92 Reasons to Ignore Sovereigntist Nonsense

Canada's provinces are 78% English. Quebec is Canadian a province...therefore.

Last week, with great fanfare a group funded by the PQ came out with a document detailing the 92 reasons Quebec is disadvantaged by remaining in Canada.

The document was largely ignored by the media, it contained a lot of gibberish and gobbledygook with the media featuring the one tidbit that would grab readers attention, the fact that it argued that francophones were subject to a 'soft-ethnocide' whereby Canada is slowly wiping out the French fact.

You can download the document and read it for yourself, but I assure you, it is as tedious as it is long.
DOWNLOAD THE PDF

After sniffing around, the media gave the document the short shrift, the news conference held by Conseil de la souverainete du Quebec, an embarrassing bust;

"A pro-independence organization held a news conference to unveil a new study that identifies 92 ways in which the Canadian federation hinders Quebec's development against the interests and values of Quebecers.
But the Montreal event generated little media coverage.
There were eight panellists at the news conference. There was only one question from a French-language media outlet. Daniel Paille, leader of the long-dominant Bloc Quebecois, didn't get a single question." Link

I read the complete document, or rather I should say I got through it, a painful exercise in endurance, considering that it is a blend of fact, fiction and fantasy, chock full of nonsense, the reading of which actually made my brain hurt.

Perhaps I can best describe the document as a foul attempt at deception and manipulation, or as they say in French 'poudre aux yeux.'

I wouldn't say that the document rises to the level of the Procotols of the Elders of Zion, but clearly the authors let their imagination get the better of them.

If you read it, consider the pervasive use of dishonest logical devices meant to deceive.

Cherry-picking. "the Canadian government awarded the contract to build its navy ships in Atlantic Canada, therefore Quebec is always disfavoured."
Using facts selectively or without context. 

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. ("After this, therefore because of this.")
"It has been proven that all heroin addicts smoked marijuana in their youth. Therefore, smoking marijuana leads to heroin addiction"
Actually heroin addicts probably started on mother's milk.... 

Appeal to Ignorance: "See that door move, must be ghosts!" 

False Comparison: "The City of Vancouver doesn't require employees to speak French, so the city of Westmount should not demand bilingualism." 
The two cities have different circumstances.

Red Herring "Alberta is richer than Quebec, therefore federalism hurts Quebec"
Alberta's wealth has to do with oil, not federalism.. 

Concurrence Fallacy: "The country has gone downhill since religion has been taken out of school"
Two things happening at the same time need not indicate a causal relationship.

Faulty conclusion "In Quebec, there are proportionally more English television networks than French networks, thus penalizing francophone viewers."
A reduction in the amount of English networks will not increase the number of French networks.  
Read more about faulty logic from the source

As I said, I've gone through the study and would like to apprise readers of some of the faulty, distorted and downright dishonest conclusion offered.

Here's just a glimpse, I could find fault in just about every single conclusion offered, but considering that the document is being given the weight it deserves, I'll content myself with a few examples. 

"The last census informs us that in Quebec, citizens with French as a mother tongue fell to 79.1% and in 49% on the island of Montreal"
(Le dernier recensement nous apprend (à propos du Québec cette fois) que le poids des citoyens de langue maternelle française a chuté à 79,1 % au Québec et à 49,0 % sur l’île de Montréal.)

"Hmm...these readings are off the chart!"

How this is Canada's fault is mystifying.
There certainly isn't a large influx of non-French mother tongue Canadians invading the province from Canada.
The reality is that Quebec is welcoming about 50,000 new immigrants a year, a relatively new development meant to fill the void caused by a low birth rate.
Of those arriving immigrants, almost none, as one would expect, have French as a mother tongue. 

If Quebec separates, but still allows immigration, how will the downward direction of the mother-tongue statistic change?


In a section entitled; "Culture and media under the federal control", the authors make some at some startling conclusions. They complain about the CRTC, a federal institution having jurisdiction over television and radio.

"Quoiqu’ils ne représentent que 12,9 % de la population métropolitaine (8,3 % au Québec), les anglophones, grâce aux choix du CRTC, ont accès au tiers des stations de radio (31 %) et à la moitié des six chaînes de télévision. Ils sont desservis par deux quotidiens : la Gazette de Montréal et le Record de Sherbrooke, dont le tirage atteint 17 % des ventes totales du Québec. De plus, ils disposent également d’une vingtaine de journaux dans les régions."

The authors complain that just 8.3% of anglophones benefit from having one third of the radio stations and half of the television stations in Quebec and then complain about the language of newspapers.
At any rate, there are three problems with the statement.

First: A misleading  statistic is offered concerning Anglophones, that is the fact that Quebec is comprised of no more than 8.3% of people with English as a mother tongue. It is here that the mother tongue issue is used to distort.
According to StasCan 13.1% of Quebecers use English day to day, regardless of their mother tongue. In other words, 13.1% of Quebecers read English newspapers, watch English TV and fill out income tax forms in English. Making allusions to Mother tongue is irrelevant, it conveniently ignores immigrants who have adopted either English or French as their language of choice.
Second: Newspapers are not controlled by the government and if free citizens decide to read the Montreal Gazette, how is this a problem and how is this the fault of Canada. Do the authors maintain that an independent Quebec will control the number of people who can have access to English newspapers or the number of newspapers allowed to be sold?
If the authors are complaining about the availability of English newspapers, how about books? Is it also Canada's fault that more English books are available than French?
...a note.
Language militants will never, ever, mention the subject of books when discussing limits on English culture. They will never, ever propose that like Hollywood films, books be embargoed in Quebec without a translated French version.
Even they understand how dangerous and humiliating is the subject of book-banning..
Third: The fact that there are a lot of English television stations available in Quebec, doesn't mean that a reduction thereof will lead to more French stations, the market of which is already saturated.
Considering how few francophones actually watch English television, the analogy is irrelevant.
Do the authors contend that an independent Quebec will limit access to English networks from Canada or the United States a la North Korea?

Quebec as a net contributor
Throughout the study, the authors complain that Quebec is shortchanged in various federal government programs and intimate that they are over-contributing.
Fully one third of the study, the part that complains that Quebec is not getting its fair share of federal programs can be debunked by considering one incontrovertable fact..
That is, that when it is all said and done, Quebec gets more from Ottawa than it pays in.

In 2009, of the $215 billion that Ottawa took in, Quebec contributed about 39 billion dollars, about 18.5% of the total. Note that this contrasts with the authors who fudged Quebec's contribution, claiming that the province contributes over 20%
Considering that Quebec's population is about 23.5% of Canada's, it means that Quebec makes a significant under-contribution to Ottawa's budget.

Now of the $241 billion Ottawa spent that year, (there was a deficit,) Quebec received benefits totaling $53 billion, a difference of over $13 billion from what it contributed. Link
For the authors of the report to cherry-pick the various programs where Quebec receives less than its fair share, without balancing against the programs where it receives more, is just plain dishonest.

Here' a couple of other tibits;
Reason 20....Quebec suffers because Canada didn't respect the Kyoto Accords.
Had Quebec been an independent country and signed and respected the accord, the effects would have been devastating on the economy. Even without Alberta in the picture, the emission reduction required to conform, would have crippled the economy. It is fantasy to believe that Quebecers are prepared for the sacrifices, its just easier to blame Canadians for their failure.

Reason 39....Quebec suffers because Ottawa is the capital of Canada and the related spending there, hurts Quebec
The idea that  Quebec is short-changed here fails to consider the fact that francophones are over-represented in the federal civil service, an inconvenient fact.

"Today francophones, who represent 24% of Canada's population, occupy 31.5% of jobs in the Public Service of Canada, including 30% of management-level jobs." Wikipedia

Reason 40....It is the federal government which favours Toronto's Pearson airport over Montreal.
Of course market forces have nothing to do with it and in an independent Quebec, market forces won't exist...

Reason 44...Ottawa  is hindering the development of a high speed train in the Windsor/Quebec corridor
Anybody who has studied the issue will tell you that the project is a pipe dream, horribly expensive and completely impracticable considering the load factor. After all, how many people woke up this morning in Windsor with plans to travel to Quebec City?
Aside from all that, why would an independent Quebec need a high speed rail hike to Toronto as travel between the two cities will likely collapse as the two countries sever ties.

Reason 47...As the Montreal port reaches it saturation point, Ottawa is directing business to Halifax
I'd like to know what scenario in an independent Quebec would lead the port of Montreal to increase its business.
Surely shippers who had product destined to Canada would ship to Canada, not Quebec. In fact the business in the Port of Montreal would probably be significantly reduced as shippers react to the new realty, wherein Montreal is not in Canada, to where the bulk of these shipments are destined.

Reason 45...Ottawa has shirked its responsibility in allowing Air Canada to close its maintenance facility in Montreal
In what altered universe would Air Canada maintain an overpriced and over-regulated facility in an independent Quebec. Now if you're thinking that a new airline like Quebecair will rise to replace the mighty Air Canada and do its maintenance in Quebec, you might want to ask where Air Transat does its overhauls.

Reason 48...Ottawa has reduced its financial support to universities.
I thought that education was a provincial matter, that is what the militants always remind us.
In an independent Quebec, do the authors expect Ottawa to continue funding Quebec universities?

Reason 51.. Quebec has contributed $15 billion of the $60 billion spent on research.
("En recherche, entre 1994 et 2008, sur un total de 60 476 milliards $ (dont le Québec a défrayé par ses impôts au Canada quelque 15 milliards $) 
Now the authors change their math. Their earlier reference to Quebec's federal contribution of 20% has now risen to 25%. ($60 billion divided by $15 billion= 25%) 
They should be reminded of the bullshitter's golden rule, which is to remember your own lies and stick with the same story.

Reason 55...Ottawa has robbed the Employment insurance by confiscating billions paid by workers and placing the money in the general fund.
Ottawa may have done exactly so, but they weren't robbing Quebecers, they were actually robbing other Canadians.
In re-routing contributions to the general fund, Quebecers are big benificiaries because they take out more than their fair share of the general pie. The bigger the pie, the more they benefit.
In fact Quebec contributes less than 20% of the total of EI funds revenues, but takes out about 40% in benefits.
It means that each year, aside from what Ottawa takes out of the fund, Quebec receives about $700 million more than it puts in.
If I lived in the rest of Canada and heard a separatist politician demanding that Canada repatriate the program to Quebec jurisdiction, I would wish that politician good luck and ask him or her, if by chance, they'd be interested in repatriating some spent nuclear fuel rods as well!

Reason 70/1: Canada spends $5 billion in foreign aid, of which Quebec's contribution is 20% (now we're back to 20%) which according to the authors is not enough. I don't exactly understand the point the author is making in pointing out Quebec's contribution. Are they actually telling us that a broke-ass independent Quebec will raise the amount spent on foreign aid?
Then the authors complain that francophone countries are being systematically denied Canadian foreign aid, perhaps forgetting that the largest beneficiary of Canadian largess is Haiti, at over $300 million.

In conclusion, a lot of these 92 reasons are really nothing more than bitching and moaning, an exercise in cynical spin and deception, so it's lucky that the document is a bust, something that only dedicated sovereigntists will bother with.
If this is what we are to expect in the new campaign to promote sovereignty, we are going to witness an exercise in futility 

And as Shakespeare put it, it is just;

Sound and fury...signifying nothing.

PQ's Magical Mystery Tour

"Roll up,
WE'VE GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED

Roll up for the mystery tour.... Roll up!,

SATISFACTION GUARANTEED,
Roll up for the mystery tour.
The magical mystery tour is hoping to take you away,
Hoping to take you away... take you away!!"

I have to say, if Pauline Marois is nothing else, she is predictable.
Her latest sovereignty 'push,' announced with much fanfare is actually just another cynical ploy dedicated to deceiving the weak of mind and the ideologically over-committed.

When one considers her actions, in light of her true motivations, which is to  retain power at all costs, it makes certain sense to engage in another silly round of loud sovereigntist chest-thumping.

Like jogging, where the object isn't to get anywhere, but rather to exercise, Pauline's sovereignty push is not really an effort to re-animate the moribund project of sovereignty, but rather to satisfy the militants who demand action.
As they say "busy hands are happy hands!"

And so Pauline hopes to tire them out in a useless bout of sovereigntist exercise.
Her new push should be nicknamed Sovereignty 5BX, a tiring stand in place, go nowhere program which uses up a lot of effort and doesn't cost a lot.

To dedicated sovereigntists, Pauline Marois' announcement that her PQ government  is undertaking a new and robust campaign to promote sovereignty is perhaps music to their years, but I'm not sure that they are entirely fooled, so naked is the deception.

To that end, they will be utilizing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, a decidedly low-cost approach.
Let us consider that one television commercial on a top-rated French TV show can garner up to two million views while an internet infomercial promoting sovereignty will be hard pressed to hit 10,000 views and all of those views are likely to come from dedicated hardliners.

At any rate, Pauline has launched the campaign with a speech worthy of  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, cherry-picking a few facts to make the point that Quebec is done wrong by Canada.
Her argument is so glaringly infantile that only the delusional can swallow it.

Telling her minions that Quebec is being short-changed because the big ship-building contract was given to the Maritimes, she actually said that had Quebec gotten that same $20 billion money to invest, they wouldn't need equalization payments! Link{fr}
Think about that statement....
She is actually telling the audience that if Ottawa gives Quebec money, Quebec wouldn't need any money from Ottawa!
It makes as much sense as Robert Mugabe telling his followers that ;
“We don't mind having sanctions banning us from Europe. We are not Europeans.” Link

I'm afraid that there are more of these type of pronouncements that we can expect, patent nonsense, this from our Premier who is fast becoming a Mugabesque buffoon.

How's about this Pauline gobbledygook about the bothersome subject of university and college tuition fees;

“For me, indexing means a freeze because indexing means that with the cost of living increasing from year to year, if we freeze without indexing, we reduce tuition fees,” Marois said. “We have to be clear on that.”
Marois said she wants “a balance,” to reduce student debt and make university more accessible.
In a tweet, ASSÉ, the Association pour la solidarité syndicale étudiante, which has called for free tuition, replied to the premier.
“The freeze on tuition fees its not indexing. Pauline Marois should open a dictionary!” Link

It would be funny if not so sad......

Quebec's Alternate Universe

The maddening and bewildering world of Quebec's  alternate universe

Like it or not, agree or disagree, the use of a common language, different from Canada, has resulted in Quebec developing in a different societal direction than that of the ROC or in fact, English North America altogether.

While the federal government binds Quebec to the rest of Canada with both societies sharing many common experiences, it is what is unshared,  including language, law, culture, media and education that sets us apart.

It's like placing two closely-related groups of people on two separate desert islands and watching them naturally develop in different directions over time.

Sometimes, we on the English side sit back and wonder at the decisions Quebecers make as a society, but everyday in the Quebec press, a similar voice is raised about us, that it is we who are paddling up the wrong river and that it is Quebec that has chosen wisely, making societal choices that favours the collective over the individual.

Most people in the ROC, as well as the English speaking people in Quebec, view Quebec society as nothing less than an alternate universe, as strange and bewildering as the world experienced by Alice on her trip through the looking glass.

Let's peek in and take an allegorical and whimsical tour of this place, with apologies to Lewis Carrol.
I've put together a compendium of stories, which like Alice's experience through the looking glass, will take the reader on a bewildering and maddening voyage, one where normal as we define it is abnormal and where sense as we define it is nonsense. 

a caveat: Not everybody in Quebec agrees with this alternate view of society, not by a long shot.
But it is the agenda sold in the media, the schools, and the intelligentsia, the concept of massive government spending and massive government intervention in society, a policy adopted by both federalist and separatist Quebec governments going back to Jean Lesage.

Quebec's "sustainable un-development"

Let me credit the above phrase to Alain Dubuc of La Presse who coined the original French version of "sous-développement durable," in an article which described Quebecers sometime pathological fear of fossil fuel development and which describes more specifically the city of Gaspé where the town council enacted legal roadblocks bringing to halt the drilling of an oil well near the town. The mayor insisted on protecting the town's water table despite the fact that  the well, which incidentally, was only a test well, was being drilled over five kilometres away from homes.

"What is surprising, however, is the contrast between the mayor's vehemence and the decay of his city's economy. Mr. Roussy said that "we will not compromise" on the water quality, even if the threat seems virtually nonexistent. Read the story in French

Like most other towns in the peninsula, Gaspé's economy depends largely on fishing and tourism, both purely part time affairs and it's no surprise that chronic unemployment is a hallmark of the region where those on government benefits are double the Quebec average and of those who do work, 38% depend on government related salaries.

In choosing to block oil development, just about the only thing that can bring jobs and prosperity to the region, the local citizens led by the mayor are smugly telling all who will listen that they are choosing to protect the environment over  economic benefit. Hmm....

In a stinging blog piece, entitled "Gaspé and other people's money', a blogger points out rather cruely, just how dependant the area is on handouts from the federal and provincial governments and just how much of a drain the region is to Quebec's financial well-being..

"When you live in the land of Cain and you're as poor as Job, unless you are completely masochistic, you'll jump for joy to learn that you've found oil on your land ..." Link{fr}

err...Not the people of the Gaspé!

Now the fun starts in the comments below the story where Gaspésian after Gaspésian defends the right to live as they do, this letter, pretty typical.

"Gaspé has clean air, pure water, nature, unpolluted beaches. There is no corruption, no corrupt municipal employees, no murders every week, no home invasions, no mafia, no traffic jams, no road rage, no senior homes with malnourished, ill treated and abandoned seniors, but rather, hospitable caregivers, proud to be  Gaspésians. We have the best quality of life that you could imagine and the most beautiful view in the world, as well as the most beautiful part of the country imaginable .... that must be why Montrealers come to buy our homes to spend their retirement ... Gaspé is paradise... Montreal is more like hell ... I'm sorry, David, money does not buy happiness" -Marie-Jeanne Fiola ....

Comment after comment of sanctimonious wailing, was finally interrupted by this one which made me smile.

"Clean air? Please stop being an idiot, The air in Montreal would be as pure as in Gaspé, if we were as lazy as you. And for a people who don't work hard, you still managed to virtually exterminate the fish stocks.
You say to us that we have corruption, but YOU ARE WORSE, how about all the welfare money and under the table earnings.
You are all just pathetic and useless and I dream of days that Quebec will turn its back on you!."- Françis Éliotte

And so these Quebecers are against the development of natural resources in their backyard, but not necessarily against the benefits of natural resources. What they are in favour of is someone else developing these resources, somewhere else and shipping a portion of the profits over here.
Are you listening, Alberta?

So it's no surprise that some Quebecers are demonstrating against Quebec's vaunted 'Plan Nord' a project to develop Quebec's vast resources in the uninhabited hinterland in the vast wastelands of the north.

Poster calling on Quebecers to demonstrate against Quebec's plan to develop natural resources

And so as we begin our Alice in Wonderland trip through Quebec, our first experience is the discovery that it's first holy principle, is called 'Other people's money'

Quebec stamp collecting raised to an art form

In Quebec's alternate universe, people have the absolute right to work for four months a year and collect unemployment benefits for the remaining eights months.
It's normal, fair and absolutely justifiable.

Those who defend the practice, tell Alice that just because there are few employment opportunities where they live, they have an absolute right to live where they want to and if the government can't produce jobs for them, then working Canadians in Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, will just have to pay to support them.

While unemployment insurance was invented as a safety net to help people get over a rough spot after losing their job, in parts of Quebec, it is simply an income subsidy program where participants in places like the Îles de la Madeleine get benefits every single year and where it is a way of life.

Recently the Harper government brought in reforms that will have the effect of reducing these benefits, something that has the region up in arms.
A recent demonstration against these reforms in Cap-aux-Meules, the main town in the Îles de la Madeleine, turned out one third of the population, panicked by the idea of being cut off.
In fact, the 300 local lobster fisherman are not only opposed to the stricter rules, but are in fact demanding that benefits be extended by another five weeks, because the fishing season is less than three months long and that they face a 'black hole' between the time the benefits run out and fishing season begins!

The practice of working the qualifying period for employment insurance even has its own sarcastic euphemism, called "Collecting Stamps"
I first heard the term many years ago, while travelling on business through the region. It is a term used to describe someone who works just long enough to qualify for benefits and no longer.

It seems that in the old days before computers, workers kept booklets in which they would affix stamps that employers included with their paycheck. When a worker 'collected' enough stamps, he or she could qualify for unemployment benefits.
The concept is pretty much the same as the  'Pinky' or 'Gold Star' stamp program that food stores conducted in the fifties and sixties, if you are old enough to remember. (which I doubt)

When Alice asks those on the program how they can justify Canadians paying them eight months of benefits for four months of work, year after year, they  become indignant, warning her that without these benefits, everyone will have to move where there are jobs, an unacceptable burden!

Students being students...Quebec style

When the PQ won a slim minority mandate, it had to face the reality of its election platform, part of which was the promise to support a freeze in tuition for college and university students until a conference it was to call to discuss the issue.
Now the PQ government is facing that conference, but like all the other promises it made, is searching for a way out of it.
The radical students who demand free tuition have been told that this idea is now off the table and won't even be discussed, triggering a decision by some of them to boycott the conference.
The less radical student groups, who opposed the large increase, but called for a freeze instead, are also learning that a promise is not a promise and that Pauline who wore a symbolic red square and banged pots in the street in support of the student strike, actually doesn't give a crap.

Students are not amused and many feel betrayed, threatening a return strike action if their demands are not met.

Alice is surprised, she asks the student leader how a strike can hurt the government, when the only thing at stake is the student's education.

"When I refused to eat my dinner because I didn't like it, my mother took it away and served it for breakfast and then lunch the next day, until I ate it. I learned a good lesson. How can going on strike hurt anyone but yourself?"

"Ah, but this is Quebec!" answered the student leader. "You should have done as we did. You should have broken the windows in your home and slashed your mother's tires so she couldn't go to work!"

"Oh my.. " said Alice..."If you do that, how will she support your family?"

"You obviously don't understand," answered the student leader... "how else will we be heard?" 

Quebec's  fossil-fuel-phobia

As Alice continues her visit through the alternate universe of Quebec, she is surprised to find that its citizens have a pathological fear of fossil fuel development. She is told patronizingly, that exploration of oil and gas is feeding an unhealthy dependence on polluting energy.

Alice is perplexed, because if Quebecers are against using fossil fuel energy, why are they in fact the province that has the highest per head ratio of vehicles on the road?

In fact, Quebec leads the country in the use of 'dirty' wood stoves. Used for heating, the majority of these haven't been updated to cleaner versions that create up to 90% less pollution.
The fact that just one of these dirty stove heaters creates more pollution in 24 hours than 9 cars in a year, doesn't seem to faze the Quebec government, which otherwise claims to be obsessed with the enviornment.
Surprisingly, the government also has no plans to restrict these stoves or phase them out, nor even to ask users who do heat with wood, to upgrade to the newer and vastly cleaner models!
Instead the Quebec government is looking at making pollution standards for cars even tighter and more expensive.
"Go figger...." Alice thinks to herself.

Now years ago, Quebec put a hold on shale gas exploration (exploration, not development) because of the furious outcry by people in the communities close to where the gas wells would be drilled.
The Charest government sent the whole issue for study to the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE), a government commission that assesses the ecological impact of development. This had the effect of freezing things until now.

When the PQ government was elected, those running the BAPE were fired, deemed to be too industry-friendly  and replaced by radical environmentalists.

Then the Marois government decided to throw out all the previous studies conducted by BAPE concerning shale gas development and decided to start deliberations from scratch, claiming that the old studies were biased in favour of industry, declaring a moratorium on the exploration of the resource, in the meantime.

The bewildering part in all this is, is that the commission needn't bother deliberating at all.
All the companies that do the exploration have packed up and left Quebec!
If somebody in the PQ would bother to read the newspapers, they would know that the shale gas industry has already matured and that production in North America is now so high that prices have fallen in half.
While mature shale gas wells on-stream for many years remain profitable because start up and development costs have already been paid for, new wells are not economic under current and foreseeable market conditions.

Alice asks Pauline, "You've missed the boat, so why are you studying the ecological impact of shale gas development, if no company is prepared to develop shale gas at all?"

"Because we have to be prepared, that's why!" snorts Pauline.

SNC Lavalin & HQ..... pride of Quebec

There's no doubt that Quebecers are proud of the two biggest symbols of its economic emancipation, Hydro-Qubec and SNC-Lavalin, and it seems that nothing but nothing can be allowed to shake that confidence.
Like those fans of Lance Armstrong who believed that he was innocent in the face of overwhelming evidence, self-deception is a powerful thing when people are so deeply invested.

So it is actually no surprise at all to see that in the face of so many negative and shocking revelations in regard to these two pillars of Quebec economic development, the province has collectively decided to "stand by her man."

SNC-Lavalin has developed into one of the most powerful engineering/consulting firms in the world, with billions of dollars in projects spread across the globe. The fact that the company is Quebec-bred and that its head-office remains in Montreal, remains a powerful symbol of Quebec know-how.

Recently however, that reputation has not only been tarnished, but absolutely sullied with revelations of bribery of officials in order to win contracts, that may have been standard operation procedure in the company's business development plan.
A bizarre story came to light exposing this dirty secret when a plot to smuggle one of Colonel Gadhafi sons out of the country during the revolution, to safe haven in Mexico, fell apart.
Allegedly, SNC paid up to $160 million in bribes to Saadi Gadhafi, which successfully led to lucrative contracts in Libya.
One ex-SNC employee is sitting in jail in Switzerland and the company has distanced itself from other employees involved, throwing them all under the bus.
All this led to the dismissal of the president of the company, who is now charged with fraud. The RCMP is also investigating whether the company paid the infamous Arthur Porter a bribe of up to $22 million to secure the contract for the new super hospital now under construction in Montreal. Link

But like a wayward son, Quebecers seem forgiving.

"Quebec’s pension fund giant Caisse de dépot says it will continue to support SNC-Lavalin because it sees the engineering firm’s potential of becoming a “true global leader” once it gets over its current problems.
“I know now that SNC is tarnished because of what’s happened but you can’t lose the forest through the trees,” Caisse CEO Michael Sabia told reporters Tuesday during a discussion of its new strategy to shield itself from market volatility." Link

 As for the public, they do seem somewhat enraged, but not over the scandal itself, but rather the repercussions.
It seems that in conducting a cleanup, a lot of old francophone bosses including the president, have been replaced by Anglophones and that has the press seeing red.

"The reshuffle announced Friday morning in the senior ranks of SNC-Lavalin is another blow to the French presence at the highest levels of the company, until recently seen as a jewel of 'Quebec Inc.'

Since coming into office, the boss of SNC-Lavalin, Robert Card,  an American who replaced Pierre Duhaime, has made multiple appointments that lead  to the diminished  presence of francophones at the highest levels of the company." Link{fr}

As for Hydro-Quebec, support for the utility remains steadfast, despite having up to twice as many employees as it needs and perhaps the highest operating costs of any North American utility.
But all this isn't important as long as the company records billions in profits, notwithstanding the fact that most of the money it makes is based on the power that it gets from Newfoundland for pittance.
But bad decision after bad decision, coupled with collapsing export prices has people starting to look closer.

While Hydro is mothballing power plants that it owns because it has piled up a massive amount of surplus generating capacity, it is paying for power it doesn't need from third parties at exorbitant prices.
The company is also committed to useless and expensive wind-farm projects and other stupidities.

But so far, nobody in government is willing to bell the cat, it is just too unthinkable.

As Alice hears the story she shrugs her shoulders.

"This place is curioser and curioser!"

Honesty and Quebec values

While taking a break, Alice is invited to watch the goings on at the Crime Commission that the government of Jean Charest was browbeaten into convening.

She watches a few witnesses who tell a harrowing story of corruption wherein Quebec's first and third largest cities seem to be run by criminals doing business with criminals, aided by criminals.
The scale of dishonesty is so large and widespread that Alice asks the Cheshire cat who is sitting beside her why not one person ever became a whistleblower.

Read "125 years of corruption commissions"

"Ha Ha!" he retorted." How little you understand. Quebec has been corrupt forever, it is the way things are.
People aren't even that upset, in fact despite the horrific tales of corruption coming out about the city, a majority of Montrealers still believe that their city is well run!" 

 "Oh my," said Alice, as she got up to leave, "I've got one more stop to make on my quest to better understand the queer nature of this place. 

"Where are you going, my dear?" asked the Cat,

 "I've an appointment at a place called 'l'Office québécois de la langue française,' they promised to clear things up for me."

"Really....the OQLF?" answered a grinning Cheshire cat,

"Then Good luck, my dear"



Thank you readers for coming along on this journey. I shall leave with a  final quote from the original work, Alice in Wonderland;

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Pauline Marois Making Lemonade from Lemons

Pauline Marois, Quebec's most dangerous Premier.

It's a political reality that elected officials need to project an aura of calm control, even in the face of bad news.
Depending on the situation, politicians uphold that truism by sometimes telling the truth, sometimes spinning or colouring the truth and more rarely, ignoring the truth and outright lying.

It's part of the game based on three incontrovertible political truths, the first that voters are generally not too bright, secondly, that partisan supporters of any particular political party will accept just about any nonsense spouted by their leader and thirdly, that the press is uncomfortable in calling out politicians as liars, as it may lead, more often than not, to the reporter losing access, something that will affect his or her ability to make a living.

Let me offer a couple of examples that illustrate the above.

Telling the truth.
This is the easiest concept to understand and when the truth lines up with what a politician's and political party's agenda, than truth it is. Unfortunately, it's rare.

Preaching to the converted
When Pauline Marois and the Parti Quebecois tell the faithful that they are working towards sovereignty, despite the fact that support for the option is practically at its nadir, they are providing a false and cynical view that only the faithful buy.  But buy it the faithful do, and keeping the party base satisfied is rule number one in politics.
So Pauline has now decided to spend waste $15 million on a new government department whose task is to promote an option that is a strictly no-go.

Lying
When an elected official is positively sure that a lie cannot be discovered and that the lie is more convenient than the truth, then lie it is.

My favourite possible examples are these two. I say possible, because nobody can disprove the stories, regardless of how implausible and unrealistic, therein lies the beauty.

Back before the last provincial election, Pierre Duchesne told the press that he never had a conversation about becoming a PQ candidate while working as a reporter for Radio-Canada.
According to him, he quit his job as the network's chief correspondent at the legislature in Quebec after 25 years without any prospects.
Both he and Pauline swore up and down that there were no conversations about a PQ offer to run, yet another potential PQ candidate, who asked for a chance to run in the riding that Duschene now represents, told reporters that she was told months before the announcement that it was reserved for a  “star candidate from Radio-Canada” Hmmmm....

And then there is poor Olivia Chow, I cannot help but remember her impassioned defence of her husband, Jack Layton, when she sucked it up and said this;

"Sixteen years ago, my husband went for a massage at a massage clinic that is registered with the City of Toronto," Chow wrote. "He exercises regularly; he was and remains in great shape; and he needed a massage."

Of course, the massage therapist wasn't exactly licensed, she was a young Chinese immigrant who police said they observed throwing a wet Kleenex in the trash bin while a naked Layton was confronted by police in the washy-washy. Yuch! Read the hilarious story and denial

Years later, after the death of her husband, in an interview with Peter Mansbridge, Chow insisted that Layton didn't want to reveal the type of cancer he had  in order to give others, similarly afflicted, hope. LINK
Really? Did Chow expect us to believe that drivel?
A more likely suggestion was that Layton lied by omission about the extent of cancer before and during his last federal election and Chow was protecting his legacy.
But in Chow's defence, we all know that dead men tell no tales.

The 'Perfect Storm' that combines every element of political dishonesty.
When Thomas Mulcair proposed that the high Canadian dollar caused by the Alberta oil boom is hurting the economy by attriting manufacturing jobs, he hit on a perfect issue.
Too bad it wasn't true.
This so-called 'Dutch Disease' played well to the faithful, especially in Quebec where the concept of job disappearance caused by Alberta's boom economy was music to the ears of separatists and leftists.

"Yet another study has found that a Canadian dollar boosted by high oil prices isn't a big factor in manufacturing declines, but NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair isn't buying it." Link

The fact that the theory is outdated and discredited doesn't faze Mulcair at all, who continues to defend the concept, because well, those who support the NDP, so want it to be true.
Thomas Mulcair is the consummate political operator, where spinning the truth, deluding the deluded and defending the undefendable is not only possible but probable, when voters are cynically told what they want to hear, irrespective of the truth.

At any rate, all of the above negative political traits apply to Pauline Marois to a degree that I have never in my life witnessed in any Canadian politician.
When it comes to Quebec's Premier, obfuscation, misdirection and outright prevarication are practices that she has raised to an art form and in this respect she is a cut above any politician I have ever followed, even Mulcair.

Now before I am accused of launching a partisan screed against separatists, the above description does not apply to any of the previous PQ leaders, even Bernard Landry, who while a dedicated and committed separatist was never any guiltier than the average Canadian politician when it comes to political honesty. As for the rest of the PQ leaders, none can compare to Pauline, who is the darkest, most dishonest and treacherous Quebecois political leader in my memory.

I remember being told, by a highly placed source in the real estate industry, that after shaking the hand of Pauline's husband, Claude Blanchet, one would be advised to count your fingers. 
How Marois dared complain about Charest's 'secret' salary (which was altogether legal) in light of the dubious circumstances by which she and her husband managed to get the agricultural land on which they were to build their famous chateau, re-zoned, is a story that reeks of sliminess.
The PQ government of the day, of which she was then a member, approved the unlikely re-zoning making the couple instant millionaires.
Let us not forget the circumstances by which Blanchet was named the head of a government investment agency.

"In 1997, in contrast to 20 rules, the PQ cabinet, instead of the elected Board of Directors,  appointed the husband of Pauline Marois (then Finance Minister) as Chairman of Société Générale de Financement, a bizarre resemblance to Elvis Gratton. It's was Marois herself that established his contract and his salary,  contrary to the rule that specifies that this must be done by the elected Board of Directors.  Link{fr}

Blanchet, by the way, led this agency, the SGF, to over $500 million in losses. When he was pushed out of the job, Pauline got him a lifetime pension of $90K. Link{fr}
After all this, with a straight face, she gallingly dares call the Liberal Party corrupt!

Aside from her dubious personal ethics, in all the years I've watched politicians, none have so cynically mislead the public and in fact her own political party as does Pauline Marois on a daily basis.

In the face of a deteriorating economy, crumbling infrastructure, rampant corruption, a failing health system and deficit spending that will soon have the province facing a crisis, Pauline chooses to offer an alternate view of reality, one where every failing is a golden opportunity and like Eric Idle, in Monty Python's The Life of Brian, Pauline has her minions looking on the bright side of life, singing an unrealistic song of fantasy and self-deception.

For Pauline making lemonade out of lemons has become an exercise in spin, misdirection, deception and outright prevarication, elevated to the nth degree.
While attending the economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, she unloaded this beauty concerning Quebec's growing electricity surplus, a statement that nobody, but nobody in the mainstream press, called her out on.

"We have surpluses at the moment," Marois said. "I don't  see that as being negatives. These surpluses are available to attract investment to Quebec. And I think that's a comparative advantage we have to use." Link

 "Whaaat???"
That's like saying having cancer is a good thing because it allows you to try out all the new treatments and remedies available!
Electricity, like airline seats is a perishable item. If an Air Canada jet flies with empty seats on Monday, those seats can't be sold Tuesday.
Could you imagine an airline executive explaining to shareholders that having lots of empty seats is an opportunity to attract more customers in the future, because they can be sold cheaply? Such utter nonsense would have shareholders out for his scalp!

There was a story in the Montreal Gazette about public figures lying and our ability to observe body language that indicates dishonesty. Link
Notwithstanding, it's my opinion based on a lifetime of observation that con artists and experienced public officials who lie, are impervious to this method of detection.
They are so used to lying that is natural and so they feel no guilt or tension at all.

And so when Pauline unloaded this whopper in an interview aired on the BBC, she didn't flinch one bit.

 "If you have a poll, you can see that the approval of the sovereignty is at maybe 42, 44%."

Yikes!!!!
By the way, nobody but nobody in the mainstream press has called her out on her obviously misstatement of the truth.

She's a dangerous character, able and willing to advance her own agenda by any means, which is not sovereignty, but rather maintaining her position as Premier, a job like her predecessor, that she relishes.

She will say and do anything, damn the consequences. She is an operator extraordinaire.

She is perhaps the most evil and destructive Premier this province has ever seen, having no qualms about destroying Quebec in order to advance her personal agenda of mindless and reckless power.

Equality Party 2.0 Selects Interim Leader

As I mentioned a while back, The Equality party is in the process of re-forming, now going through the necessary steps to become certified with the Directeur général des élections  du Québec (DEG), a process that gives official standing and allows the party to run candidates in the next provincial election.
It seems that in the eyes of the election commissioner the old Equality Party has lapsed and cannot be resurrected.

And so the whole process of creating a political party must start from scratch, including collecting memberships, filling out forms, providing a deposit, etc. etc.

Until the time that the party is official, posts will be filled on an interim basis, pending a general membership vote.

This last weekend, the interim committee selected Mark S. Bergeron as the interim leader and if you are not familiar with the name, let me refresh your memory.

"A Quebec couple has lodged a complaint with the province’s ambulance service after they say a paramedic refused to speak to them in English as their daughter suffered a seizure.
Last weekend, Mark Bergeron and Stephanie Hansen of Vaudreuil, just outside Montreal, called an ambulance for their two-year-old daughter Ella, who was convulsing and unresponsive with a febrile seizure. Children can have these types of seizures when they develop a fever and their body temperature rises quickly."
“Her eyes were closed, she was unconscious,” Bergeron told CTV Montreal. “She wasn’t responding to anything (the paramedics) were doing.”

Two-year-old Ella tries out a slide in Montreal on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012.

Bergeron is bilingual, but began having trouble understanding medical terms the paramedics were using in French, and so asked if they could all switch to English.
“With a lot of hostility in his voice he basically said to me, ‘No, moi je parle francais,’ meaning that I had to address him in the language that he was comfortable with in this situation, which in my opinion was absolutely unacceptable,” Bergeron said. Read and watch an interview with Mark

The incident convinced Mark to get involved with this new version of the Equality Party, one that will speak up for individual rights as well as other economic and social issues from a federalist standpoint.

 Here is a bio provided to me;

I was born in Montreal on February 23, 1976 to an Anglophone father and Italian mother.

My paternal grandfather was a rare Anglo Bergeron and my paternal grandmother was Hungarian. My father, however, was raised by his Hungarian grandparents and only learned to speak English at the age of 6.

My mother was born in Italy and her family came to Canada in search of a better life when she was young. My grandfather passed away shortly after arriving in Canada and my grandmother raised 5 children on her own in Montreal, speaking nothing but Italian her entire life.

We were raised in the West Island, born in Kirkland, spent my teenage years in Beaconsfield, and finally settled in Hudson in 1993.

I attended French school throughout my formative years, from Pre-School to Grade 4, at École St. Rémi in Beaconsfield. From there, I attended private school, Lower Canada College, in NDG until graduation in 1993. In 1994, I opted for LCC’s Pre-University program in lieu of CEGEP, which allowed me advanced placement in University, outside of Quebec. The program is not recognized by Quebec institutions.

In the fall of 1995, I left Quebec for the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton campus. My first two years were in the Science program, specializing in Biology. My father, however, convinced me to switch into the Business Administration Program so that I could run the family business. I graduated in the Spring of 2000 with a BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) with a Major in Finance.

In April 2001, shortly following my return to Montreal, I completed both the Canadian Securities Course (with High Honours) and the Insurance of Persons course offered by La Chambre de la Sécurité Financière.

My return to Montreal included my wife, a unilingual, Anglo New Brunswicker, and  we settled down in Montreal West. We lived there for eleven years until our family (We have 3 children) outgrew our place and moved to Vaudreuil-Dorion.

I work alongside my father as a Financial Security Advisor, managing a client base of over 2,000 individuals, and approaching $70 million of assets under management. Essentially, I am a self-employed financial services broker, but the aforementioned is my official title. In addition, I am Vice-President of my father’s corporation.

A while back, I wrote a piece describing why I think a political party representing equal rights is important and why a seat in Parliament is not as important as one would intuitively think.

Firstly, as a bone fide political party, the leader could not be kept off the airwaves and would naturally have the "right of reply" to those who propose limits on personal freedom.
As of now, despite the best efforts of those in the Anglo/Ethnic community who have organized lobby groups, nobody is called upon to offer a defence of individual rights in the mainstream media, when those rights are attacked by franco-supremacists.

Let me put it bluntly, when loudmouths, like Mario Beaulieu spout their nonsensical ethnocentric rhetoric on television, the Equality party can rightfully demand (and in my opinion will receive) the right to counter those arguments. The media, like it or not, will have no other choice but to present a response from a bone fide political party in the interests of fairness.

Secondly, the leader of a bone fide political party can speak with some authority across Canada, bringing the message to Canadians that personal rights are being infringed in Quebec and that it is the duty of those in the ROC to defend those rights, rather than just give up on Quebec and the millions of Canadians living here who don't want to be abandoned and who do not wish to flee.

The coming per vote subsidy can provide tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding, money that can be used to build support in Ottawa and the ROC for a defence of our individual and collective rights.

As for specific policies I'm not going to presume to speak for the party or the leader, the former and the latter will no doubt apprise the public as to what it is the Equality Party 2.0 stands for.

I have been provided this quick policy comparison which you can peruse in detail by clicking on the illustration.

FAIR DISCLOSURE:
As a political organizer, I have been asked to provide advice to those creating the new Equality party and have done so willingly.
I have filled out a membership form and will certainly vote Equality in the next provincial election.

That being said, I HAVE NO OFFICIAL capacity and do not speak for party. That will be up to the leader and the executive, again of which, I am not a member.

I hope you will take up membership and support the party whichever way you can.

While the party gets its ducks in a row by going the the process of becoming 'official' in the eyes of the law, you contact the party through this email that was provided to me.

equalityparty2.0@gmail.com