Surprise!....Quebec Wants Back Into Canadian Constitution

A lot of Ottawa pundits have thrown cold water on the idea put forward by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard on re-opening constitutional talks with an eye to finally getting Quebec to sign on. Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has indicated that he's in no mood to reopen the painful and acrimonious debate. So stressful and traumatic was the last constitutional round of negotiations in 1982, that the bitter taste hasn't dissipated for those who participated. For those of us common citizens who were around and observed, it was like watching someone getting a tooth pulled.
But however painful, having Quebec remain out of the constitution is a powerful reminder that Canada remains an unfinished symphony, an incomplete country with a constitution that was never agreed upon by one of the founding partners.

For lack of a better analogy it reminds of the Israel/Palestinian dynamic where an imperfect and unfair status quo has become permanent and where there is no movement towards accommodation because one side is decidedly favoured by leaving things alone and the other too stubborn and prideful to engage.
Now I know I'll catch flack for the above, but all I'm trying to say is that there isn't much interest in English Canada in re-opening talks because quite frankly, English Canada and the other provinces see (quite rightly) that there is nothing is to be gained for its side.
But it doesn't make it right and who less than the Prime Minister should know better. Painful as re-negotiation will be, it is a necessary step in making Canada whole.

But the question remains, why on Earth would Premier Couillard embark on what would be on first glance a foolhardy endeavour, fraught with danger and conflict with little chance of success.

Actually, for Couillard any new negotiation remains a win/win, believe it or not.
Success, no matter how unlikely would be the crowning achievement of his Premiership and assure his re-election.
Counter-intuitively, even in failure Couillard and the Liberals would find success, as separatist sentiment would certainly be re-kindled and the old debate of federalism versus independence returning to become the prime election issue, something to the Liberal party advantage.
While the PQ's support would rise, it would come at the expense of the CAQ, marginalized by the debate, being neither here nor there. The Liberals would still muster enough federalist votes to be re-elected.
For the Liberals, moving the debate away from the corruption issue is of paramount importance, because it is over this issue that it remains vulnerable to the CAQ who would, even in a minority situation jump at a chance to partner up with the PQ in forming a government.
A new constitutional accord or a failed constitutional debate both play into this Liberal party playbook meant to steer the debate away from corruption, any way it can.

At any rate, what is it that Quebec wants that Canada is reluctant to give?
Asymmetrical federalism  is what can best be described as different strokes for different folks, that is that Quebec would enjoy certain powers that other provinces do not.

On the face of it, asymmetry sounds rather terrible and unfair, but to Quebec, it is considered the essential component to the preservation of it's place as a vibrant and self-sustaining French entity in Canada.

Our current legislation guarantees Quebec 3 of the 9 judges on the Supreme Court of Canada, a clear over-reach considering Quebec has but 23% of the Canadian population, meaning that based on population, Quebec would be entitled to just 2 judges.
This asymmetrical accommodation to Quebec irks many Canadians to no end and is referred to endlessly as an unfair advantage.
But strangely nobody seems to complain that Prince Edward Island enjoys one of the most egregious displays of asymmetrical accommodation in the division of Parliamentary seats where the tiny island is allotted four members in the House of Commons, grossly exaggerating and multiplying the province's political influence. With a population of just 145,000 people, each PEI member of parliament represents but 35,000 people, while the Canadian average is one member of Parliament for every 103,000. By all rights PEI should be allotted no more than 2 members of Parliament and even this is generous.
The same goes for Canada's three territories which each get one member while the straight math indicates that they deserve one member for the three combined.
These are asymmetrical accommodations that most of us would argue is fair, so let us not get on a high horse and pretend that asymmetrical accommodations towards Quebec are inherently unfair.

I'm reminded of the anecdote which has taken many forms, but this one seems to be one of the more popular;

“They are telling this of Lord Beaverbrook and a visiting Yankee actress. In a game of hypothetical questions, Beaverbrook asked the lady: ‘Would you live (sleep) with a stranger if he paid you one million pounds?’ 
She said she would. 
‘And if he paid you five pounds?’ 
The irate lady fumed: ‘Five pounds. What do you think I am?’ 
Beaverbrook replied: ‘We’ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.”

So Canadians are not against accommodations or asymmetric federalism, it is just the degree that Quebec benefits that remains the question.
Quebec seeks the right to opt out of federal programs with compensation, the right to control immigration and language in its province and other benefits that quite frankly make little difference to Canadians living their daily lives.
There is certainly a deal to be done, one that will in fact change little, but one would that mean a lot to Quebecers seeking their rightful place in Canada.
I would in fact support practically any deal and accommodations as long as it eliminates the infamous and egregious 'notwithstanding clause' which allows provinces to opt out of portions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by a simple vote in provincial Parliament, thus rendering our Supreme Court not so supreme.

Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is part of the Constitution of Canada. It is commonly known as the notwithstanding clause (or la clause dérogatoire in French), or as the override power, and it allows Parliament or provincial legislatures to override certain portions of the Charter. It was, and continues to be, perhaps the most controversial provision of the Charter. Wikipedia

And so gentle reader, before holding your nose and screaming constitutional change 'over my dead body,' one should consider that it is really not that big a deal.
Not that big deal at all.

Delusional London Mayor Downplays Terrorism

"There’s no reason to be alarmed....
I’m reassured that we are one of the safest global cities in the world, if not the safest global city in the world.

--London Mayor Sadiq Khan,.

Really?
Delusional London Mayor Sadiq Khan is playing with words in claiming that London is the safest 'global' city in the world.
I don't know where he gets his stats, but a brief internet search shows that London doesn't even make the list of the top 15 safest large cities. Both Montreal and Toronto made the list and surprisingly even New York City, but no London.  Link

At any rate with two deadly terrorist attacks in London this year that have killed 13 and injured scores, when it comes to terrorist victims London rates worse than Tel Aviv or Jerusalem this year.

Who of us doesn't believe that London, like Paris are the two most dangerous western cities vis-a-vis Islamic terrorism.
Both cities are hotbeds of Islamic fundamentalism.

"Two very different responses from the Mayor of London and the the Prime Minister. London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim to hold that office, did manage to acknowledge the damage which had been done, but immediately fell back on a well practiced line indicating perhaps a bit more optimism than is warranted. This segment from Fox News includes the Mayor’s comments." Link

President Trump  couldn't resist.

So what response will our fearless Prime Minister Trudeau offer?
Methinks he will ask parrot the nonsense of Sadiq Khan.

Poutine and Cultural Appropriation

McDonald's Poutine?? A Pale Imitation!!

By now you've no doubt heard that there's been a complaint made by a Quebec academic that Canada has wrongfully claimed 'poutine' as part of its Canadian food culture to the detriment of the originators, the people of Quebec, the francophone population of Quebec. Link
This latest alt-Liberal nonsense crusade is another gratuitous pot-shot at white North American society for 'stealing' essential cultural elements from minorities and incorporating them into mainstream society.
The idea that blending good ideas, foods, concepts, music, fashion or culture from minorities into mainstream society is a bad thing, can spring only from the minds of the eternally done-me-wrong whingers.
It makes logical sense that you can't be for 'inclusion' if you are  against 'cultural appropriation'

"Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture. Cultural appropriation, often framed as cultural misappropriation, is sometimes portrayed as harmful and is claimed to be a violation of the collective intellectual property rights of the originating culture."

And so our society is attacked by the holier-than-thous when white people wear dreadlocks or perform rap music to the detriment of the originating Black community.
But if cultural appropriation is unfair to the Blacks then it is unfair to the Italians when pizza is declared a national American dish.
So too then must there be a slight to the Jewish community for the mainstream use of Yiddish vernacular such as 'shlock,''yenteh,' 'putz,' or shmooze'. Don't forget the Irish who must certainly be outraged at the appropriation of their St. Patricks Day holiday by mainstream interlopers who celebrate alongside the real McCoys by wearing green, attending the parade and partying like...well, you know.
The latest joke about 'cultural appropriation' is that ISIS, is complaining that Kathy Griffith wrongfully stole their culture by holding up a mock severed head of Donald Trump. Haha! 

But I do support the crusade against cultural appropriation when a beautiful and perfect item like poutine is appropriated and bastardized by mainstream society. It is a little sad and distressing that something so simple and tasty has morphed into a fad product or worse still, a poorly copied pale imitation of the original.
Let's face it, poutine isn't gourmet food, nor was it ever meant to be. It is one of those dishes best eaten hung-over or depressed. While it isn't fancy, it is however tasty and fulfilling.
For most of us, eating poutine is one of life's guilty little pleasures. There are those who don't have to worry about the obscene amount of calories and grease that poutine provides, but in today's society of the decidedly overweight or otherwise health conscious, poutine is a dish best left as a very occasional treat.

For those of you from Mars, poutine is a simple dish of fresh cheese curds, fries and gravy, but as all great things, the devil is in the details and producing this simple dish is not quite so simple. The potatoes have to be blanched and aged overnight, before being deep-fried again before serving. The cheese curds have to be authentic to get that squeaky texture and traditional mild taste. The gravy has to be made from scratch and have exactly the right viscosity.
Any added ingredients or deviation is blasphemy.

Cheesy-Avocado-Bacon-Poutine...Arghhhh!!!

And so it is that as poutine goes mainstream, across Canada and now into the United States, most restaurants can't or won't reproduce the fantastic original, because remaining faithful is either too difficult or time-consuming, with curd cheese perhaps too hard to source. Conversely there is a movement by upscale restaurants to make a 'gourmet'  version with fancy and expensive add-ons like foie gras,  meant only to goose up the price.  Nothing is more obscene than a US$12 poutine.

This is cultural appropriation at its worst.

A disgusting layer of pizza cheese+crab= dreck

How bad is it getting?
Well last night I watched a food channel show about carnival dishes from the States and lo and behold, of the five dishes presented, two were absolutely dreadful poutines. The first a Chesapeake Bay crab poutine from a Virginia fair, a recipe of melted pizza cheese with a crab topping sans brown gravy. The other poutine presented was an equally garish recipe that featured a 'pogo' hot dog.
In an annoying and insulting display of chutzpah, the host of the show warned viewers that Canada should watch out as America is coming after them in the preparation of poutine. Ughhhhhh!!
Even in Canada, poutine is being systematically debased, especially by the fast food chains who plop gravy and cheese on their completely inappropriate French fries. 
Every time poutine is presented on English language cooking shows, the chefs (and I use the term lightly) breathily advise us that this is their 'take' on poutine. Nobody, it seems outside Quebec can make the original and that is cultural appropriation at its worst.
Now I get it, poutine is a regional dish that for most North Americans isn't that tasty. Quebec fries are thick and soft, while North America is familiar with those thin crispy fries featured in McDonalds and other fast food restaurants.
But changing the essence of poutine and calling it by the same name is like advertising ice cream and serving customers frozen yogourt, telling them that this is their version.
Not kosher my friends, not kosher at all.

And by the way, since I am of the tribe,  I feel absolutely fine using the word 'kosher' and 'chutzpah.'

The Farce of Quebec Democracy

It's a bit sad to see the that the pernicious attack on democracy vis-a-vis the re-redistricting of electoral ridings in Quebec has gone sadly uncontested by our elected officials who it seems have gotten an 'independent' commission to do the dirty work that which they themselves would never dare to try.
The so-called independent agency (Commission de la représentation électorale (CRE)) that draws up the Quebec electoral map is supposed to act fairly and impartially in dividing up the ridings according to these rules and principles.

"Il importe d'assurer l'égalité relative du vote, c'est-à-dire que le poids du vote d'un électeur ne doit pas être disproportionné par rapport au poids du vote d'un autre électeur, à moins d'une situation exceptionnelle. Pour ce faire, il faut regrouper un nombre d'électeurs à peu près égal au sein de chaque circonscription du Québec." 

"It is important to ensure the relative equality of voting, that is, the weight of an elector's vote should not be disproportionate to the weight of another voter's vote, except in an exceptional situation. To do this, we must have a roughly equal number of voters within each riding of Quebec. (ed. note my translation from the French)

It's not that complicated if one remains fair and impartial, but it becomes problematic when the commission invokes political motives. There are so many voters and so many ridings, divide one from the other and you get a number that represents the number of electors that each riding should represent.
Number of voters in Quebec ......6,012,440
Ideal number of voters per riding....48,100

It's pretty cut and dried, but democracy in our fair province takes a decidedly undemocratic turn when 'Quebec Rules' are applied.
The CRE allow that the orderly division of ridings be modified in consideration of subjective criteria  allowing itself a margin whereby ridings can have 25% more or less voters than the average.

It means that ridings can vary by an astonishing 80%.
Lowest threshold ............................36,075
Highest threshold .......................... 60,075
Unfortunately, this disgraceful attack on democracy is practised in just about every electoral district in North America.
Even in the United States presidential election, some voters had more voting power than others, leading to Donald Trump's victory with less votes than Hillary.
How bad is this descrepency?
Well voters in Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota get to cast one electoral college vote  with 143,000 voters, while it takes some 500,000 New York voters to do the same, a margin of over three and a half to one.
Some democracy.....

In Ontario, it takes two and a half as many voters in Brampton to send a MPP to the Ontario legislature as it does in Timiskaming—Cochrane.
Some democracy....

But as usual Quebec takes the cake.
Not content to use the formula that allows the CEQ to modify ridings by the 25% plus or minus rules, the commision used its discretionary power in invoking  the 'special circumstances' rule to create two Montreal ridings with 62,000 voters compared to the 11,800 voters that elect a MNA in Iles des Madeleines, an obscene difference of almost six to one.
That's right it takes about six voters in D'Arcy McGee and Mont-Royal-Outremont to mimic the voting power of one Madelinot!

Imagine if votes were divided by race instead of geography and we told Anglos, Jews, Blacks and immigrants that it would take six of their votes to equal one Francophone vote.
Too much?  I think not. Fairness is fairness.

So what are these special circumstances that make it so compelling to bastardize the election ideal of one person/one vote?
The old chestnut trotted out is that outlying ridings are so geographically large that MPs are disadvantaged by travel and deserve smaller ridings despite population.

But this is not the case with the Magdalen Islands... far from it.
The Magdalen Islands are an isolated two island community in the  middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, accessible only by air or sea.
While this is true, if the riding was twinned with the closet geographical neighbour, Gaspe, the total electors would number about 42,000, still under the provincial average.
As for hardship, there are at least two flights a day between the two districts , flights that take less than hour. Once arrived in the Islands, travel is very simple as the population is very concentrated.

As for special economic circumstances that makes it compelling to  have an MP with such a sparse population, there is none.
Islanders are Canada's biggest layabouts, with the season of its biggest industry, lobster fishing, lasting just ten weeks a year, with fishers and employees in the processing living on employment insurance the rest of the year.
Islanders are renowned for their indolence and dependence on Canadians for permanent welfare. Here is what controversial radio host Andre Arthur had to say about them, much to the consternation of locals.

The Magdalen Islands is a place where residents spend the year on the BS (employment insurance,) or on either auto insurance benefits or on workman's accident insurance, where in the summer they exploit tourists in a shameful way. Every time I was in the Magdalen Islands, I felt like I was visiting an Indian reservation, that is, a place where all those who actually work, come from the outside. The people of the Islands are at home with both feet propped up in front of the stove, saying: "When will my check arrive?

 Here is an audio of the screed in French

By the way, that employment insurance is paid by Ottawa, so there is really no compelling business for a Quebec MNA other than to insure that the Ottawa welfare pipeline is maintained.

Democracy is fragile, its biggest enemy are those who chip away at its fundamental tenets quietly through bureaucracy and regulation.  It remains our civic duty to defend the principles of democracy, because if we leave it up to politicians and bureaucrats, we will find ourselves stripped of our rights......  and by the way, we are already half way there.

Quebec Separatist Forces Melt Down

It's fair to say that those militating for Quebec sovereignty come in all sorts of political stripes, supporting a diverse range of political ideologies running the gamut of the alt-left of Quebec Solidaire, to the centrist Parti Quebecois and even the conservative element, the barely alive Option nationale of ex-leader Jean-Martin Aussant.

It doesn't take a genius to understand that unless these forces agree to work together, or 'converge' as is the term used by sovereigntist forces determined to unite the movement that the chances of success, already slim to none, are effectively out the window.

With this in mind separatist forces created an action committee to facilitate an agreement whereby cooperation would lead to some sort of a breakthrough through cooperation.

But this didn't happen, Quebec Solidaire signed the deal, but asked that it be kept secret until a party congress and then welshed on the deal rather abruptly.
And so we are witness to what can be charitably called a 'Mexican Standoff' whereby separatists are pointing guns at each other, unable to withdraw or advance.

The Liberals and the CAQ can not believe their good fortune and so it is to be that different separatist forces will battle it out for the small sliver of the sovereigntist slice of the electoral pie next October in the next provincial election.

The seemingly bizarre position of Quebec Solidaire actually makes sense when one considers what they are...idiots who never really want power anyways because they would be forced to implement their childish agenda. For them the peanut gallery is the place where they want to be, pitching nonsense ideas with no consequences.

For PQ leader Jean-François Lisée the utter stupidity of QS quitting the alliance is particularly hard to swallow, his deception apparent as he labelled the leadership of QS leadership 'members of a politburo' an nasty jab labeling them as commies.

For those who think we have a bad government in Philippe Couillard's Liberals, could you imagine a independent Quebec run by a coalition government where the likes of fools like  Manon Massé actually had power.

There is a sad reality that hangs over the Quebec independence movement, that is there are too many divergent opinions, opinions that are impossible to square.

So perhaps Quebecers may see a real option next year's election, a battle between realistic political philosophies, the conservative  CAQ versus the center of the road Liberals.
Usually it would be a no brainer, with the Liberals winning once again, but the taint of scandal and corruption isn't going away and perhaps with the sovereignty vote split and irrelevant, the CAQ might just slip in.
I'm actually hoping so.