The Post to Quebec: Love Canada or else
By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, February 24, 2009 - 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.
-
My Canada Day includes poutine
By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 11:55 AM - 8 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.
