We know how much Stephen Harper hates the CBC. We know how he has slashed its budget, until it's swimming in its own blood. We know what he recently said about it: "First we’re going to get them on their knees and then we’re going to restructure them.” But now he has taken aim at Radio-Canada, and made a huge and possibly fatal mistake.
I've been seeing a lot of stories in the Canadian and British media, comparing the Scottish independence referendum campaign to the one in Quebec in 1995. And I've resigned myself to seeing a lot more of them after this latest development. Because it is so familiar. But here's the thing eh? I've seen the Scottish referendum campaign up close and in the flesh this summer, in this quiet northern place where my family lives...
I lived through the Quebec one in Montreal, in the crucible of the clash between the YES and the NO. And I can tell you that while the campaigns may be superficially similar, they are at their core radically different.
Well as you know, and as I mentioned the other day, Stephen Harper has set out to try to woo the province of Quebec. Or at least the people in the relatively small region in and around Quebec City, where he is planning to hold a special cabinet meeting. The rare cabinet meeting to be held outside Ottawa, which is in preparation for early September, will allow Mr. Harper to promote the role of Conservative Fathers of Confederation in protecting the rights of the provinces when Canada was founded in 1867. Because in the rest of the province his amatory advances wouldn't stand a chance...
But so deranged and desperate is Great Leader, that he has started comparing himself to George-Étienne Cartier. And claiming credit for vanquishing the SEPARATISTS !!!!
In his well known song Mon Pays, the Quebec poet and singer Gilles Vigneault famously sings: "My country is not a country, it's the winter." And in this seemingly never ending one, this Winter from Hell, I think we can all relate to that. But since just a few weeks ago during the Olympics we were all happily chirping or tweeting #wearewinter we can't complain too much eh? Even if it seems to be driving a lot of Canadians crazy. For what else can explain the hysteria over national unity?
I see Pierre-Karl Péladeau's decision to run for the Parti Quebecois in the Quebec election has sent shockwaves rolling across the country. With some in the media predicting trouble for Stephen Harper and his ghastly Con regime. Pierre Karl Péladeau’s emergence as a superstar Parti Québécois candidate represents a seismic shock for not only Quebec politics. The millionaire media mogul’s decision to actively promote sovereignty threatens to rock Stephen Harper’s government and possibly the entire country. But nobody seems to be pointing out that the greatest threat to national unity is Stephen Harper himself.
I really like this photo. And I'm glad some Quebecers took to the streets today to protest against the PQ's exclusionary so-called Charter of Quebec Values. And although I am an atheist if I had been in Montreal today I might have marched with them. Because I will not let anyone discriminate blatantly against others for no good reason. Or in the PQ's case for cheap electoral purposes.
The federal government’s plan to destroy all data from its long-gun registry is unconstitutional, a judge has ruled, giving Ottawa 30 days to hand to Quebec records collected from the province’s gun owners.
“Quebec didn’t embark in the project of setting up a registry knowing that it would later be deprived of the fruit of its co-operation,” the judge wrote in a 42-page decision.
The other night I wrote about how shocked I was by the senseless act of cowardly violence that stole the life of poor Denis Blanchette.
And how stunned I was to see his deranged killer scream "The English are rising!!!" As if he was acting in our name, as if we the Anglos of Quebec shared his crazy views and his blind hatred.
For a Montrealer like me, who lives and plays happily in both solitudes, and is always trying to bring Quebecers and Canadians together, it was the ultimate nightmare.
An old Anglo, in a balaclava .... and a bathrobe ... screaming "The English are rising up!!! There's going to be fucking payback !!!"
After killing a poor stage hand, throwing a molotov cocktail at the back entrance, and trying to shoot-up the PQ victory party.
OMG. Mothers hide your children. It appears that Stephen Harper has set out to try to woo Quebec.
Stephen Harper and more than a dozen of his cabinet ministers chose Quebec to kick off the Tories’ political “summer of love,” wooing support with their economic plan and a pledge to work with the Parti Québécois if it is elected to govern the province.
And what an absurd spectacle it was. Great UglyPretty Lover Leader and half his Con cabinet gathered in Saint-Narcisse-de-Beaurivage (population 1,000) mumbling sweet nothings to the separatists. While his flunkies played the fiddle.
And so it came to pass. On the 100th day of their amazing struggle, they refused to be intimidated by a totalitarian bill, and turned Montreal RED.
A sea of students, their numbers swollen by trade unionists, teachers and other supporters, flooded through the streets of Montreal in a massive turnout marking the 100th day of a protest movement that is growing broader and bolder.
Reported estimates placed the number of protesters Tuesday at between 100,000 and 250,000.
The debate isn't over yet for the Harper’s government’s criminal justice legislation – at least not in Quebec.
The provincial government announced Tuesday that it would do everything in its power to limit the clout of the legislation that passed a day earlier.
And why wouldn't they? When this fascist bill makes absolutely no sense.
Similar legislation has failed in both Britain and the United States:
Republican governors and state legislators in such states of Texas, South Carolina, and Ohio are repealing mandatory minimum sentences, increasing opportunities for effective community supervision, and funding drug treatment because they know it will improve public safety and reduce taxpayer costs. If passed, C-10 will take Canadian justice policies 180 degrees in the wrong direction, and Canadian citizens will bear the costs.
Oh fuddle duddle, or merde as we say in Quebec. I see Justin Trudeau is in trouble again.
“I always say, if at a certain point, I believe that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper – that we were going against abortion, and we were going against gay marriage and we were going backwards in 10,000 different ways – maybe I would think about wanting to make Quebec a country.
And this time he's being called everything from a traitor.
“If had read the quote and not known who said it, I would have attributed it to an adolescent,” said Tom Darby, a political philosopher at Carleton University. “It does not matter what party or even what policies one favours, the quote is factually untrue, irresponsible, and even treasonous.
To a narcissist, and even *gasp* a young Canadian.
His name was Mitchell Wilson. He suffered from muscular dystrophy. But that didn't save him from being savagely bullied. When he learned he would have to testify in court against his alleged attacker, it was too much for the gentle boy, and he killed himself.
But now his words will speak from beyond the grave.
A judge has ruled that written statements will be allowed as evidence against a boy charged with bullying and robbing Mitchell Wilson, an 11-year-old Pickering, Ont., boy who took his own life.
The Crown alleges that Wilson, who suffered from muscular dystrophy and used a walker, was bullied and attacked in November 2010. He was walking in his neighbourhood and allegedly attacked and robbed of his father's iPhone. Wilson suffered broken teeth in the attack.
I must admit that I have never paid much attention to anything Angelo Persichilli has ever said or written. I thought The Great Angelo was just another Liberal who sounded like a Con. And they're a dime a dozen.
But now he's wearing Dimitri's hat, I think this is outrageous.
“Many are tired of the annoying lament from a province that keeps yelling at those who pay part of its bills and are concerned by the over-representation of francophones in our bureaucracy, our Parliament and our institutions,” Mr. Persichilli wrote about 18 months ago.
And this is PATHETIC.
“I will do whatever is in my capacity first to serve the government and eventually to serve the Canadian people – and I have the utmost respect for people living in Quebec, no doubt about it.”
Because how can you slag a people and then claim to respect them? And how can you put the interests of the Cons before the interests of Canadians and their country?
But then The Great Angelo is just a bit player in a bigger drama. For years I have warned that Stephen Harper's ultimate objective is to drive Quebec out of Canada. Because he knows that if the country's most left-leaning province leaves, the Cons will rule FOREVER.
And now you see the shape of things to come. The NDP are separatist traitors. Quebec is The Enemy. The mob in English Canada will cheer, and some Liberals will join them, because they think that's the way to win seats in Quebec. The idiots.
And nobody will care about how Quebecers will feel, being treated as outsiders or pariahs in the country they helped found. And we will all end up living in a country choking in its own bile, stinking of bigotry, and ripping itself apart.
Great eh?
Which is when I think of Jack Layton. And how the last thing he did may turn out to be his greatest gift to our country.
Reaching out and embracing the people of that province...
And inviting them to rejoin the great Canadian family after more than twenty years of alienation and bitterness.
And I remember how warmly they embraced him back, and how sorry they were when he died...
And then I think how his tragic death could affect the future of our big beautiful country, and I wonder what will happen to it, now that Jack isn't there to bridge the Great Divide. Or the Two Solitudes.
You know... the other night the CN Tower was glowing orange to honour Jack. A fierce electrical storm was raging all around it. And I was looking out of the window with the Québécois Canadian I love. He was staring at the glowing tower and the lightning with eyes wide open in wonderment. And saying WOW. In French. Because he always sees the good in everything.
But not me. I can see the hate that will eventually consume this country. So although the tribute to Jack moved me beyond belief. The lightning scared me.
Oh sure. The Great Angelo is just a bit player, but you can see the shape of things to come.
I don't know who writes the editorials at the Globe. But I suspect they vibrate sympathetically to the squeals of their porky corporate masters. Because this is absolute hogwash.
Mr. Lebel, who joined the Bloc in 1993, dropped his Bloc membership 10 years ago. When he ran for the Conservatives in a 2007 by-election, he was clear that he while he was a Quebec nationalist, he had cast his lot for a united Canada.
Ms. Turmel, by contrast, appeared to be an activist for the NDP while simultaneously holding a Bloc membership card and membership in the sovereigntist provincial party Québec Solidaire. She swore off her affiliation with the Bloc only this year, and then, only for “personal reasons” – and never in a public forum, until The Globe and Mail revealed her affiliation. And she now leads the government-in-waiting.
As if granny Turmel, the temporary leader of an opposition party, four years away from an election, was a clear and present danger. As if the NDP was a separatist party. When everyone knows their only real "crime" in the eyes of the Globe and Pork, is to suggest that big corporations should pay more taxes.
If they can't call them communists, then by jingo, separatists they must be.
Which is not just disgusting, it's dangerous. For unlike that garbage this is so true.
It should be easy to understand that for a political party to be successful in any political community, it has to speak convincingly to its aspirations, its understandings and its values. Layton spoke convincingly to Quebecers and — with a lot of help from favourable circumstances — was amply rewarded. But, evidently, in Canada’s contemporary political culture, if a federal party is successful in Quebec, there must be “pandering” going on.
In other words, there exists, deeply anchored in English-speaking Canadian political consciousness, a belief that there is no proper Canadian way to address Quebecers’ aspirations. And Quebecers who have been attracted to the sovereignist movement at some point, to some degree, for however long or short a period, are not to be trusted. But something like 60 per cent of francophone voters is a lot of people to exclude from the Canadian political conversation.
The current agitation around the Turmel affair had been simmering ever since the “orange wave” swept Quebec. It is fundamentally about the question of how and whether Canadians will be able to accommodate themselves to a Quebec that is willing to participate in the governance of Canada. The attacks on Turmel, and on Layton’s supposed lack of judgment in putting her forward as interim leader, serve to reaffirm two decades of Canadians’ blindness to their relationship with Quebec. They are about keeping Quebecers and other Canadians as far apart from each other as possible, without actually breaking up the country.
Any English Canadian who doesn't understand that will NEVER understand Quebec...or EVER know Canada.
And will one day regret it more than they can ever imagine.
The other day the great McGill political scientist Desmond Morton called the way the media has handled the Turmel story "revolting." And I agree completely because I love this country and want it to stay together.
Anyone who plays the Separatist Scare for political advantage is just pathetic.
Anyone who plays it for porky greed is simply beneath contempt...
It's a debate you'd expect to hear at a party like this one. But it's one being hoisted upon us by the Liberal Party, which only makes it more absurd.
With Jeff Jedras as the Mad Hatter spouting this nonsense.
Now, you could try to argue the NDP is just saying Quebec picks the question but that doesn’t mean the feds can’t reject it. I don’t read it that way, but to make that argument you’d have to overlook the face they don’t say the question is open to judgment so, at best, in that scenario you’re arguing they’re deliberately misleading Quebecers by leaving that part out. But I don’t buy it; they’ll clearly accept Quebec’s question, no reservations. And accepting a confusing or misleading question that could lead to the break-up of Canada is unacceptable.
Which puts the question before the crisis, like a cart before the horse.
Lawrence Martin as the March Hare, asking whether the NDP is more Bloc than the Bloc.
When the Commons reconvenes, who knows what other sleeping dogs the Dipper 59 will awaken? In order to maintain their support in Quebec, what choice do they have but to take up the Bloc’s priorities?
Even though Quebecers just voted overwhelmingly to show their faith in federalism by giving the Bloc the boot.
And Impolitical as the Dormouse, dredging up Claude Morin.
The 82-year-old separatist and RCMP spy, who nobody has taken seriously for almost three decades.
It's crazy kooky stuff, and it would be laughable. Just another example of the once mighty Liberal Party failing to come to terms with its new and reduced status...
But tragically it's no laughing matter, because in their bitterness the Liberals seem determined to take the country to the brink of destruction. Again.
In the 1990's they revived the separatist movement, by torpedoing the Meech Lake Accord, and denying Quebec the right to call itself a distinct society. When it so obviously is. Then they bungled the referendum campaign and almost lost the country.
Then they rubbed salt in the wounds of the province with their heavy handed and vindictive Clarity Act which managed to annoy both separatists and federalists. By treating Quebecers like children, in a province where separatists and federalists often share the same dinner table.
And then when that backfired, they tried to bribe them with the tacky sponsorship program, and we all know how that one worked out.
Now they are trying to deny Jack Layton's historic achievement, and whip up anti-Quebec feeling in a country where there is far too much of that blind hatred. And for what?
When the only people who will benefit from that are the Cons and the separatists. And our country could be the big loser.
Oh boy. I don't want to get into a slagging match with the Liberals, as others are doing. As everybody knows my only interest is uniting the progressive movement. And I'm willing to give the Liberals a little more time to heal.
But if they don't see the errors of their ways, and keep on attacking the NDP instead of the Cons, I will have no choice.
I went for a long walk in the woods this evening, to clear my head, slow down my wildly beating heart, and try to prepare myself for the election tomorrow.
The precious signs of Spring in The Great White North were everywhere. But it was cold and wet, a fog was rolling in from the lake. And it all seemed to sum up how I'm feeling.
Tomorrow could be one of the best days of my life, or one of the worst, and nobody really knows what's going to happen.
"I want you to create lineups at the polls, my friends, because we can defeat Stephen Harper," Layton told the crowd.
The numbers and the headline I thought I'd never read. The words I thought I'd never hear. Except in my dreams.
The fear comes from the very real danger of vote-splitting that could still give the tyrant his deadly majority. As the Toronto Star, that endorsed the NDP, points out here.
In theory strategic voting could avoid that danger. And I have the Project Democracy widget in my sidebar. But will it work? Will NDP supporters vote Liberal when their party is so close to overtaking the Cons? Will Liberals supporters vote NDP when their party is so damaged?
I hope so, but I wonder. And what if it just drained support out of the orange wave and prevented it from swamping the Cons?
Luckily for me, my choice is a simple one. I live in an NDP riding, I'm voting to keep it that way, and I couldn't be happier to find myself surfing the orange wave.
Not just because their social-democratic platform is closest to my own. Or because I prefer to live in a centre-LEFT country not a centre-right one. And I know that in an increasingly polarized Canada, the middle is just an illusion.
But also because of something else, that strangely enough so few progressives seem to mention. Jack Layton's ability to connect with Quebecers, and break the Bloc's long stranglehold on the French-speaking people of that province.
Because it's a stunning achievement, a glorious opportunity for a new beginning. And some things are even bigger than an election.
Quebecers have saved us from a Harper majority. They are the fiercest defenders of our beautiful Canadian values, that put community and caring before the jungle individualism of Amerika. No Canadians hate the Harper Regime more than they do.
Now they are challenging us to join an orange wave, overthrow the tyrant, and bring something new and different to a country that has been suffocating in its own deadly lethargy, while being slowly poisoned by the fascist fumes of Harper and his alien, un-Canadian thugs.
So I'm going with them eh? I'm accepting the challenge. I love them too much to see them disappointed. Especially the one I live with, who will be voting for the NDP for the first time in his life.
And as the kids from this French junior college in Montreal, where the orange wave started, keep reminding me. Life is meant to be exciting.
And I gotta feeling it's gonna be a good day...
And from the English-speaking kids just a few blocks away.
Who are running to meet them...
YES/OUI. We can do it...
Have a great election everybody. May all our dreams come true.
I'm hopeful, I'm scared, but I've never been so proud to be a progressive.
