A state of perfect disharmony

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 4:30 PM - 8 Comments

So the harmonization comedy continues. Scant weeks after the people of British Columbia, in a magnificent fit of self-destructive fury, voted to unharmonize their provincial sales tax from the now-misnamed Harmonized Sales Tax, word came that talks between Ottawa and Quebec on a plan to compensate the province for harmonizing its own tax were at an impasse.

You could tell the talks were at an impasse because the two sides put out a press release announcing the talks were going swimmingly. “HST and QST harmonization,” it read: “Discussions proceeding normally.” And so they were, if by “normally” you mean sailing past the Sept. 15 deadline for an agreement to which the federal Conservatives had pledged themselves in the recent election campaign. The most they would say now is that they hoped to have a deal by the end of the month.

Mind you, it was always a mystery just what they had to talk about, the feds having already promised, publicly and often, to yield to Quebec’s demands. They’d even named the figure, $2.2 billion—by a remarkable coincidence, the very sum the Charest government had asked for at the start. What was there left to negotiate?

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In Quebec, construction chaos ahead

By Martin Patriquin with Philippe Gohier - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 6 Comments

Photography by Roger Lemoyne

It has become a cliché to say Jean Charest has nine lives. The Quebec premier, who has spent more than half his life in politics, has made a sport out of defying expectations with his ability to spring back, catlike, from political disaster. At 36, he brought the federal Progressive Conservative Party from the brink; in 2003, at 44, he overcame an earlier loss to Lucien Bouchard to become premier, and has ruled ever since.

Until recently, Charest had seemingly turned his rather disastrous year in office into this comeback-kid narrative. This is no small feat. Over the last 12 months, Charest’s Liberals weathered allegations of favouritism in the selection of judges, an embarrassing flip- flop on the development of shale gas resources, and have been dogged by news that the party had been the recipient of hundreds of thousands of donations (some legal, some not) from several of the province’s largest engineering and construction firms—the very ones who won lucrative construction contracts from the Ministry of Transport. Far from backing down, Charest mused he might even take a fourth kick at the can.

What a difference one leak can make. Last week, a scathing report on the province’s construction industry, leaked to La Presse and Radio-Canada, stymied Charest’s legacy and, more importantly, gave Quebecers a glimpse at the scale of corruption plaguing the province’s construction industry.

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The Williams bump

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 4:11 PM - 3 Comments

Getting back to this debate, I decided to run the numbers for the entire shortlist using rg’s metric: by popular vote, compare the last election result before the leader took over to the election in which that leader peaked. So, for instance, for Jack Layton I compared the NDP’s 2011 result to the NDP’s result in 2000.

Using that measure, our seven leaders (including Mr. Layton) post the following gains by percentage point.

Danny Williams 29.0
Gordon Campbell 24.4
Jack Layton 22.1
Dalton McGuinty 15.3
Gary Doer 8.0
Stephen Harper 1.9*
Jean Charest 1.5

Add those numbers to our previous stats as you see fit.

*That compares 2011 to the combined result of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives in 2000.

Hackers make false announcement of Jean Charest’s death

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:42 PM - 0 Comments

Hackers targeted the website of the French-language newspaper Le Devoir on Tuesday morning, publishing a short article announcing the death of Quebec Premier Jean Charest. The article stated that Charest had died of a heart attack at the Université de Montréal’s hospital, and that the hospital had verified the news. Charest’s press secretary, Hugo D’Amours, confirmed that the premier is alive and well, and called the hoax “sad and in bad taste”. The newspaper’s website shut down at approximately 2:30 a.m. and was revived just after 4 a.m.

Toronto Sun

Irish studies flourish in Quebec

By Josh Dehaas - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 3 Comments

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Only a tenth of Canada’s 4.4 million Canadians of Irish ancestry call Quebec home. And yet, it’s the epicentre of research on the Emerald Isle.

Concordia University’s School of Canadian Irish Studies—the only one of its kind in Canada—will have more than 700 students enrolled this fall, studying everything from the Great Famine to James Joyce. The first ever bachelor of arts in Canadian Irish studies will begin in January. “The success of Irish studies at Concordia is quite striking,” says Will Straw, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, “particularly since these kinds of ‘area’ studies programs are having difficulty in other universities.”

Interest in Ireland is especially high in Quebec, says Michael Kenneally, principal of the Concordia school. “Here in Quebec, if you’re interested in cultural nationalism, colonialism, post-imperial identities, partition and decolonization, rebellion and independence, Ireland is a case study for all of that.” And, he adds, “preserving the Irish language has a lot of resonance in Quebec.”

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The best way to settle the best politician debate

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments

From the comment thread of this post, reader rg suggests one way to settle this theoretical contest.

I think the better metric is how much a leader improved the position of their party, relative to before their tenure as leader. That kind of metric could capture Layton’s 2011 gains. Harper is less impressive on that metric – in 2000 37.7% of Canadians voted for one of the constituent parties of the CPC. Harper fell below that mark in 2004 and 2006, but edged it slightly in 2008 and 2011. Of course Harper looks better if you take the poll position of the Alliance and PC’s at the point when he became leader.

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‘The best politician of my generation’

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, August 14, 2011 at 7:30 PM - 18 Comments

Former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon commends Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

Defeated in the May 2 federal election in the West Quebec riding of Pontiac, Cannon strode into a meeting of the Liberal’s youth wing Saturday to take part in a panel discussion. Cannon was invited to the event by the Liberals but few people knew he was attending until he walked in. But his arrival got tongues wagging about a possible return to politics for Cannon or even a run, one day, for the leader’s job should Premier Jean Charest leave.

The veteran politician immediately moved to quash the speculation. “There’s no race in the Liberal Party of Quebec,” Cannon said. “Jean Charest is an exceptional man, probably the best politician of my generation at least. I am convinced Mr. Charest will be there to direct the troops in a future electoral victory.”

It’s perhaps mildly curious that Mr. Cannon didn’t mention Stephen Harper here and it’s unclear what he means by “my generation,” but it’s not unreasonable to say Jean Charest might be the “best” politician of what might be called the Post-Chretien Era.

For the sake of argument, we’ll generally limit this to Canadian politics since 2003 and those who’ve had their greatest successes in the last eight years. And we’ll also separate the politician (whose primary job is to win votes) from the premier or prime minister (whose primary job, at least in theory, is to effectively govern the province or country). If a politician’s primary task is to get elected and a party leader’s primary task is to lead his party to victory and if we generally accept that party leaders dominate our politics, there are probably a half dozen politicians in this conversation—Mr. Charest, Mr. Harper, Dalton McGuinty, Danny Williams, Gary Doer and Gordon Campbell*. Continue…

What not to hide in your wallet

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 3:25 PM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: Among Canadians, those in the West Coast province are the most sympathetic toward the poor, according to a new poll for the Salvation Army. There, only 17 per cent believe that all the poor need in order to improve their lives is “to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” In contrast, 36 per cent of their Prairie neighbours feel that way. And the disparity widens dramatically when comparing those who are “jaded” and believe lower-income residents have “lower moral values.” Only five per cent of those in B.C. fall into that category, compared to 21 per cent of Albertans.

Alberta: When it comes to buying a house, 39 per cent of Albertans are willing to plunk down extra money to get a brand-new home, compared to a national average of 22 per cent. Seventy per cent of prospective homebuyers in the province are in the market for a place that doesn’t need any work.

Saskatchewan: Premier Brad Wall is the most popular premier in Canada, with a 63 per cent approval rating. Kathy Dunderdale, Newfoundland and Labrador’s new premier, finished second with 55 per cent. Meanwhile, the bottom spot was snagged by Quebec’s Jean Charest, who is backed by a measly 13 per cent.

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WikiLeaks imitator QuebecLeaks launches in 'la belle province'

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 12:28 PM - 5 Comments

In a bid to jump-start his government’s sagging popularity, Quebec Premier Jean Charest inaugurated a new legislative session last week with a sweeping speech that included everything from a promise to deliver better English-language education to gloating about the international success of local artists like Arcade Fire and filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. But on the two topics atop most Quebecers’ minds—ongoing calls for an inquiry into corruption and the future of shale gas developments—the premier devoted next to no attention. That’s where QuebecLeaks.org, a new Quebec-focused WikiLeaks imitator, hopes to come in.

By its official March 9 launch, the whistle-blower clearing house hopes to have the type of sensitive documents that could pressure Charest’s government on any number of issues. “Our objective,” the site’s mission statement reads, “is to achieve complete transparency on the part of the Quebec government. There’s too much collusion, too much corruption, and too little action.”

Though currently accepting submissions—in a Feb. 25 Twitter post, QuebecLeaks admitted it had yet to land a big scoop—little is known about the people (or person) behind QuebecLeaks. But Québec Solidaire MNA Amir Khadir hopes the website’s revelations will eventually make it impossible for the Liberals to keep resisting calls for an inquiry into alleged corruption. “Every new revelation,” he says, “undermines even the most  skilled politician’s ability to recover from these attacks.”

With his party trailing badly in the polls—the latest CROP survey shows the Parti Québécois with a 13-point lead on the Liberals—Charest was already facing the difficult job of righting the provincial Liberal party ship this spring. The last thing he needs is to spend the next few months plugging leaks.

Someone call Larry Bertuzzi to sort this out

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 9:03 AM - 21 Comments

The Conservatives may or may not allow gas tax revenues to be used to build a hockey arena in Quebec City, but the mayor of Quebec City isn’t open to using the city’s gas tax funding to build that arena and he and Quebec Premier Jean Charest are now ready to go ahead without the federal government’s involvement. Regardless, the mayor of Edmonton is upset, the city of St. Catharines is interested and the city of Regina is befuddled.

Chuck McDonald, director of finance for the City of Regina, said out of the $10.66 million in gas tax received for 2011, $4 million will go to bridge renewal, $1.18 million is for street renewal, $3.66 is for new buses and $1.82 million is for the new landfill. Such spending is typical for the gas tax dollars.

“If I understand correctly and they would designate that facilities would be eligible, it really is a question of robbing Peter to pay Paul, because if we were to dedicate it to a facility, it means we’d have to find other funding for street infrastructure or the fleet. The pie stays the same size,” McDonald said. ”It would provide more flexibility, but we’ve got our core things that we have to invest in. We would have to find funding somewhere else for these things.”

Jean Charest wishes you an obedient Christmas

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 4:09 PM - 4 Comments

(Been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve missed you, too.)

The official-looking letter I’ve posted above was sent out to Quebecers purporting to be holiday greetings from Jean Charest. As you can see, the letter is written on government letterhead, bears Jean Charest’s signature, and features the premier’s office phone number at the bottom. As far as hoaxes go, this is pretty well done.

That said, it’s the text of the letter that gives it away. It doesn’t so much mock Charest as paint him as a dark and venal man. And that seems to be the difference between now and Charest’s first few years in office, doesn’t it? Continue…

What does it take to make Parliament sad?

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 19, 2010 at 6:00 AM - 51 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP

We now update you on the emotional state of the House of Commons.

On Sept. 29, after this magazine ran a cover story calling Quebec the most corrupt province in Canada, the lower house of Parliament voted unanimously, more or less, to express “its profound sadness at the prejudice displayed and the stereotypes employed by Maclean’s magazine to denigrate the Quebec nation, its history and its institutions.”

This concludes your update on the emotional state of the House of Commons. Your MPs have not passed any motions describing their emotions since. We can only speculate on their mood at Bloc MP Serge Ménard’s claim this week that Gilles Vaillancourt, the mayor of Laval, gave him an envelope with $10,000 cash in it when Ménard was preparing to run for the National Assembly in 2003.

Does this news sadden the Commons, even a little? Does it make the lower house giggly? Your guess is as good as mine.

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'A Canadian dream that no longer exists in reality'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 15, 2010 at 5:09 PM - 0 Comments

Gilles Duceppe charms an American audience.

“One thing is certain: Our relationship with the U.S. would be the focal point of a sovereign Quebec’s foreign policy,” Duceppe said at the event co-hosted by the Canadian Institute of the U.S.-government-funded Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Hudson Institute. ”The United States already has a very solid ally in Canada. Should Quebec become a sovereign state, the U.S. would have two very solid allies for the price of one.”

… Duceppe said the low approval ratings of Charest, now in his third mandate, indicate the premier’s departure is imminent leading up to the next election, which must be called before 2013. ”There are many reasons to think that events may begin moving quite quickly and that Quebecers will be making a decision on their political status for the third time,” Duceppe said.

Quebecers have more backbone than the politicians in Ottawa

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Mathieu Belanger/Reuters

Maclean’s has heard a great many voices over the past two weeks regarding our recent cover story on corruption in Quebec politics (“The most corrupt province in Canada,” Oct. 4, 2010).

Many of these voices, largely the political elite in Quebec, have expressed a degree of outrage ranging somewhere between apoplexy and eye-popping fury. We have been wildly accused of xenophobia and bigotry. The House of Commons, in a unanimous motion orchestrated by the Bloc Québécois, declared its “profound sadness” at our coverage.

We’ve heard a very different message from the public at large, however. Canadians have told us loudly and clearly that they are concerned about the significant problem of corruption and unethical behaviour displayed by their elected representatives. And this sentiment is noticeably stronger in Quebec than any other province. It seems a far more convincing expression of the public interest than complaints from a bunch of self-interested politicians.

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Poll: 62 per cent of Quebecers see broad, systemic corruption

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 1, 2010 at 12:29 PM - 0 Comments

Quebecers are more concerned about corruption and the ethical standards of their politicians than the residents of any other province, according to a poll by Angus Reid. And 62 per cent in Quebec consider corruption in the province to be a broad or systemic problem.

The poll, conducted this week, surveyed 1,260 randomly selected Canadians, and found that 68 per cent of Quebecers are either “very concerned” or “moderately concerned” with corruption in their home province. British Columbia (61 per cent) and Ontario (56 per cent) finished second and third. As far as the ethics of elected officials as viewed nationwide, Quebec politicians scored the worst of any province. Forty-nine per cent of all Canadians said politicians in Quebec are “moderately” or “very unethical.” Ontario politicians finished second: 36 per cent of respondents deemed that province’s politicians to be unethical. But nobody is as harsh on their own elected officials, the poll found, as Quebecers themselves—58 per cent of whom describe their politicians as “moderately unethical” or “very unethical.” Just 24 per cent in Quebec described them as either “moderately” or “very ethical.”

When identifying root causes, 41 per cent of Quebecers blame “systemic failings best dealt with by policy reforms” and another 21 per cent say it’s a “symptom of broader public attitudes.” Just 22 per cent in Quebec blame corruption on a “few bad apples.” According to Angus Reid’s Jaideep Mukerji, “this fits in well with other polling we’ve seen that shows overwhelming public support for a broader public inquiry into the links between political parties and outside interests.”

The poll comes amid much coverage, including a cover story in Maclean’s about corruption in Quebec that Premier Jean Charest and the House of Commons both attacked as unfair. In the midst of the Bastarache hearings into allegations against Charest’s government, and with other controversies in recent years, the issue of political corruption has been front and centre in Quebec. But if Quebecers are concerned, they don’t seem to think the problem is unique to them. In fact, 47 per cent of Quebecers feel that politicians in their province are “just as ethical” as politicians everywhere else. On that point, the rest of Canada doesn’t seem to agree. Of those surveyed from outside the province, 44 per cent said politicians in Quebec were “less ethical.”

Methodology: From September 29 to September 30, 2010, Angus Reid Public Opinion conducted an online survey among 1,260 randomly selected Canadian adults who are Angus Reid Forum panelists. The survey included an over sample of residents of Quebec. The margin of error for the Canadian sample-which measures sampling variability-is +/- 3.1%, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for the Quebec sample is 4.38%, 19 times out of 20. Results have been statistically weighted according to the most current education, age, gender and region Census data to ensure samples representative of the entire adult population of Canada. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.

Enough immaturity

By André Pratte - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Jacques Boissinot/CP

The last issue of Maclean’s magazine had barely arrived on the newsstands when the entire Quebec political class was uttering cries of indignation. Gilles Duceppe spoke about “xenophobia.” Nathalie Normandeau got carried away: “Enough with Quebec bashing!” All because Maclean’s dared to run a cover headline that Quebec is “the most corrupt province in Canada.”

Of course, tenacious prejudices exist about Quebecers in some milieus of English Canada. But the Maclean’s feature is not part of that ilk. Our politicians’ quick and emotional reaction shows how hypersensitive we have remained to any criticism coming from “outside.” This immaturity is unworthy of what Quebec has become.

In an open letter, Mr. Duceppe points out that there have been political scandals in other provinces, a fact that the magazine’s journalist points out clearly. The Bloc leader notes that Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald (“Johnny Macdonald,” Mr. Duceppe writes), lost power because of the Canadian Pacific scandal; Maclean’s recalls this as well.

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The front cover is sensationalist but the reporting as such respects standard journalistic practices. It does not say that corruption is exclusive to Quebec nor that it is encoded in our genes. The author, journalist Martin Patriquin, points out that Quebec’s political history has been marked by a greater number of scandals than in the rest of Canada; this fact is undeniable.

While the politicians’ indignation is unanimous, Quebec public opinion is divided. Of about 10,000 people who responded on Saturday to the Cyberpresse question of the day, 50 per cent agreed with the magazine. This is food for thought for our elected officials.

Maclean’s puts forward a few hypotheses to explain the phenomenon of corruption in the province. Some of these hypotheses are worth discussing. For example, the everlasting debate on independence. The Québec Solidaire MNA, Amir Khadir, is quoted: “Today’s PQ and the Liberals are the same political class that has governed Quebec for 40 years. The more they stay in power, the more vulnerable to corruption they become. There hasn’t been any sort of renewal in decades. We are caught in the prison of the national question.”

Another possible cause: the omnipresence of the state. Since the Quebec government and its corporations play a determining role in the province’s economy, there is a great temptation for private companies to woo the members of the political class.

Maclean’s columnist Andrew Coyne, a sworn enemy of Quebec nationalism, was surely not surprised at the visceral reaction of Quebec politicians. In his contribution to the report, he attributes part of the problem of corruption in the province to the fact that criticism of the system in place is often very poorly received: “But constructive criticism in Quebec, given the francophone majority’s perception of itself as an embattled minority, all too often leads to a closing of the ranks against what is invariably described as ‘Quebec bashing.’ ”

Those who observe us from the outside are not always wrong . . . The question Maclean’s is asking today, like a cat among the pigeons, is “why are there so many corruption scandals in Quebec?” We should have been asking ourselves this question a long time ago.

André Pratte is the chief editorial writer of Montreal’s French-language daily La Presse. He can be reached at apratte@lapresse.ca
© 2010 La Presse. Reprinted with permission.

Bonhomme strikes back

By Jean-François Lisée - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

JACK PICKETTS/CP; ANDRE PICHETTE/CP

I was more amused than shocked by Maclean’s cover naming Quebec “the most corrupt province in Canada.” It certainly feels that way these days, and Martin Patriquin’s only challenge was to cram in a single story all the strands of allegations and shady shenanigans surrounding Quebec’s current Jean Charest government. All the facts in the story are public knowledge, and for the most part brought to light by an aggressive Quebec media and no less insistent opposition parties.

Granted, the blow—being named most corrupt province—was not as painful for me to take as for most of my brethren, since I am aware of Maclean’s penchant for take-no-prisoners covers. Thanks to the weekly’s headline writers, I have been informed these past few months that Lawyers are Rats, Hitler is Back, Toronto Sucks, New York is a Land of Constant Terror, Hillary Adopted an Alien Baby, and Bush was a new Saddam.

No wait! Maybe one of those titles came from another magazine. No matter. Having been a journalist for a couple of decades, I did try to find in last week’s issue the methodology used to grant Quebec its number one spot on the corruption scale. I was curious to know who was number two, and how wide the margin was—as in Maclean’s yearly university rankings. Did the writers use the number of corruption convictions of elected officials in each province since 2000? The cash amount proven to have changed hands illegally? Or, since no conviction is to be found in Quebec (yet?), the number of police inquiries in play? I was disappointed. Maclean’s has no comparison metrics whatsoever. The whole cover is based on opinion and perception alone. Hopes for a Pulitzer on this one are dim.

So, what is the fuss about? A screaming headline loosely based on facts? They’re a dime a dozen. They sell. And Maclean’s is in the selling business. So all would be forgiven, if it were not for Andrew Coyne’s scoop that Quebecer’s are impervious to “constructive criticism.” Let’s try. Continue…

Les Québécois méritent mieux que ça

By the editors - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 4:15 PM - 0 Comments

Francis Vachon/CP

La semaine dernière, Maclean’s consacrait sa une à un article sur la politique au Québec intitulé “La province la plus corrompue du Canada.” Dans une chronique qui accompagnait l’article, Andrew Coyne prédisait que notre travail, tout comme la majorité des critiques de la société québécoise issues de l’extérieur de celle-ci, serait dénoncé par la classe politique de la province comme du “Québec bashing” (dénigrement systématique du Québec).

Il avait vu juste. L’article a été attaqué avec virulence par tous les politiciens qui se sont trouvés à proximité d’un microphone. Le chef du Bloc Québécois, Gilles Duceppe, a traité l’article de “xénophobe.” Le président de la Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, un organisme souverainiste, l’a décrit comme “haineux et diffamatoire.”

Le premier ministre du Québec, Jean Charest, qui venait tout juste de témoigner devant une commission d’enquête sur la corruption, nous a envoyé une lettre pour exiger que nous présentions nos excuses aux Québécois. Le chef libéral Michael Ignatieff a fait chorus, selon toute apparence sans avoir lu l’article.

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We believe Quebecers deserve better, and they seem to agree

By the editors - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 3:30 PM - 0 Comments

Francis Vachon/CP

[Cliquez ici pour lire la version française]

Last week, Maclean’s ran a cover story about politics in Quebec entitled, “The most corrupt province in Canada.” In an accompanying column, Andrew Coyne predicted that our work, like most criticisms of Quebec society coming from outside the province, would be attacked by its political class as “Quebec bashing.”

Quite so. The story was loudly and stridently denounced by every politician within reach of a microphone.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe claimed the story was “xenophobic.” The head of the sovereignist organization Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal called it “hateful and defamatory.”

Quebec Premier Jean Charest, fresh from his appearances before a corruption inquiry,  sent us a letter demanding that we “apologize to Quebecers.” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff joined the chorus apparently without having read the article.

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What lies beneath Quebec's scandals

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, September 24, 2010 at 5:50 PM - 0 Comments

JONATHAN HAYWARD/ JACQUES DESCHENES/CP

No, Quebec is not the only province where political scandal sometimes erupts. Governments and business have been corrupting each other across this country since pre-Confederation days. But in no other province does it feel quite so . . . inevitable. British Columbia has thrown up the odd chiselling premier, Atlantic Canada is famously steeped in patronage, but there is no comparison to the kind of octopussal industry-union-mob-party configuration lurking just below the surface of politics in Quebec. Toronto may have been scandalized by the cronyism of the Mel Lastman era, but only in Montreal would a candidate for mayor publicly confess to being afraid for his life. When a senior adviser to Ontario premier David Peterson was forced to resign after it was revealed he had accepted a refrigerator from a party donor with ties to a developer, puzzled Montrealers phoned their friends in Toronto, asking, ‘What was in the fridge?’ ”

The roots of corruption run deep in the province. Scrounging for funds to carry him through the 1872 election, the eminently corruptible Sir John A. Macdonald didn’t have far to look: Montrealer Sir Hugh Allan, said to be the richest man in Canada, was even then angling for the contract to build the CPR. Fifty years later, with Prohibition in force and Montreal a flourishing centre of the cross-border smuggling business, Mackenzie King saw fit to put Jacques Bureau in charge of the customs department, with comically debauched results: the scandal that ultimately led to the King-Byng affair.

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Quebec: The most corrupt province

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, September 24, 2010 at 5:45 PM - 177 Comments

JACQUES BOISSINOT/CP/ TOM HANSON/CP

Marc Bellemare isn’t a particularly interesting man to look at, so you’d think the spectre of watching him sit behind a desk and answer questions for hours on end would have Quebecers switching the channel en masse. And yet, the province’s former justice minister has been must-see TV over the past few weeks, if only because of what has been flowing out of his mouth.

Bellemare, who has been testifying in an inquiry into the process by which judges are appointed in Quebec, has particularly bad memories of his brief stint in cabinet, from 2003 to 2004. The Liberal government, then as now under the leadership of Premier Jean Charest, was rife with collusion, graft and barely concealed favouritism, he says—the premier himself so beholden to Liberal party fundraisers that they had a say in which judges were appointed to the bench. “It happened in [Charest’s] office. He was relaxed, he served me a Perrier,” Bellemare testified. The two spoke about Franco Fava, a long-time Liberal fundraiser who, according to Bellemare, was lobbying for Marc Bisson (the son of another Liberal fundraiser) and Michel Simard to be promoted. “I said, ‘Who names the judges, me or Franco Fava?’ I was very annoyed. I found it unacceptable,” Bellemare recalls. He remembers Charest saying, “ ‘Franco is a personal friend. He’s an influential fundraiser for the party. We need men like this. We have to listen to them. If he says to nominate Bisson and Simard, nominate them.’ ”

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Nordiques arena: A pricey precedent

By John Geddes - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Yan Doublet/Le Soleil/CP

In the annals of hockey heartache, Quebec City and Winnipeg are forever twinned. Both lost their NHL teams to the bright lights and bigger markets of America—the Nordiques to Denver in 1995, the Jets to Phoenix the very next year. After they were left in the lurch, though, the tales of the two wintery cities diverge. In Winnipeg, a modest new downtown arena, the MTS Centre, was completed in 2004, built with mostly private money, as a home for minor-league hockey and concerts, and maybe, just maybe, an NHL team again someday. In Quebec City, a plan for building a much grander arena, mainly with public money and expressly to lure back the NHL, has only recently taken shape—and sparked political controversy.

The issue is whether the federal government should contribute heavily to the project. Quebec Premier Jean Charest has pledged $180 million, and Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume $50 million, leaving about $170 million they hope the feds will ante up. After Quebec Conservative MPs donned vintage powder-blue Nordiques sweaters last week to promote the scheme, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s confirmation that he’s considering the request came as no surprise. But Harper said he won’t be playing favourites. “In terms of financing these things going forward,” he said, “we’re going to have to respect the precedents we have had in the past, and be sure any treatment we’re prepared to make to one city we’re prepared to make to all.”

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It’s the investment opportunity of a lifetime (II)

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, September 10, 2010 at 5:29 PM - 0 Comments

I should start with a confession: when I wrote that really long post slamming governments for getting into the NHL arena-building business, I hadn’t yet read the Ernst & Young feasibility study (summary here; full report here) about the project. Had I read the report, my opinion would have been different. I would have hated the idea even more.

Here’s why: Continue…

Long live the Nordiques! (But let someone else pay for them)

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 7:20 PM - 0 Comments

The chips appear to be falling into place for Quebec City as it looks to revive the Nordiques franchise. The province announced Tuesday it would kick in about $180 million to build a new home for the as-yet-non-existent franchise, adding a plea to the feds to do the same. And if the Conservatives have no plans to fund the rink, they’re doing a brilliant job of hiding it—their Quebec City MPs were out and about sporting vintage Nordiques jerseys on Wednesday:

“As far as a new arena is concerned, our government is very interested to know if this can be done,” John Babcock, a spokesman for Transport Minister Chuck Strahl, said in an e-mail Wednesday.

“As the prime minister has clearly said, we would be very happy if (the) Nordiques could make a comeback to Quebec City.”

On the political front, Pierre-Karl Péladeau (the presumed owner of the new Nordiques) couldn’t have hoped for a more perfect set of circumstances to extract money from all three levels of government. Quebec City’s mayor, Régis Labeaume won the last mayoral election with a Stalin-esque 80 per cent of the vote after making his pro-Nordiques pitch a central part of his campaign. Given Labeaume’s immense popularity—the man’s a demi-god in la vieille capitale—it’s hard to imagine a better politician to be seen cozying up to. Moreover, absolutely no one wants to be seen as the politician who put a stick in his wheels. And if it takes a new arena to win a public handshake with the mayor, Jean Charest and Stephen Harper seem all too willing to oblige.

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