'A new scandal all the time'

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, November 26, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 14 Comments

Arsenault, the FTQ head, wants an inquiry into the construction industry; Laval Mayor Vaillancourt responds to bribery accusations | Mathieu Belanger/Reuters; Ryan Remiorz/CP

La Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) has never been keen on having eyeballs, governmental or otherwise, peering in on its affairs. Part of the reason is pragmatic: as the largest union federation in the province, it represents the lion’s share of workers in Quebec’s construction industry, a notoriously rough-and-tumble industry in which big egos and strong arms traditionally rule the day.

No longer. Last week, FTQ president Michel Arsenault essentially reversed his federation’s year-long opposition to become part of the growing cry for an inquiry into the construction industry and more. With the FTQ now onside with a growing list of fellow unions, political parties, legal and law enforcement organizations and citizens’ groups, there remains one ever-stubborn holdout: Premier Jean Charest, whose governing Liberals this week are expected to (barely) survive a non-confidence motion from the opposition Parti Québécois. Apparently, Charest’s intransigence is hurting him: nearly two out of three Quebecers believe their elected officials have something to hide, while roughly 75 per cent believe their province is corrupt.

Continue…

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 5, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

It just isn’t Brett Favre’s year
Despite being hobbled by two fractures in his foot, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback started in his 292nd consecutive NFL game. It was a bittersweet affair for fans, who saw Favre throw a costly interception, draw two penalties and leave the game with an eight-stitch cut to his chin in a loss to the New England Patriots. Then there are his alleged follies off the field: the married QB reportedly sent texts and lewd photos to TV personality Jenn Sterger.

The Parti is hungry
There are a few constants in life in Quebec: good food, cold winters, and infighting within the Parti Québécois. But knowing this can’t allay the worries of Pauline Marois, who after three years at the helm of the sovereignist party is facing restive ranks. A group of 50 young sovereignists recently signed an open letter criticizing her. That came on the heels of a Radio-Canada interview in which Jacques Parizeau chided Marois and complimented Bloc leader (and one-time PQ leadership hopeful) Gilles Duceppe for his “remarkable clarity” on the sovereignty issue. It seems the party that eats its leaders—Marois is the sixth in 10 years—is licking its chops once again.

Continue…

An Anglo truce

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 24 Comments

Photograph by Clement Allard/Canadian Press

Quebec, so the cliché goes, is home to poutine, smoky bars and maddening language debates, and indulging in all three is something of a rite of passage. Alas, a recent government health initiative means the combination of fries, cheese and gravy will effectively be outlawed from the cafeterias of many government institutions by 2012, while lighting up in any public space has been illegal for nearly five years. Language issues, meanwhile, are far less the stuff of spittle and hot blood than they once were. Battles between English and French used to occupy the headlines and even spill out onto the street. Now most English Quebecers apparently choose to stay quiet.

Fighting language laws seems especially passé. Twenty years ago, the right to have English on exterior commercial signs spawned an English rights movement that saw the birth of the Equality Party, and renewed linguistic tension across the province. Now, as Premier Jean Charest’s Liberals prepare to clamp down on English education rights, the old guard of that movement is lamenting the distinct lack of rage in its ranks. “Anglos don’t want to stick their necks out anymore,” says Robert Libman, former leader of the Equality Party. “There’s a sense of ‘What’s the point?’ The white flag has been waved, and it’s now lying encrusted on the ground.”

The current fuss—or lack thereof—is over an amendment to the current language law. In 2002, alarmed by a trend of parents exploiting what it called a legal loophole, the governing Parti Québécois outlawed a somewhat obscure practice that allowed certain students, otherwise ineligible under the province’s language law, to attend English school: if they attended a private English school for a year, they and their siblings could receive public education in English forevermore. (Under Quebec law, only those with a grandfathered right can attend English school.) The PQ’s Bill 104 closed the loophole—but lawyer Brent Tyler challenged the law all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled it unconstitutional last October.

Continue…

Bouchard shakes it up, again

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 5:30 PM - 8 Comments

Lucien Bouchard doesn’t venture out much. Since leaving politics nearly a decade ago, the former Quebec premier has become the political equivalent of a hermit crab: guarded, aloof and maddeningly difficult to pin down, he occasionally ventures out to pinch a nerve or three, only to quickly disappear thereafter. As a result, his infrequent declarations on the state of things in Quebec are collectively analyzed and obsessed over, demonstrating Bouchard’s enduring influence—and to what extent Quebec itself is beholden to its own ghosts.

Even by his own standards, Bouchard’s most recent sortie was devastating, if only because he denigrated Quebec sovereignty—the very cause he himself came so close to achieving 15 years ago. In a forceful, sometimes rambling dialogue that brought to mind his own fiery referendum-era speeches in 1995, Bouchard excoriated the sovereignist movement for pressing on with its 40-year obsession, to the detriment of Quebec society. “There’s no referendum in sight, and I don’t want any more defeats,” he said at a recent round table discussion in Quebec City. “We were so obsessed with it that today we have challenges practically hitting us in the face.”

The main challenge, he said, was to awaken Quebecers from their “stupor,” brought on by being debt-ridden, over-taxed, undereducated and spoiled by expensive government programs and cheap electricity. He says he is still a sovereignist, yet he has clearly all but given up on the idea. “It remains just a dream,” he said. “We all have dreams. Some come true, others won’t in our lifetime. I’d like to use my remaining time to work together and fix the things that need fixing.”

Continue…

Just give the man his baguel and no one will get hurt

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, November 23, 2009 at 3:37 PM - 32 Comments

At this weekend’s PQ brainstorming session—don’t call it a convention!—party members spent much of their time debating just how far they should extend Bill 101′s tentacles. As reported by Le Devoir‘s Antoine Robitaille, party president Jonathan Valois even made a strangely personal plea to Montreal’s wretched Anglos, whose doughy delicacies he just can’t resist:

[That French is disappearing] is a feeling many Montrealers share. Sometimes, it annoys us when I can’t buy a bagel in French. It annoys me. And that’s part of daily life for Montrealers.

It’s all true. In fact, that’s why I moved to Toronto. My last apartment in Montreal was just a few short blocks away from both St-Viateur Bagel and Fairmount Bagel, and the stress was overwhelming: O lord, when will you finally deliver Jonathan Valois from the modern-day calvary that is bagel shopping in this godforsaken place?

Thankfully, where I live now, bagels aren’t worth buying in any language. Deliverance at last.

There are morals in politics?

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 1 Comment

The PQ managed to keep François Legault’s old seat in a by-election in Rousseau last night. The Liberals haven’t made a dent there since Bourrassa was in power and Legault was nothing if not a party heavyweight, so the result shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone. And even though, as Chantal Hébert points out, the ADQ vote appeared to collapse in the Liberals’ direction rather than the PQ’s, the abysmal turnout should preclude anyone from reading too much into a result that was never really in doubt.

Still, despite not being under much of a threat from anyone in the riding, not losing has apparently become reason enough for the PQ to celebrate. Cue Pauline Marois, who delivered the best line of the night: “We’ve had enough of moral victories, so now we have a real victory!”

All those moral victories—they sure get exhausting, don’t they?

Péquiste with a Canadian soul

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, September 18, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 14 Comments

René Lévesque an “extraordinary Canadian”? Even the suggestion will make many in this country, not to mention legions of purs et durs Quebecers, cringe. Yet throughout his political career—and, indeed, even in his attempts to make Quebec a sovereign state—Lévesque demonstrated what are considered bedrock Canadian values: honesty, centrism, a commitment to democracy and non-violence. With groundbreaking transparency and anti-corruption legislation, Lévesque’s Parti Québécois effectively put an end to a political environment long dominated by graft, favouritism and barely concealed fraud; it has since been mimicked, to varying degrees, in several other provinces and at the federal level. Bill 101, the PQ’s landmark language law that Lévesque’s government ushered into existence in 1977, met with near-unanimous condemnation across the country. Today, language tensions exist largely in the minds of the fringes on both sides, and the wide-scale acceptance of Quebec’s French fact has shown, perversely, how Quebec can assert its will within Canada’s borders.

Lévesque the human being was much like Lévesque the politician: flawed, endearing, hopelessly romantic. He consumed everything—liquor, tobacco, women—with abandon; political strategy was more likely hashed out over all-night games of five-card stud than behind the walls of the National Assembly. Quebecers, even his political enemies, admired him as much for his canny political sense as his distinct lack of pretense. In an excerpt from René Lévesque—in this week’s Maclean’s—Daniel Poliquin, a leading Canadian francophone author, traces the origin of Quebec’s love affair with this frumpy little man with red eyes who trailed smoke and a hangover wherever he went.

To read an excerpt from Extraordinary Canadians: René Lévesque by Daniel Poliquin, click here.

Quote of the day

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, July 3, 2009 at 12:50 PM - 3 Comments

Arnold Kling isn’t referring specifically to Quebec, but he might as well be:

The problem with physical secession is that it is very difficult to achieve critical mass. There is probably not much overlap between the people you want to live with and the people who want to choose your particular form of government. The vast majority of us put up with government we dislike in order to live in proximity to people with whom we want to work and play.

I can’t think of a better way to encapsulate the fundamental problem at the heart of the PQ’s mandate to be both the chief promoter of an independent Quebec as well as its natural governing party.

Maclean's Interview: Louise Beaudoin

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 20 Comments

Louise Beaudoin has been at the forefront of Quebec’s sovereignty movement for over 40 years. As a cabinet minister in three Parti Québécois governments, she was largely responsible for the province’s language laws. Now, as a Montreal-area MNA, she is one of the main architects of the party’s new “plan for a sovereign Quebec,” which would use “sectoral referendums” in order to wrestle powers like taxation and culture away from Ottawa.

Q: Tell me about the PQ’s latest plan for a sovereign Quebec.

A: We thought it was time to remobilize the sovereignist troops and relaunch the sovereignty debate. We want to do away with the waiting game. It’s nice to say that we are going to wait for that big night where everything falls into place, but we know this won’t magically happen. So the best way to reignite the debate is this plan that [PQ leader] Pauline Marois has presented. We want to be transparent in what we are doing and what we want. The first thing, of course, is for Ottawa to respect the constitution of 1867, that is to say Quebec’s powers, as well as those that are shared with the federal government, as well as to reclaim certain powers that we think are necessary for Quebec’s development.

Q: In concrete terms, how do you arrive at getting these powers for Quebec?

A: We’ve already started. A year and a half ago we put forward our proposed law on Quebec identity and citizenship. When we get into power we will reintroduce this bill. Continue…

Why it's worth paying attention to the PQ's demands

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 4:24 PM - 6 Comments

It didn’t take long for federalists to jump on the glaring contradiction that forms the basis of Pauline Marois’s “Plan pour le Québec souverain“: If asking for more powers for Quebec is merely a prelude to a successful campaign for out-and-out separation, as its very title indicates, why would anyone in Ottawa accept to play along? (For the record, Marois wants Ottawa to give up control of taxation, immigration, broadcast communications, the environment, and agriculture to the province.) Chantal Hébert draws perhaps the best illustration of the absurdity of it all:

It is, in a sense, the opposite of the beau risque. Twenty-five years ago, René Lévesque invited sovereigntists to play the federalist game. Today, the PQ leader is inviting Canada to play the sovereigntist game.

In cruder terms, it’s the equivalent of having your wife ask you to pick up the tab for a date with her boyfriend (or vice versa). That may seem weird, but a lot of weird things happen in dysfunctional relationships. Desperate and confused spouses do desperate and confused things as a matter of routine—and it would be a stretch to describe the Conservatives’ or the Liberals’ relationship with Quebec without using either of those two adjectives. The fact that logic dictates Marois shouldn’t get anywhere with this hardly means she won’t. Continue…

Quebec vs. Windsor

By Paul Wells - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 12:30 PM - 11 Comments

At the headquarters of the Canadian Council on Learning in downtown Ottawa, researchers have an animated chart they use to demonstrate the relationship between learning and the job market.

It’s a standard graph: unemployment rate up the vertical axis, and the CCL’s Composite Learning Index (CLI) across the horizontal. The dots are Canadian cities. And the dots move to show how the cities evolved along both measures from 2006 to 2009.

Continue…

Coalition fever: The swine flu of 2008

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 5:14 PM - 5 Comments

Just try to imagine the hand-wringing this would’ve caused across Canada: A Bloc-supported coalition in power in Ottawa with the PQ, propped up by the ADQ, in power in Quebec City.

According to a report in La Presse, it could’ve happened:

In order to stymie Jean Charest, who was clearly preparing to call an election for December 8, the ADQ made a suprising proposal to draw in the PQ. Mario Dumont and Pauline Marois would have gone to see the lieutenant-governor, Pierre Duchesne, to tell him that the parties with a majority in the National Assembly were uniting to form a coalition government, with Pauline Marois as premier.

The ADQ was apparently so desperate to avoid having to run a campaign that it was going to let a party holding less seats—recall that the ADQ was the official opposition at the time—take over the premier’s job!

Now imagine what the provincial and federal budgets would have looked like had it happened. Something tells me the fiscal imbalance would’ve been solved in no time.

Adios, Super Mario (and other scattered thoughts about the election)

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 6:49 PM - 17 Comments

A few (more) final thoughts on the election:

1) I have a nagging feeling Charest’s inability to convert his huge lead in the polls into a huge majority is being vastly overstated. A majority is a majority is a majority, no? He’ll have to rule over his caucus with an iron fist to prevent internal dissent from undermining that slim majority. But that’s still not as bad as having to deal with an unruly opposition that goes behind your back and elects a Speaker from its own ranks. That said, a minority government would have been devastating to the Liberals, especially considering they would have found themselves squaring off against a rejuvenated PQ rather than an incompetent and ineffective ADQ.

2) I’m having a hard time reconciling the notion Stephen Harper’s low-rent separatist-baiting was responsible for the PQ doing better than expected with the fact voter turnout was an abysmal 57 per cent, “the lowest election turnout since 1927.” Turnout was actually much worse than that oft-repeated nugget implies. In 1927, and for every election before that, turnout was calculated based on eligible voters in all ridings, even those in which a seat went uncontested. Voter turnout jumped by more than 20 points when the acounting method was changed in 1931, meaning participation in this past election may in fact have been at its lowest point in Quebec history. It’s hard to imagine that all the nonsense in Ottawa wouldn’t have an impact. But if it did, why did so many people stay home? Furthermore, how low would turnout have been had Harper not gone off the rails? The simplest explanation is that the pollsters just got it wrong. Continue…

'The PQ is a party of ideas'

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, December 1, 2008 at 7:02 PM - 3 Comments

“The PQ is a party of ideas. We discuss and we discuss passionately. I hope there will continue to be debates over ideas within the Parti Québécois.”—Jacques Parizeau, November 16, 2008

This seemingly innocuous sound bite was the extent of Parizeau’s election gift to Quebec federalists earlier this month. Uttered during a remarkably subdued appearance on Tout le monde en parle, a popular Sunday evening talk show, Parizeau was explaining to host Guy A. Lepage (and nearly 1.5 million Quebecers watching at home) why the PQ always seems to be at war with itself. Continue…

Why Charest should be annoyed with Ottawa for threatening the Bloc

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 7:36 PM - 7 Comments

Turns out Canada’s Machiavellian genius of a prime minister can be pretty crass after all. (Colour me surprised.) Before the election, Stephen Harper viewed the global financial crisis as little more than a “good buying opportunity.” But now that we’re in a full-blown “technical” recession, Harper’s got more than his mother’s stock portfolio on his mind. Never one to pass up an opportunity to kick the legs out from underneath his political opponents, Harper figures he can use the time he won’t be spending coming up with a stimulus package to defend a move to bankrupt the opposition as a cost-cutting measure. (Think of the trips Conservatives officials will be able to make with an extra $30-million kicking around!)_

As Andrew notes, the party that stands to lose the most if the Conservatives follow through on their plan to scrap public funding for political parties is the Bloc. In the very short term, however, the plan might also turn out to be a pretty significant spoke in Jean Charest’s wheels. Continue…

Today in campaign lexicon: "se mettre à genoux"

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 6:07 PM - 3 Comments

This is the second in an occasional series of posts deconstructing various phrases and words Quebec politicians hurl at one another during the current election campaign. Earlier, we examined ‘ras-le-bol’ here.

Pauline Marois was in front of a large, boisterous partisan crowd yesterday in the Montreal district of Sainte-Marie-Saint-Jacques (home to both Maclean’s Montreal office and Carte Blanche––get the onglet de boeuf if you know what’s good for you), where she took more than a few potshots at Jean Charest. Chief among them was this gem:

Continue…

Liberals way, way ahead

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, November 25, 2008 at 1:13 PM - 1 Comment

The latest La Presse-CROP poll shows the Liberals widening the chasm between them and the other parties:

Liberals: 45% (+3)

Parti Québécois: 32% (+1)

Action démocratique du Québec: 12% (-3)

It’s probably unfair to dwell on Mario Dumont’s ability to stink up the joint, but the last time the ADQ scored this poorly was in 1998, when it won just a single seat—Dumont’s in Rivière-du-Loup. Continue…

Asleep at the wheel

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, November 24, 2008 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

André Pratte hits the nail on the head in today’s La Presse:

Despite being launched under the pretext of an economic crisis, the electoral campaign in Quebec is taking place as if Quebec was going to be the only corner of the planet spared the turbulence that’s wreaking havoc worldwide.

Jean Charest couldn’t stand the thought of having “three pairs of hands on the steering wheel” in the midst of a recession, so he launches an election to let voters decide who’d do the best job. Fair enough. But then, how come nobody’s talking about the economy? And would it be too much to ask that the parties use real numbers when they do? Continue…

The Bloc parties on

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, November 24, 2008 at 9:00 AM - 6 Comments

There is a certain delight in being a Bloquiste these days. Having been written off yet again this fall by Quebec’s nattering punditocracy, and despite a listless early campaign performance, the party returns to Parliament this week nearly as big and powerful as before the election. Gilles Duceppe has sprung back from near death almost as many times as Quebec Premier (and noted turnaround artist) Jean Charest, though in the current incarnation, the Bloc is less a sovereignist party than an escape valve for the nervous Quebec vote. Without a referendum in the province’s near future, and with the party never actually having to govern, supporting the Bloc remains almost consequence-free for Quebecers.

Still, the party’s horizons are muddied. Though it managed to stave off the attempted Conservative swarm of Quebec, the Bloc’s share of the popular vote decreased by four percentage points—the second-lowest showing in its history. In the absence of the nationalist furor that brought it into being—support for sovereignty is at its lowest ebb in nearly four decades—the Bloc has come to rely on the shortcomings of its adversaries, and on short-term manoeuvring, for its continued survival.

This time around, Harper’s missteps on arts funding and juvenile justice, in which the Prime Minister proposed letting judges send young violent offenders to adult prisons, were a gift to Duceppe. “Before the election, people were ready to vote for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, ready to participate in government, ready to move onto other things,” says Léger Marketing president Jean-Marc Léger. “In the end, though, the Bloc didn’t win, the Conservatives lost.”

The Bloc, which also benefited enormously from the split in the federalist vote, returns to Parliament more or less intact, and all the more entrenched. The party boasts both the oldest MP on the Hill, Christian Ouellet, at 74, and the longest-serving MP, Louis Plamondon. Gilles Duceppe is by far the most experienced party leader, and the only one who is also a grandfather. Its MPs are among the most prolific committee members in Ottawa, and are instrumental in the forming of policy affecting Canadians beyond Quebec’s borders.

And once again, Gilles Duceppe returns to Parliament as resident kingmaker. The Tory minority is thought safe from toppling until at least next May, when the Liberals hold their leadership convention. After that, the Bloc’s 49 seats will give it considerable sway. As with the last two budgets, the Tories will likely look to the Bloc to prop up its government. Duceppe has already named his price for co-operating: along with a bevy of government initiatives to see Quebec (and, by extension, the rest of the country) through the economic crisis, including aid for forestry and manufacturing sectors and retraining programs for elderly workers, the Bloc is demanding Harper reverse the shelving of Quebec’s economic development grants, as well as the pre-election cuts to arts funding. (On the latter, at least, Harper has so far refused to budge.)

Duceppe will also continue to harp on Canada’s “fiscal imbalance,” which it defines as an “intrusion in the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces.” (Reading much of the Bloc’s literature, one might get the impression that Quebec has already separated.)

With all its demands, some of which the Tories will no doubt acquiesce to, it may seem odd that the Bloc’s bid to remain relevant through Canada’s 40th parliamentary session will effectively hinge on proving, in the words of one senior Bloc MP, that “federalism doesn’t work” and that Canada “is a dead end.” The party will do so largely by introducing Quebec-centric bills that don’t have a chance of passing.

In 2007, for example, the Bloc’s Pauline Picard introduced Bill C-482, a private member’s bill to compel the federal government “to undertake not to obstruct the application of the Charter of the French Language in Quebec”—effectively making federal and financial institutions within Quebec French-only. An affront to Canada’s Official Languages Act, the bill was handily beaten in the House of Commons. Which was exactly the point.

“We are going to show that over the years, no matter what party is in power, there is a limit to what Quebec can do [within Canada],” said Bloc MP Christiane Gagnon. “We are always hitting a wall.”

If this is the case, the Bloc will be purposefully running into many walls in the next parliamentary session. Along with Bill C-482, which it plans on reintroducing shortly after Parliament reconvenes, the party will put forward motions demanding, among other measures, the end of official multiculturalism in Quebec, the establishment of a Quebec-only body governing the province’s radio and television concerns, and a reorganization of Telefilm Canada’s funding structure so that Quebec would control its own grant money.

Duceppe will haunt the Harper government over its cuts to cultural spending, and has pledged to have la nation québécoise recognized in the Canadian Constitution, which he said would be a “further step toward sovereignty.”

Meet Canada's best friend

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, October 31, 2008 at 2:22 PM - 10 Comments

“If you aren’t with us, you are an asshole!”

-Pierre Falardeau, 1996

Last week, Quebec filmmaker Pierre Falardeau used his inaugural column in Ici Magazine to call David Suzuki a “bearded little Jap.” Mr. Suzuki’s alleged transgression was to have said–in Montreal and, horror of horrors, in English–that he was “disappointed” in Quebecers for having voted Conservative in the recent federal election. To wit: “A bearded little Jap, another bothersome shit from the west coast, a veritable Professeur Tournesol of the environmental movement, stopped in Montreal to tell us, in English, that he’s disappointed with Quebecers. Stay at home, you, and leave us be with your colonialist scorn.”

It was pretty a pretty tired, as far as Falardeau goes. The man who used to pursue real colonial types–Le Temps des Bouffons is one of the more eloquent bursts of scalding outrage I have ever seen–is apparently now content with vapid sequels to past glories. In between these non-efforts, he excoriates politicians well after they’re dead (classy, and less lawsuit-prone!) and race baits world renowned environmentalists. Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

All of this should be music to Canada’s ears.

Continue…

Breaking up is hard to do

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 at 6:28 PM - 12 Comments

First, a challenge: Name three things a sovereignist likes to do more than embarassing their counterparts at inopportune moments.

The reason I ask is the not-so-coincidental timing of a column by former PQ minister Jacques Brassard for his local rag in Chicout’ (reprinted, along with an interview, in this morning’s La Presse). In it, Brassard writes that Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Québécois have become nothing more than a French-speaking clone of that “archaic Canadian socialist party, the NDP” and suggests it should re-evaluate its very presence in Ottawa.

For example, how is it an abandonment of “the defense of Quebec’s interests” [the Bloc's supposed mandate] to believe the gun registry is a scandalously expensive and useless bureaucratic monster? And how, for another example, does “the defense of Quebec’s interests” require that you consider the Kyoto Protocol a sacred text and an unimpeachable catechism? Continue…

Rumours, death, exaggeration

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 6:24 PM - 0 Comments

Quebec separatism has been eulogized more often than any other political movement in Canada. After the March 2007 election, in which the PQ garnered the smallest share of the votes since it burst onto Quebec’s political scene in 1970, it was tempting to write it off again. But after replacing André Boisclair, Pauline Marois seemed to have rallied the troops behind her no-referendum vision. She’s spent the past year closely stalking—at times, even leading—Jean Charest and Mario Dumont in the polls, and had seemingly united the often fractious party. But old habits die hard among PQ members—and the infighting is back.

François Legault greeted reporters outside a PQ caucus today with a surprising statement, saying he thinks the sovereignty issue should join a referendum campaign on the political backburner:

Continue…

Paul McCartney: The PQ's Yoko Ono

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 6:06 PM - 0 Comments

Officials in Quebec City are expecting as many as 250,000 people to check out Paul McCartney’s free show for the city’s 400th. It’s probably safe to say Pierre Curzi won’t be among them.

The PQ’s cultural affairs critic is a little miffed about Sir Paul coming over from England to bang out some tunes on the Plains of Abraham. Curzi says McCartney’s show exemplifies the “Canadianization of the 400th” and calls it a “political gesture that tarnishes his presence.” (A good chunk of purzédurs sovereignists evidently feel the same way.)

PQ leader Pauline Marois, however, isn’t on board with Curzi. Like most middle-aged women, Marois still has a soft spot for the “cute Beatle”, so much so she says she would’ve gone to the show had she been in town. And in case Curzi and co. didn’t get the message, Marois also said that, upon the successful creation of an independant Quebec state, “Love Me Do” would be adopted as its national anthem. (Okay, I made that last part up.)

The one thing I can’t quite wrap my head around, though, is how come Van Halen got a free pass from all this stuff about the Elvis-Gratton-ization of Quebec? Is it because of the undeniable awesomeness of “Panama”? Or the the hilarity that followed the leak of Diamond Dave’s vocal track from “Runnin’ with the Devil”?

Seriously, I’d love to figure this out.

UPDATE: Paul McCartney has advised “Quebeckians” to “smoke the pipes of peace.” Unfortunately, Macca didn’t offer to share from his personal stash, which appears to pack quite the punch.

'Cause a separatist party don't stop

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 6:17 PM - 0 Comments

Sorry if I’m a little late with this, but the elections folks in Quebec released membership and financial data for all the political parties in Quebec late last month. Looking them over, I was really surprised to see how steady the PQ’s membership numbers have been over the years, even during the rough patches. While the other parties are stacked with a bunch of fairweather friends—I’m looking especially hard at you, ADQ—the PQ base is especially resilient.

Continue…