Quebec's Construction Nightmare

The "Godfather"

I know we spend an inordinate amount of time discussing language on this blog, but as I pointed out recently, the French/English debate takes up so much air that legitimate debate over the real problems that this province faces are too often left unexamined.

Last week a story exploded on the French side of the media in relation to union malfeasance, it was quite a humdinger and underlined the depths to which this province's construction industry is gripped by dishonest elements.

Curiously the story made barely a ripple in the English Press and so I thought it would be useful to run down the bare bones of the story for those of us on the English side who missed it.
It's unfortunate that the English media chose to largely ignore the story, the ongoing saga of corruption is like a disease eating away at the fabric of our society and bears very close examination.

This isn't a French/English story, it is a story of good versus evil and whether we as a society have the wherewithal and the intestinal fortitude to set our house in order.

Corruption in Quebec's construction industry generally takes the form of contractors rigging tender bids by means of illegal cooperation among the players. It's a story as old as the hills.
This illegal practice remains the principle focus and obsession of Quebec's Press corps, determined to prove that the government of Premier Charest is turning a blind eye to the practice because his Liberal party is the beneficiary of illegal campaign contributions from those involved.

But these last weeks we've been exposed to another aspect of perfidy in the construction industry, this time on the side of unionized labor, a problem even more dangerous and costly than bid-rigging.

The story started with the French language television news magazine infiltrating a union meeting and  surreptitiously filming the union boss of Local 144 International, Gérard Cyr, a nasty piece of work, if ever there was one.
It was quite a show!

Mr. Cyr is the business agent of Local 144, a designation akin to calling Bill Gates a minor software engineer.
Mr. Cyr is in fact the most powerful personality in all of Quebec's construction industry, directly controlling 98% of the province's boilermakers, 96% of steel erectors, 90% of pipefitters and 93% of plumbers!
Local 144 directly controls the flow of workers to over 50% of Quebec's construction industry and employers are at its absolute mercy, to say the least.

Up until recently, when the Quebec government passed a law (Bill 33) banning the practice, the union controlled which workers and how many would be assigned to each job site, and you can imagine the abuse, considering that employers had no other choice but to do business with Mr. Cyr and his cohorts of local 144.

Even the workers are under the absolute control of the union, which exercises the power to provide work to those who tow the line or keep dissenters off the job site. 
A worker who ran afoul of the union told a reporter that he was forced to exile himself to Fort McMurray in Alberta to seek work. Link{Fr}

Now the news story started with this, a speech captured on tape of Mr. Cyr, addressing a large room of union workers, looking and sounding like a union gangster.

"I AM THE GODFATHER!!" he shouted. 

The broadcast of this speech along with an exposé of the deep down reality of Local 144 was a shocking and disturbing eye-opener that even had the Minister of Labour Lise Thériault shaking her head in disbelief.

 "After watching this video, Ms. Thériault immediately responded in an interview on the  Larocque Lapierre show.
She announced that the Commission will investigate the construction sites mentioned in the report.
"I am deeply shocked to learn that workers must pay to work," says Thériault. "The allegations are all too serious."

Ms. Thériault was particularly hurt by degrading and sexist comments uttered by Mr. Cyr. "It doesn't make sense. We're not in 1950, it's 2012. Women fought hard enough to earn their place in positions of power." Link{FR}

You can watch the entire speech and all the allegations in three stories by J.E. (in French) here;
Part One  Part Two  Part Three


Now you might be familiar with Canada's Competition Act or at least its principles.

"The purpose of this Act is to maintain and encourage competition in Canada in order to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy, in order to expand opportunities for Canadian participation in world markets while at the same time recognizing the role of foreign competition in Canada, in order to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises have an equitable opportunity to participate in the Canadian economy and in order to provide consumers with competitive prices and product choices."

 The act insures that companies aren't allowed to become monopolies that gobble up all the competitors, thus controlling the entire market, enabling them to charge higher prices and offer poorer service.
This rarely happens in Canada but the situation gets more complicated where;
"a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). Because there are few sellers, each oligopolist is likely to be aware of the actions of the others. The decisions of one firm influence, and are influenced by, the decisions of other firms. Strategic planning by oligopolists needs to take into account the likely responses of the other market participants."  Wikipedia

Many would argue that this is exactly the situation with Canada's wireless telephone industry where  three companies control close to 90% of the subscribers, leading Canada to have some of the highest wireless rates in the western world.
The federal government is aware of the problem and is trying to bring new players into the market to stimulate competition.

So what happens when similarly, one union and one union boss controls 50% of labor pool in Quebec's construction industry?
Not only are prices higher and service poorer, they are astronomically and criminally so.

The television exposé detailed the horror story rather explicitly and the picture is frightening. For the first time witnesses (mostly anonymous, out of fear) are coming forward to tell the truth about Local 144 and the Quebec construction industry.

The union shakes down employers to hire more workers than needed and forces them to pay extortionist salaries.
At one point in the construction of a pipeline between Quebec city and Montreal, some workers made  $90,000 in the three months leading up to Christmas!

Stories of kickbacks abound, where every Friday workers fortunate enough to get these jobs prepare envelopes of two or three hundred dollars in cash which are given to union collectors.

Here are some translated quotes from Le Journal de Montreal which also ran a story about Local 144

"Local 144 isn't complicated, it's like a biker gang."

"Because I'm not in the right gang, I work only four months a year."
 
"On the Ultramar pipeline those who were in Gérard's clique made $5,000 a week, those who weren't, stayed at home."
 
"On the construction sites, there's a big waste of time. Where you need one guy for the job, there are two, where you need three, there are six."


"On the laying of four inch pipes, we had to install three per day. If you laid  four, you were thrown off the job. Guys could easily lay ten per day."

"It's a small group that direct an entire province, a circle, a  family"

"They supply forty guys for a job that require twenty. It leads to an awful lot of coffee breaks"

"Everybody has envelopes and all deals revolve around them"

The union successfully negotiated a $1,000 a week travel allowance for workers working on the pipeline, even for those who lived close to the the work site!

Another interesting shakedown is the requirement that the union approve building materials, a practice specifically outlawed.
The union provides stickers that are affixed to approved products like pipes and fittings.
One employer recalled paying $12,000 for 'stickers' to add to products that he acquired outside the inner circle. Link{Fr}

Anyway you look at it , that is a criminal shakedown.

In the face of all the allegations the union stands firm, denying every allegation including the one that accuses them of organizing a devastating shutdown of Quebec's construction sites last October in protest of Bill 33. In scenes worthy of a Sopranos episode, roving bands of union thugs intimidated workers with all manner of threats and in one case actually turned off a generator providing electricity to a pump providing air to a diver working underwater! Link

“They shut us down,” said a worker sitting outside a downtown coffee shop who had planned to work on Tuesday. When asked whether he felt intimidated, the man in his 30s replied, “Let’s just say we were encouraged to walk away by several guys who weighed about 250 pounds.” Link{Fr}

As you can imagine Gerard Cyr and Local 144 have a lot to be angry at the government about, which is menacing the evil empire.

Bill 33 was the was a giant first step in bringing the industry to order, but as usual, nobody in the Press is willing to credit the government for taking action.

Of course that one single law doesn't go far enough and calls for action are starting to be heard;

"In light of all this information, the office of the Labour Minister Lise Thériault, stated: "We seek to put an end to acts of intimidation, extortion or fraud of individuals in positions of power within of an employee organization, who pervert the true and essential mission of trade unions, which is the defense of workers. "

According to Yves-Thomas Dorval of the Employers Council, "we must go further than Bill 33, one must ask about the compulsory unionism in the construction environment."  Link{Fr}

By the way, in the aftermath of the fallout over Mr. Cyr's outburst and the disturbing revelations that followed, the 69 year old union leader announced his decision to resign soon, turning over his job to the capable hands of his own son-in-law..
Plus ça change........


Is it any wonder Quebec is going broke? Perhaps Canada should ramp up the equalization payments...

*************************************************

 Here's the audio of the interview On CJAD last Thursday, where Brent Tyler, myself 

and Aaron Rand discuss Bill 101

French versus English Volume 51

Chateauguay to follow Huntingdon example?

"Over sixty English-speaking citizens protested against Bill 101 at the town hall meeting of Châteauguay  city council on Monday and got the support of Mayor Nathalie Simon and every aldermen except one. 
The demonstration  was in reaction to  the Office québécois de la langue française's complaint about bilingual communications by the municipality, considered not to be in compliance with the Bill 101.  

The "Châteauguay Magazine" is particularly targeted. 
For over an hour, citizens urged the board to stay the course, as did Mayor Gendron in Huntingdon."Many of the French support bilingualism," argued one citizen to the elected officials. "I know! I am one.  

"It is not I, who called OQLF, "responded the mayor. 
When asked if she would sign the petition circulated asking Châteauguay to maintain its bilingual publications, she responded, 
 "I will sign it," said Nathalie Simon on response to the request. After she had affixed her signature on the document, seven of eight councilors did the same. 

Only Alain Cote abstained. "I will not sign. Laws are made to be respected,"said the counselor. 
The protesters anticipate filing the petition at the next public meeting of the Board of Châteauguay, scheduled for April 16.
Mayor Simon said that she would present it to the MPP and Châteauguay Quebec Transport Minister Pierre Moreau. "The law is provincial, it is a provincial issue, she insisted. I will say that some of my people will be served in both languages. We are a family different from other cities. We must deal with it. "It also reflects the fact that 26% of residents of Châteauguay have English as their mother tongue.The mayor also argued that to produce separate documents for each language "will cost twice as much" because the city does not currently translate all texts. 
The disappearance of bilingualism in the "Châteauguay Magazine" which is in the crosshairs of OQLF is not cast in stone. "According to the OLF, we are respecting the letter, but not the spirit of the law, explained the Mayor.  
We'll see according to the Office which may be kept or not. Let's see what the best solution is, but we need to put water in our wine.  
If we do not respect the law, there will be fines. "

" Let's pay the fines!" responded the people in the audience. 
A bad idea because each subsequent offense would cost more and more, according to Nathalie Simon. But bilingualism in the "Châteauguay Magazine" will not be eliminated anytime soon. The file has been open for two years, said the Mayor. The complaint to the OQLF, originally focused on another publication of the city, which no longer exists."We had a meeting with the OQLF last year. The municipal machine moves slowly. The provincial machine is even slower, "commented Nathalie Simon. Read the original story in French

More OQLF inspectors

The Quebec government has caved to pressure from  French language militants and added more inspectors to the provincial agency charge with protecting the French Langaguage.

"Facing a barrage of linguistic controversies, the Quebec government announced Friday it is planning to give the provincial language watchdog more teeth.

Despite a hiring freeze across Quebec's public service, the government said it will hire 43 employees at the agency to fill vacancies left by departures.

That is on top of 26 who came on board several months ago.

The government is also asking the Office Quebecois de la Langue Francaise to bite more often. It is urging inspectors to be more proactive — and take action not only after they get complaints, but also beforehand.

Quebec law allows the agency to take legal action and seek fines from commercial establishments that don't respect rules like French predominance on signs.

But recent news reports have offered anecdotes of the laws being ignored in Montreal, and that has created political headaches for the Charest Liberals.

The governing party, heavily supported by Anglos, has faced severe criticism from opponents who accuse it of being too weak in protecting French.

Language controversies began ramping up last summer, when the Harper government announced the hiring of people who can't speak French as Supreme Court justice, auditor general and senior government spokesman.

Since then stories about slights against the French language and anecdotes of people struggling to get served in French are frequent features of news reports in Quebec." Read the rest of the story
Next on tap?.......Halal inspectors?

Language complaint at the Royal Vic

"A man says his mother hasn't been getting adequate care at the Royal Victoria Hospital because some of the staff can't speak French.

Royer Harvey, whose Alzheimer's needs constant round-the-clock care, filed an official complaint. He says that his mother, who only speaks French, has had great difficulty speaking to orderlies and nurses.

"There's a lot of staff that speak only English," he wrote in a letter. "We speak to them in French, and there are some who understand, but respond in English. There are others who don't understand French at all, have no idea what we're saying, and respond in English."

The hospital and Quebec's health minister are investigating. Read the rest of the story.

Fresh Attacks on Halal and Kosher food

A story in the Montreal freebie newspaper "24H" is attacking the fact that prisoners are demanding and receiving Kosher or Halal food while incarcerated.
The paper complains that the government is paying an extra $114,000 on a whopping 57,000 meals per year.... quite a scandal according to the newspaper.
The Journal de Montreal reports (without quoting figures,) that the Halal meals are so tempting that prisoners are converting to Islam!

But wait a moment, let your editor do some rapid math for the benefit of Le Journal de Montreal and other alarmists......

Each prisoner eats three meal a day and has one snack and this for 365 days a years, for a total of 1,465 meals each.  When divided by the scandalous figure of 57,000 Kosker or Halal meals paid for by the government, it means that there are but 39 prisoners in all of Quebec jails demanding this accommodation.
 Horrors!!!!!
But it makes a good story.   Link{Fr}

NDP speaks with forked tongue

It seems that Thomas Mulcair is off to an inauspicious start as the new leader of the NDP.
His less than impressive acceptance speech at the convention had party speechwriters shaking their head at the fact that Mulcair refused their help.

It seems that now that the NDP is the official opposition, it will not be able to play the duplicitous game of telling Ottawa one thing and Quebec another;

"The New Democrats did a very peculiar thing on Thursday afternoon.

Canada's official opposition party issued two English-language press releases about the Harper government's budget: one was for Canadians, and the other was for Quebecers.

....Interestingly, and perhaps as damage control, the NDP has issued a B.C. specific press release more than 16 hours after the Quebec press release.

We're still waiting for press releases for Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario... Read the whole story

Louise Beaudoin returns to PQ fold

With her tail between her legs, Louise Beaudoin has been reintegrated into the caucus of the Parti Quebecois, her adventure in sitting as an independent an abject lesson in marginalization.
Don't confuse this re-integration as a magnanimous gesture of solidarity and sisterhood on behalf of Pauline Marois.
Beaudoin was accepted back into the fold under the condition that she will not run in the next election. POW!
Payback's a bitch

Easy to live in Montreal in English

Not exactly Earth-shattering information, but the Journal de Montreal hired a unilingual reporter to live in Montreal and report as to whether she could get along in English only.

Doh.....

Shock of all shocks, the newspaper reports that incredibly it is possible to live in Montreal without French!!!
Read the story in French

Montreal an English and French City?

A kind reader send in a note concerning a spread in FAST COMPANY magazine that has a very large advertising section touting Montreal.

"Hi, You may have come across this but I picked up a recent copy of Fast Company Magazine. It has a 20 page special
advertising section for the city of Montreal. It is sponsered by the Quebec government, Tourisme Montreal, Montreal chambre de commerce,
Laurentian Bank, and the city of Montreal. To my surprise the second paragraph reads as follows:

" Arts and Culture enjoy celebrated prominence by a diverse people with a variety of interests and its bicultural status as a French and English city
strongly sets it apart from other North American cities.

Thanks DAVID!

Another sad day.....

 DEVELOPERS GENTRIFY FRANCISIZE  GRIFFINTOWN MONIKER

By the way I did my first interview on radio this Thursday afternoon on CJAD in Montreal about Bill 101
I was a bit nervous .


Have a Happy Easter!
Have a Happy Passover!

STOP The Insanity... Everybody's Culture is Beautiful!

Monday's rant wasn't just a reaction to linguistic idiots calling Canadian culture second rate, it was a wake-up call to language zealots to step back from insulting others just because they can. 

I really wanted to put an end to the idiocy in the comments sections and to remind fools like Benoit Dutrizac that he isn't the only one clever enough to make injurious remarks about somebody else's culture.

When we were kids, the classic insult of this sort was "YA MUDDER WEARS ARMY BOOTS!" which if I recall, was first enunciated by none other than 'Bugs Bunny.'
It sort of means 'Shaddup already.'

When readers in the Comments section complain that Canadian culture is a pale imitation of American culture, it's nothing more than a lame attempt to annoy, as is likewise when English readers do the same .....Your mother wears army boots!

At any rate, I'm surprised that nobody cottoned to my tongue in check reference to the 'PRICE IS RIGHT.'

For Pete's sake!!!!

If you are a regular fan of the 'The Price is Right" in French or in English you are not exactly a paragon of cultural superiority.
It's a piece of crap in any language and 'showcases' the very worst of us. All it proves is that people on each side of the language divide are equally greedy and stupid.
So I guess we are not so different from each other, language aside..

Did not one of you readers appreciate a belated April's Fool's Joke!!!!!

Monday's post was meant to prove that we can all make arguments that hurt when we are angry or in the mood to punish.
Lawyers do it every day, make a great argument to support a bad premise.

Calling someone's culture second rate or lame is like calling someone else's kids ugly.

WHY?

What good can come out of it?
Everybody loves their kids and it's the same for culture, everybody loves their own and if one culture is more sophisticated or complicated is it automatically better?

Who really is to say what is good or bad?

Here in North America, including the ROC, Quebec and America, we live in a fast food culture of crap. Greasy, fried, fatty, bad for your health CRAP!

I'm sure that no one among us will argue that our food culture is superior to anything offered elsewhere the world, even in poorer countries.
Yet we like our food and are used to it and wouldn't want to change it for a 'superior' food culture.
What would you say to someone from another country telling you that your food culture is crap?
You'd probably tell the insulter to take a hike.

Telling English Canada that it's culture is a pale American imitation or telling French Quebec that their culture compares to a second tier hockey league, makes as much sense.
You're not going to convince anyone and you'll just annoy people with such comments.
It is an argument not worth having. Really, think about it.

We seem to be living in a charged atmosphere where a few hotheads aided by the media are whipping up people into a linguistic frenzy, brainwashing the public into believing that the sky is falling in on the French language in Quebec when nothing can be farther from the truth.
And so as the inflammatory rhetoric against English rises, it is to be expected that the English defenders riposte.

But is all this emotional debate necessary. Is language such a big issue in Quebec?
I'm not talking about the media, which has a vested interest in pushing disharmony.
How many people are really involved in this movement to protect the French language in Quebec?

Are people really so worked up about language in their own personal lives?

Every time the language militants call for a massive demonstration to denounce this or that, concerning the French language, they barely get a turnout.

When they called for a massive display of indignation over the hiring of a unilingual English coach of the Canadiens, about 150 turned out to protest. This in a city of two million and this after tens of thousands of dollars of free publicity in television news coverage before the protest.

Consider the 25,000 to 50,000 students who protested last week over a tuition hike and one can easily come to the conclusion where the language issue actually stands in this province.

On a scale of one to ten, language as an issue must rate between zero and one.

Sure if you take a poll and ask Francophones if they are worried about language, they will invariably answer YES, but ask them to make some sort of a sacrifice to defend their language and culture and the answer is NO.
They won't even attend a demonstration.

It's clear that the entire French language movement is composed of a tiny group of serial complainers.
It's the same faces on TV, over and over again.
Gilles Proulx, Mario Beaulieu, Mathieu Bock-Côté and the Parti Quebecois.

As they say in French... Dats it, Dats all!

Let us consider the 'shocking rise' in complaints over at the OQLF where we are told that complaints are way up this year to over 3,500 from 2,400.
Most of this increase, by the way, stems from the fact that the OQLF issued false and erroneous public information that businesses in Quebec who have trademarked names, must use French descriptors.
There is no such stipulation in the law or in the rules.

At any rate, even with this increased number of complaints it boils down to not very many in a province of eight million people seven million francophones.
The OQLF will not reveal the actual number of complainers or the percentage of complaints that are unfounded, but we can draw some inferences.

Many French language militants admit to making hundreds of complaints! One dear lady, Marie-Thérèse Rioux,  received an award for making over 200 complaints. Others like Louis Prefontaine and Gilles Proulx and Mario Beaulieu are also serial complainers and so it may very well be that 90% of these complaints are made by a couple of dozen fanatics.

I reviewed a number of these complaints on a site run by Mouvement Québec français, which ran a contest whereby readers send in copies of their complaints. About one third of the complaints were completely unfounded and as for the famous Madame Rioux, she should actually check out the rules before complaining. 
Here she complains  about a Café Chill-Out, because there's too much English in the name, despite it including that famous descriptor!

We are letting ourselves get carried away.

All of this language hate is only about getting people to vote for sovereignty. A classic case of sleight of hand.

In the meantime it masks the real issues of a province on the road to financial ruin and remains a wonderful mask that keeps us from debating the pressing societal issues.

Readers, please don't get caught up.
Francophones and Anglophones get along just fine in Quebec, if only the radicals would leave us alone.

That they don't is sad, but we need to react as adults.

Canadian Culture versus Quebec Culture...Gimme a Break!

Anglophones embracing Quebec culture...er....'Non Merci!'

I'm a bit annoyed over today's subject, so readers be prepared for a cranky rant.
If you are a French language militant, you just may want to skip it.

At least you've been warned......

Over the last months I have been reading numerous posts in the Comments section mocking Canadian culture and classifying it as a pale imitation of America.
 
These comments parrot the idea that since Canada has no distinct culture of its own, it has no culture at all.

Sadly, most of these posts are based on an inferiority complex and a profound jealousy explained perfectly in the age-old parable of the Fox and the Sour Grapes wherein one disparages what one cannot possess.

It reminds me of those jealous types (usually female) who watch the Victoria's Secret fashion show on television and comment that the girls 'aren't so hot'.....Yah, sure.

Now I wouldn't have undertaken this post based on a few misguided Anglophobes in the comments section, but last week Quebec's most important radio Anglo hater, Benoit Dutrizac  in a fit of pique, made a similar statement, this time on his Twitter account.

"Obviously you aren't interested in francophone culture. Second class American wannabees.
Évidemment, tu ne t'intéresses pas à la culture francophone du Québec. Un anglo simili américain de 2ème ordre." - Benoit Dutrizac

And so the narrative is spun that Canadian culture is second rate because it is not distinct, a pale imitation of its American big brother, an idea so patently foolish that it reflects on the utter ignorance of its propagators.

First let me say that Canadian culture is not based on American culture, it is based on international English culture of which America does take a prominent role, but all English speaking countries contribute to varying degrees.
In fact, so powerful and overbearing is this culture that even those not born to English adopt it as a prerequisite to international success and this, in just about every field of human endeavor.

Canada as well as other English speaking nations (representing hundreds of millions of people) all contribute their share of artists, entertainers, writers, scientist etc. etc. to create the most elite culture in the world, bar none.

To complain that Canada doesn't have its own distinct culture because it foolishly allowed itself to be drawn into and become an integral part of the greatest international culture ever created on this Earth, plumbs depths of stupidity........Welcome Mr. Dutrizac!
 
Let us consider the example of the National Hockey League where elite players from all around the globe gather to create a product unrivaled anywhere in the world.

Now let us compare it to the minor LHJMQ hockey league which operates in Quebec and the Maritimes and where the Quebec teams are composed primarily of Quebec Francophones, players of decidedly inferior talent as compared to the NHL.

I suppose that there are those who prefer attending a junior LHJMQ hockey game rather than the NHL, but to pretend that the product is somehow better or more entertaining is nothing short of laughable.

The above analogy actually fits to a tee the difference between 'Quebec culture' and 'Canadian culture' and those who mock English Canada for being a part of a greater world-wide English culture, actually defend their own mediocre choice.

I'm not knocking Francophone culture, it is what it is, and produces talent commensurate with its tiny population base, certainly when compared to the English cultural community which draws on a pool of at least 500 million people and perhaps another couple of hundred million foreign language speakers who adopt English, in order to get in the club. (Celine Dion, ABBA, Julio Iglesias, etc.)

So yes, English Canadian music culture includes powerhouses like Beyoncé from the USA, U2 from Ireland, Justin Bieber from Canada, Rihanna from the Barbados, Lady Gaga form the USA and Arcade Fire from Canada.

Quebec culture includes  Marie-Mai from Varennes, Éric Lapointe from Pointe-aux-Trembles and Bridgette Boisjoli from Drummondville.

Take your pick.......NHL or LHJMQ.

Sorry, Mr. Dutrizac, English Canadians have made a choice for quality over nepotism.

The sad reality is that a big part of Francophone Quebecer's choice towards local French talent is attributed to nothing more than the language handicap.

A couple of weeks ago the most popular television show on French Quebec TV,  'Star Academie'  ended its season.
If you were to ask the average Quebec Anglophone who won the contest, the answer would likely be "What the heck is Star Acadamie?"
This, while more than one-third of Quebec Francophones, about two and a half million people watched the finale.

But the reality is that there is no reason for an Anglophone watch a second rate production like Star Acadamie when he or she could watch an infinitely more talented group of singers compete on the  more glitzy American Idol?

And if you think Quebec Anglophones should have a better connection to a contestant from Maxville or Paquetville, Quebec, rather than a contestant from Murfreesboro, Tennessee or South Kingstown, Rhode Island, you've got another think coming. All these places may as well be on the Moon.

Why on Earth would an English Quebecer watch a local French version of the Price is Right instead of the original English version which has richer prizes and better production values?

The above example serves as an analogy for ALL QUEBEC  CULTURE and is the reason why Anglophone Quebecers will never embrace it.

That the likes of Jean-François Lisée wonders aloud why English speaking Quebecers don't embrace and support French culture instead of a superior English product, is the height of effrontery.

Now for those of you who are going to say that as an Anglophone, I am not qualified to judge French culture, all I can say is for the last forty years of my life I have worked almost exclusively in French and have traveled more extensively across this province than almost any of you reading this blog. My French isn't just good, it's pretty much impeccable and I have lived with Francophone culture all my life.

To those who brand me as a Francophobe or Angryphone, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Like many Anglos on this blog, we complain not because we hate Quebec or Francophones, but rather because we see our province going in the wrong direction.
I actually adore French, speaking it and living it. I could have moved away years ago but I haven't because this is my home.

Readers, I make it point to listen to French radio, watch French television and everyday I read six newspapers, three of which are French.

When I tell you that Francophone culture is inferior to Anglophone culture, it is just a function of the math.
When you are drawing talent from 7 million people versus 800 million persons, there's going to be a qualitative difference.

International English culture is richer, more diverse and is comprised of infinitely more talented artists, entertainers, authors, musicians etc. etc.

Asking a Quebec Anglophone to embrace Francophone culture is like asking Sydney Crosby to choose to play in the LHJMQ instead of the NHL....not going to happen.

Sorry to be cruel, but such is truth. 


Now someone in the comments section recently complained that my references to The Price is Right, poutine or sugar shacks is but a cheap representation of pop culture and not reflective of 'real' Quebec culture.

So what is this real Quebec culture that is so wonderful?.......I haven't seen it.

Sunday Housekeeping - Volume 7

Readers, I want to tell you that BLOGGER still hasn't fixed the problem with timestamps on the comments and they continue to reflect PACIFIC time.
I don't know about you, but it's a bit annoying.
At any rate I can't complain, the platform remains FREE, but I do hope they fix it soon.

Never mind all that, I am launching an appeal to ALL OUR READERS, to help out with content.

Did you come across a news story that would be of interest to readers?
Don't depend on someone else or assume I've seen the story. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE!

How about a serious or humorous picture, video or a story suggestion, etc.etc.

Or a personal story reflecting the Anglo experience?

English or French, please drop me a line at anglomontreal@gmail.com.

To those who email me and take the trouble to help me correct typos or inadvertent errors, your efforts are most appreciated.

Aside from my wife who heroically edits this blog for grammar after a hard day's work, I am alone.

I have no fact checkers or editors and so I appreciate your effort in making this blog more accurate.

Incidentally, this last month of March registered the highest traffic ever on this site, over 66,000 page views.
And soon we are approaching our 20,000 comment!

All of this success is attributed to you the reader and I do appreciate it, because if you didn't participate, I wouldn't continue.

After all, I'm not getting paid to write this blog and you are not being paid to read it and comment.

We all need to make an effort to participate in order to keep things going.

It isn't a threat, it is an appeal.

THANK YOU!!!!