"Tough love is an expression used when someone
treats another person harshly or sternly with the intent to help them
in the long run....
In most uses, there must be some actual love or feeling of affection
behind the harsh or stern treatment to be defined as tough love. For
example, genuinely concerned parents refusing to support their
drug-addicted child financially until he or she enters drug
rehabilitation would be said to be practising tough love. Athletic
coaches who maintain strict rules and highly demanding training
regimens, but who care about their players, could also be said to be
practising tough love." Link
Vacationing here in Florida I've been exposed to the local news and the different take Americans have on general societal principles, an interesting learning experience about how differently public life is ordered here, not better or worse, per se, but different.
Banging around the local channels is a story of an eighteen year-old high school student,
Rachel Canning, who is suing her parents for support after she left home in a dispute.
Miss Canning claimed her parents threw her out in November 2013, when
she turned 18, because they didn’t like her boyfriend. She said they
refused to pay for her higher education, even after she received
acceptance letters from several universities. In court filings, she
alleged her parents were abusive, contributed to an eating disorder, and
pushed her to get a basketball scholarship.
The Cannings, who
have two other daughters, said they helped her through the eating
disorder and paid for a private school where she would play less
basketball than at a state-run school. Retired Lincoln Park police chief
Sean Canning and his wife, Elizabeth, said their daughter voluntarily
left home because she did not want to abide by reasonable household
rules, such as being respectful, keeping a curfew, doing chores and
ending a relationship with a boyfriend whom they believe is a bad
influence.
“We love our child and miss her”, Mr Canning told New Jersey newspaper the Daily Record
before the hearing. “It’s killing me and my wife. We have a child we
want home. We’re not draconian and now we’re getting hauled into court.
She’s demanding that we pay her bills but she doesn’t want to live at
home and she’s saying: ‘I don’t want to live under your rules.’” Link
The judge threw out her request, but as is the norm in the litigious USA, the case is certainly headed for appeal. What else in new?
Incidentally the young lady isn't asking for
chump change, she wants nearly $35k a year plus tuition.Yikes!
Somehow, I see an analogy here in this story between Canada's relationship with Quebec, where for forty years Canada has pandered to Quebec nationalism, caving in on myriad of issues both political and financial, in a sadly desperate effort to placate a recalcitrant province which wants the financial benefits of the Canadian home without the obligation to live by 'house rules.'
Now one manifestation of 'tough love' is that in many cases, it is characterized by an abrupt and monumental shift in parenting, from soft and indulgent to harsh and unwavering, literally overnight.
This after painful reflection and soul-searching by parents, leading them to the conclusion that their pandering over the years had the opposite desired effect and where a radical course change is all that is left in order to save the situation.
It happens when exhausted parents are at the end of their rope and see no other alternative, just like
Rachel Canning parents who obviously reached their parenting limit, despite their obvious love for their daughter.
So readers, is 'tough love' where we are headed in Canada's relationship with Quebec?.......I think so.
Certainly federal politicians haven't given us any indication that this is the direction they are headed, but there are clear and meaningful indications that this is the case.
In the end, politicians take the lead from the public they represent and get in front of the gathering wave of public opinion.
While we haven't heard a peep about 'tough love' from any elected federal politician yet, it will break out spontaneously, like a case of chicken pox, if and when Pauline wins her majority.
For a while now, the likes
of Mario Beaulieu and company have been whining that Canadian media has undertaken a savage campaign of '
Quebec-bashing', an unfair and racially motivated attack on Quebec.
Of course this isn't entirely true, not the bashing part, which actually is bang on, but rather the contention that the denigration is racially motivated, because it isn't.
The attacks on Quebec are strictly targeted at separatists and the Parti Quebecois, something Beaulieu understands, but attempts to spin, hoping to characterize the attacks as an affront to all Quebecers
But if Beaulieu is perturbed by the mild criticism of the past, he and his minion are in for a rude shock, one coming very soon should Pauline attain her majority government(not a sure thing by a long shot)
While we've been slowly working our way towards this new 'tough love' approach to Quebec relations, the dam finally burst with an article by
Jonathan Kay in the National Post.
The no-holds-barred screed was ground-breaking because it pulled no punches and dealt directly with the sovereignty issue from a Canadian standpoint. A watershed moment or '
tipping point' in the more modern vernacular, it marked that from this day forward, the PQ and the separatists will no longer control the conversation and indeed the agenda.
While Ottawa has steadfastly refused to discuss sovereignty in any meaningful way, the Canadian media has finally put post-sovereignty borders and the question of partition itself (gasp!) clearly on the table.
Issues long settled in separatists' mind are now open for discussion, and the debate will blow apart the PQ's rose-tinted promise of an easy road to independence.
Michael Den Tandt; (National Post)
"As we head into a Quebec provincial election, with the separatist Parti
Quebecois in a position to win a majority, this much can be taken as
given; the response in the rest of Canada to any resulting new push for
independence will be quite different from last time, or the time before
that. There will be no candle in the window — no heartfelt plea from
Main Street Ontario, imploring Quebecers to vote “Non.” If anything, the
opposite could occur....
In the face of a third referendum, the political pressure from Main
Street in the rest of Canada to push back — possibly even via a movement
for a nationwide referendum on whether Quebec should be handed its hat,
and don’t let the door hit you on the way out — would be impossible to
ignore. Read more
Jonathan Kay; (National Post)
"During the 1995 referendum campaign, the federalist forces held a
downtown Montreal rally that drew an estimated 100,000 participants. But
as Michael Den Tandt reported in Wednesday’s edition of the National Post, such scenes are unlikely to be repeated this time around....
So how should our federal government respond if a referendum is
called by a re-elected Parti Québécois? Here are four suggestions:
First, don’t act as if Quebec separation would be some kind of
apocalypse. Acting as if Quebec’s departure from Canada is unthinkable
destroys our bargaining position on a hundred different issues once the
referendum fails. Indeed, such hysteria is a major reason Quebec has
built up that annual $16.3-billion bribe.
Second, notwithstanding the paragraph above, let’s not waste our
breath lecturing Quebec about the economic fallout of separation. Like
all sentimental nationalists, Quebec separatists see independence as a
sort of magical elixir. Warning them about dollars and cents is like
warning teenage poker players that all those cigars might eventually
give them gum cancer.
Third, make NDP leader Thomas Mulcair — and every other soft
federalist — tell us clearly whether he or she respects Canadian law.
Specifically, the Clarity Act, which defines a valid referendum result
as one based on “a clear expression of the will of the population,”
expressed through “a clear majority” of voters — as opposed to the
bare-bones majority standard of 50%-plus-one, which the NDP has
supported since the Jack Layton era.
Fourth, and this is the big one: Have the courage to tell Quebec,
flat out, that if Canada is divisible, so is Quebec. And whatever clear
voting standard is used to adjudicate the overall result of the
province’s referendum will be the same result used to adjudicate the
status of the province’s northern Cree regions, the Eastern Townships,
and, most importantly, Montreal. Read more
Wow!
Them's fighting words, something Quebec has never heard before and as large a dose of 'tough love' as it comes, as unexpected and inconceivable to sovereigntists as were the newly found parenting skills to Rachel Canning.
The Conservatives are itching to get into the act and
Maxime Bernier warned that while Ottawa will keep silent in the Quebec election debate, that if federalism becomes an issue, the Conservatives intend on speaking out.
But living in the past, most Quebecers still believe that Canada will bend over backwards to accommodate their
enfant gâté act
and that Ottawa will continue its forty year policy of appeasement.
Those days are gone and if Mario Beaulieu thinks the media has been overly harsh towards Quebec, he hasn't seen anything yet!
While the PQ and Quebec sovereigntists remain blithely unaware of the tectonic shift in the ground below their feet, there are some francophone journalists who very well read the writing on the wall and are sounding the alarm.
Benoît Aubin (Le Journal de Montreal)
"The ambiguity of a possible referendum is deeply ingrained in our political fibre and doesn't seem to bother Quebec.
But it is different on the other side of the Ottawa River. The National Post is already campaigning to press the Harper government to hold a referendum the day after the Quebec election, to force Quebec to choose, right now, once and for all, hoping that Quebec says yes, killing off bilingual cereal boxes, official bilingualism, equalization and transfers ... a beautiful and prosperous Canada purring along in English while Quebec chokes on poutine. Link{fr}
So it's gratifying to see that somebody in the French press recognizes the gathering storm!
The question isn't how sovereigntists react to this new political reality, but rather how the unpoliticized man and woman in the street will.
The nasty and unexpected debate over the 'day after' is something Quebecers never really expected, convinced by separatist leaders that the road to sovereignty is as simple as a YES vote, after which all would unfurl seamlessly.
This debate will be devastating.
As Mr. Aubin explains, Quebecers have been content in the past to have the referendum question kick around eternally, enjoying the annoyance it represents for Canada as much as a teenager enjoys sticking it to her parents by sporting a nose piercing or an outrageous punk hairdo.
From now on the sovereignty debate will be as painful and insufferable in Quebec as it has always been in Canada. For Quebec, wrestling with the newly emboldened Canada, will be something unexpected and unpleasant, like discovering rodent at the bottom of the box of cereal.
It changes everything.
Pauline Marois warned Quebecers that part of her sovereigntist plan was to goad Canada into endless squabbles that would raise the
enmity between Quebec and Canada and push soft nationalists over the line.
She is going to get her wish, the fight is on, but she'll probably not get the result she anticipated.
In fact she and Quebec are going to get mauled like the foolhardy idiot wading into shark infested waters on a lark and she's going to take Quebecers along for the nasty ride.
And so separatists who spout nonsense and who sell fantasies are going to be rudely challenged firstly by bloggers, then journalists in the mainstream press and ultimately by federal politicians.
The childlike arguments and nonsensical assumptions about sovereignty are finally going to be demolished and for separatists, it isn't going to be a pleasant experience.
For those who believe that in response to a ferocious federalist attack, Quebecers will somehow stand up and grow a pair, don't count on it......but that is the stuff for another post.
Let me re-iterate my position, that is that I do not want Montreal separated from Quebec, but I do not want Quebec separated from Canada.
But given one, I'll accept the other and I think that is where the debate is going.
So let me begin countering separatist arguments, starting with a missive from the insufferable pseudo-intellectual
Mathieu Bock-Coté who warns us that the deconstruction of the Ukraine is inevitable, obviously because it serves as an analogy to his separatist agenda.
"One thing is clear: Toxic borders are bad. The western part of the country is inhabited by Ukrainians. The east of the country is inhabited by Russians. And in a world that sees relations between Western Europe and Russia as fragile, the country is torn. Ukrainians want to get closer to Europe, largely to protect themselves from Russia. Russians in Ukraine want to get closer to their mother country.
History catches up with us: old conflicts end up mostly reborn. Geopolitics has its laws which we are foolish to ignore. Basic lesson: an artificial country will eventually burst. We can not force people to live together who do not share the same identity references of civilization. Link
Of course one can just smell the argument here, that Quebec is somehow in the same boat as Ukraine with it artificial borders holding back a frustrated and put upon people, well-deserving of independence.
But if
Mr. Bock-Coté can make the analogy that Quebec is Ukraine, so too can the argument be made that an independent Quebec cannot force Montreal from seeking its own destiny, based on the very same argument that it does not share the same values or vision as the rest of Quebec.
Mr. Kay rightly argues that if Quebec breaks away from Canada, so too can Montreal from Quebec.
No doubt separatists like Bock-Coté will turn cartwheels to counter this notion, but the damaging debate itself is actually what we federalists desire.
For forty years separatist have controlled the debate, the hour of the referendum and the question, as well as the presumptions as to what an independent Quebec will look like.
Presenting the Canadian point of view that the breakup is not at all as separatists promise, is a useful and sobering exercise that just might convince Quebecers to abandon the self-destructive and childish path similar to that of sad sack
Rachel Canning.
