La Presse Editiorialist Annoys Sovereignists Again

I've taken the liberty to translate an editorial written this week by Andre Pratte, La Presse's resident federalist and foil of every true sovereignist. Read the original text here.

"One of the great mysteries in my life is that it (Quebec independence) has not happened yet," said Bernard Landry at the opening of the documentary 'National Issues', which premiered last night at the Festival des Films du Monde.

But there is nothing really so mysterious about it. The key is actually found in two excerpts from the film.

First, from this speech by René Lévesque in 1970:
"We want to stop being a caricature of poor people in a wealthy society that are manipulated by others."

Then today, about Mr. Landry:
"When I say to foreigners that we are the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, they hardly believe it. When I tell them that of the several multinationals that dominate the planet in their area ... the Caisse de depot is the third or fourth largest real estate investor in the world!"

Between these two statements, are four decades of dazzling economic, social and cultural development within the Canadian federation.

Independence? What for?

"For 50 years, 111 countries gained their independence, why not Quebec?" Ask the authors of the documentary.

Because the vast majority of them were imprisoned in colonial regimes that blocked their development and bullied their culture. Independence has appeared in such nations as the only solution. Quebeckers have had time to take another path.

In an interview he gave to National issues, the Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, made a surprising prediction: "What happened to the Franco-Canadians and Acadians, their rapid assimilation, this is what will happen in Quebec. We can not wait 50 years. "


More than six million Francophones assimilated, really?
We've already survived the 'Conquest' and "cultural genocide" which, according to Pierre Bourgault, has beset Quebec since 1867.

There are similarities between the situation in Quebec and two other minority nations, the Catalans and Scots. The parallel between them and us is particularly fascinating. The regional government in Scotland is now run by a separatist party. The Scottish National Party was elected in 2007 after a campaign in which they spoke little about independence. However, the SNP promised a referendum on the subject in 2010, a referendum in which they had chosen a "soft" issue. Does that ring a bell?

In Scotland, independence gets only 28% support, according to the latest survey. The reason for this indifference is simple: Scotland has managed to preserve its culture and thrive in the United Kingdom. However, the Scots, as Quebeckers simply do not see any need to venture into independence.

There is no mystery. -André Pratte La Presse

Candian Justice Versus Chinese Justice

A repeat drunk driver offender who killed a young woman in Montreal East in 2007 was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday.

"Raymond Levesque's criminal life as a drunk driver began in 1985 when he received the first of seven convictions over the next 11 years, including a jail sentence.

Ten years later, on May 8, 2007, Levesque was driving with twice the legal amount of alcohol in his blood when he hit several parked cars and then pinned Methot as she tried to get into her vehicle.

Police caught up with Levesque not long afterwards based on witnesses who reported his license plate number." CTV.ca

Since then Levesque has spent 27 months in jail and so at worst he'll be out in about five and a half years. That's because time spent in jail before sentencing counts as double in Quebec. But that's the maximum.

He doesn't qualify for accelerated parole (1/6th of the sentence) because he's a repeat offender, otherwise he'd be out already!

However, he will definitely qualify for regular parole (2/3 of the sentence) so he can possibly get out of prison after serving 80 months. He's already credited with 54 months because of the double/double rule and so we can assume he'll be back at the wheel of a car in exactly two years and two months!!!!

I can't wait!!

Now in China..........

Sun Weiming, a 30-year-old company executive in Chengdu, Sichuan province, was found guilty of endangering public safety.

He is thought to be China's first drunk driver to be charged with "endangering public safety."

Sun drove his Buick into four oncoming sedans on Dec 14. Tests after the pile-up showed he had 135.8 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. A person is considered a drunk driver at 80 milligrams.

Investigation revealed Sun had been driving without a license since May 2008.

He was sentenced to death by the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court.

Hmmm....

Where is Hydro-Quebec's Thierry Vandal?

If ever there was a cowardly display of cynicism and disdain, it is Thierry Vandal's arrogant and shameful decision to hide from the public.

Caught with his hand in the public purse, sending Hydro-Quebec money to his alma mater, (College Notre Dame) where he sits as the president of the board of directors, it remains inconceivable that he is stonewalling the media and the public.

It is also a sad testament to the complacency of the public and media who make a big deal about the story for a couple of days before getting back to the more important business at hand, bitching and moaning about anglophones and Ottawa.

Why does public indignation over dishonest or unethical behavior by public officials evaporate so soon?

Why is the public's attention span so limited?

It may not be fair or decent, but Mr. Vandal may be right to hide out and ride out the storm.

Quebeckers are notorious for their short memories.

Look at the example of our illustrious Premier, who is again riding high in the polls. Who would have believed he could recover so quickly from the fury directed at him for essentially fooling voters about the disaster at the Caisse de Depot

We deserve the leadership that we have.!!

Pigs at the Trough Come to Hydro-Quebec's Defence.

Recently we've seen a spate of defenders make public pronouncements defending Hydro-Quebec's donation program.

The controversy surrounding the now cancelled donations to the private schools has opened up a can of worms that has sent shock waves around Quebec's francophone arts community.

Hydro-Quebec's donation policy has come under the loupe and many are questioning the legitimacy of a provincially owned monopoly doling out money without public oversight.
While Mr. Vandal seems to have survived his attempt to steer money to his alma mater, the question of Hydro-Quebec donating to the arts has become an open question.

Shocked by the direction of the debate, leading francophone editorialists are flocking to the defence of the program whereby Hydro-Quebec shells out money to it's favorite festivals, theatres and arts programs.

By the way don't bother asking Hydro-Quebec for dough if your name is Clark, Cohen, Collevechi, Costas, Hadid or Chong. This money is meant to support 'real' Quebec culture and education.

Here's some of Hydro's biggest beneficiaries;

OSM ($600 000 )
le Musée Pointe-à-Callières ($400 000 )
le festival Montréal en lumière,($900 000 )
Les Grands Ballets canadiens ($70 000)
l'Opéra de Montréal ($42 500 ),
le Moulin à images de Robert Lepage ($250 000)
Festival du cinéma international en Abitibi-Témiscamingue ($60 000),

Here's an example of what Hydro-donates to in the Sagenuay region;

Fondation de ma vie (Hôpital de Chicoutimi): $476 500
Fondation Hôtel-Dieu Alma: $25 000
UQAC (campagne de financement 00-09): $25 000
UQAC (projet Balsac): 25 000 $ Cégep Jonquière Fondation Asselin: $20 000
Dolbeau-Mistassini (comité spectacles): $25 000
Festival international des Rythmes du Monde: $25 000
Orchestre symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean: $21 000
Camp musical du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean: $15 000
Cathédrale de Chicoutimi (concerts d'été): $50 000
Chambres de commerce: $8700
Grands jardins de Normandin: $10 000
Randonnée à vélo Hydro-Québec: $30 000
Traversée internationale du Lac-Saint-Jean: $30 000

Of course all these beneficiaries of Hydro largess are spurned to action, fearing that the tap will soon be turned off. There hasn't been such a call to action since the Harper government cut off funding to Quebec artists. Maybe we'll have another parade.

The $26 million that Hydro-Quebec has spread around the francophone art community has bought it a lot of defenders.

Former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard, who is president of the board of directors of the l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal penned a letter in Saturday's le Devoir which is representative of the type of argument used to defend the program;

"WE NEED THE MONEY!!!"

Things are much more serious for Nathalie Petrowski in La Presse;

"Without the support of Hydro-Quebec, there wouldn't be any culture, not only in Montreal, but across Quebec"...

Not everyone in the French press agrees. Richard Martineau in Le Journal de Montreal asks;

"Is it the role of Hydro-Québec to invest $26 million in culture? Don't we already have a minister?
As far as I know, the Minister of Culture doesn't invest in the production of electricty"

There seems to be a chasm between the Francophone inteligensia and the man in the street.

When Pierre Duhamel wrote a fatuous defence of Hydro-Quebec in L'Argent, his readers were not amused and the comment section was overwhelming negative. If you read French go over to the article and see for yourself. In fact, most of the comments are better written and make more sense than does Mr. Duhamel's article.
At any rate here is my favorite comment which I have taken the liberty to translate;

1) Every dollar that HQ gives in sponsorship is a dollar less returned as a dividend to the government and a dollar more that needs to be collected in taxes. As the anglos say; "no taxation without representation"...

2) HQ is a badly run enterprise, wasteful and notoriously inefficient. By the way at least 70% of it's profits come from the sale of electricity from Churchill...
(ed. note - Hydro Quebec re-exports energy produced in Newfoundland because the power lines need to cross Quebec territory to reach markets. Hydro forces Newfoundland to sell it the power at the border for a pittance and makes a huge profit upon it's resale.)

3) HQ is a monopoly and doesn't need to promote it's image in a captive market.

4) HQ is probably one of the coziest havens for unionism on the planet, the average citizen probably has no idea how its employees (and managers) are living large, but they should understand that they help fund these golden pensions while often without a pension fund of their own. Ultimately it is the citizens who are funding these "gifts" to Hydro.

HQ is basically a mediocre enterprise which wasn't always the case, (but is now) which uses our money to brush up it's image. -Pierre Brasseur

By the way I like the nickname given to Hydro's boss Thierry Vanadal by another commenter- " l'invisible PDG".

Passport Photo Flap Makes Little Sense

In a recent post, I wrote that if I was manning the passport station in Kenya when Suaad Haji Mohamud came through, I too would have refused her passage based on the photo in her passport.

Passport 'loaning' is a rampant scam whereby a legitimate passport is used for the short period that it takes to pass immigration controls. Before boarding the airplane the passport is returned and the passenger lands in Canada as an undocumented traveller claiming 'refugee' status. It is legitimate for consular and passport officials to be suspicious when documents don't match the bearer, either because the photo or the personal details such as age don't match.

That being said the actions by Canadian consular officials in resorting to DNA testing to prove Ms. Mohamud 's bone fides shows a disturbing lack of sophistication that is not only puzzling but disheartening.

Does it really take DNA evidence and three months to uncover the truth? There are a lot easier ways to establish one's identity without resorting to such a drastic, expensive and time-consuming process.

Thirty years ago, before boarding an EL AL flight to Israel, I was (along with every other passenger) put through some pretty thorough vetting by Israeli security agents.

Regardless of your feelings about Israel, you've got to give them credit for having the most effective security in the world. For them, establishing one's identity is more than keeping illegal refugees out of the country, it's about keeping the airplanes in the air.

To the Israeli security team a passport is an essential element in establishing an identity, but it is by no means the only criteria.
Each passenger, before boarding the airplane is subject to an interview by a security screener. The agent's role is to establish that the person before them is the same person represented in the passport and that their travel aboard the El Al airplane is non-threatening.

Back then, my screener was a young slip of a girl who didn't look more than nineteen years old, not the hard nosed sort you'd think you'd come up against. She was friendly and polite and explained that she needed to ask me a couple of questions. She asked for my driver's license and studied my travel documents, the airline ticket, hotel reservation, etc. The questions started out with the standard queries that you'd expect.
Who packed your bag? What's the purpose of the trip? Did anyone give you a package to take on the airplane. etc.etc.
Pretty standard stuff, but then things got personal.
Tell about your neighborhood? What's the name of your Member of Parliament? What's the closest food store to your address? etc. etc.
The questions were harmless, but incredibly effective in determining that I was who I said I was. If I was an impostor there's no way I would have successfully passed the screening.

If EL AL can successfully confirm an identity in a short interview, why couldn't Canadian officials determine Ms. Mohamud's identity by using the same method?

Would it be so hard to ask her questions that a passport 'borrower' would never be able to answer.
They could ask her personal questions that only she would be able to answer and they could add questions about life in Canada and Toronto in particular, that a long time resident would easily answer, but which would prove difficult for an impostor.

Unless Ms. Muhamid was a spy out of a John LeCarre novel and had undergone months of intensive training at a KGB type of school that taught the art of assuming another identity, she'd be hard pressed to fool her interrogators.

The interrogators could ask the questions, email the answers to Canada for someone to verify and during this verification period Ms. Mohamud could be kept incommunicado in order to make sure she doesn't communicate her answers to anyone.

Under this scenario it wouldn't take more than 24 hours to establish whether she was who she said she was.

Just for fun, here's a list of questions that I would ask her. I bet you could come up with an effective list of your own.

• Describe your apartment building and tell us about your neighbors?
• Describe the view from your bedroom window.
  
• How much rent do you pay and whom do you pay it to?
• Describe your kitchen? What's in the pantry?
  
• Where do you work and how much do you get paid?
  
• What is the name of your boss?
  
• Name a few co-workers.
• How do you go to work? Describe the trip.
• What school does your son attend and what is his teacher's name?
• Name some of your son's friends.
• What does he eat for breakfast?
  
• What did you buy your son for his last birthday?
  
• What will I find in your bedroom closet?
  
• Recite as many phone numbers as you can and who they belong to.
• Describe your neighborhood.
• Where's the closest place to your apartment to buy milk.
  
• Who do you pay your electric bill and telephone bill to?
• What's the closest bus stop to your apartment? The closest park? Hospital?
  
• What colour is a Toronto tram painted?
• What is a loony? What colour is it?
• In which supermarket do you shop?
  
• Do you have cable TV and if so what is the name of the cable company?
• Which Canadian television shows do you watch?
• What is Tim Hortons?
• What caused last year's big Toronto explosion?
• Name five people who aren't related to you, who could identify you from a current photo.
  

Enough!!!
I bet you've thought up a few good question of your own by now! No impostor could possibly know all the right answers. It would take a couple of hours to run down the answers and determine if she is really the person she claims to be.

I hope that there's some sort of inquiry that will determine if there's more to this story or if our officials are really the bumbling fools that they seem to be.