornered: Memoirs Of A Professional Carpet”? Has a nice ring to it, no? (Photo Toronto Life)

Venting pressure, assigning blame

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 6:37 PM - 4 Comments

Tony Tomassi, not exactly as illustrated

I have a piece about Jean Charest’s various flip-flops on key decisions over his eight-year tenure as Premier of this lovely place coming out in dead tree form tomorrow. Charest seems to have a knack for reversing himself once he’s inflicted the maximum amount of political damage on himself and the Liberal Party. The most recent, of course, is Charest’s musing that he’s open to an inquiry into the province’s construction industry. (He’s been saying no, nuh-uh, forget it, no chance, next question to the idea for the last two years.)

To paraphrase Rick James, serendipity is a helluva drug, and damned if Charest’s pertinent musings on an inquiry weren’t followed up by a truly astonishing score by the province’s Unité permenante anticorruption (UPAC): none other than former cabinet minister Tony Tomassi. The cops charged Tomassi, Charest’s erstwhile families minister, with two counts of fraud and one count of breach of trust.

There are many interesting things to consider when it comes to the timing of the indictment, as well of the subject. Let’s have a look:

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Meanwhile, in enlightened Calgary…

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:28 AM - 71 Comments

…courtesy today’s Calgary Sun:

Yes, by all means, put her in her place. Stay classy, Aspire Condo Living.

“Captain bulls–t”

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, September 26, 2011 at 10:03 AM - 3 Comments

Example number 437 of why Quebec satire kicks the bejesus out of its English counterpart. In English Canada, they get at the likes of Harper, Duceppe, etc by way of caricature. Jean Chrétien: he can’t talk properly, in either Official Language! That’s hilarious! Harper: cold, heartless and humourless! It’s funny cuz it’s true!

Meanwhile, here in Quebec: faced with the news that Jean Charest has once again refused to call a public inquiry into the province’s construction industry, Jean-René Dufort of Radio-Canada’s Infoman cuts to the chase and baptizes our fair Premier “Captain Bullshit.” Much more satisfying, no?

Bernard Landry writes

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 6:24 PM - 6 Comments

Bernard Landry dropped me a note a couple of weeks ago. There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about the former Quebec Premier publicly speaking out about something or other (it’s undoubtedly the source of many headaches for Pauline Marois); what is interesting is that he would do so to a designated Anglo journalist whose opinion, you’d think, would mean bupkis to him. That said, I’ve interviewed him before, and we once had a 10 minute conversation entirely in English outside the Gazette offices on St. Catherine. (I kept looking around for fear that it was part of some elaborate Just For Laughs gag.) Suffice to say he’s approachable and great with a quote, which is always nice for a person in my line of work.

As it happens, Landry took issue with how I used one of his more infamous quotations in a blog post about Sun News. (You’ll find it here. Hey Brian! Great Hair!) Referring to the wee shell game Quebecor plays with its news brands—ultra-patriotic outside of Quebec, fleur-de-lys blue nationalist at home—I wrote the following: “Hell, even former premier Bernard Landry, the man who once compared the Canadian flag to a ‘red rag,’ once wrote for Quebecor—before his union sympathies got the better of him and he gave up his column during the Journal de Montréal lockout in 2009.”

Landry took issue with my translation of “red rag”, and accused the English Canadian press corp of ignorance and bad faith. Ayoye.

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Corruption and Quebec, a slight refrain

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 3:53 PM - 16 Comments

This afternoon a Quebec City radio guy named Stéphane Gasse essentially asked me if, in the wake of a leaked report detailing widespread, long-standing and deeply rooted corruption within Quebec construction industry, I felt like doing a touchdown dance on the heads of all the critics who lined up to pillory the magazine last year for our cover story on the subject. The report, written by former Montreal police commish Jacques Duchesneau, details what La Presse’s Tommy Chouinard describes as a “the existence of clandestine funding of political parties by engineering and construction firms.” Radio-Canada got its paws on it yesterday.

Not at all, I said. Zen is a wonderful thing, and anyway the fact that the province of my birth has a political culture that allows such a thing to fester for so long is nothing to be happy about. One thing, though: I wonder whether Parliament will express its similarly profound sadness at a situation Le Journal de Montréal pithily dubbed “Corrupt To The Bone” this morning, as it did when we dared write about it almost a year ago?

Conservative Jacques Gourde: chutzpah with a capital ‘C’

By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 4:25 PM - 9 Comments

“The resources of Parliament should serve to help all constituents of a district, in a non-partisan fashion.” – Conservative Jacques Goude, reacting incredulously at the news that the NDP might sell memberships out of MP’s district offices.

So, Gourde is so furious at the prospect of the NDP selling cards out of their offices that he lodged a complaint with the, uh, Board of Internal Economy. How nice. In other news, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney is appearing at events for Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak—on his own time, we’re sure. Yes, the same Kenney whose office “used government resources to raise money for the Conservative party” last March.

Oy vey.

Charest to overhaul construction industry (!)

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 3:37 PM - 6 Comments

Yes, he’s smiling. You would be too.

The government of Jean Charest announced plans to table a bill that will do nothing short of “initiating a complete in the construction industry that will mark a new era in work relations [in the province],” according to the very quotable words of Industry Minister Lise Thériault. The report (English-language highlights courtesy of the Gazette here) includes measures to remove significant power from the various construction unions. It is the fruit of a lengthy commission overseen by a five member….

Oh, hell, let’s just get on with the applause, shall we? It’s for you, Mr. Charest. A year ago our Premier’s numbers were in the cellar, the PQ had the force of public opinion behind it (as far as the construction business was concerned, anyway), a fellow named François Legault was far and away the province’s most popular politician even though he wasn’t running for anything, and hardly a day went by where he or one of his ministers was under attack for some sort of alleged skullduggery. In short, everything was sticking, and everything sucked.

Now where are we? The PQ is in full-blown Gong Show mode, François Legault has yet to start his party—and is still well short of its fundraising goals, from what I hear—and whatever lingering collective fury that remains over the construction industry will be in large part placated by this dandy, well-timed little report. Is it any good? Probably. Will Theriault’s Bill do anything? Yeah, sure, maybe. But that’s not the gobsmackingly-impressive part: it seems, with this construction-industry-overhaul-à-la-sauce-électorale, it seems Charest is going to ride out yet another storm.

Libs and NDP, in a tree: a problem in need of a vote split

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 5:17 PM - 50 Comments

Tania Liu/Flickr

There are several really good reasons why the NDP and the Liberals aren’t about to go beyond first base anytime soon (the political version of first base being where each side teases and scorns the other in equal measure.) The best is alluded to in this morning’s Globe and Mail editorial. Usually the Globe’s Front Street take on Quebec is about as specious and disconnected as you’d expect, but this one made sense. A leader out of Quebec, reason the Globe sages, would properly root the party in the province where it has its most MPs and where, arguably, the halo of Jack Layton seemed to shine that much brighter. And since whatever candidate steps up will have to speak French (one really, really hopes so, anyway), why not have him/her from Quebec?

So, imagine you’re the next NPD leader from Quebec. Why in the name of all things orange and green would you want to merge with the party that ranks somewhere amongst bad breath, parking tickets and syphilis, as far as Quebec public opinion is concerned? Put another way: you’ve just hauled in the most support in your party’s history, punted aside the long-reigning sovereignist Bloc Québécois and captured the eye (if not the hearts) of Quebec’s fickle voters. Is now really the time to start playing footsie with the party of Trudeau, Chrétien, adScam etc—the same one that, with the sponsorship scandal, gave the Bloc a new lease on life on 2004? If nothing else, this would be a fantastic way to give weight to the sovereignist argument that all federalist parties are the same.

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François Legault’s shameless pandering on immigration

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 8:15 PM - 18 Comments

When François Legault launched the Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec (CAQ), his all-but-confirmed vessel to re-enter Quebec politics, he addressed the group’s manifesto to “all those who want to change.” “It’s time to get Quebec moving again,” he wrote. Indeed it is.

Even for Legault’s critics, of which there are relatively few these days, it’s hard to find much to quibble with in his mission statement—education should be “the absolute priority”; culture and the protection of the French language are essential; public services should be… well, they should be better; and Quebec should do more to attract investments. As Vincent Marissal points out in this morning’s La Presse, Legault has so far proven himself enormously adept at “surfing on general ideas,” so much so that he’s emerged as the most credible candidate to replace Jean Charest as premier. Continue…

“There isn’t a crazy appetite for sovereignty”—Pauline Marois

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, August 26, 2011 at 7:03 PM - 3 Comments

My colleague Alec Castonguay, who toils over at our sister publication L’actualité, posted a first-rate interview with Pauline Marois earlier this week that’s a must-read for anyone interested in the Parti Québécois’ ongoing travails. Among the things that stood out to me was Marois’s apparent doubling-down on the policies that drove away four members of her caucus earlier this summer—namely, her insistence that a referendum shouldn’t be top-of-mind for the party. Of the nascent Nouveau Mouvement pour le Québec, aka the new home of sovereigntist hardliners in Quebec, Marois says they “should start from where Quebecers are at… There isn’t a crazy appetite for sovereignty, even if polls have us at 40-45 per cent ,” she says. (CROP pegs support for sovereignty at 38 per cent and Léger at 36 per cent, but let’s not quibble.) “Renewal isn’t about waiting for the referendum.”

Good government—which, unfortunately for Charest, is more or less synonymous with “change” these days— is what Marois wants the PQ to focus on delivering. Creating a second chamber at the National Assembly that would focus on regional issues, taking over control of EI from Ottawa, increasing the constraints on companies who extract resources from Quebec’s northern regions, and broad efforts at democratic renewal are all part of what Marois describes as the PQ’s plan for “sovereigntist governance.” “The government’s actions are what will show that Quebec deserves to have all the tools to blossom.” Continue…

Le bon Jack

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 4:14 PM - 1 Comment

Photo by Jessica Darmanin

I had only two close encounters with Jack Layton. The first was back in late 2002 or early 2003, when he and some members of McGill’s NDP club came into Café Santropol, where I was waiting tables. I can’t quite remember whether he’d already won the NDP leadership or whether he was still campaigning for it. Either way, I knew who he was and was glad when he ended up sitting in my section.

When I got to his table, I nervously introduced myself to “Mr. Layton,” at which point he quickly corrected me, asking that I call him “Jack.” For the next 10 or 15 minutes, I ignored every other table in the restaurant and chatted with Jack—about poverty, federalism, my job, the NDP in Quebec. He knew he had his work cut out for him in la belle province, but he exuded optimism, so much so I figured he’d never actually looked up his party’s dreadful numbers in the province. Continue…

Notes on Jack’s velvet switchblade

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

I was watching RDI coverage of Jack Layton’s passing this morning, and it was more than just heartening to hear Gilles Duceppe say a few kind words about the man. The former Bloc Québécois leader spoke of how he and Layton crossed paths in the parliamentary gym room, and how he was always impressed by Layton’s drive and grinny optimism. It was familiar because Duceppe spun a similar tale throughout the Bloc’s spring campaign—how he and Layton were practically drinking buddies, how they didn’t see eye to eye on Quebec but were  ideological doppelgangers otherwise—and it reminded me: wow. Duceppe is a guy who had a virtual monopoly of virtue over Quebec for upwards of two decades and whose jaundiced view of Ottawa (and the rest of the country) essentially set the political agenda for the province. As a sovereignist, his Québécois credentials were untouchable—or so it seemed, until little ol’ Jack came around.

And that was that for Duceppe. With his smile and his cane and his bons mots flowing out of his mouth in joual-inflected French, Layton threw Duceppe into unfamiliar territory. All of a sudden, and for the first time in his career, Duceppe had an adversary who couldn’t be made into a boogeyman—a man who was indestructably nice. Duceppe played catch up for the rest of the campaign, and on election day Jack as pleasant as ever slipped the knife into the Bloc, doing in one of the most dominant political forces in the province’s history. It was the only possible way to do in the party: with a smile.

You wonder who in the NDP could possibly continue Jack’s legacy of cheery political ferocity.

Gohier vs. Patriquin on the splintering of Quebec’s sovereigntist movement

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 3:08 PM - 0 Comments

Sun News: in bed with separatists and radical lefties

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, August 12, 2011 at 5:09 PM - 180 Comments

You know what’s great about Sun News Network? No, it’s not the seamless marriage of perpetual fury and Wayne’s World-esque production values. It’s not even the daily five o’clock cutoff, where all the female talent goes ‘poof!’ and the Sun set becomes a soapbox for hours of spitty white male outrage. The best thing about the folks who bring you “Hard News, Straight Talk” is their utter lack of consistency. Or, since we’re all we’re straight talking here, let’s call it what it really is: hypocrisy.

Just over a week ago, the Sun News people grabbed hold of the story about interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel having been a member of the Bloc Québécois… and, well, hasn’t really let go since. Just yesterday the network fronted a story touting Turmel’s membership in the BQ as well as the “radically separatist” Québec Solidaire. ‘Byline‘ host (and, in the spirit of SNN’s trademark hyperbole, the network’s in-house right-wing commie-baiter) Brian Lilley took to his blog to decry Turmel’s separatist past and supposed radically communist leanings. “Quebec Solidiare is no mild-mannered left-wing political party or your grandfather’s labour movement political action group, they are full on commies,” Brian wrote.

Continue…

Turmel and the Bloc: er, so what?

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 12:02 PM - 152 Comments

As a person who digests the news as part of my job, I love the fact that the Nycole Turmel was until recently a member of the Bloc Québécois. It’s a brilliant story: the interim leader of a wholeheartedly federalist party was until this past winter a member of another, this one dedicated to removing roughly eight million of its citizens from the Canadian equation. Big kudos to the Globe’s Daniel Leblanc for digging it up.

But as someone who has lived in this delightful province for all but five years of my life (there was an exile to New Brunswick that’s a bit of a blur), I say this: big deal. The deep lefty streak that runs through Quebec is, by definition, proudly coloured fleur-de-lys blue. Translation: Continue…

Jack and Tom

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, July 25, 2011 at 9:46 PM - 2 Comments

We interrupt DMA’s regularly scheduled vacation to get to the news about Jack Layton. First off, it hurt to see him today. I know cancer well; the most enraging thing about it, apart from the prognosis, is how quickly it can physically ravage a human being. It makes even the strongest among us, and Layton is certainly that, look weak. And then people treat you as such, which makes it even worse. Go and kick it in the ass again, Jack. It deserves it.

A quick word about the leadership bit. With all due respect to Tasha Kheirddin, I don’t think the appointment of Nycole Turmel as interim leader of the NDP is a slight to Tom Mulcair at all. In fact, I doubt very much that Mulcair would have wanted the job. Think about it: Layton says he is temporarily stepping down as leader. It would look pretty bad for someone with long-brewing leadership aspirations like Mulcair to jump at a job that is, for now anyway, strictly a Bob Rae deal. At best, Mulcair would come off as an opportunist—and it would be way worse should Layton not return to the party. It’s best for Mulcair to keep his powder dry and his hopes alive by leaving the job to Turmel, whose pretensions to the NDP’s helm are exactly as old as the Orange Surge that swept her to power.

Inside the PQ, independence starts at home

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 6:47 PM - 0 Comments

Leave it to the Parti Québécois to find a way to make a bad situation worse. On Tuesday, the PQ’s Benoit Charette became the fifth MNA this month to quit the party. PQ leader Pauline Marois also expelled René Gauvreau from caucus over allegations an aide was helping himself to party funds, but let’s focus on Charette for now, if only because my brain can’t process how bad a month Marois is having. Continue…

Why it sucks to be PQ leader, part CCXXXIV

By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 3:23 PM - 2 Comments

Thank you, Gary Larson

A few weeks ago, five PQ MNAs resigned. One of the main reasons: Pauline Marois didn’t talk about sovereignty enough.

Today, PQ MNA Benoît Charette resigned. The reason? Pauline Marois talked about sovereignty too much.

Rock, meet hard place.

Journal de Montreal: xenophobic, lazy or both? You decide!

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 4:33 PM - 13 Comments

Picture courtesy la Clique du Plateau

Last week, Journal de Montréal columnist Richard Martineau wrote one of his blah-blah-everything-sucks columns that, as his regular readers will recognize, means it must be Sunday. Or is it Thursday? It can’t be Wednesday: that’s when Ricky attacks the leftists. Or the righties. Or the fact that we just don’t have time for our family anymore. Surely it can’t be Friday already, can it? Look out, Dominique Strauss-Kahn! So much righteous anger, and only seven days in the week to vent it. WHY ISN’T THERE AN EIGHTH DAY IN THE WEEK, DAMMIT?! Blame the socialists!

Anywhoo, Tricky Dick was about half-finished shotgunning away at the apparent Third World awfulness of Montreal Continue…

Vous êtes pas tannés de mourir, bande de caves?

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 12:31 PM - 4 Comments

Former PQ president Jonathan Valois recently had a pretty epic rant agains the four PQ MPs who left the party in a huff this week. (Maclean’s take on the whole affair is here.) Anyway, Valois is hellishly eloquent—especially, it seems, when he gets that whiff of self-righteousness in his nostrils. Noting how Marois had cleaned up the party’s finances, brought the party back into Official Opposition in 2008 and scored a 93 per cent leadership approval rating just last April, Valois went off on Curzi, Beaudoin, Lapointe and Aussant. “It’s like certain people said, ‘Thanks for the cleanup, Ms. Marois, but you aren’t the woman for the situation now.’ They’ve treated her like a cleaning lady. [...] Now, after all this unity we are breaking apart because their egos were more important than the party itself.”

It’s great listening, in large part because Valois has a point. The four who left the party did so ostensibly over Bill 204—the bill sponsored by PQ MNA Agnès Maltais that would effectively shield the City of Quebec from lawsuits over its hockey arena deal with Quebecor. But from three of the four of those who bolted—Beaudoin excepted—there was another expressed reason: Marois wasn’t doing enough for the cause of sovereignty. “I leave also because I have the sad impression that [the PQ] is moving away from sovereignty and even the power that seemed so close,” said MNA Lisette Lapointe. Jean-Martin Aussant was even more direct: “I don’t think Ms. Marois is the woman that people want to follow as we build a country,” he said, before inviting her to step down.

It’s an old PQ trick: denounce the leader for his or her lack of sovereignist sang froid. Except this time it seems particularly egregious, because since she became PQ leader Ms. Marois has done little but talk about sovereignty. Whether it was her goal to institute a series of mini-referendums to chisel away powers from Ottawa—in order to “provoke a crisis,” as Jacques Parizeau happily noted—or the (somewhat bizarre, but whatever) “ABCD de la souveraineté” cross-province speaking and activity tour in 2009, the word ‘sovereignty’ has never been far from her lips for the last three years. “We want to offer our children a free country, a sovereignist country!” she said in her opening speech in April—in which she invoked ‘sovereignty’ nine times in 15 minutes. The next night she gave a closing speech in the same vein: “We are sovereignists and as a result, we propose to Quebecers to get rid of the biggest waste of all: Ottawa bureaucracy!”

And so forth.

Marois’ critics would say she is but paying lip service to something she knows she’ll never achieve. Perhaps. But here’s the thing: the PQ is in opposition. She hasn’t even had a chance to screw up yet. What the hell else besides formulating strategy, working to defeat Charest and talking the issue to death is Marois supposed to do?

Poet Claude Péloquin had a great line that translates (badly) to “Aren’t you tired dying, you bunch of morons?”

So, I put the question to the four PQ deserters: Vous êtes pas tannés de mourir, bande de caves?

Pauline Marois and the Parti Québécois have a very bad day

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 6:55 PM - 6 Comments

It’s hard to feel much sympathy for PQ leader Pauline Marois. It was an absolutely terrible idea for the PQ to support bill 204, which would immunize Quebecor’s arena rental deal with Quebec City from being tested before the province’s courts. It was an even worse idea for her to be petty and belligerent about it. The word ‘comeuppance’ keeps coming to mind.

At the same time, the PQ’s plight has become so pathetic as to be pitiable. Marois, you’ll recall, was already looking for ways to patch her battered caucus this morning after three party super-heavyweights—Louise Beaudoin, Pierre Curzi, and Lisette Lapointe—bolted yesterday. But that’s when Jean-Martin Aussant abruptly quit, giving the impression a full-blown mutiny was underway. In fact, Marois’s downfall is exactly what Aussant had in mind, telling reporters the PQ leader should resign.

Jean Charest drove in the final stake this afternoon when he announced the vote on bill 204 would be postponed until the fall. All that infighting inside the PQ, all that strategizing about how to win a vote that was threatening to derail Marois’s political career? Useless—all of it. Continue…

Three huge PQ resignations

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, June 6, 2011 at 12:47 PM - 94 Comments

Pierre Curzi, Louise Beaudoin and Lisette Lapointe, three stalwarts of the PQ’s hard sovereignist flank have just resigned from the party. Not over matters of the tongue (which would be bad enough), or country (just as bad), but over the increasingly undemocratic nature of the party itself (which is worse, especially for a group of social democrats). The proverbial straw that broke the proverbial back? A law having to do with a hockey arena. The three essentially just said that in its thirsty quest for votes, members of the PQ brain trust are acting like (gasp) Liberals. Ouch.

Unbelievable. The repercussions of this are going to severely hurt Pauline Marois’ leadership and the party as a whole.

The Daily Mail's killer source

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 1:51 PM - 97 Comments

The Daily Mail is all a-titter about Amir Khadir’s bon mots about the impending visit of Prince Willy and bonnie Kate to Quebec. It’s a tabloidy piece that’s cute in a race-baiting sort of way—they make sure to mention Khadir is ‘Iranian born’ in the headline—but my favourite part is how, to illustrate the complicated politics that play out between Quebec and the rest of the country, the paper combed the pages of the National Post website for the mother of all knowledgable sources: the anonymous commenter.

‘l’ll be ready to welcome them to Calgary. As for Quebec, the less said the better with those constant leeches on the rest of Canada.’

What? Lorne Gunter wasn’t available?