Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘pq’

This as a footnote to a post at Tout le monde en parle:

Un columnist bien connu ayant assisté au congrès péquiste ce week-end me disait aujourd’hui à quel point il avait été surpris par le fanatisme des militants péquistes et à quel point le Parti était un mouvement barbare d’extrème-gauche. Dur d’être en désaccord avec ces affirmations.

Pour ma part, les images de tous ces partisans hystériques et en pleurs à l’annonce du départ de Landry me faisaient penser aux habitants d’une petite république de banane ayant perdu son dictateur, élevé au rang de demi-dieu. Leur Grand Leader n’est plus…une vraie religion que le séparatisme! Ça fait peur…

The Quebec population is luckily a lot less extremist than the PQ hard-liners, who espouse sovereignty like a fanatical religion. Trouble is, most people don’t see this fanaticism; they just tacitly agree with the general direction of the party, without worrying about the details.

If you speak French, read the whole post. It’s an interesting insight into the P.Q. and the developments of the last few days.

This from a letter to the Gazette:

So Bernard Landry is not satisfied with his approval rating of 76.2 per cent.

I’m sure the Parti Quebecois will now realize that it’s only fair that the Yes side should have to attract at least 76.2 per cent of the votes in the next referendum to break up the country.

Sounds good to me.

The PQ leadership race is shaping up to be interesting. Pauline Marois has already announced her candidacy and Francois Legault is expected to follow. But if Gilles Duceppe throws his hat into the ring, he’s almost certain to sweep the contest.

Unfortunately, the PQ old guard is determined to take the party down the old familiar road again:

Outgoing party vice-president Marie Malavoy warned that the leadership candidates must embrace the party program adopted yesterday, one that was largely influenced by Mr. Landry.

The program, which calls for a referendum on sovereignty “as soon as possible” should the PQ form the next government, reflected Mr. Landry’s approach. Party hard-liners failed in their bid to adopt a more radical program, and say they will now use the leadership race to influence candidates to ensure that whoever becomes party leader will be committed to governing Quebec as though it were a country, with the determination to achieve Quebec independence.

If this is indeed the “old guard’s last stand”, we can expect a full guns blazing sovereignty campaign to kick off right about now. The next election may be a couple of years away, but that just gives the PQ more time to rally support for separation. And with the federalist camp in shambles, it’s gonna be a *long* few years.

Update: Right on cue, Duceppe now says he’s considering running for the job. This is all for show; he wouldn’t have announced that if he hadn’t decided to run. Prepare for Premier Duceppe by 2008. *Sigh*…

I guess the PQ is already gearing up for the next provincial election, as party leader Bernard Landry announced he will resign, paving the way for a new – and more charismatic – leader to be elected:

Landry made the surprise announcement after getting a 76.2 percent confidence vote from party members at the Parti Quebecois’ convention in Quebec City, capital of the mainly French-speaking province of 7.4 million.

“It breaks my heart to tell you this, but I’m doing it in the national interest,” Landry said, according to a report by CBC television. “I’m sorry to do this.”

Landry said previously that if he got more than 76 percent in the leadership review vote he would remain at the helm, but the 68-year-old politician has faced criticism from within the party since losing the 2003 provincial election.

Who’s surprised? Not me. Landry was never going to be party leader in the next election campaign, and this timing gives the PQ a chance to bring in somebody new before election frenzy hits.

My bet for new party leader? Gilles Duceppe. After all, he’s the most popular politician in Quebec right now, and the leadership of the Bloc is really nothing but a launching pad for provincial leadership, as established by Lucien Bouchard’s precedent.

It was already pretty much guaranteed that the PQ would win the next election, with the Liberals’ numbers somewhere down around the temperature in centigrade on a mid-January day in Montreal. But with Landry as premier, it was doubtful that the separatists could win a referendum. If Duceppe takes the helm, however, that changes the whole ball game. And unless the federalist camp starts gearing up for a fight soon, there’s a frighteningly realistic possibility that we could lose.

It’s pretty clear that the student strikes no longer have much to do with the students.

Last week, the McGill Daily reported that the PQ youth wing and that major Quebec labour unions were supporting the student strikers, in an effort to topple the Charest Liberal governement and get the PQ re-elected. Yesterday, the Liberals angrily accused the unions of funding the strikers, lashing out at them for mixing issues:

Liberal party whip Norm MacMillan says unions appear to be piggybacking on the student strike in order to advance their own contract negotiations with the government.

“Everybody’s in negotiations right now: civil servants, teachers in universities and CEGEPS,” he notes.

MacMillan says some union money may even have paid for buses to help the students mobilize large demonstrations.

The university students federation doesn’t deny some funding has come from outside groups.

It’s not exactly news that the labour unions in Quebec overwhelmingly support the PQ and have been engaged in a bitter battle with the Liberals since their election. And the student cause seems to be a popular one; a Léger poll conducted two weeks ago found that 24% of people think that the government should cave to the student demands, and another 48% believe that a portion of the $103 million in cuts should be re-invested into the bursaries program. Furthermore, 44% of people said they would be willing to forego a tax cut in order to put the money back into the bursary program.

In the media circus surrounding the protests, rock-throwing at police, arrests and threats of cancelled semesters, the voice of dissenters is getting drowned out.

I’m talking about the students who actually want to go to class. The ones who want to graduate eventually. The ones who recognize the value of their education, and are willing to make an investment into it. Though disorganized and quiet, there are an awful lot of them. And they’re tired of being deprived of classes they paid for, of having their opportunities that they’ve worked hard for yanked away from them, and of the general attitude among their fellow students and even professors that they’re “selfish” or just plain “wrong”.

Times like this, I’m glad I’m not still a student. Because it’s tough enough dealing with the pressure without having to face the Quebec reality: that this is a socialist province where everyone seems to think that society “owes” them. Everyone wants to take out of the system, nobody wants to contribute into it. This is how we end up with massive economic failure. (But of course, the students and the labour unions have a perfect solution to this: tax the rich more. Never mind what happens when all the rich leave the province; they’ll just tax the next richest.)

Or, to quote the CASSEE spokespeople:

Members of the CASSEE say they’ve tried holding demonstrations.

Blocking traffic and offices works better, they say.

“We started by drawing up petitions, we held protests; our pressure tactics have escalated,” said Xavier Lafrance, another CASSEE spokesperson, and a political science student at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.

[ . . . ]

Funding for higher education could be raised, they said, by ensuring private corporations pay their taxes – in full.

[ . . . ]

“Aggressive unionism is a Quebec tradition,” added Mathieu Cousineau DeGarie, a third CASSEE spokesperson.

“We at the CASSEE want to revive that tradition.”

So they continue to strike. And I continue to rant. Because nothing will improve while the student unions are allowed to hold the Quebec education system – and its students – hostage. No government has the political capital to change the situation; only the students can make a difference by rallying to oppose their oppressors. Sadly, their voices seem too scattered, and students opposed to the strike have no choice but to grumble and sigh.

With most of the polls reporting, the fairly final election results are as follows:

• Liberals – 76 seats – 45.84% of popular vote
• Parti Québécois – 45 seats – 33.25% of popular vote
• Action Démocratique – 4 seats – 18.28% of popular vote

The race in this election was pretty close all along, with Charest and the Liberals really only gaining momentum after the debate, and pulling away in the past 3-4 days. Tonight, however, the biggest race was between the networks, to see who would predict the outcome the soonest after polls closed.

And all the candidates for Premier have really bad hair. Dumont’s isn’t all that bad, if a little stiff. But Charest’s still got the chia-pet thing going on, and Landry, oh that combover is painful!

The latest polls are predicting a possible Liberal victory in Monday’s election:

It is the second survey within 24 hours pointing to a big shift in public opinion in Canada’s mainly French-speaking province in favor of the Liberals.

The results show support for the Liberals up 8 percentage point from a mid-campaign CROP poll. Backing for the Parti Quebecois is down 6 points.

“Should these numbers hold until the election, the Liberals will certainly form the next government,” CROP Vice-President Claude Gauthier told the Globe and Mail. “We might even be witnessing a wave of support for the Liberals that could go up as high as 50 percent of the vote.”

All I can say is, don’t count your chickens before they hatch. The Liberals may well win the popular vote – in fact, it’s almost a guarantee that they will. But the PQ still has a very high chance of forming the government – even a majority government.

I’ve never understood why polls aren’t released by riding. That would be a much more accurate picture of what is likely to happen on election day.

Bernard foot-in-mouth Landry is in trouble again, this time over a comment he made that is being viewed as insulting to women:

Yesterday as a three-day policy convention of his Parti Québécois to prepare for the coming election wound to a close, Landry was caught by a Radio-Canada camera saying he would rather meet with the chairman of Sun Life than with women’s groups. Landry’s words were captured as he reluctantly voted for a resolution calling for a law requiring that 50 per cent of candidates in an election be women.

“It’s for the women’s groups,” Jocelyne Gadbois, a member of the PQ executive, explained to Landry.

Landry turned to Gadbois and said, “I would rather meet the chairman of Sun Life.”

In 1978, shortly after the National Assembly adopted the PQ’s Bill 101, the Charter of the French Language, Sun Life moved its head office from Montreal to Toronto, saying it couldn’t work with the language law.

This barely a month after his “birdbrain” comment got him in trouble with poverty groups.

It seems to me that if the PQ wants to win this election, they need to muzzle Landry and lock him up.

Looks like a springtime election. The news seems to be that us Quebecers will be going to the polls April 14th to decide whether we want a federalist, separatist, or closet-separatist-pretending-not-to-care government.

I’ve been accused of being extra hard on Mario Dumont and the ADQ. Actually, I think it’s the other way around. People in Quebec are so tired of the Liberal-PQ dichotomy, they see Dumont as a breath of fresh air. Thus, they’re being too easy on him, giving him a free pass every time he waffles on an issue or makes a ridiculous proposal. And thanks to much of the “soft nationalist” support going Dumont’s way instead of to the Liberals, it looks like we’re going to be in for another 5 long years of Bernard Landry.

*Sigh*.

Statistics Canada released new census figures this week, and now the PQ nitwits are falling all over themselves to decry a “lack of bilingualism” in Canada.

“It’s a dream, this vast bilingual country and this dream is not a reality,” Diane Lemieux said at a news conference after the 2001 census figures were unveiled. “This image of Canada being a bilingual country is an image disproven by reality. “It’s not true that French and English coexist as equals throughout Canada.” Lemieux said French would be better protected if Quebec were sovereign.

“The real solution is for Quebec to be a country,” she said.

The census showed Canadian bilingualism is divided along geographic lines, Lemieux suggested.

Of course, to the PQ, everything would be better if Quebec were sovereign.

But that’s not the point here. The point is that while the number of francophones in Canada (excluding Quebec) dropped a tiny bit – 4.4% down from 4.5% in 1996 – the truth is, both French and English-speaking populations dropped as the number of allophones (people with a mother tongue other than French or English) increased sharply. This is a result of increased immigration and multiculturalism, and only the PQ would see it as a BAD thing.

Wasn’t it Louise Beaudoin who was rallying about “rampant” bilingualism just a few short years ago? Of course, in that case she meant Quebec – where 83.1% of people speak French at home, compared to only 8.3% who speak English (down from 8.8% in 1996). Of course, to the PQ, bilingualism is only bad if it’s in Quebec. Their “raison d’être” is to preserve French, and of course there’s nothing wrong with that except when it’s done by criticizing other languages and groups.

Language has always been divided along geographic lines. That’s human nature. People tend to gravitate towards areas and communities where there are others who share their language and culture. In fact, the entire PQ argument for sovereignty is based on the division of language along geographic lines.

The problem is that the PQ has always seen the population of Canada as pieces on a chessboard, which they are free to position and manipulate at will. This was the reasoning behind immigration policies that would see immigrants forced to live in designated (outlying) areas instead of big cities. This was the reasoning behind efforts to shut down English schools and force all immigrants to send their children to French schools, even if they already speak English fluently. This was the same reasoning behind the law forcing all companies with 50 or more employees to conduct their internal business in French – even if all the people working at the company are non-francophone – and to advertise in French even if they’re targeting a mainly non-francophone market.

The PQ wants to hammer out a francophone society – whether the people like it or not. And now the same government that has been so restrictive of its anglophone minority is criticizing the rest of Canada for not being French enough! The difference, of course, is that in the rest of Canada, people are free to speak whatever language they choose. And this is apparently what the PQ finds so offensive. Maybe they ought to start targeting communities out in Alberta for “forced bilingualism” laws. Something tells me they wouldn’t get welcomed with a red carpet.