Aim at the oil sands, and you hit Quebec
By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 24 Comments
One pundit suggests Jim Prentice suffered from ‘Quebecophobia’
One guess what lesson Pauline Marois drew from Jim Prentice’s recent criticism of Quebec’s environmental policies. Why, yes: it just clinches the case for sovereignty. “Quebec is a leader [on the environment]…and Canada is dragging us down,” the Parti Québécois leader declaimed. “If we were independent tomorrow, we could speak with our own voice…We could have signed the Kyoto agreement ourselves.” Etc., etc. “Federalism does not suit the Quebec reality…The real solution for Quebec is sovereignty…” zzzzzzzzz.
But if Marois’s response was predictable—in a sovereign Quebec, the very air would be purer—so was that of the rest of the province’s political class. In La Presse, Alain Dubuc found it “surreal” that a federal environment minister would “harshly attack” the province for “doing too much” for the environment. My sometime colleague Chantal Hébert agreed in her Toronto Star column that the minister’s “attack” was “unprecedented,” even suggesting on our CBC panel that it verged on “Quebec-bashing.” Le Soleil’s Raymond Giroux diagnosed the minister as suffering from “Quebecophobia.”
All this, over one paragraph in a half-hour speech! Prentice’s harsh and unprecedented attack on Quebec was to suggest it is “folly” for provinces to pursue their own individual strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions rather than the continental approach the feds prefer, citing as an example “the new and unique vehicle regulations in the province of Quebec.” That’s it. That’s the Quebec-bashing that set off this firestorm: a brief critique of a particular policy of the government of Quebec, delivered half a continent away in a speech at the University of Calgary.
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The Post to Quebec: Love Canada or else
By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 5:28 PM - 37 Comments
If you haven’t read the National Post‘s editorial about the canceled re-enactment of Battle on the Plains, it’s worth checking out, if only because it stands out as a perfect example of the breathtaking lunacy Quebec’s identity debates sometimes generate in the Rest Of Canada. To wit:Enough of the decades of appeasement; it’s time for Ottawa to adopt a tough-love attitude toward Quebec. And who better to do that then Mr. Harper and his Tories? They’ve got nothing to lose…
They can start by reinstating the Plains of Abraham re-enactment and, if need be, providing federal security for the event. They also can end the unofficial federal policy that as near to half as possible of all federal defence spending must go to manufacturers in Quebec.
While they’re at it, they should tell the truth about equalization… There is no “fiscal imbalance,” at least not between Ottawa and Quebec…
Let’s also take away the Quebec chair at the Francophonie. Defend vigorously in court any challenges filed that seek to uphold the minority-language rights of English-speaking residents in Quebec. Such an approach won’t make any friends in Quebec. But at least everyone in the rest of the country won’t keep feeling like suckers.
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My Canada Day includes poutine
By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments
As far as slights are concerned, whether real or perceived, this one seems fairly innocuous. The Canadian embassy in Washington has apologized for posting an invitation to a Canada Day party that featured Samuel de Champlain holding a plate of poutine. The offending image has since been removed from the page, but that’s it on the left. (Why do I feel like I’m turning into Ezra Levant all of a sudden?)Some complainants, however, aren’t willing to let it go. The French-language advocacy group Impératif français is calling for nothing less than an official apology from Stephen Harper, and the resignations of newly-minted Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson and Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson.
Bill Johnson better be thankful the folks at Impératif français apparently didn’t get their hands his recent op-ed in The Globe about St-Jean festivities in Montreal. If they found a strange non sequitur by the Canadian embassy in Washington offensive, who knows how they would have reacted to the former Alliance Quebec leader’s insufferably patronizing piece?
UPDATE: Andrew Potter beat me to it. And he has a better headline.
