French versus English Volume 65

OQLF targets American companies

Radicals propose another laughable boycott.. Good Luck!!

A couple of months ago I told you that a lawsuit was brewing in regards to the OQLF demand that companies sporting English names be required to add a French descriptor.
As you all must know by now, that lawsuit has been  deposited with six very large retailers (Costco, Best Buy, Gap, Guess, Old Navy and Wal-Mart) banding together to defend their right to use their trademark to identify their business in the marketplace.  Link

When I first saw the list of stores, I was actually disappointed at how few decided to fight, but after closer consideration, a different picture emerged.

My ennui was caused by the absence of Canada's biggest powerhouse retailer "Canadian Tire" from among the group taking on the OQLF in court.

Why?
Because of any firm that has a chance to win its case in court, it is Canadian Tire, a Canadian company that has operated successfully across Quebec for over seventy-five years.
Unlike the upstarts suing the OQLF, it would be almost impossible to rule against a company that has been so firmly established in Quebec for so long and in fact even if the court ruled in favour of the OQLF in law, the principle of an acquired right would apply as surely as in the case where your neighbour asks you to move your thirty-year old fence because it encroaches a few feet on his land.
Ain't going to happen, ask any lawyer.

And so, if Canadian Tire was on the list, the case would be a slam dunk and that readers is exactly the point.

It appears that the OQLF has targeted American companies alone, perhaps making the decision that to take on Canadian icons would be suicidal.

Yup, it isn't a coincidence that there isn't one Canadian retailer on the list, no Brick, Canadian Tire, Roots, Smart Set, Scores ,Winners, Homesense, etc, etc.

Hmmm... I'm sure that when the U.S State Department gets wind that American companies are being singled-out, they will not be pleased. They clearly can intervene if they so choose to.
If you think the American government is unaware or uninterested as to what is going on here, I can assure that is not the case and this I speak of with direct personal knowledge.

Clearly the OQLF is picking its fight with American companies because in their estimation, they have less public support and more importantly, less judicial support, especially in the Supreme Court.

Now French language militants have been whinging for years that the Supreme Court has 'butchered' Bill 101, ruling unconstitutional, clause after clause, but it really isn't true.

In almost all cases, all the Supreme Court did was to confirm 'unfavourable' decisions that were decided in lower courts in Quebec and finally in the highest court in Quebec, the Court of Appeal.

If the six litigants win their case in the highest Court in Quebec and the OQLF decides to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, before accepting to hear the case, the Supremos should consider saying 'No Thanks" leaving the Quebec government and militants with an unfavourable decision 'made exclusively in Quebec.'
What will the language militants say then?
Actually they have said it already, that is that the Quebec Court of Appeal is a federalist bastion, where separatists can never get a fair shake.
Boohoo!.......

Now readers, here is an interesting case study in the stupidities of descriptors;

Does the pictogram above representing APPLE need a descriptor?
It is not as stupid as it sounds.
Clearly the trademark represents an English word, nobody could pretend otherwise.
Maybe Apple will start a trend?
Can anybody guess the name of one Canadian retailer who may opt for the Apple solution if and when it is forced to adopt a French descriptor?

  

Charbonneau commision follies

Most of us don't have the time nor the inclination to devote hours and hours to watch the daily goings on at the Charbonneau commission and so we depend on summaries and commentaries offered by analysts in the media, whose summations and conclusions are usually pretty good....but not always.

Having been involved in the fundraising process, the revelations about illegal campaign contributions didn't surprise me much, but one part of Mr. Zambito's testimony did come as quite a surprise and shock.

It wasn't the fact that he claimed that he made a $30,000 cash contribution to the Liberal Party of
Quebec, what shocks me is how the payment was made.

Mr. Zambito claimed that he made the payoff directly to Pierre Bibeau, a Liberal party fundraiser and at the time, husband of Nathalie Normandeau, a member of Jean Charest's cabinet. Mr. Zambito made the alleged delivery of his 'brown envelope' in Mr. Bibeau's office in  the Loto-Quebec building in downtown Montreal, where Mr. Bibeau worked as a VP for the provincial lottery corporation.

Whaaat????
This is where my eyebrows were raised.

Only an idiot or an arrogant bastard would allow a transaction like that to take place at his office, especially at the Loto-Quebec building in downtown Montreal, where visitors are logged in and names recorded. If Zambito did in fact visit Bibeau's office, it is all in the record. I've visited the offices of Loto-Quebec and can confirm that you can't get in without an appointment. Visitors are issued a badge and in some cases escorted up the elevator.

What a fool!
Now everybody who I know in the fundraising business, understands that these types of meetings should never take place in your home or office.  
NEVER!!! NEVER!!
 
Why, because people in your office or at home are witnesses, they know you and probably who you are meeting.
Why on Earth put your employees or family in a position where they may have to confirm that a meeting took place to investigators?

In fact Mr. Zambito explained that all his other 'transactions' took place in public, as in fast food restaurants. This is how it is supposed to be.

Now after the revelation about the alleged meeting at the Loto-Quebec between Zambito and Bibeau, a panel on television were discussing the situation.
Quebec's media wunderkind, Mathieu Bock-Côté commented that it didn't seem too bright an idea to have meetings in public places like fast food restaurants, where money was to be exchanged and further commented that those criminals who did so, were stupid.

Readers, only an idiot comments on things he knows nothing about and believe me on this subject Mr. Côté is about as conversant as Judge Charbonneau, the head of the inquiry and another woefully uninformed, when it comes to these things.
I seriously doubt if either of them ever saw a stack of $10,000 in cash.

So let me help Mr. Côté understand and perhaps readers will appreciate a lesson in what I would call 'Bagman 101.'

Mr Côté couldn't be more wrong, a fast food restaurant is a perfect spot for an exchange of the infamous 'brown envelope'

It is called hiding in plain view.
The two parties involved in the transaction meet at a busy McDonalds at lunchtime where the place is full of hungry people each concentrating on their Big Macs, oblivious to who is seated beside them.
Both parties check out the restaurant for the fluke chance that someone there knows them, but the restaurant is usually chosen for its off the beaten track location.

The giver and the receiver sit down and consume a meal like any two colleagues out for a fast lunch.
The 'giver' has the brown envelope hidden between the pages of a Journal de Montreal which he places on the table and which he forgets when he leaves first. The 'receiver' leaves several minutes later, carefully scooping up the newspaper.
There is never any need to count money, the giver and the receiver both have a vested interest in making the transaction work.
The parties can choose a different restaurant each time, insuring that family, friends, employees and co-workers are ignorant of what transpired.
My God, Mr. Bock-Côté , don't you ever watch spy shows!

Now as I remember there were times when lengthy discussions had to take place, not necessarily transfers of money and in these cases, a quiet yet discreet location was required.
Nothing beats a Chinese restaurant in the afternoon, well after the lunch hour rush and well before the dinnertime crowd arrives. Chinatown in any major or medium-sized Canadian city is ideal and whether it is on Spadina, Sumerset or la Gauchetière, it is always pretty much the same.

The restaurant is usually deserted and so it's easy to secure a quiet table in an inauspicious back corner. The server, who is probably the only waiter covering the moribund afternoon shift, is usually an uninterested middle-aged Chinese who is more interested in the poker game going on in the kitchen than fussing over you.
It is easy to have an hour long meeting, completely private.

As a now deceased senator and mentor of mine explained to me, getting identified by the staff in a Chinese restaurant is almost impossible,
"To the Chinese, we white people all look alike" and on top of it, he continued,
"A Cop could show a Chinese waiter a picture of his own mother and he would deny knowing her nine times out of ten"

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Pay in cash, leave a decent tip, not too big or small to call attention and you are good to go.

Now how do politicians, who are recognizable have clandestine meetings (and yes they do.)

Hotel rooms, where a third party rents the room and the politicians meet in private.
Remember the story of Brian Mulroney meeting lobbyist Karl Heinz Schreiber in a hotel room in Mirabel?
Textbook.. Link

Pay attention and learn something, Mr. Mathieu Bock-Côté!

7 out of 10 PQ cabinet ministers send their children to private school

Reaction to Quebec education minister Marie Malavoy's attack on private schools was swift and furious, eliciting a firestorm of criticism in the press. In an altogether familiar refrain Premier Marois was forced once again to correct a minister publicly telling reporters that the government has no intention of cutting subsidies to private schools that require students to take entrance exams. Link{Fr}
Reporters couldn't resist and launched an investigation as to how many ministers in Pauline's cabinet with school age children, send them to private school;

"By sending his children to private school, the Minister of Higher Education, Pierre Duchesne, contradicts the principles defended publicly by the government of Pauline Marois.

During the election campaign Marois said this;

"I believe that the Minister of Health has the duty to be exemplary. As for me, a Minister of Education has the duty to be exemplary (and should) send their children to public school, "Pauline Marois said during the election campaign in August.

She was nastily referring to the portly ADQ candidate, Dr. Gaeten Barrete, whose girth, in her opinion, disqualified him for the position of Health minister.  Link

However, two of Pierre Duchesne's three children go to private school and the children of the Minister of Education, Marie Malavoy, also spent several years in a private school.

During the election campaign, Marois also attacked  François Legault for having sent his children to private school.

Oh the hypocrisy!

PQ would apply French-language laws to daycares

"Immigrants to Quebec who want to send their children to daycare will soon have to look into finding a French-language centre, the government said Wednesday, outlining the latest plank in its plan to overhaul the province's language laws.
The measure will be part of legislation to be tabled this fall that is aimed at toughening Bill 101, formally known as the French Language Charter, Families Minister Nicole Léger said.

"Bill 101 is going to be changed," Léger said in an interview. "I will have plenty of support as family minister to make sure it also extends to daycares."

Quebec has various types of child-care centres and it is not immediately clear whether the new legislation would apply to all of them — if the bill even passed in the legislature, where the Parti Québécois government has a minority. But it appears that the new rules would at least apply to children up to age five who attend publicly run or subsidized daycares and early-childhood centres."  LRead the rest of the story

Lost in all this is a conclusion that nobody in the mainstream media picked up.

Had the PQ intended to apply the Bill 101 to cegeps, it would have been included in this proposal and so it seems that idea is off the table.

Radio-Canada too Quebec-centric

"A long-standing complaint concerning Quebec navel-gazing by the CBC’s French-language news service has been revived as the national broadcast regulator considers Radio-Canada’s licence renewal. Sen. Pierre de Bane, a former Liberal cabinet minister under prime minister Pierre Trudeau, commissioned an exhaustive research study that suggests Quebec television viewers may be getting an “unrepresentative image of the Canadian reality.”
A scientifically vigorous sample of 2010 newscasts on Le Telejournal, taken by a Carleton University researcher, found that 42% of the coverage focused on Quebec, a third dealt with international news and just 20% covered Canadian “national” news.
Regional stories focusing on the other 11 provinces and territories comprised less than six per cent of Le Telejournal’s coverage over a month-long period.
By contrast, CBC’s The National focused 37% of its newscast on Canadian national news, 36% on international events and the remaining 27% on the provinces and territories." Read the rest of the story

Quebec continues to decline

Here is a chart prepared by DAVID, at republique de bananes, reflecting a sad decline in Quebec's relative weight in Canada. Read the original story in French

The red line is the demographic proportion of Quebec's population in Canada and the blue line, Quebec's portion of the Gross Domestic Product.

etc. etc.

David Hague: Time for some Anglo push-back in Quebec (good read)

Montreal engineer first to admit he took kickbacks

After furious French lobbying, CRTC blocks Bell bid to take over Astral

Quebec companies most heavily taxed

Budget cuts hurting bilingualism 

Canadian flag rally set for Quebec city


Attention readers:

I would have liked to offer a longer post for this weekend, however I was preoccupied and so cut things short.
On Thursday morning my son and daughter-in-law presented us with a little baby granddaughter and as you can imagine, our family is as excited as can be.

Since my son and his family are expats, we are hopping in the car to visit the newest addition to our family and so, I beg readers indulgence if posting  is disrupted over the beginning of next week.

Have a very good weekend, I'll know I will!!