Bridge Saga Confirms Our Leaders as Idiots

It was with stunned amazement that I watched the presentation by our illustrious leaders who explained quite proudly that the plan to remove the old Champlain bridge (once the new span is completed) will take some four years to complete and cost upwards of $400 million.

Whaaaaat???????????

The Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges  authority prepared a video at a cost of untold tens hundreds of thousands of dollars to illustrate how they might undertake the vastly complicated project.
 I say 'complicated' rather facetiously because the entire world understands that to demolish a bridge, the cheapest and fastest way to do so, is to blow it up in one fell swoop.
Not so in Quebec, where we do things differently, not to be better, just to be different and always at a higher cost.

At any rate, the new bridge looks like it's going to be late and over-budget, something every person reading this page, fully expected.

You might ask why they don't just blow up the damn thing with dynamite in a controlled demolition for a fraction of the cost, with just a couple of weeks preparation.
If you do ask, you'd get the most ridiculous and patently stupid answer in return.

You see the good folks at the bridge authority are afraid of disturbing the mutant three-headed fish that swim below the bridge and they want to spare the folks on the adjacent Nuns Island a nasty dust cloud that would inevitably follow.
Yup, that's the justification for that $400 million cost. The fish and the dust.

Montreal Dumps massive amount of sewage into river

This for a city that dumped a gazillion liters of toxic sewage into that same river last year because to do anything else would cost too much and be quite the bother.
When it comes to saving the environment in Quebec, all efforts are mandatory and at any cost ....as long as Ottawa and Canadian taxpayers ante up.

The question to be asked is why in Quebec is blowing up a bridge not politically or environmentally correct, when the practice is standard operating procedure all over the world.
The City of New York doesn't seem to have any qualms about blowing up a bridge with dynamite and this in one of the most densely populated urban areas in North America.

"A much needed replacement bridge has been under construction since 2015 and is slated to open in April. Once it's fully functional, the 78-year old Kosciuszko Bridge will literally be blown to smithereens. The reason behind blowing up the bridge is that it will just save the work crew's time. Usually, it takes months to dismantle a bridge so blowing it up is actually much easier (not to mention, considerably more dramatic)."Link

The only controversy around the project is which music will be played during the big explosion, with many proposing the 1812 Overture being  played by a volunteer band.
In a ceremony last year blowing up another New York State bridge, Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn't seem to have any qualms about using explosives to take down another out-dated bridge.

"Life is tough when you’re a bridge," he said. "You work for 85 years, stand up through storms, rain, carry vehicles every day. Then at retirement, you don’t get a watch, you don’t get a pension, you don’t get a thank you. All they do is blow you up.”

In fact dozens of bridges are successfully blown up each year, even those over rivers.
What is it that makes us so special that we cannot do the same?

Now I understand that a federal agency is undertaking the foolhardy project which includes an overpriced bridge and a ridiculous over-priced demolition, so we here in Montreal are sitting on our hands, watching the rank stupidity and foolhardy spending with nary a complaint because we are the beneficiaries.
Like usual Quebec takes while giving back a pittance and so Canadian taxpayers get to play the generous fools once again.
The project represents all that is wrong with our government, both provincial and federal when idiots have their hands on the public purse strings and spend like demons just because they can.
The announcement of the environmental effort to spare the fish under the bridge comes in the same week that Montreal is surreptitiously chopping down 1,000 trees on beautiful St. Helen's Island to make way for a paved concourse, further degrading a stunning green space to accommodate Osehega, an alt-music festival.
Maybe the festival can adopt Joni Mitchel's 'Big Yellow Taxi' as it's anthem.
You know the lyrics;

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
And put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half to seem 'em

I cannot fathom the timid reaction by taxpayer groups, watchdogs or the press, who let the issue of the massive overspend on the removal of the old Champlain bridge go with nary a word of protest.
This while people are motivated to protest in the streets over a couple of million dollars in over-compensation of Bombardier executives while quietly accepting a needless $400 million demolition project.

I remember getting a knock on my door in my rented apartment in Florida. A lovely and spry grey-haired senior citizen asked me if I planned to go down to city hall for the big tax protest that they were organizing.
Alas, I answered, I'm only a temporary renter with no dog in the fight.
To which she called me an idiot, reminding me that because of the tax increase I would be paying more next time I rented.
By the way, the protest was successful and rates were frozen.
If only we had the same concerned citizens here, we might attend a grand farewell blow-up party for the Champlain bridge, saving us hundreds of millions.

Bombardier Makes Fools of Us All

It boggles the mind how devious, arrogant and underhanded companies like Bombardier can be. This coupled with the rank stupidity of those in government who deal with these slickers, leaves taxpayers holding the bag once again, a Quebec tradition.

Quebec is the provincial champion of government largess vis-a-vis company handouts and actually doles out three times as much money and tax breaks to companies as Ontario does. Considering that Ontario's budget is 1½ times that of Quebec, it means that we dole out money at a rate 4½ times in comparison.
This adds up to about $6 billion that the government shells out to keep companies from fleeing to greener pastures.
The vaunted Montreal video game industry, the poster boy of the government's investment in jobs is strictly a question of pay to play, with tax benefits that cover in some cases of up to a third of the overall company payroll.

At any rate, let us say that when negotiating with these companies, our illustrious leaders are over-matched, like a flyweight boxer getting into the ring with a heavyweight.

If you hadn't heard the latest, Bombardier blackmailed the Quebec government for a $1.3 billion loan, claiming poverty, and then turned around and gave huge raises and bonus' to its bosses.
The company has a long history of living on the government dole.

There is no better description of Bombardier's actions than the Yiddish word "Chutzpah"

How stupid are Bombardier bosses?
Not since "New Coke" has a company blundered so publicly, turning even the biggest government defenders against them.
The federal government is now considering an additional request from the company for a further $1 billion loan, which has become toxic overnight.
Not even Trudeau can sell this loan, the country won't have it.

It's time for governments to forgo loans and subsidies to  private business. Those companies asking for handouts are either commercial failures (Bombardier) or successful companies who scam idiot politicians with threats and promises over jobs.

Now we are hearing that the Calgary Flames are threatening the city and province with moving if taxpayers don't shell out for a new arena.
The Flames are in the successful scammer category, threatening taxpayers in a shameful ruse that would make a mafia protection racketeer proud.

The Flames billionaire owner is just following the successful shakedown that the other Alberta hockey billionaire-owner of the Oilers, Daryl Katz did on Edmonton taxpayers, getting the city to pay for most of the $600 million arena project. All it took was a shopping trip to Seattle to frighten officials into coughing up. Easy-peasy.

But Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi should call the Flames bluff.
There is absolutely no good option in the western part of Canada or the United States to move to, Seattle included. If there was an option, the NHL would have expanded there itself.
On the other hand, on the remotest of chance that the Flames move, another ownership group would jump at the chance to operate in Calgary under the present conditions.

Politicians need to grow a pair.
Subsidies and corporate handouts should be made illegal, because just like drugs they are too tempting for weak-kneed politicians.

As Nancy Reagan said....JUST SAY NO!

Does Social Malaise Grip Quebec?

It was more in sadness than anger that I read about the inevitable forced resignation from McGill university by perceived Quebec-basher Professor Andrew Potter, who wrote a scathing and perhaps disjointed article attacking Quebec society entitled entitled;
“How a snowstorm exposed Quebec’s real problem: social malaise.”

Reading the article I couldn't help but sense the profound disdain and anger that the good professor felt for Quebec society, and although the article was mostly accurate, it had the sense of one written by an author in an altered state or someone unloading on his boss before the inevitable firing.

Of course, once published, the writing was on the wall for the good professor at McGill, an institution on a precipitous decline after itself adopting and installing Quebec values, best represented by the French expression; "Nivler par le bas" or as we say in English "leveling down," the process of making the lowest common denominator the academic standard.
McGill is a university led by Quisling-like administrators petrified of giving offense to its government overlords and French language critics. It is quick to change its academic standards so as to accommodate French students in order to scare off the language hounds.

“Dr. Saleem Razack, assistant dean of admissions for medicine.... .... says McGill would have kept the MCAT requirement if there was a French equivalent. “But we want to make sure there’s no barrier for a major segment of our population.” According to Razack, the regular med school class from undergraduate programs doesn’t have as many francophones as McGill would like....” LINK

McGill University medical school, which lowered admission standards to favour francophones has slid from the best program in Canada, to third, reflecting the sad realty of the effects of affirmative action.
I can only imagine what other 'accommodations' have been made in other faculties.

And so it isn't strange that the good professor was shown the door despite the university denying that it forced the professor out, even in the face of criticism of the apparent assault on academic freedom of expression.
The French press went berserk as is always the case when the Quebec model is attacked, with irrational and unrestrained charges of 'Quebec bashing.'

I wonder if the Quebec Press Council will again censure Macleans magazine for the anti-Quebec article, just as it did over the blockbuster article the magazine ran last year entitled...  "The Most Corrupt Province In Canada ."
On second thought probably not, considering that the last fiasco left the Press Council with egg dripping on its face when the allegations made in the article turned out to be more than accurate.
At any rate Anglo apologists like the Montreal Gazette took up the banner of crushing the messenger  with a sadly amateur opinion piece by editor in chief Lucinda Chodan that was to be kind, unworthy of a high school journalist. The Gazette
In the piece Chodin claimed that criticizing Quebec is fine for Quebecers, but 'Quebec-bashing' when done by mean-spirited out-of-provincers. She went on to excuse Quebecers lack of charity or volunteerism on the demise of the Catholic Church, some 50 years ago, an argument akin to the 'dog ate my homework.'
Most of the attacks over the article were based on two small factual errors which in and of themselves were minor. The author claimed that Quebec ATMs distribute $50 bills to facilitate the underground economy and that restaurants routinely offer discounts for cash.
The attacks based on these small errors reminds me of the lawyerly practice of picking apart the devastating testimony of a witness in court wherein a small discrepancy is blown up out of proportion to discredit the entire testimony.
And by-the way, the practice of cash payment in restaurants was so pervasive in Quebec, that the government installed a draconian system of electronic surveillance of restaurant payments, via government mandated billing machines that connects restaurants directly to the tax department. A small army of vicious tax inspectors prowl restaurants clandestinely buying food to make sure that the billing system is used and that every customer is issued a government receipt.
What other province does this?
And by the way, most  hair salons and barbershops in Quebec are notorious for practicing the art of 'cash' payments,' so much so that the government is contemplating installing the same type of  controlled billing machines. The only caveat is that the attached government inspectors would be obliged to get a haircut or perm to establish the bone fides of the billing system, a prospect not altogether practicable.

As for $50 bills in ATMs, they have recently become rare, with Canada Trust one of the few institutions that provide the bills routinely.
Perhaps the banks are under pressure by the government to no longer provide them. 

At any rate, the ad hominem  attack on the author and the picky argument over the minor errors were nothing more than an attempt to deflect, a concerted effort  to obscure the argument made in the piece, that Quebec suffers from social malaise, a subject worthy of legitimate debate.

So the question remains; is Quebec in a situation of social malaise?

social malaise 
- a feeling of pervasive dissatisfaction and disgruntlement
-problems and difficulties acting together which are causing a bad situation.
-a vague awareness of moral or social decline.

Now let us not mince words;
Quebecers are more dependent on government because that is what they voted for...the nanny state and all that it entails and all that it breeds.
The results;
Quebecers are less generous than Canadians and volunteer less because Quebecers view these responsibilities as the government's.
Quebecers work many less hours than other Canadians because the money is less important than the free time.
Quebecers ship their parents off to senior homes at a rate twice that of Canada because personal and familial responsibility has been bred out of them.
Quebecers save for their childrens' education at a rate half of that of parents in British Columbia and 65% of Quebec parents don't contribute a dime (other than general taxes) to their children's higher education.

I could go on and on, but the question remains... Is this a sign of social malaise?
I think not..
That's just the way Quebecers order their lives and they generally feel right about it, far from the definition of social malaise.
As for Canadians judging them as socially backward...well as the saying goes ...Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And let us remember that like an over-indulgent parent, it is Canadians that help fund these excesses through those naughty equalization payments.
I mean really, if your parents gave you an overly-generous allowance as a teen, would you seek a part-time job at McDonalds?

Why Canadian Medicare is better than Obamacare or Trumpcare

What if a child with a potentially fatal disease had only one option for a cure, a treatment that costs 100 million dollars. Would you expect our publicly funded medicare system in Canada or a private insurance company in the USA to pay for it, or opt to let the child die under the theory that the 100 million dollars could be better spent saving many more lives?

It's a decision worthy of Sophie's Choice, where saving one life means condemning others to certain death, a decision that no rational human would feel comfortable making.
But the reality is that these decisions are made every day by government bureaucrats here in Canada or nameless insurance actuaries in the United States and belies the truth that we cannot provide maximum healthcare to all of our citizens, regardless of whether we are American or Canadian because we do not have the financial wherewithal to pay for it.

And so painful decisions have to be made, decisions that in effect ration healthcare on the basis of cost.
It is a healthcare pie that is to be divided, wherein Canada, each of us gets an equally small sliver or in the United States when the slices are decidedly uneven.
And there is the rub.
And so debate rages here and in the United States over which system can deliver the most for the least, despite the fact that no system can or will deliver all that is ideal and that, to all members of society.

The Canadian system is called single-payer, where the government provides all services related to healthcare and funds the system through special health levys and general taxes.
Both Obamacare and Trumpcare are hybrid systems where the government pay for about half the healthcare service, while the other half is funded by employers and administered by private insurance or health care providers using private doctors and healthcare facilities.

On the face of it, the Canadian system makes a lot more sense. It is plain and simple, eliminates the profit aspect and should in theory spread out health resources (hospitals and doctors) evenly, based on need instead of profit.
But like communist or social systems, it sounds a lot better on paper than in real life and the benefits as opposed to the free market system don't necessarily pan out.
Bureaucracy and low productivity are the Achilles heel of the single-payer system, whereby layers and layers of administrators rob the system of valuable resources and where inefficiency due to poor management and oversight, coupled with low productivity are the bane of the system.

This can be best illustrated by the administration of health services in Quebec versus the rest of Canada, whereby Quebec's infamous bureaucracy and abysmally low productivity rate demonstrate how two single-payer systems operating under the exact same rules can register different results.
Let us remember that 25% of Quebecers cannot find a family doctor despite the province paying for more doctors per capita than Ontario. It is illustrative of how bureaucracy, bad management and laziness makes Quebec's healthcare system so bad as compared to other Canadian provinces, despite having equal financial resources.

At any rate, healthcare in Canada is rationed through long waiting lists for surgery and treatments, and where appointments with doctors, especially specialists, takes much too long. Certain 'exotic' treatments and expensive drugs are just not available due to the perceived poor cost/benefit ratio and so many Canadians afflicted are deprived of  essential treatments, condemned to suffer the consequences of non-treatment or forced to travel to the USA to get what they need or want, at their own expense. How many of us give up waiting in the emergency room because of the interminable hours upon hours of waiting? The societal cost of these delays is incalculable, but impactful just the same.

There is no doubt that long delays for appointments with doctors or waiting lists for surgery or treatment is not a problem in the United States, where health services are plentiful, superb and available almost on demand.
The problem here is getting in the door, where millions upon millions of Americans cannot avail themselves of these excellent services because they don't have the means to pay or the insurance to cover it.
This is the American version of rationing.

When people vaunt the benefits of the American system over the Canadian system they always point to the availability and quality of services as compared to Canada, but always fail to include the crucial aspect of access, whereby too many Americans are locked out of the medical system.

In the end no system is perfect, but let us consider that Canada spends half of what the USA does on healthcare and I can only imagine how much better our system would be versus Trumpcare or Obamacare if we had access to double our healthcare budget.

In the chart above you can see that the USA spends US$8,233 per person, per year on healthcare, while Canada spends almost half that at US$4,445, perhaps the key element in the USA/Canada debate on healthcare.

While most Americans have been frightened away from the concept of Canadian style single-payer system by the entrenched healthcare and insurance industry who constantly 'trump' up the negative aspects of our system, the reality is that only a fraction of Canadians would opt for Trumpcare or Obamacare care, despite the shortcomings of our system.

But before we get too full of ourselves, we shouldn't be too proud of our medicare system and ask ourselves the important question, how it is that countries like France, Great Britain, Germany and others, all have better healthcare systems than ours, while spending considerably less.

New Bloc Leader Already Working on Her Pension

My least favorite politician is Martine Ouellet, the newly minted leader of the Bloc Quebecois who is, although a double university graduate, one of the dumbest people to ever grace the halls of the National Assembly.

She is the absolute definition of of an idiot, spouting off utter separatist nonsense that only fanatical supporters can buy.
According to her, Quebec contributes more in taxes to Ottawa than it receives in benefits and that every province is favoured over Quebec.
She is opposed of course to the Energy East pipeline on the grounds that it is “the biggest threat to potable water in Quebec.”
"She called on sovereignists to rally behind her to protect the “green jewel” that is Quebec and put an end to tax havens and the loss of corporate headquarters from the province."

Quebec as a "green jewel" Really???

She pledges to shut down the world's tax havens and to force companies to keep their head offices in Quebec. I'm not kidding. She says all this with a straight face.

The Parti Quebecois was thrilled to dump her and her claim that the PQ was conspiring against her is the one thing which she repeats that is 100% believable. 

For those new to the blog, I want to cite this interview that I translated a while back where a Radio-Canada interviewer tries to keep a straight face, but clearly astounded at her stupidity.

Yup, the new leader of the Bloc Quebecois thinks that by Ottawa guaranteeing Newfoundland's $900 million loan, it costs taxpayers $900 million.
Someone should have explained it to her in terms she might understand, so here goes.

Your brother goes to the bank to get a car loan, but since he has bad credit, the bank wants to charge a much higher interest rate. But the banker says that if you (the sister with  the good credit) guarantees the loan, the bank will offer the lower interest rate instead.
Now Martine, listen to this..... If you brother repays the loan without defaulting the guarantee COSTS NOTHING!!!!

This is the same woman that is promising to nationalize the internet.

At any rate, let's talk about the fact that she is not giving up her Quebec National Assembly seat where she now sits as an independent, a situation that hasn't gone over big with any of the political parties who view the idea of holding down two full time jobs rather deceitful. Taking advantage of a loophole that allows members of the National Assembly to have a second job, the situation is somewhat of an embarrassment to the institution.

Now the two years salary she'll collect from the National assembly while she is leader of the Bloc Quebecois has a much larger effect on her income than you can imagine.

Ouellet  will be 48 next month and that number is important because in two years she is eligible for a National Assembly pension. There is a provision that an ex-MNA can receive her pension at fifty years instead of sixty, with a 25% penalty.

Now MNAs earn a 4% indexed credit on their salary for each year they serve.
Simply put, if a MNA has served ten years in the Assembly and made $100,000 in each of those years, she'd be entitled to a $40,000 pension at 60 years old or a $30,000 a year pension if retiring early at fifty years old.
The two years that Ouellet will sit in the National Assembly while leader of the BQ, will earn her another six or eight thousand dollars in pension for life.

Ouellet will be pension eligible just about the time she'll be out of a job in Quebec and ready to run federally as a BQ candidate.
If she wins a seat in Ottawa, she can start working on a federal pension and delay until sixty years old, her indexed $40,000 Quebec pension.

For her ten years of tenure in Quebec's National Assembly, she can collect a lifetime indexed pension which could run thirty or forty years and which would cost Quebec taxpayers over a million present dollars.
But readers, that's not the end of it. No sireee!
Let us consider Ouellet winning a seat in Ottawa where she can start working on an even more lucrative Parliamentary pension, one which she'd be eligible for in six years.
But should she be defeated, after say, five years all is not lost.

She could invoke the buy-back clause in her Quebec National Assembly pension plan whereby ex-MNA members who leave and take another designated eligible job, can continue contributing to their Quebec MNA pension, or can make a lump sum payment to come up to speed. And by the way, sitting as an MP in Ottawa is considered an eligible job.
So by contributing a lump sum  amount, equal to what she would have paid into the Quebec plan had she remained a member of the National Assembly instead of sitting in Ottawa, she could add those five years to her Quebec pension.
A fantastic deal when one considers that the lump sum payment is a fraction of what the pension is worth.
It's calculated that in Ottawa, taxpayers pay $25 for every $1 contributed by the beneficiary of a Parliamentary pension.

Quebec is not as bad as that, but pretty bad just the same.
In the ten years that Martine Ouellet sat as a member of the National Assembly, she contributed about $100,000 herself total towards her pension, a pension which is worth roughly about a million dollars over her projected retirement life. It means that taxpayers are paying about $10 for each dollar she contributed. Yikes!!!

Good luck Martine!!!!