Thirty-Seven Years of Mediocrity

Back in the day, when my older brother had his bicycle stolen, two Montreal police detectives showed up on our doorstep to see if they could help, bearing a box of French fries to help placate our sadness and incidentally speaking very passable English.

Could it happen today?
I imagine if you call the Montreal police about your car being stolen from your driveway, they'd tell you to call your insurance company, as they couldn't be bothered with such trivial matters, perhaps too busy militating for a three day work week, instead of doing their job. Link

In almost all respects, life has gotten better and easier, largely because of technology, but looking back over the years, I sadly conclude that Quebec society has actually regressed to the point of being pathetic.

A few days ago we were treated to a news conference of concerned south shore mayors and chambers of commerce big shots complaining that the promised toll on the proposed replacement to the Champlain bridge would represent an unbearable hardship to commuters. Link
These whingers warned of the disastrous effect where drivers will shun the toll bridge in favour of the free Victoria and  Jacques Cartier bridges, supposedly causing massive traffic jams.
The toll on the Olivier-Charbonneau Bridge connecting Montreal to Laval is about $2, so the question remains....would you drive five kilometres out of your way and into a traffic jam to save two dollars?
Just a few days earlier, I drove into New York city via the magnificent George Washington Bridge and paid a toll of $13.....Yup, $13.

Come to think of it, the George Washington Bridge took only four years to build back in 1927, while the new Champlain bridge replacement is scheduled to take 10 years to complete!
Is that not pathetic?

Victoria Bridge...4 years to build, 153 years ago. Still standing..

I'll remind readers that Montreal's Victoria Bridge, spanning the St. Lawrence River was built over 153 years ago and is still doing yeoman's duty.  Built before the invention of steel, the wrought iron bridge was built in just five years, using innovative and cutting edge techniques, all without the use of power tools or computers! Link

Are we actually unable to compete with 150 year old technology?

A while back I posted a video of a 30 story hotel in China being built in just thirty days.
It's an attitude called 'can do,' something we had, but lost over the years, the ability to rise to the occasion and get things done through hard work and true grit.
Think of it, a skyscraper in thirty days. Here we couldn't do it in thirty months! Link

I don't want to get into stories of the good old days, but permit me a few observations.
When I was a kid, doctors made house calls and it didn't take 21 hours to be seen in an emergency room.
In modern Quebec people are literally dying, while waiting to be seen by doctors. Link{fr}
While Quebec has more doctors per capita than almost all the other provinces, 25% of us cannot find a family doctor, while the rate in the rest of Canada is about half that.
Why is this?

Respect has gone down the drain.

Cops walked a beat and kept the neighbourhood clean, or at least cleaner than today. They wore the uniform proudly and people looked up to them.
The picture of this Laval patrol car parked in handicapped spot is indicative of attitudes today, the pride and respect, all but gone.

Corruption has always existed in Quebec, but never on a level seen today, where the sophistication and scope of the graft boggles the mind.
Our  infrastructure is literally collapsing, overpasses falling down and cement flying off bridges on a weekly basis, built with inferior cement and shoddy workmanship, but at an astronomical cost. 

It is no coincidence that our almost forty years of mediocrity and 200 billion dollars plus of debt that we have racked up over that period, coincides exactly with the rise of nationalism and the promotion of the sovereignty movement.
So consumed has the province become with language, culture and sovereignty issues, that we've completely taken our eye off the ball, engaged in nonsensical debates while our society crumbles, as companies, citizens and  international investers flee to greener pastures.

On Friday I spent altogether too much time watching the French news channels starting with Mario Dumont's French language talk-show where the subject du jour wasn't waiting times in the ER, our massive debt, exorbitant taxes, or the lack of productivity, or come to think of it, any of the real issues that affect us.
Nope, what obsesses Quebecers today is but another red herring, the idiotic Charter of the Pathetic.

And so viewers were treated to an oral screed by some Francophone zartiste, a nobody that not one English person in the world would recognize, who was dishing it out to Muslim women, not only supporting the Charter, but intimating that nobody be allowed to wear a Hijab in public at all, because it offended her sense of citizenship.
According to her, the Muslims, left to their own design, will ruin Quebec, but alas readers, that ship has sailed, Quebec is already ruined and not by the Muslims, but by us.

Later on in the broadcast, a bit of good news, as Prime Minister Harper announced a free-trade deal with Europe, one that even Quebec supports, if you can believe it.
But I was confused, after all, why on Earth would spoil-sport Quebec support anything proposed by Ottawa?
All became clear a little later as our illustrious finance minister, Nicolas Marceau, proudly explained that Canada would compensate Quebec for any losses, like the cheese producers, who simply can't compete with French producers.

For God's sake, can you believe we can't compete with the French!

A local cheese producer who was interviewed on the news channel, admitted that it isn't only a question of price, but also the fact that Quebec can't compete on a quality level as well.
Of course we all understand that Quebec protects dairy farmers by artificially inflating the cost of milk through  'supply management,' a quaint euphemism for price-fixing.

While the rest of Canada is moving away of these anachronisms, (the Wheat Board cartel was stripped of exclusivity back in 2012,) Quebec is forging ahead with more price-fixing, now proposing  to control the price on newly issued French books, in order to support the authors and small bookstores.
Who believes that this measure will sell more books?
And so in Quebec, it isn't only at McDonalds where the Monopoly game is played!

In reaction to the falling gate receipts for Quebec made movies, the government is studying a new tax on theatre tickets and perhaps a levy on Netflix. Why not?
Think that's gonna increase ticket sales?
When interviewed about the proposed tax, one of the owners of the Guzzo theatre chain, (I can't remember which)  told a television interviewer that the real trouble is that the movies produced in Quebec, generally stink.

Pathetic...

Still later in the day, I caught a press conference by Diane DeCourcy, another PQ stalwart, who was describing the new rules to be implemented by the OQLF. It seems that language police are installing new protocols so that in its never-ending battle to terrorize English citizens and their businesses, care will be taken not to embarrass Quebec in the international press, à la Pastagate.
In Quebec, this is what we mean by progress.

Then there was a newspaper story last week detailing how Hydro-Quebec is no longer competitive because successive governments (both Liberals and PQ)  forced the once mighty power producer to absorb overpriced electricity from ridiculous pork-barrel wind-generating projects, this while we've got rivers up the whazzo, just waiting to be dammed. Link{fr}
The pride and joy of Quebec Inc. has been reduced to a laughingstock, where in the face of declining demand and collapsing prices for electricity, it is mothballing existing power plants with one hand, and accepting new wind farms with the other, which are producing electricity at a rate almost three times the price of the mothballed plants, worthy of a Monty Python skit!

Our government has become so bloated and incompetent that it cannot effectively provide services at any meaningful level or within any reasonable time frame. Every new proposal is bogged down in endless studies by bureaucrats who are reminiscent of the dysfunctional employees of Fawlty Towers.

I'm reminded of the famous Seinfeld episode where the ever bumbling and unsuccessful George Costanza decides to act exactly opposite of what he usually does because he hasn't been successful following his instincts.
"If every instinct that you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right!"

Perhaps our government should follow the same concept and lower taxes on books and movie tickets!
Instead of raising subsidies to video game companies, perhaps the government should consider  lowering royalties paid by mining companies. Jobs in the resource industry are high-paying and permanent, after all, production can't move offshore.
While our idiot Natural Resource Minister is creating a new higher royalty scheme, companies are pulling out of Quebec at an alarming rate.

I recently spoke with a manager of a ski hill in the Laurentiens who complained that the Quebec environment department nixed an expansion plan because it would intrude on a nesting ground of ducks.
I know how they'd handle the problem in China, it's called Peking Duck.

And so we are actually debating the environmental impact of oil drilling on Anticosti, an uninhabited island the size of Crete or the reversal of a pipeline, as if the direction in which the oil flows, East or West, is actually germane.
All manner of commissions, committees and study groups plow away, examining issues that in some cases actually become moot, like shale gas development, where the companies involved got tired of waiting for the government to issue permits and so packed up and left the province.
Projects take so long that sometimes they are obsolete before even completed. Take for example the project to computerize the health records , not exactly brain surgery.

"Auditor-General Renaud Lachance concluded that: “The initial parameters of the project, costs, scope and schedule, will not be respected. Given these changes, we consider that the project in its originally defined structure no longer exists and, in this sense, is a failure.”

Lachance asserted that the DSQ was budgeted in 2006 at $563 million and was to be in full operation by 2010. The program had the backing of Canada Health Infoway.

Now, the government is committed to spending $900 million more to computerize patient health records, bringing the cost beyond $1.4 billion when the DSQ becomes operational in 2016...

....Lachance would not venture a guess at the final cost of the DSQ.

What’s more, the strategy for the architecture of the system has changed. Instead of a new province-wide system for all regions and health providers, the strategy is to make use of regional solutions and to tie them all together." Link

Pathetic.

Quebecers now work about two full weeks less per year than those in the ROC, so it's no wonder family income in Quebec is about $77k, while $92k in Canada.
Quebec has about 30% more people on welfare, 44% more people using food banks, 8% less people employed and a startling 46% less individuals owning a business.

As the province goes to Hell in an handbasket we remain obsessed with the Charter of the Values, like discussing what type of music the band should play during the sinking of the Titantic.
Unbelievably, it has become the most important political issue since the last referendum.

Why am I so glum?
Because the public doesn't seem to care.
Our economic collapse has been papered over with debt and subsidies from the ROC, so no politician in Quebec (save Regis Lebeaume) is willing to tell the truth about our famous Quebec model, which is actually a fiasco, reminiscent of the Bixi project, something we all wanted to succeed, but where reality dictates that the model doesn't work.

I actually hope the PQ will be re-elected in another minority government so that they can finally tank the whole province, because like an addict who has to hit rock bottom before seeking the remedy, until Quebecers come face to face with the reality of their own addiction to laziness and entitlement, we can never recover.

And it is coming sooner than later. The next budget, regardless of who presents it, will finally confirm that Quebec under its present circumstances can not operate in the black.

But by all means let us ignore all this and obsess over the Charter of the Pathetic.

Have I used the word 'pathetic' enough?