Friday, February 25, 2011

Pauline Marois' Losing Conditions and Other Nonsense

So it's Friday and perhaps time to wrap up the week with a couple of mini-stories that don't have enough girth to merit a separate post. 

Pauline Marois Declares negotiating strategy
One of the most basic rules of negotiating is not to let your opponent know your strategy beforehand. It's something Pauline Marois apparently never learned, but perhaps should have, considering that her strategy to win support for sovereignty is so ridiculous.
Madame Marois has told a PQ meeting that since 'winning conditions' don't seem to be in the offing any time soon, she'll boost support for sovereignty by entering into bad faith negotiations with Ottawa, the purpose of which is to end up in protracted arguments that will somehow fuel support for sovereignty.
"....she intends to make demands for new powers within Canadian federalism in such fields as culture in the hope they will be refused, provoking crises in Quebec-Ottawa relations that will boost support for secession.
"We're finished with the winning conditions," she told a PQ regional convention," LINK
Pauline Marois: "Mr. Harper, I demand that we enter into negotiations to return more power to Quebec and I'm telling you right now that I won't agree to anything, no matter what!"
Stephen Harper: "Hmm...."

Anybody else see any problem with this plan?

Language cops get new Boss
The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) got a new boss Louise Marchand who is promising renewed vigor and more transparency in protecting the French language.
What's interesting about this?....nothing at all.

But I wanted to publish her picture because she looks like a corpse and has a smile worthy of the WAX museum...... eeeks..

Amir Khadir gets a taste of his own medicine
For someone who has tried to  have a myriad of anti-Israel motions passed in Quebec's Parliament, the  Assemblee nationale, Amir Khadir felt the sting of being the object of just such a motion himself.

A motion put forward by all three of the other political parties representing all the members of the House except for Mr. Khadir, condemned the boycott of the shoe store by the left wing organization PAJU.

To add insult to injury the motion reiterated the Parliament's support for the cooperation agreement with Israel signed by the government of Israel several years ago. LINK
"Although blocked by the sole member of Québec solidaire, "said Director General of Quebec/Israel Committee, Luciano G. Del Negro, "this motion is not only a stinging disavowal and consensus of the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel promoted by Mr. Amir Khadir and his political party (Quebec solidaire), but a rejection of the Zionist ideological war that Mr. Khadir has brought to the National Assembly and into the street. ""
Mr. Khadir was forced to deny the unanimous consent required to debate the motion, the only member to do so. It was a humiliating comeuppance.

In a statement released on the Quebec solidaire website, Khadir complained that the motion was flawed;
"The motion by the member for Shefford in support of Le Marcheur shop was misleading in consideration that the boycott of the store by a group of citizens ended two weeks ago."
But alas, Amir couldn't even get that right!

PAJU, the group organizing the protest is back outside Le Marcheur once again, after taking a two week break.

Separatist online petition's ignominious end
The over-hyped online petition demanding Premier Charest's resignation came to an ignominious end when the government refused to table the printout. Pierre Moreau, the brand new  Minister of intergovernmental Affairs refused to accept the petition because according to him, 'it contained a fatal flaw' in that it demanded that the parliamentarians do what they could not legally do, that is, fire  Premier Charest. The opposition parties were furious to see the petition dumped so frivolously and lashed out angrily. LINK

Asked to comment on the petition Premier Charest shrugged it off, remarking; "Didn't Rick Mercer get 600,000 names for Stockwell Day to change his name to Doris?"  LINK

The PQ and the Bloc solidaire were all agog over the 250,000 signatures, but considering that over a million people voted for the PQ in the last election, getting a quarter of them to sign a partisan petition online was not much of an achievement.
The petition was, so to speak, not worth the paper it wasn't written on!

Steve Brosseau, the organizer of the petition promised to also organize a demonstration in front of Parliament. After testing the waters to gauge how many people would actually show up, he backed off when he realized very few would actually attend. LINK

Earl Jones likely to sit in jail....
Passage of the government's crime law Bill-C59, which I've affectionately dubbed as "Earl's Law" has raised a level of controversy between legalists as to whether the elimination of the 1/6 provision for parole can be applied retroactively to Earl Jones.
According to a bar expert, Stephen Sineberg, the law's retroactive nature may be anti-constitutional in that it modifies an already existing sentence. Prisoners who accepted a plea 'deal' in exchange for an expectation of early parlole are now seeing the government modifying that possibility after the fact. LINK{FR}

But a criminal lawyer aware of the Earl Jones case has told me that he is pretty sure that the law will hold up and poor Earl will be incarcerated in the big house for at least 44 months.
His interpretation of the effect of 'Earl's law' is somewhat different from Mr. Sineberg's. Here's what I've been told.

A prisoner's sentence cannot be modified once handed down. That means, should the law change and the amount of jail time for a certain crime be modified, it cannot affect the previously convicted.

That being said, how a prisoner serves his sentence is flexible and to some extent up to the parole board. A prisoner who has been given a 10 year sentence may serve 5 years in prison and 5 on parole. Another may serve 3 in prison and 7 on parole. In both cases the criminals will be deemed to have served their entire sentence.
If Earl Jones serves 1/6 of his sentence in jail and the rest on parole or if he serves 2/3 of his sentence behind bars and the rest on parole, he will he have been deemed to have fulfilled his sentence, as well.

Many criminals that go into jail don't know exactly when their parole will start, or if they will be getting parole at all, and Earl Jones is no exception.
The key is, that he'll serve his full original sentence, but how many years on parole or in jail, is up to authorities.
And so the new provisions of the law do not modify his actual sentence. They modify parole conditions which are at any rate flexible to begin with.

This week, The Truth in Sentencing Act, which came into effect last year survived its first judicial challenge. An Ontario judge ruled that abolishing the 2-for-1 sentencing credit that offenders received for time served before their sentence was constitutional. LINK

Montreal City councillors vote in favour of boycott
In reaction to a motion put forward by the Montreal mayor opposing the boycott of the Montreal shoe store LE MARCHEUR, for selling Israeli shoes, Louise Harel and her gang voted in favour of those persecuting the small Montreal merchant. She repeated the hackneyed leftist position that Israel is comparable to apartheid South Africa. Her opposition to the motion was supported by her entire Vision Montreal team as well as about half the councillors on Projet Montreal team..
The motion passed 38-16, but not before some heated debates in council.
In supporting a stupid and meaningless assault on a small merchant, Madame Harel has validated Montrealers view that she remains a dangerous leftist ideologue bitch politician.  LINK

*********************************************************

Let me end the week on a bit of a humorous note.
Failqc.com is a relatively new website that you should click on at least once a week to get a nice laugh.

Inspired by the FAIL genre that features the less than successful achievements, it focuses on the dubious  aspects of Quebec life. I've pulled out a few examples that are somehow related to language and the French/English thing. Enjoy.

By the way, for those who don't speak French I've provided an explanation when necessary.




Seen in Ottawa. Sorry, if you don't actually speak French, I can't help you with this one. Ha ha!!!!



Translation FAILS are more common than you'd think, especially when the manufacturer uses GOOGLE to translate or some other online translation software. Hey, don't laugh the RCMP is no better... LINK




This last video is just plain devastatingly funny. For late-nighters, Call-TV is a mind-numbing time-wasting television show that is best watched under the influence. The presenters try anything to get people to participate in the moronic games meant to suck you in to making a toll 1-900 call.

Here, the hostess pretends that she is pissed-off that nobody is calling in and exhorts the audience to call-in to express displeasure with the producer, who she purportedly wants to have fired for coming up with such lame games.

It's a great example of why Quebec French is as expressive as any language in the world.
This piece is appropriately called;

"On peut-tu crisser le fucking producteur dewors?!"


Have a very good weekend!

34 comments:

  1. Editor, Marois is just articulating the policy that was central to every Quebec government (both liberal and pequiste) since the 1970's. The policy of ambiguity, uncertainty, vagueness, and never-ending negotiations with undefined objectives (negotiating for the sake of negotiating). This kind of suspense suits Quebec's interests, especially the interests of Quebec's elite, but runs against the interests of the rest of the country.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Louise Harel is what is wrong with quebec in the last 30 years, a socialist/separatist union loving bitch, i dream of the day Montreal has the option to vote for a person like Ford, and that power gets repatriated to Montreal, and some power is further divested to the borrows. and demerge while ur at it, that would bring down the level of corruption.

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  3. Editor said : But I wanted to publish her picture because she looks like a corpse and has a smile worthy of the WAX museum...... eeeks..

    This has got to be the lamest reason for going after someone that I have ever seen you print. By all means tear her to shreds for what she says and does, and the office she has been appointed to sounds like a totalitarian dream-come-true, but really, mocking her purely for her physical appearance is beneath you. If we live long enough, we'll all end up looking like Yoda.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mr. Editor:


    The language you are using to describe certain events are not proper. Cursing is part of your strategy to be English separatists are not exactly highly educated on the blog, the two together make a vulgar scene Elvis Gratton like.

    Is this what you try to represent ? Please try to be professional,* like the French sites, when they argue on political finesse.

    --------------------------------------------
    *A professional is a member of a vocation founded upon specialised educational training.

    The word professional traditionally means a person who has obtained a degree in a professional field. The term professional is used more generally to denote a white collar working person, or a person who performs commercially in a field typically reserved for hobbyists or amateurs

    ReplyDelete
  5. "This has got to be the lamest reason for going after someone that I have ever seen you print. By all means tear her to shreds for what she says and does, and the office she has been appointed to sounds like a totalitarian dream-come-true, but really, mocking her purely for her physical appearance is beneath you. If we live long enough, we'll all end up looking like Yoda."

    Agreed. Physical appearance should never be a reason to jab at a political figure, or anyone for that matter.

    Rest of the article is spot on.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Terrible, one thing is, only a Frenchman should laugh at another Frenchman.

    In the meantime you should complain to the CRTC. Any complaint about television, radio, telephone, cell phone, internet or other services, the CRTC will respond to most questions within 10 working days. Find out more about how we handle complaints for television and radio, phone and internet. It is a federal matter, so use it in the name of quality. You want to hear GOOD French, not a second or third rate.

    http://www.crtc.gc.ca/rapidsccm/register.asp?lang=e

    ReplyDelete
  7. Editor you forgot one little thing, the new Earl jones laws were opposed tooth and nail for the last 3 years by the Bloc, apparently there was a consensus in qc against it. As usual the bloc was left looking like morons and had to back track, and Earl, Lacroix will probably avoid having to serve full sentences.
    Where is the outcry about the bloc's and clique du plateau that made up this consensus? this law should never have been opposed by the bloc or those morons to start with. they should be left with egg and their face, but yet again protected by the clique du plateau they avoid any criticism.

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  8. Hey Editor,

    I totally agree with what you said about Louise Marchand’s appearance. She freaks me out too. Let’s just say she’s looks the part, and has been cast in the perfect role. But it’s more than her superficial look; it’s her entire persona and what she stands for. She oozes Franco zealotry. She stands before us as a symbol of Anglo discrimination. In short, she looks like the enemy.

    We all react negatively towards certain types of individuals, it’s just human nature. The problem is we’re not supposed to say these things out loud, especially in these PC times. We’re supposed to express those thoughts with our inner voice, so we don’t offend anybody or make them feel bad about the things they cannot change. Fair enough. But when the enemy tells you they are about to reload and take aim, all politesse goes out the window. If the sky dropped shit on her head, whatever, she deserves all of the (non-violent) abuse that comes her way.

    Besides, if she were a man we wouldn’t be having this conversation; it would be alright to criticize him on any level. No one says a thing when Charest or Bouchard are criticized for their peculiar (and creepy) looks.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I disagree with defacing or laughing at people's appearance publicly. It is hostile, rude, malicious and pervert.

    This is worse than the uneducated woman (who speaks in your video clip) like a lumberjack without teeth.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Star,

    ‘Terrible, one thing is, only a Frenchman should laugh at another Frenchman.’

    I wonder if André-Philippe Gagnon or any other Quebecois comedian would agree with your idiotic statement, you rarefied twit.

    ReplyDelete
  11. If you want more translation FAILs, Protegez-Vous keeps a list here:
    http://www.protegez-vous.ca/chronique-hein.html

    ReplyDelete
  12. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  13. "Director General of Quebec/Israel Committee, Luciano G. Del Negro..." was quite an active Marxist in his youth. Then married then "revolutionary" Marlene Jennings before she joined the Liberals. Now this Italian is the chief hawker in Canada for Likud.

    ReplyDelete
  14. To anonymous at 5:47

    Thank you very much for your affront, English Separatist. WE know which side you are on. This site is for ex-convict or what ?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Any head of the QOLF deserves to be mocked and ridiculed publicly as far as I'm concerned. As a Quebec taxpayer I object to my tax dollars funding such a blatantly racist and discriminatory government department. Stamping out a language that has been instrumental to building modern day Quebec is just plain wrong especially in a so called free society. How these people wake up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror is beyond me.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Your taxdollars ! As if I don't pay any... don't be so self inflated. The way you are carrying on is not any better... you can't even learn how to speak French. You know, you have to be smart to do so. Drunkkilling...English Separatist with an awful ego.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Yes, where are those rules against the editor asked for ? again, a one-way street.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Anything is good to laugh at Quebec, the only reasons to do so are the following:
    1- be English;
    2- be against the French;
    3- know how to write in English only;
    4- be an English separatist;
    5- ask for money to the French;
    6- show your strength with statistics;
    7- show you are smarter than the French;
    8- help the others to be racist like you;
    9- be an English bigot helps;
    10-be a bear drinker and like sports;
    11-look out for French rats;
    12-flatter yourself as English of Canada;
    13-ignore the history of the French;
    14- spit on the history of the French;
    15-use everything the French have and claim their yours;

    You can have a criminal record, be stupid, monocultural, unilingual, it doesn't matter you are so beautiful and so English.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Man the number of seppie racist retards keeps increasing in the comment section. Hilarious how the 2.52 idiot says Anglos are unilingual only, they are way way more multi lingual than the french in this province, it's not even close. Heck just the fact that Charest proposed immersion in 6th grade and they are all worried that French student are not bright enough to be able to do so. The sad part is they are but seppie morons have so low an esteem of their fellow citizen they are telling them, ur not bright enough. At least Anglos have no problem in french immersion, you must be so jealous of our intelligence u unilingual retard. Jealousy and hate is all u are about.

    ReplyDelete
  20. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  21. @ Quidam:

    "The way you are carrying on is not any better... you can't even learn how to speak French. You know, you have to be smart to do so."

    In case you haven't noticed, this is an English blog. If you don't like it, go troll somewhere else. Fortunately the fascist Office de la langue francais has no power over this site.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Your frustrations are not going unnoticed.... it is free speech!!!

    > How come since the last 400 years it is always a one-way street with you English Separatists!!!!!
    Hello :=(

    ReplyDelete
  23. > Madame Marois has told a PQ meeting that since 'winning conditions' don't seem to be in the offing any time soon, she'll boost support for sovereignty by entering into bad faith negotiations with Ottawa […] Anybody else see any problem with this plan?

    No, actually, this is the only shot she and her movement have ever had – and that’s what makes it so insidious. If this project had any honest chance of succeeding, it would have done so – decades ago.

    We’ve seen some rather (let’s call them) colorful comments, including, yes, Parizeau’s famous musings on the ethnic vote and lobster traps, Bouchard’s white-race-having-fewest-babies shtick, to name but a few. These only help their right-wing ethno-populist cause. The vengeful commentators on this site and others have repeatedly reassured everyone that all they’re waiting for is a minor slip-up and they’ll get their 50%+1 “victory”. Funny how 50%+1 is enough for the YES but not 50%+1 for the NO (twice!) isn’t enough for the OUIs to concede defeat and bury the hatchet. Oh the double standards…

    While it might be pathetic from the perspective of a federalist, the idea of creating “winning conditions” for independence by deliberately picking a fight isn’t new. The movement’s very essence is predicated on alienating Quebecers from the notion that there are indeed two levels of government in this country entrusted with different (and sometimes complementary) responsibilities to govern us. They have successfully duped millions of uninformed Quebecers into believing the notion that our legislative assembly constitutes our sole true “legitimate” government. With the same chutzpah they entice us to neuter our federal voice by sending a protest party to represent us in Ottawa that claims to defend our interest without ever wanting to actually govern... wow.

    Strangely enough, we’re well aware that the municipal government clears our snow, fills our potholes, and picks up our garbage (or so it claims). It’s a surprise we don’t have a “Committee for a sovereign Montreal” yet.

    Bad faith might be a well-worn separatist strategy, but it’s one that has paid handsome dividends, keeping these ass-clowns in business for the last 40 years. The periodic emotional flare-ups is what keeps them relevant. Everybody almost expects this from them now. All Pauline wants do is introduce a trashy Tea-Party-like dimension to it.

    We claim to be waging an existential battle for survival against the culture surrounding us, yet we imitate it so very well…

    > "....she intends to make demands for new powers within Canadian federalism in such fields as culture in the hope they will be refused, provoking crises in Quebec-Ottawa relations that will boost support for secession. [...]"

    Claiming federalism isn’t working (or even good) for Quebecers is laughable if not ludicrous to those of us who understand why Canada has a federative form of government in the first place. And anyone who knows even a smidgen of our history knows that Canada would neither be a federation nor would have included Quebec had George-Étienne Cartier not insisted that the former would be a precondition for the latter. John A. MacDonald, for his part inspired perhaps by the recent Civil War south of the border – as well as the events that led to it – was less convinced that federalism was the ideal for the nascent Dominion…

    (1)

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  24. > If we live long enough, we'll all end up looking like Yoda.

    Yeah but if you’re lucky you won’t be aware of it so it won’t make much of a difference.

    > Louise Harel and her gang voted in favour of those persecuting the small Montreal merchant. She repeated the hackneyed leftist position that Israel is comparable to apartheid South Africa. Her opposition to the motion was supported by her entire Vision Montreal team as well as about half the councillors on Projet Montreal team.

    (Re-)Stating the obvious: look for municipal politics to continue becoming polarized analogously to what we’ve seen going on in the two other tiers.

    > "On peut-tu crisser le fucking producteur dewors?!"

    Purists will obviously disagree and bemoan both the crassness and quality of a line like that. But I, for one, happen to find this pseudo-rant a lovingly eloquent zeitgeist of our language.

    > The PQ and the Bloc solidaire were all agog over the 250,000 signatures, but considering that over a million people voted for the PQ in the last election, getting a quarter of them to sign a partisan petition online was not much of an achievement.

    “Horray! We got something done!”
    Sigh…

    > Steve Brosseau […] promised to also organize a demonstration […] he backed off when he realized very few would actually attend.

    ROFL.

    > Terrible, one thing is, only a Frenchman should laugh at another Frenchman.

    I was never a fan of the bizarre idea that only black people could say the word n*gger, so I have to disagree with ethnic-exclusive humor (or even schadenfreude). Humor is humor. Humiliation is humiliation. Get with it.

    > Cursing is part of your strategy to be English separatists […]

    “English separatists”… THERE’S one for the books! Somehow I wasn’t thinking about the faction of English people in Britain advocating independence. But now I am.

    > This site is for ex-convict or what ?

    You mean like Raymond Villeneuve?

    > You can have a criminal record, be stupid, monocultural, unilingual, it doesn't matter you are so beautiful and so English.

    @Editor: check the IP address; this “English separatist” crap has to be coming from the same twit.

    > the two together make a vulgar scene Elvis Gratton like.
    It never ceases to amaze me how Elvis Gratton is parodied as the epitome of crass small-minded and colonized federalism by the crassest and most boorish of separatists.

    > Please try to be professional,* like the French sites, when they argue on political finesse.
    I read the French sites daily. They’re no more or less refined. And they’re just as repetitive as this tired old debate is, irrespective of language.

    > anyone associated with the OLF deserves to have their face spit on, or punched in.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if the OQLF emphasized its commitment to linguistics and terminology and finally ditched its commitment to measuring tapes and disciplinary action? I work with them for terminology every day and I’ve always thought this government body would do exceptionally more for French if it were exclusively non-confrontational.

    > Luciano G. Del Negro..." was quite an active Marxist in his youth. Then married then "revolutionary" Marlene Jennings before she joined the Liberals. Now this Italian is the chief hawker in Canada for Likud.

    …further lending credence to the idea that everybody has a price.

    (2)

    ReplyDelete
  25. TO THE ENGLISH SEPARATIST :
    TO THE SCARRY CAT SEPARATIST:


    Obviously, the shoe fits you Mr. Anglophone. The truth hurts, and SOCRATE's method are working,yes working even today.

    English separatists are the worst whinning people in Canada,(les Canadiens anglais qui piaulent!) for no reason. Yes, no reason. They live well, they play well, they loaf too much, they should study more.

    Which way are you, according to this maxim:

    Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

    ReplyDelete
  26. "Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."

    No foolin'. Where do you fit in this quote? I guess you left out the part played most dominantly in Quebec - the politics of hate and racism and the fascist tendencies of a culture that is completely unequiped for the modern world in every way. A unilingual, largely uneducated, largely rural based culture that is conditioned by its little puppet masters like levesque and the rest of the slime that have represented them over the years, to hate and to fear anyone that doesn't match their likeness or their background.

    Quebec has to become a bilingual society or the island and the surroundings have to hold a referendum on its political future free of the cultural apartheid that is funded by every Canadian in this country.

    Let Etoile preach his bullshit on his side of the political fence, St Jerome, the new border between Quebec and Ontario.

    ReplyDelete
  27. http://www.montrealgazette.com/Quebec+tourist+busted+Nazi+salute/4355560/story.html

    And here we go again. A French Quebecois, embarrassing Canada on an international level, once again. Just ignorance really, but an embarrassment nonetheless.

    ReplyDelete
  28. The English Separatists feel there race is superior to others.

    The French are distinct, different and they feel sovereign about it.

    It is the English Separatists who are racists and they don't know about it !

    Leave them alone !!!!

    Elvis Gratton

    ReplyDelete
  29. > SOCRATE's method are working,yes working even today […]

    There’s a lot to be said for the Socratic method. Unfortunately I have yet to arrive at any meaningful conclusion when I engage some of my separatist acquaintances on this topic. As a cynical francophone-anglophone-allophone mutt myself, I happen to believe that French should be protected and promoted, but not out of any particular love or fear for our own existence on this continent. I believe in a lifelong commitment on the part of all individuals to achieve genuine fluency in both languages rather than some token or beginner’s basic functionality. Yes this takes work, but it’s not that hard and it’s far more rewarding than leading a life of perpetual fear or hatred of the evil “other” who I perpetually accuse of “assimilating” me.

    > Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

    I actually agree with you, Étoile.

    I believe that the survival of French on this continent will have everything to do with our desire as individuals to continue speaking it. I also believe you can’t legislate desire, and that any legislation that attempts to substitute individual desire with collective compliance cannot and will not succeed in the long term. I also seem to have a higher opinion of us as keepers of this rich tradition than our recent governments have, liberal or péquiste. Our French language has a lot to offer: it can hold its own without a massive state apparatus.

    For a long time in this province – long after they had given way in the Mother Country – our massive Catholic institutions were ever-present and reigned supreme. Orphanages, schools, hospitals, governments – the entire state was run along and sanctioned by Catholic principles. Sure, there was good, but also a lot of bad – repression, exclusion, fear, and hatred. The excesses of the Duplessis era (the orphans, for example) are but one very specific manifestation of the problems endemic to our own ancien régime.

    The reason all our churches are closing today for lack of attendance is not due to Quebecers having suddenly developed a hatred for Christ. Rather, it was a natural backlash against the curés and monseigneurs who for centuries self-servingly controlled us all into thinking the only thing that mattered was for us to reproduce, populate, and colonize the land. Fortunately, we now live in an era where we are free to explore our Catholic faith in a less repressive – and more liberal way.

    The same ethno-religious, pseudo-patriotic propaganda spirit lives on in the rhetoric of our language supremacists today. Heaven forbid we should ever think outside the box and speak about it publicly: to do so is to be branded an enemy of the people or worse, un vendu. No English school for your children, messieurs Tremblay, Gagnon, and Côté – don’t you know a good Quebecer’s duty is to raise francophone children? Indeed, it seems, for all our Revolutions and modernization programs, our politics and views of ourselves are still very much stuck in the era of Maria Chapdelaine…

    My only hope is that one day we as francophones will unite behind a banner of lucidity. I think that part of that lucidity necessarily requires that we drop the pretension that to be a “true” Quebecer you need to advocate independence and pursue a rabid French-only policy. Your Gladstone quote is rather à propos here. Quebecers have generally shown themselves to be quite socially liberal. The fear instilled in us by our own native, hawkish, and culturally conservative overlords who have claimed to act in the interest of our survival has often generated nothing more than distrust and blinded us from our real challenges. (Meanwhile, our overlords are laughing all the way to the bank).

    It only makes sense that we embrace our reality and trust our abilities to progress along an open, plural, and liberal path.

    ReplyDelete
  30. > The English Separatists feel there race is superior to others.

    For the second time, English separatism alludes to a political conflict going on in Britain and has nothing to do with what you (are attempting to) say. This has nothing to do with politicized partisan vocabulary and everything to do with trying to be accurate and not making yourself sound like a ranting moron. I’m sure Louis himself would take down your comment because it was unnecessarily incendiary and lacked context.

    Like many people here, I respect your right to disagree – even your right to argue and be argued with. But for the love of Bonhomme, maple syrup, and the Montreal Canadiens, PLEASE find a more accurate term than “English Separatists” to refer to the anglophone Canadian residents who don’t share your view.

    This isn’t a pedantic or translation thing. If you asked 100 people out of the blue what a « séparatiste anglais » was, I doubt you would receive a uniform answer. Many would probably assume the scenario I illustrated. And I’m sure even fewer would guess what your definition was without you telling them.

    > The French are distinct, different and they feel sovereign about it.

    Whether or not anybody “feels” sovereign is ridiculously irrelevant. By the way, France is a sovereign country.

    Ethnic French-Canadians (a group that I am also a proud member of), apparently make up about 80% of Quebec today. We might feel different, special, distinct, and unique, but we are also members of a broader federation called Canada. Unlike Canada, France is not a federation.

    “Sovereignty” is a nice general word with various fuzzy meanings which include the ability to enjoy control over some predefined territory. The Quebec independence movement has deliberately appropriated this word for their purpose because they realize that “sovereignty” is more euphemistic (and therefore less discordant) than to call their plan by its real name (“separation”, “secession”) and risk alienating undecided voters, and even lukewarm supporters of the idea.

    Within a federation like ours, to “be sovereign” or “have sovereignty” means to exercise competences or powers to govern a particular subject. The federal government has exclusive jurisdiction on some of these; the provincial government on others. Some are shared. THIS is what sovereignty refers to within Quebec’s political structure.

    For the record, “sovereignty-association” is a term that is as ludicrous and nebulous as it is contradictory.

    I take a step back and I realize that the separatists’ exploitation of the general population’s ignorance in constitutional matters (and how the constitution got that way) is appalling.

    > It is the English Separatists who are racists and they don't know about it !

    See my note above about “English separatism”.

    If you’re referring to Anglophones who don’t realize how inward looking they are, perhaps in certain cases you’re definitely right. But you’d need to state it that way, rather than be quick to call all people who disagree with you “racists”.

    But be careful before you rush to generalizations.

    Throughout history, those who have belonged to larger groups have often seen things differently from those who have come from smaller groups. I work with some people in France who can sometimes be rather « nombriliste » (navel-gazing) themselves. I just laugh off the isolated cases and enjoy the opportunity to teach them about Quebec, Canada, or North America in general, just as they occasionally teach me new things about France that most average Quebecers don’t know.

    For the record, your caricature/characterization of all federalists as crass, boorish, or impressionable idiots (à la Elvis Gratton) when it comes to anything Anglo-American isn’t any more accurate than the bigoted non-Quebecers who think we’re a toothless, intolerant, and illiterate race of lumberjacks who run through forests trapping deer, screwing Indians, and hunting caribou.

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  31. Hi there. I'm a seperatist. As I am unnable to counter anybody's arguments factually, I'm going to string a bunch of child-like insults together to distract from this fact.

    Blah English seperatist Globbish no culture drunk hanglishman bla blah Elvis Gratton bla bla racist sterotype blah bla 1759 bla american wannabes bla bla another insult that only a Quebecker could think was insulting bla bla tete carree bla bla we actually think we get a raw deal from transfer payments bla bla bla we actually belive anglos love Charest bla bla colonizers bla bla etc.!

    This is litterally as coherent as some of you sound like.

    Lol love the whole English seperatist thing that is starting. But in reality you're dumb for starting it because it can only hurt you in reality. You shouldn't push it 'cause the last thing you'd want is a seperatist movement developing in Montreal. Anglos aren't numerous enough to spread the word themselves but keep calling us that, maybe it'll catch on. Ah Quebec seperatism; the only seperatist movement in the world that tries to gain support by egging the opposition on.

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  32. When one has no arguments, one has to resort to digressions and insults. Spot on, Jason.

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  33. The English Separatists of Quebec are here, in Montreal, we know who they are; always the same people. Don't try to play smart. It's a fact of life. Your part of them, the rest... the leftover we don't really want.

    As far as the Anglophones who are respected, they are respecting the French. Those people are not a problem, YOU ARE !!!

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  34. Are you for real you guys! twisting and screwing everything the way you do! c'on go see a shrink! you like to bash, you like to elevate yourselves, you like to diminish the others, you like to think you are the best, hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    This is called R A C I S M, NOT CONTROLLING A LANGUAGE, COME ON YOU GUYS.....
    YOUR FINAL NOTES: -D FOR DETERIORATION OF THE BRAIN!

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