Nice work if you can get it

Taste the chin, Montreal

Lucien Bouchard recently referred to the Parti Québécois, a party he once led, as a “radicalist niche” bent on exploiting Quebecers’ collective language fears for electoral gain. The PQ reaction was to a) largely ignore these specific sentiments and instead concentrate on Lucien’s bit about how sovereignty ain’t gonna happen, allowing the party to label him a sellout, as it has done before with this guy and, to a certain extent, this guy; and b) largely shrug off Lucien’s bon mots as the babblings of a bitter old man who can’t keep his anger in check. After all, they breed ‘em big and angry up in the Saguenay.

But, as usual, Lu-lu’s sense was canny. A week later, this: the PQ, leader Pauline Marois says, will focus her party’s attention on “defense of the French language” and “affirmation of national identity” (it actually sounds creepier in English) in the upcoming parliamentary session.Translation: she’s doing exactly as Lu-lu said she would. And for one very good (and terribly cynical) reason: demographics.

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The insomniacs among you will be glad to know the budget documents are available online. As a re-hash of everything you already know, they’re positively outstanding:

337: Number of references to the “Economic Action Plan” or the “Action Plan” (announced in 2009)

19: Combined number of references to “Budget 2006″, “Budget 2007″ and “Budget 2008″

1: Combined number of references to pre-2006 budgets (“Budget 2000″)

12: Number of times the phrase “since 2006″ appears

2: Number of times the phrase is used for any other year (both “since 2008-09″)

12: Number of references to corporate tax cuts (announced in 2007)

14: Number of references to the Home Renovation Tax Credit (announced in 2009, expired in January 2010)

20: Number of references to government aid for the auto industry (announced in 2009)

0: Dollars committed to the auto sector in 2010-11

37: Number of references to “tax relief”

0: Number of new tax cuts introduced in the 2010-11 budget

5: Number of times government programs are referred to as “ambitious”

There are many reasonable arguments against changing the lyrics to ‘O Canada’ to make them gender-neutral. This, from today’s editorial in the Globe, isn’t one of them:

But what of the sexism in the first line of the French version, a version that dates from 1880 and has never been changed? O Canada! Land of our forefathers.” Were there no foremothers? Forebears doesn’t really work, because it sounds like four bears.

Er, the word they’re referring to and translating as “forefathers” is aïeux. Had they run this line of argument by a Francophone, they would have quickly discovered aïeux is a gender-neutral word—think “ancestors” rather than “forefathers.”

And “forebears” only sounds like “four bears” in English, which, inconveniently for the Globe, is not the language in which the French version of the anthem is usually sung. In French, “forebears” sounds like, well, like aïeux.

It is often difficult to become outraged at the outrage in a province where, it often seems, everyone delights in being a victim at least once in their lives. So, after digesting the news that an outfit named ‘The Canadian Italian Business and Professional Association” [ed's note: churlish, leg-breaking mafia-related joke redacted] has taken grave offense to the above skit from seasoned baby-boomer comedy troupe Rock et Belles Oreilles, and has launched a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission alleging all sorts of nasty, greasy-haired stereotypes, let us instead end on a truly tasteless joke exploiting another cherished Italian stereotype.

Q. Who really killed John F. Kennedy?

A. Two hundred Italian sharpshooters.

It’s officially the post-Olympian era, where heart palpitations are a thing of the past and wayward bloggers promise to post more often. Here’s a start: a piece on Lucien Bouchard’s drive-by shooting of the Parti Québécois, written for the dead tree by yours truly. Let us know, etc.

Are provincial cabinet ministers in Quebec trying to tell us something?

Transportation Minister Julie Boulet, February 2010: “There are rules that govern the funding of political parties. It’s legal in Quebec to engage in political financing, for companies to donate.”

Education Minister Michelle Courchesne, December 2009: “The majority of private enterprises donate to all the political parties.”

Minister for Transport Norman MacMillan, December 2009: “There’s a law that governs all this. We can’t prevent company X from donating $3,000 to the Liberal party.” MacMillan then added government ministers are expected to raise $100,000 a year for the party.

Aside from the fact they were all made by Quebec Liberals, the statements have something else in common: they’re all patently wrong. Quebec hasn’t allowed corporate donations since 1977 and the repeated slip-ups have now caught the attention of province’s chief electoral officer, not to mention that of Pauline Marois.

It’s almost as if he’d never been in charge.

First, Lucien Bouchard breaks his years-long silence to say the PQ is hopelessly misguided—on sovereignty, on the economy, on identity. Then he says Quebec is starving its universities by capping tuition. I can’t be the only one waiting for the other shoe to drop. (Jamais deux sans trois, and all that.) But whether or not he completes the trifecta, none of it really matters. Bouchard is hardly the white knight Quebec conservatives would like him to be.

The problem with Bouchard’s criticisms isn’t that they’re hypocritical—they’re not—nor that they’re fundamentally wrong. It’s that they’re anachronistic.

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So, we import an Aussie from that ‘other’ enlightened former colony to pretty up the opening ceremonies. Said Aussie includes a handful of French talent almost as an afterthought, illuminating what we all know to be true: only on paper is Canada an officially bilingual country. Quebec media freaks out, English Canada freaks out at this freak out. This guy, this guy, these guys and, wow, this guy all find themselves saying roughly the same thing, albeit with varying degrees of rhetoric. As a result, French is quickly backloaded into the closing ceremonies, likely prompting more of the above.

Canada: kingdom of the mutually aggrieved.

The cynical side of Jean Charest has to be loving this controversy about the presence of French at the Olympics. It’s such an easy play for someone in his position: weigh in just enough to look concerned, but not enough to look like a grouch. Leave the heavy lifting to people like Réjean Tremblay, who was annoyed at the lack of French even before the Olympics started and who has since cranked up the outrage-o-meter to eleventy-billion, and Pauline Marois, who somehow imagines joining a three-day-old pile-on that’s doing perfectly fine without her is good politics.

But make no mistake—Charest needs this controversy more than anyone else, if only for the distraction it provides. The past two weeks have exposed a potentially devastating fact about his government: it is incapable of learning from crises. Nowhere is this more evident than in the special rules the Quebec government recently implemented to make life easier for ultra-religious private Jewish schools that openly flout the province’s education guidelines.

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Philippe Gohier: The year is still young, but here’s the lede to beat so far for 2010:

“English Canadians have a more favourable view of immigrants and Jews than they do of Francophone Quebecers.”

To put the story in context, it’s about a poll done for Jack Jedwab’s Association for Canadian Studies. The survey found that the only ethnic (is that right?) group more disliked by English Canadians than Aboriginals was Francophone Quebecers. And as the Journal de Montréal’s lede makes clear, their shock in all this doesn’t stem from the fact Quebecers aren’t all that popular, but that they’re less so than EVEN THE JEWS AND THE IMMIGRANTS !!!

Imagine that.

Martin Patriquin: Ha! That’s cute. This is the newspaper, remember, that has been torquing Jedwab’s surveys for fun and profit for as long as I can remember. (A note: “immigrants and Jews?” Imagine if these two mystical forces combined to make some sort of immigrant Super Jew. Hell hath no blintzes.) When it comes to ‘identity’ stories, this is what the Journal does (and it does it well): it provokes French Quebec’s insecurity on issues of language and culture, then sells it back to Quebecers, headlines blazing.

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Who knew Grapes could swear so much? (NSFW-ish)

Don Cherry does and says what he likes on the airwaves of this country’s national broadcaster, and there isn’t really a damn thing you can do about it. Be it visors, Quebecers, hard hits, soft Swedes or Canada’s non-involvement in the Iraq War, Cherry has run of the roost. It’s part of his schtick: a rhinestone-encrusted version of Canada’s lunchbucket everyman, a plain talking rube with a chip on his shoulder and a buzzsaw for a mouth. Bully for him if this schtick is worth at least $700,000 a year, making Cherry the CBC’s highest paid contract worker, by far. He’s incredibly popular, after all, and success, even when draped in velour and hubris, deserves to be rewarded.

As it turns out, though, Cherry’s schtick actually isn’t a schtick at all. Cherry really can literally say whatever he wants on CBC, on hockey or otherwise, with very little fear of reprisal. Despite having a comprehensive third-party complaints process worthy of any governmental body—and despite the fact that Cherry is, practically by definition, a walking liability—any complaints about Cherry are likely to fall on deaf ears. That’s because those who field complaints about him have a vested interest in keeping him, and his very profitable words, on the air. More on this rock ‘em, sock ‘em conflict of interest after the jump.

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The truly incomparable Jean Dion outdoes himself with this indecipherable bit on prorogation (even if I wanted to translate Dion, I couldn’t):

Le citoyen, un «inconditionnel du bicaméralisme» selon ses propres termes, possède bien une collection sur cassettes Beta des meilleurs moments de l’étude des crédits budgétaires en traduction simultanée, mais cela ne lui suffit pas. «C’est du vieux stock, et je veux du neuf», a-t-il mentionné. «Or chacun sait qu’il n’y a personne comme des politiciens pour proférer des nouveautés.»

I can’t figure out if he’s making fun of the government or those who obsess about it, so I’m just going to assume he’s making fun of everyone. I love that guy.

$39.8 billion: That’s how much Quebec’s Caisse de dépôt et placement lost in 2008.

After watching a quarter of its total value vanish into the ether, the Caisse naturally opted for the most reasonable course of action—it sought to reinsure nervous investors by preaching and exercising extreme caution in the face of what could very well have been a devastating economic and political crisis.

Wait, you didn’t believe that did you? Continue…

Ages and ages ago I wrote a column wondering why the powers that be spent so much money on street cameras to scare drug dealers, harass hookers and comfort the paranoid, and not on cameras to scare speeders, harass red light dodgers and comfort pedestrians. Someone must have been asking themselves the same question; last August, the Quebec government instituted a pilot project in Quebec targeting some of the biggest trouble spots in Montreal and Quebec City. You practically have to be blind (or talking on your phone, another no-no) to miss the warnings. Still, people do:  nearly 24,000 tickets were mailed  out in five months, to the tune of nearly $4 million. That’s $10 million in a year in revenues from a pilot project–which is set to expand further across the province in the coming year.

Meanwhile, drug dealers remain one of Berri Metro’s most consistent charms, cameras and residents be damned. Sometimes big brother doesn’t quite work. But when he does, boy, he pays off big.