Quebec Politicians Give Montreal the Shaft

With the sovereignty movement deflating like a tire with a slow but determined leak, it's only a matter of time before the movement runs out of air and goes flat, destined to an ignominious end, tossed in the landfill of failed political movements.

While separatist diehards cling to the illusion that the independence option can be revived over time, they fail to acknowledge that time is their greatest enemy.

Ever since the last referendum almost 800,000 immigrants came to Quebec, upwards of 95% who will vote for Canada in any future referendum.
The great hope of sovereigntists, that given time, the children of these immigrants, forced into the French school system, would ultimately adopt sovereigntist tendencies commiserate with that of the general francophone population.

That premise has proved devastatingly false.
Second and now third generation descendants of immigrants, despite a French education, remain fiercely federalist, a fact that effectively  hammers home the last nail into the separatist coffin.

Add to that, the general collapse in support for sovereignty from traditional supporters, fatigued and disillusioned, it means that things haven't exactly worked out well for the sovereignists.

And so, as the Canada versus Quebec debate fades to black from the political spectrum, a new battle arises, one that also augers poorly for Quebec nationalists, who are now forced to fight an unexpected rearguard action..

It is the battle between the two solitudes that have been forming over the last thirty years, with Quebec being split rather neatly between the island of Montreal which is moving, linguistically and culturally, farther and farther away from the Rest of Quebec (RoQ.)

It is a phenomenon that is so frightening to Liberals and Peekists, that they are banding together to thwart any change to the electoral map that would favour Montreal.

In the eyes of those from the RoQ and the majority of politicians who populate the halls of power in Quebec city, Montreal is developing into nothing less than a modern Sodom and Gomorrah, a den of social and linguistic depravity that is threatening to rip the social fabric of Quebec.

Visitors coming to Montreal from the hinterlands of Quebec can be excused for concluding that they are in another country. For many of them, it is the first time that they confront the new reality that is Montreal, an urban, heterogeneous melting pot of language, religion, customs and dress, similar to Vancouver or Toronto.
But for those born and raised in communities where 95% of the people are white francophone Catholics, its a shock to the system.

Most don't like what they see and many are frightened by what it portends.

The linguistic situation for those on the island of Montreal whose mother tongue is French is deteriorating, no different then the demographic upheaval in Vancouver and Toronto. There's nothing special or different going on in Montreal, it is a question of immigration policy that affects the whole country, where newcomers overwhelmingly establish themselves in the big cities.

Each year Quebec welcomes about 55,000 immigrants, 10,000 of which eventually flee to the greener pastures of Ontario and parts beyond.
Of the 45,000 who remain in Quebec, 40,000 settle in Montreal, half assimilating to the English side of the linguistic equations, half to the French.
Coupled with the fact that about 10,000 francophones flee to the suburbs each year, it means that Montreal is getting more and more, English and ethnic, while the rest of Quebec remains lily-white and French.
The unintended consequence of this influx of immigrants, who were meant to close the demographic shortfall caused by our low birthrate, is the effect of growth in the population of Montreal with an opposing decline in the RoQ.

There seems no way to reverse this trend. The new metro line to Laval and a soon to be built commuter line to the East, will hasten the flight of francophones to the burbs, leaving the island to Anglos and Ethnics who remain stubbornly attached to their ethnic and English neighbourhoods. 

Although greater Montreal represents about half the population of the province, it doesn't enjoy half the representation in Quebec's Parliament, the National Assembly.
In fact, there are only about ten anglophones and ethnics in the National Assembly, when demographics dictate that there should be over twenty.

Electoral Extremes - Two ridings, urban English vs. rural French

I wrote a post on this inequality, which if you haven't read, I'm sure you'll find it interesting.
Read: Quebec Politicans Take an Axe to Democracy

All of this is not news to regular readers of this blog, but there is a disturbing development that remains largely unreported in the mainstream Anglophone press.
That is, the deliberate attempt by politicians to limit the influence and check the the rising power of this upstart Montreal, in favour of traditional, white-Catholic francophones who represent the majority in the regions.

A 'deal' has recently been struck between the Liberal Party and the Parti Quebecois to limit the political power of Montreal, or rather, as they say euphemistically, to 'safeguard regional representation,' a fancy way of saying protecting regional 'over-representation'

The responsibility of drawing up the electoral map is the independent agency, the Commission de la représentation électorale (CRE,) created by Rene Levesque back in 1979 and charged with impartially and fairly drawing up the electoral map, making changes every few years to reflect demographic changes.
The commission doesn't have the power to create new ridings, but may move them around to better reflect population shifts.

In 2001 the commission, cognizant of the fact that Quebec had the most mis-representative electoral boundaries in any state or province in North America, asked the government to consider remedial action. After another six years of inaction the CRE proposed that three rural ridings be eliminated and be transferred to the greater Montreal area.
The government failed to act on its recommendation and stalled for two years. After a fierce lobbying effort to save the three ridings, the government with the help of the opposition PQ, passed a law, Bill 132, that suspended the CRE and its power to determine boundaries for seven months, just enough time for another provincial election.
The three ridings were saved while none were added to Montreal.

Now with the suspension over and the commission announcing that it will indeed chop the three rural ridings, the Liberal government and the PQ are planning once again to interfere with the democratic process of redistribution. LINK{FR}
Next week, Bill 19 will be debated in the National Assembly, proposed by the Liberals and which will be supported by the PQ. In the spirit of the 'Judgement of Soloman,' three seats will be added to Montreal, while preserving the three rural seats.
This will raise the number of seats in Parliament to 108, one more than Ontario's Parliament which serves one and a half times more people.

The English press has been largely silent on this issue and the only decent report on this 'deal' struck between the Liberals and the PQ appeared in La Presse. It's a wonderful expose that you shouldn't miss if you read French.

The paranoid fear of our elected officials that Montreal must be held at bay is highlighted by the preposterous proposition by Pauline Marois that an upper chamber to Parliament (like the Senate) be re-created that would represent the regions only.
I'm not kidding.

"Pauline Marois, the PQ leader  is in favour of creating a "Chamber of Regions" to ensure better representation of the regions in the National Assembly....

...Regional representatives would be elected and carry out certain responsibilities that remain to be defined, said the leader of the Parti Quebecois....

More and more voices outside the big cities are rising against the redrawing of the electoral map that favours urban areas at the expense of victims of a declining population"  LINK {FR}.

Francois Legault, leader of Quebec's soon to be newest political party, was not impressed with the shenanigans;

"When I see  the Liberal Party and the Parti Quebecois interfere with the reform of the electoral map, I do not think this is what democracy is about. In a democracy, the weight of votes should be comparable between citizens," he said.  LINK({FR}