PQ & Péladeau Holding Back NHL Franchise in Quebec.

Bettman: Quebec's Worse Nightmare

For well nigh 40 years, successive Quebec governments, whether Liberal or Pequiste have played the nationalism card in order to extort money from the ROC in the finest tradition of a political blackmailer with a compromising sex tape in hand.
Today we find ourselves in the extraordinary situation where the separatist government of Pauline Marois takes with one hand, sixteen billion dollars a year from Ottawa, while giving the finger to Canadians with the other.
It's a fine and cynical act, like a radical student who spouts Marxism while living in the lap of luxury in his parents million dollar home, all the while threatening to leave.

It's an understandably successful strategy, as Canadian politicians have indulged a petulant Quebec for decades, leaving the impression that the province can spit upon the rest of Canada with utter immunity and without consequences as successive federal governments cave in to the incessant financial demands of Quebec in a vain and impossible effort to buy its love.

But in the private sector this nationalist strategy has not been so successful, actually far from it, where hundreds of thousands of individuals and thousands of companies have abandoned Quebec to the greener pastures of the ROC where they are respected and appreciated.

Those who have left, have no doubt contributed to the economic decline that has seen  Quebec cascade down from the powerhouse province it was forty years ago, to the beggar province that it is today, living on borrowed money and the largess of the very Canadians it so detests.

But because this economic decline has been pasted over by successive Quebec governments with an ever-increasing debt bonanza coupled with financial aid of other wealthy provinces, ordinary Quebecers live with the fantasy that everything's just fine and dandy.

You know the old saying... Denial is not a river in Egypt. 

And so while Quebecers blithely believe that all is hunky-dory and that Ottawa will indulge them forever, what they fail to understand is that ordinary Canadians have not and will not.

Here in Quebec, federalists and separatists live side by side out of necessity, each side making the necessary accommodation to live in peace.

Nobody else will say it in the mainstream press, so it befalls on me to say what few will admit out loud.
Plain and simple, the majority of Canadians dislike or hate Quebec separatists, who are seen as despicable, disloyal, diabolical and dishonest.
I can't be more blunt.

While the percentage of Quebecers who want to separate is going down, the number of Canadians who want Quebec to separate is going up and with the PQ shenanigans of late, that number is going to rise even higher.

I'm not bringing all this up to be cruel, but rather so nationalists reading this understand why Quebec City will never get an NHL franchise as long as the PQ is in power and Pierre-Karl Peladeau is involved with the franchise.

The NHL is an exclusive club and owners get to choose who gets in and who doesn't.
To those who think that business is business and that financial considerations are all that counts, ask blackballed Jim Basillie how things really work in the NHL.

There are almost a dozen billionaire owners in the NHL, the rest hundred millionaires and if you think that they'd hold their nose and vote for a separatist to join their club, you don't know much about the super rich. Many of these guys give tens of millions of dollars away each year in charity, so the idea that money is the motivating factor is utter delusion.
The NHL board of govenors is a club comprised of rich, conservative and wildly patriotic Canadians and Americans, whose politics generally side on the Republican in the USA  and Conservative side in Canada.
Collectively, American NHL owners donated four times as much money to the Republican Party as compared to the Democrats. 

If Bernard Drainville goes ahead with his plan to ban Jewish doctors from wearing a kippah to work, Regis Lebeaume may as well stop building the new arena, Quebec City will be permanently blackballed.

Among the generally ultra-conservative groups that is the NHL board of Governors, count eight Jewish members, including the chairman of the board. It takes just nine "No" votes to scuttle any expansion or relocation.

The iron-fisted president of the league, Gary Bettman enjoys absolute power after his devastatingly powerful win over the hockey players union in this year's lockout.
What Gary wants, Gary gets from a grateful band of owners who rightfully see him as a savior.
Bettman is, as you know Jewish and although he doesn't wear a kippah, his affinity to the tribe is solid and he is particularly sensitive to antisemitism.

"Bettman has confided that his discomfort is increased by the  tinge of anti-Semitism that hovers in the strike rhetoric. Toronto columnists have referred to Bettman as 'nebbish' and complain the league is now run by 'New York lawyers,' and players have joked that Bettman's wife would rather 'go shopping' than watch a hockey game -- all of which can be construed as a code word for 'Jew' ...

Notwithstanding the dollars, if Bettman wants to keep a franchise out of Quebec he can do it himself, that is how much control he exercises.

By the way, it was rumored that Bettman was meeting with the super federalist billionaire Demarais family last year, perhaps with an eye to putting together an alternative ownership group, but this was before the PQ got elected.
Now with a separatist government, all bets are off.

It takes a two-thirds vote to grant an NHL franchise (not the 50% + one that Quebec is so fond of) and there isn't a chance in heck that in the present situation, that Quebec could muster the necessary votes.

Aside from the eight Jews, there's a devout Christian, a fracking king, an Alberta Oil sands developer, and two proud Italians and three Greeks. The others are an assortment of tough guys, used to getting their own way.
The only thing that all these governors have in common, is the English language. The Nordiques have absolutely nobody carrying the ball for them in the boardroom.

Take a closer look at the Board of Govenors of the NHL, the ultimate body that will decide on any potential Quebec franchise.

 And by the way, if the Nordique Nation thinks that they have Geoff Molson's vote in their pocket, they couldn't be more wrong.
The Montreal Canadiens owner may not be bright, but isn't so stupid as to carve up his own market. The closed door vote remains top secret, so how do you think he will really vote?

As long as now, out-of-the-closet separatist Pierre-Karl Péladeau is involved with the team and as long as the PQ keeps threatening minorities and religions, there isn't a chance in heck of them scoring a franchise.

The choice of separatist Péladeau as show-runner was so patently arrogant and stupid, it goes to the utter fantasy under which Quebec lives, whereby they honestly believe that Canadians (and Americans) outside Quebec will give them a fair shake.

For those Quebecers who  choose to ignore this unpleasant reality, just keep voting for the PQ and enjoy the Quebec Remparts. 

And as the venerable Soup Nazi told Georg Costanza in Seinfeld, there's "No soup for you!"