Quebec Budget Ignores Reality

Reaction to the Quebec government's latest budget by experts and commentators has been generally positive and has been hailed by most economists as a step in the right direction, especially in the levying of new user fees taxes in relation to health care.

The budget pushes taxes to the highest level ever and extends the lead Quebec maintains as the most over-taxed jurisdiction in North America. How that can be labelled as innovative, progressive or realistic is news to me. Had the finance minister tabled any such monstrosity in the United States, he'd have been lynched.

Quebec's problem is not on the revenue side, the problem is clearly wasteful overspending. You can't remedy wasteful spending by taxing more.

To ask Quebeckers to pay more to cover a budgetary shortfall is like an addict demanding more money from his parents to support a drug habit. Clearly the problem isn't about the price of cocaine...

Without getting into a lot of boring numbers, the Quebec government will raise $56 billion this year (with all these new taxes included) and spend $69 billion. Hmmm....

The federal government kicks in another $8.5 billion in equalization payments, money taken from other provinces, in a program based Robin Hood's example of stealing from the rich, to pay the poor.

Even so, Quebec's budget still remains short about $5 billion and consequently the Province must go to the bank and increase its overdraft, just like you or me.

That overdraft now stands at over $220 billion and will grow with the addition of this year's deficit.
The interest payments on this debt keeps growing as we keep piling on more debt. Its a vicious circle that everyone who has fallen behind on credit card debt understands, the more the interest payments rise, the less chance you have to pay off the debt. 

Now anybody facing a similar situation in their personal life would be advised to seriously cut expenses, so how did the Quebec government react? By spending more!

With a straight face, the Finance Minister told Quebeckers that the government would tighten their belt and would limit this year's budget increase to just under 3%.
An increase!!!!!!!!  INSANE!!!
 

By demanding that taxpayers continue to pony up ever larger and larger amounts of money, the government is making Quebeckers willing or unwilling enablers.

It's time to cut up the credit cards.

The province's  ability to pay for this spending orgy is drawing to a close. Taxes can't be raised much more and the banks soon won't lend us more. Ask Greece.

Unfortunately, like all spending addicts, the Quebec government spends the money unwisely and always gets poor value.

Quebec spends 26% more than Ontario when identical public services are compared. That's because we have too many civil servants and para-public employees who don't work as hard as our neighbours and who are paid larger salaries and benefits. Our government owned corporations like Hydro-Quebec teeter on incompetence and produce half the revenue they should. Money is spent on programs that other richer provinces cannot afford.

"You and your parents are spending a bunch of money to help Quebec, and they’re paying half the tuition you are. Not only do Quebecers pay less tuition, they also pay far less for electricity, drugs and daycare. Quebec offers a more generous parental leave program than elsewhere, and higher corporate subsidies."        -Ted Morton, Alberta’s finance minister who vowed to visit university campuses and deliver a message to students.   Link

In Ontario, public employees were told that their salaries would be frozen for several years. In Quebec the civil servants have already been promised 7% increase over three years. As outrageous as it sounds, those employees are threatening a strike to get more.

Just like a true addict, our Finance Minister pleaded that he could mend his ways. He brought along evidence that he could spend less and was serious about paring down the size government. To prove his point, he produced a list of 28 government agencies that he was abolishing.
The truth is somewhat different, because he wasn't exactly abolishing them, just their independent status, most were rolled into other Ministries.
One of those agencies,"le regroupement du Fonds relatif à la tempête de verglas" is an organization whose job it is to distribute compensation to those affected by the famous Ice Storm in 1998, twelve years ago. I'm not kidding!

"This restructuring will have a direct impact on existing staff. I want to reassure employees potentially affected. They will be treated with respect, in accordance with collective agreements in force," said the Minister.

Sounds like people are going to be fired, right?
Not a chance!
It isn't contractually possible to fire a civil servant whose job has been eliminated, they have job security for life!  FOR LIFE!
Now go back and read the Minister's statement in light of that fact...... Just a tad misleading, don't you think?

Anyone who believes that this new 'realistic' budget will deliver the province financial stability is delusional.
Nothing has changed at all.
It's funny, the Greek government has the same attitude.

Yet Another French Language Campaign (....Sigh)

It's good to know that despite the Quebec finance minister's promise to pare down government, there's still plenty of money available for useless publicity campaigns, this one exhorting merchants to serve clients in French, once again.

The campaign is a follow-up to a similarly unsuccessful project to get merchants to post signs in their stores, which told customers that the premises served customers in French. The $400,000 campaign was a bust because there weren't many business' willing to offend Anglo and minority clients for the sake of the l'Office Québécois de la Langue Française. 
As the old saying goes, "Blood is Thicker than Water, but Money is Thicker than Language" (I made up the last part.)

That campaign fizzled badly and just about the only place these signs were found, were in French language bookstores. I couldn't find one of the signs posted anywhere west of St.Lawrence St. Laurent boulevard in Montreal.

At any rate the new multi-level campaign is much, much larger, costing several million dollars, although I couldn't run down the exact cost because nobody would reply to my request for information.
The details of the campaign are described in a press release, but the cost is conveniently left out.

This campaign uses radio, billboards, mobile billboards and a give-away promotion of hundreds of thousands of shopping bags anointed with the slogan - "MERCI DE ME SERVIR EN FRANCAIS"(Thank-you for serving me in French). The opposite side of the bag was enshrined with more inspiring bon mots,  "Un détaillant qui commerce en français, j'aime ça!" ("I like a retailer that does business in French")

Now I may be missing the point, but if the campaign is to get stores to use more French, shouldn't it target Anglos and Ethnics?

Don't you think that Francophones already offer service in French and don't need to be reminded?

At any rate, I'm glad the government hasn't lost perspective as to what is important in Quebec. It's obvious that the finance minister has his priorities in order and kept alive this vital and strategic campaign to promote the French language.

I guess militants in favour of the campaign might argue the whole thing  costs less than one new MRI diagnostic machine and anyway, purchasing another machine wouldn't put much of a dent in the four-month waiting period that Quebeckers are now subjected to.

Quebec Bakers Want Too Much Dough

It was with some disappointment that I heard that the Weston Bread factory in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil is to close down due to excessive union demands.

Decades ago, many more than I'd like to remember, my whole Grade One class made an end-of-term field trip to that very same factory. The visit was nothing less than enchanting, as the huge vats of dough and the semi-automated machines were dazzling, especially to a gang of six-year olds. When we concluded our visit, we were each rewarded with a giant shopping bag of a selection of the factory's products and I never forgot how proud I was to bring home the 'goodies' to my mom. Back then every little bit helped.

The plant will close, according to the company, because the union refused to guarantee flexibility in scheduling, a condition deemed necessary in a changing marketplace. In spite of a stern warning from the company that it wasn't just posturing, the workers held firm.

And so, the union has negotiated its workers right out of their jobs. As expected, the leaders blame the company and use slogans and catchwords like - 'mépris' (contempt) to deflect responsibility.
I've noticed that more and more, 'MÉPRIS' has become the go-to word, whenever unions, special interest groups and nationalists suffer a particularly humiliating defeat.

I feel sorry for the workers, who are now separated from their well-paid jobs, due to a union miscalculation.

Quebec has always been Canada's most unionized province and also has the distinction of having the most radical and corrupt labour movement, but still, it's hard to understand it's lack of sophistication and propensity to badly overplay its hand.
Union negotiation is all about pushing the company to the brink, but not over.  It seems that in Quebec, more often than not, the union jumps off the cliff all by itself.

Quebec has a sad history of union incompetence.
Back in 1969, a Post Office contract with a Quebec company to deliver mail locally wasn't renewed. (It was actually the company, newly unionized, who failed to bid on the renewal).
The 450 drivers of 'LAPALME' who in Quebec union folklore became known as the 'Gars de Lapalme"(Lapalme boys) were offered integration into the Post Office, but refused, out of loyalty to the CNTU (Confédération des syndicats nationaux ), a powerful Quebec union. The workers demanded that their union affiliation be maintained, a demand flatly rejected by the Post Office.

The drivers went on 'strike' to push the issue, but effectively had no leverage, since they weren't direct employees of the Post Office, who then hired new workers affiliated to their own Public Service union system. The jilted drivers held a three year long death rattle, often violent, to underscore their plight. It was one of the roughest labour disputes in Quebec history, one in which emotions ran high. Asked to comment on the driver's situation, then Prime Minister Pierre-Elliot Trudeau was quoted as saying, "Qu'ils mangent donc de la marde" (Let them eat shit.)

Sadly, in the end, the CNTU, realizing the futility of the situation, abandoned the workers, who were cast adrift in the saddest example of union bungling in the history of Quebec.

You'd think that after failures like these, attitudes would change and that unionized workers and their leadership would wise up. Alas it is not to be, not even forty years later.

The Journal de Montreal is a successful Montreal tabloid owned by zillionaire Pierre-Karl Péladeau, son of the late great media baron, Pierre Péladeau. Nobody would ever accuse Péladeau Sr. of treating workers with kid gloves and his son is a chip off the old block. Workers should have known what they were up against when they pushed demands in contract negotiations.

Last January (2009), Péladeau locked out employees in a dispute over a variety of issues. The sticking point appears to be the issue of media convergence, where the work of those who write in the newspaper can be transferred to the Internet without additional compensation.
According to Hubdub.com

"Photographers and journalists at the paper make an average salary of $88,000 for a 30-hour week. Editors make an annual average salary of $125,000. Employees are entitled to four to six weeks of annual vacation paid at time-and-a-half.

Amazingly, the newspaper continues to publish during the strike, seemingly without missing a beat, using 'contract' reporters and editors, a practice usually outlawed in Quebec.
The newspaper appears to be as popular as ever with advertisers and readers holding fast, making the newspaper even more successful than it was before the strike.

With the continued success of the newspaper, there's no impetus for the employer to negotiate. It's likely that Péladeau would love nothing better than to have the present situation become permanent.

It's ironic that some of the most literate and educated people in Quebec cannot understand that after fifteen months, it's time to either give up or go home. Many of the old-timers writing for the newspaper should remind their co-workers what happened when The Montreal Star pressmen went on a protracted strike back in 1979. The newspaper folded.

With salaries and conditions, like those described above, it's mind-boggling that the employees haven't realized that they are risking much more than they can possibly gain.  Even if the employees 'win' their strike and the employer caves in (an unlikely occurrence), they'll never recoup the money they lost by not working. Pride? Stupidity? Hardheadedness?

Raynald Leblanc, president of the union of employees is playing a risky game that is banking on the Rue Frontenac news website that locked out employees have set up, to put pressure on management. It's a risky game and Pierre-Karl is not one likely to blink, especially while staring down the mild-mannered photographer/union leader.

The locked-out employees have a healthy strike fund that can last another couple of months, but even the mighty NHL player's union realized that it was time to cave, after being locked out for a full season by determined owners. Once again, another Quebec union is playing Russian roulette.

There aren't many strikes lasting over a year which are ever resolved in the worker's favour, a reality that Quebec unions still fail to understand. If a company can hold out for a year without folding, they can usually hold out indefinitely.

Sometimes you've got to swallow hard.
Weston Bakery employees and their union leaders should have realized that three quarters of a loaf of bread is better than none.
Just ask the Ontario auto workers, who took massive hits in order to keep their jobs. While its hard to accept less, sometimes it's a better choice than to shoot for all or nothing.

That could of course never happen in Quebec, after all, we have our union pride and ....BS (welfare.)

Harper Deals Quebec Another Devastating Blow

This week Prime Minister Harper delivered another painful dose of payback to Gilles Duceppe, Jean Charest and the people of Quebec, a harsh lesson in realpolitik for their betrayal of the Conservatives at the polls in the last federal election, as well as for the humiliation Mr. Charest inflicted upon Mr. Harper during the run up to the Quebec provincial election and for his theatrics and grandstanding, at Ottawa's expense, in Copenhagen.

Ever since the creation of the Bloc Quebecois, twenty years ago, Quebeckers have tantalized both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties with promises of electoral support in exchange for preferential treatment and political indulgence.
The strategy worked quite well, highlighted by the last coup, pulled off by Premier Charest in 2007 wherein he wrested a $2.3 billion federal equalization and transfer payment top-up, from Prime Minister Harper, in the run up to the provincial election. Mr. Charest cynically used $700 million of the money to give Quebec voters a tax break, thus contributing to his re-election, but at the expense of humiliating the Prime Minister. LINK

Based on that largess, Mr. Harper hoped for the quid pro quo of a Quebec bounce in the next federal election, one that would have given him a majority, but after a gaffe over his cancellation of a small subsidy to the artistic community, the Quebec electorate voted solidly for the Bloc, once again.

Mr. Harper, utterly frustrated by the betrayal, decided to write off Quebec for good and rule with a minority, while seeking a majority, outside the borders of  Quebec.

The game which the province had been playing for decades, that of a reluctant girlfriend, always promising to put out on the next date, while demanding gifts from an eager and gullible suitor, was over. Mr Harper had figured out that despite the flowers and chocolates, there'd be no nookie for him in Quebec.

Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Charest, may not have realized it yet, but the jig is up.

Mr. Harper now listens to Quebec's demands with a deaf ear. He's decided to expend his political capital (and dough) elsewhere and so Quebec is truly left sucking wind.
Ironically the Bloc Quebecois has been 'crying wolf' for so many years, now that Quebec is getting a bum deal, nobody's listening to the legitimate complaints.

Mr. Harper hasn't even tried to hide or couch his actions, his disdain for Quebec is a signal to his traditional base in the West.

The first major indication in his shift in policy was the stimulus package, which saw Ontario and B.C. get the lion's share of the money, while Quebec's devastated forestry industry received peanuts.

Last week the federal government told Mr. Charest, in a letter forwarded (and leaked) just days before the Quebec finance minister was to present his budget, that the province wouldn't be receiving an expected $2.23 billion payment for having harmonized the GST and provincial tax. Quebec had been led to believe that a deal was done and were caught unaware that the money wouldn't be forthcoming. It was a humiliating signal by Harper that 'two can tango' and the miscalculation by Quebec of Ottawa's intention, left a big hole in the already prepared budget.

The snub was particularly painful because both Ontario and British Columbia had already successfully negotiated their inducements to take on the tax harmonization project.  Quebec had harmonized their system years ago and after seeing that payments were given to others, went cap in hand to Ottawa demanding the same treatment. Thomas Mulcair, a Quebec NDP member accused the Harper government of  double-crossing Quebec(with some justification.)

The latest slap in the face by Mr. Harper towards Quebec, is the legislation adding 30 new seats in Parliament, none of which are to be allocated to Quebec, notwithstanding that this action is wholly justified as Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia have been seriously underrepresented demographically in Parliament. In fact, of all the western nations, Canada has one of the most unfair electoral maps and this legislation will redress the issue of voter equality.

Of course the effect of this is to reduce Quebec's influence (and that of the Bloc Quebecois) in Parliament, something both the Conservatives and the Liberals are pleased with. The seats in question are pretty much up for grabs between the two main parties, so you won't hear a peep from the Liberals when it comes to opposing the bill.

Perhaps now, Quebec will finally understand, that had the province wielded more influence in cabinet, it might have  averted the catastrophe. The devastating effect of the legislation is that a majority government no longer necessarily runs through Quebec.

Mr. Duceppe is already promising that he and his party will defend 'the honour' of Quebec by opposing the legislation vigorously and like before, his huffing and puffing is an exercise in futility.
He has announced that he is setting off on a cross-country tour to assess the future of sovereignty,  an effort to deflect attention from the ongoing calamity in Ottawa.

I can save him the time and frequent flier points by assuring him that at the conclusion, he'll determine that the sovereignty movement is in great shape, that Canadians are unwillingly to satisfy Quebec and that sovereignty is not only necessary but inevitable.

Perhaps he can be successful from shielding Quebeckers from the truth, that their rejection of the main stream federal parties has left the province isolated and unrepresented in the halls of power.

The decision by Quebeckers to thumb their nose at Ottawa is coming home to roost.

Next on the Mr. Harper's agenda - reduced equalization payments. Just wait....

PAYBACK'S A BITCH!!

"Naema's Law" to Open Floodgates of Intolerence

Bill 94, Quebec's proposed law banning the niqab and burka from government and para-public institutions, including schools and hospitals, will likely be referred to as  "NAEMA' S LAW," in honour of the young lady, Naema Ahmed, whose extraordinary demands provided the crucial impetus to the government to act on the issue of fundamentalist Islamism and its place in Quebec (and Canada).

While many commentators like Shahina Siddiqui in the Montreal Gazette and Clifford Orwin in the Globe and Mail pan the law based on their view that it is an attack on religious freedom, other liberals chime in that the law is unnecessary in light of the very few woman who actually wear the veil.

On the first point, as to whether the ban is an assault on freedom of religion, there remains fair grounds for debate, but opinion polls show that Canadians across the country are massively in favour of the restriction, rendering the argument moot. 

The second argument, that the law is unnecessary because few actually wear the veil, misses its real point.

Naema's Law is nothing less than a statement that religious fundamentalism that directly attacks the principle of the equality between men and women will not be allowed to be practiced in Quebec, just as is, female genital mutilation or polygamy.


While the law directly affects just a few dozen people, Muslims rightly view the law as a lever, likely to open up a Pandora's box of intolerance.

The public generally take their cues from their elected officials and the niqab bashing by both federal and provincial politicians as well as prominent commentators has added fuel to the fire. The pendulum is swinging dangerously away from the niqab, to outright hostility towards those who wear any type of religious regalia.

Emboldened by NAIMA's actions and the government's reaction, Quebec secularists and Christian heritage defenders have made an unholy alliance (excuse the pun) to attack orthodox non-Christians.


The drive has already started to remove the subsidy to private religious schools and if successful, it will force many orthodox children into public schools where they may be forbidden (unlike in the rest of Canada) to manifest their religious orthodoxy, through dress.  In effect, it will be a case of forced secularization of non-Christians.

A disturbing opinion poll published in the  JOURNAL DE MONTREAL reveals that Francophone Quebeckers attitudes are tilting towards a dangerously indefensible position.

54% of Francophone Quebeckers polled agreed that anyone wearing a religious symbol shouldn't be allowed to work in a hospital or school. This contrasts sharply with the 19% of Anglophones who feel the same way.
 
75% of Quebeckers are against the wearing of a hijab by students in a public school. (and by implication a kippah, turban or kirpan) No numbers were provided for the difference in opinion between Anglophone and Francophones for this question.

Paradoxically, 54% of those polled are in favour of keeping the crucifix hanging on the wall in classrooms in public schools! Again, no numbers were provided for the difference in opinion between groups, but if Francophones alone were considered, the number would very likely shoot up to well over 65% !

54% of Francophones believe that non-Christian immigrants pose a threat to Quebec culture with a contrasting number of 30% in the Anglo community holding the same view.

The results of the poll lay bare the reality that the debate is not really about secularism versus religion, but rather Christianity versus minority orthodox religions, particularly on the Francophone side.

The poll indicates that the majority of Francophones are not secularlists who wish to remove all religion from public life. 
It  indicates that the majority are those who wish to protect their Christian heritage by restricting other orthodox religions from manifesting themselves publicly.

That's a heckova difference!
That is what Naima's Law is going to lay bare.