Everybody's Talking About....

Most anglophones hardly bother with French television. Unless you have superb French, it's hard to understand and truthfully most of the original programming is exceedingly dull. One of the programs that anglophones should know about is the wildly popular Sunday night talk show-"Tout le monde en parle" It is a talk show where people in the news are invited to face a critical panel and explain their positions. The program has wide following and averages up to a million and a half viewers each week.
Last Sunday the guest was Jean-François Mercier, the producer of the infamous Bye-Bye 2008, Radio Canada's annual new year's eve show.
There probably isn't a francophone in Quebec who hasn't seen or heard about the show and this year's edition was seen by an amazing four and a half million Quebeckers.
The show lampoons Quebec personalities and has a history of cruelly insulting anglophones and immigrants.
This year, people complained that two of the sketches crossed the line of decency. One was a mock interview of Barak Obama that made fun of the fact that he was black.
The second skit mocked Quebec personality Nathalie Simard, who for those of you who don't know, is the sister of René Simard. The two were a Donny and Marie-like tandem who as children were very popular singers in the 1980's.
At any rate it turns out that Nathalie, as a child was abused by her trusted manager, Guy Cloutier, a pedophile who repeatedly raped her for seven years.
Poor Nathalie hasn't been right since and wrote a book about her experience. For his crime Cloutier was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
The skit made fun of the fact that Miss Simard, apparently suffering an emotional breakdown, announced that she was abandoning Quebec for the Dominican Republic.
Not only was making fun of Nathalie Simard viewed as a low blow, what infuriated everyone was the fact that one of the two writers who wrote the skit was actually the daughter of the pedophile.
Yup, incredibly Veronique Cloutier, the writer, is the daughter of Guy Cloutier, pedophile.
According to Jean-François Mercier, "When you take a chance, sometimes it backfires." He claimed that he never saw anything wrong with Veronique writing the skit, as he viewed both father and daughter as distinct.
As for being a racist, Mr. Mercier defended himself by claiming that some of his best friends are black.
It made for quite a show!
I shall be reporting on future shows.

French President Knifes Sovereignists

Last summer President Sarkozy's gave a speech in Quebec city that seemed to support Canadian federalism. It was seen as a betrayal by most sovereignists , but was explained as being ambiguous by others.
In a speech in Paris, at a ceremony honouring Quebec Premier Jean Charest, he dispelled any illusions that Quebec sovereignists might have had.
In no uncertain terms he came out in support of a united Canada, so much so that according to LE DEVOIR, "it overshadowed the ceremony."
It seems that sovereignists will have another 'humiliation' to suffer and I'm sure we will soon see a vitriolic attack on the French president reminding him to mind his own business.
For anglophone Quebeckers, it will be delicious entertainment

First, Do No Harm.

Do-gooders and social engineers should be interested in the article in Le Journal de Montreal concerning the new healthy menu served in Quebec high schools. It appears that the change to healthy food in school cafeterias is driving students to McDonald's and other fast food restaurants. School administrators are concerned about the perverse effect of this healthy food edict. It seems that you can lead students to the salad bar, but you can't make them eat.
As for solutions, one spokesman put forward the idea of more legislation. The area around schools should be designated junk-food free, where fast-food restaurants would be barred from operating.

We should take heed of the law of 'unintended consequences'. There's been talk of banning the sale of bottled water. The question is, what will it be replaced with. Social engineers would have us believe that we'd all drink from the water fountain when in reality we'll probably just buy soda pop. Not a great advance by any standard.

Radio Canada Exec First Class Pig

It seems that $6,000 for an airline ticket to Paris is justified, according to a spokesman for La Société Radio-Canada (the French CBC).
Vice-President Sylvain Lafrance, flew over to attend a board meeting of TV5, a worldwide French language network. When he got there, the meeting was canceled for lack of a quorum, but that didn't stop our dedicated public servant from spending a week in the City of Lights, racking up another couple of thousand in expenses. According to the SRC apologist, Mr Lafrance touched base with the Canadian embassy, met some Radio Canada personnel and held "secret meetings", so the trip was not in vain.

I don't know why they paid for $6,000 for the ticket, the SRC must have the world's worst travel agent. According to the Air Canada website a executive-first ticket for tomorrow's flight to Paris, returning a week later costs from $2,500 to a maximum $3,600.

Montreal Yo-Yo Gas Prices Unjustified

It's good to see gas prices down, but those annoying spikes that see prices jump by ten cents in a day seem a bit over the top. This price volatility doesn't seem justified and I set out to see if it exists elsewhere. The people over at gasbuddy have all sorts of graphing tools and I've created one that compares Montreal gas prices to those in Syracuse and Miami. Aside from the striking difference in price look how stable and gradual price movements are in the US. The pattern here is a large jump followed by a gradual decline. My research indicates that this pattern occurs all across Canada, but not in the USA. I think our retailers have some explaining to do...
You can beat these spikes by filling up regularly when the price is stable. Then you can ride out the couple of days after a spike, until the price falls.
If you use 'Super' gas, ULTRAMAR gives you a 3 cent break on Thursday, regardless of price. If you have a Costco card, the downtown location at Bridge street now sells gas at prices that are always at least 5 cents cheaper.