CIVITATENSIS

The country can breathe with some relief now that it has been announced: Stephane Dion will once again run to represent the good citizens of Saint-Laurent-Cartierville.  With Martin Cauchon returning and Dion staying, Michael Ignatieff can convincingly show that he is a leader capable of attracting new and vigorous blood to the Liberal Party.

Considering that Denis Coderre wanted Dion to disappear, this is a victory for the Cauchon Team.

The contest continues: It’s now Cauchon 3, Coderre 4.

I caught Michael Ignatieff saying on CTV that he “will give Quebeckers a choice.” He and Bob Rae already have done that, however: It’s Martin Cauchon (and the Chretienites) or Denis Coderre (and the Martinites). It’s Deja-vu.

Ignatieff also said that there is no need for a Quebec Lieutenant. Reportedly, he will run Quebec out of his Ontario riding office.  Gotta  hand it to the man. He has the power of conviction that any zealot would envy:  When he believes that led balloons will fly, he believes that led balloons will fly.

The contest continues: It’s still Cauchon 1, Coderre 3

Michael Ignatieff found out today that cutting people off at the knees, especially when they are your provincial lieutenant, is never a good thing.  But doubly so in Quebec, where Ignatieff’s decision to displace a woman candidate from the riding of Outremont in order to benefit Coderre’s political rival, Martin Cauchon, left Denis Coderre weak, and open to separatists accusations of spineless lackey.

This morning Denis Coderre quit his position as Quebec federal Liberal chieftain, giving a blow to Michael Ignatieff’s chances of bouncing in Quebec in the near future. In addition, the new lieutenant, whoever the Grits choose, will have to answer as to whether he can make local decisions on his own, or whether he will be a slave to Ignatieff’s indecisive will,  even when the leader’s decisions work against women in Quebec.

Should Ignatieff choose Martin Cauchon for the job Coderre has left vacant (one cannot put this eventuality past Ignatieff), we will no doubt soon assist to yet another round of the Liberal civil war in Quebec. Ignatieff has all the skills, what is more, to see the feud spread across the country. That’s not just wishful thinking on my part. That scenario, given that Bob Rae is already trying to get involved, is well within the political gifts of the national Liberal leader.

One might say that Ignatieff does not understand the political culture of Quebec. But this has little to do with how looooooooooong he has been out of the country. To displace a woman candidate so as to parachute a powerful male politician into a riding is only different from the Duplessis years in that there were no women candidates in the Duplessis years.

I predicted here that this was going to take the form a feud, but that’s easy to do because it already was a feud.  Count Ignatieff is a fool for getting in the middle of it.  Where is the Liberal messiah of Unity?

The contest continues: Cauchon 1, Coderre 3 (This was a three-pointer)

Martin Cauchon’s return to politics in Quebec broadsided a female Liberal candidate and plucked a few feathers off of Denis Coderre’s political headship for the Quebec Liberal party.

While Ignatieff got caught in the middle of the titanic egos of the two male Quebec politicians who have leadership ambitions, it was Nathalie Prohon that got pushed to the side to the lesser riding of Jeanne-Le-Ber instead of Outremont.  It’s the new expression of Liberal friendliness toward women in politics.

Coderre’s Facebook status yesterday called for sending Cauchon to the riding of Jeanne-Le-Ber and keeping prestigious Outremont for Prohon (”Sur ma recommandation et celle de notre equipe du Quebec. Michael Ignatieff a offert la circonscription de Jeanne-LeBer a Martin Cauchon. A suivre”).

But Denis Coderre lost the battle to sideline his rival. Coderre has not updated his status since yesterday, no doubt still perplex. As Quebec party chieftain, he expected to prevail but Ignatieff decided otherwise.

The contest has only begun: Cauchon 1, Coderre 0.

Jacques Parizeau, the former Parti Québécois premier of Quebec, said that a coalition government would be weaker than the incumbent, a prospect he said was "eminently satisfying."

"The fact that the Bloc got Stéphane Dion to sign a political accord in which it is explicitly written that he undertakes to act in partnership with Canadians and the Québécois should bring a smile to the face of many sovereigntists," Mr. Parizeau wrote.

It has been a long time since I have paid attention to much that Jeffrey Simpson writes, but some of his observations regarding the recent federal election results in Quebec deserve some attention. Simpson seems completely unaware that he is now sharing political space once occupied decades ago by the Reform Party and the redneck Westerners he so often mocks.

They [francophones in Quebec] apparently welcome a party that wants no part of governing Canada while continuing to demand more and more from it.

[...]

Since 1993, the largest number of francophone Quebeckers [they call themselves "québécois" but Simpson seems confused about what to call them. Haitians are Quebec francophones, for example, but they are not "québécois."] apparently has wanted no part of federal parties, and therefore of the government or governance of Canada. Canada is no longer a country they wish to participate in governing, but one from which they wish to withdraw cash, like an automated teller machine.

They want to influence decisions in Ottawa without taking any responsibility for those decisions. They want neither to separate from Canada, nor to govern it. They want, through the Bloc Québécois, a variation of an old and enduring ambition: to be part of Canada, but only sort of, and on their terms, which means some sort of associate status, égal à égal, separate but not fully separate, sovereignty but with association, autonomous but still tied, somewhat in but somewhat out, or, in the metaphor of the brilliant Quebec journalist Jean Paré, parishioners in a church called Canada they seldom attend except for important occasions like Christmas, Easter and maybe marriages. They want to take but not to give. And they always prefer leaders, when given a choice, from [francophone?] Quebec.

It is historical fact, reinforced again this week, that [francophone?] Quebeckers have always voted for a party led by a [francophone?] Quebecker when confronted with a choice between such a party and one led by someone from outside the province.

What an epiphany! Preston Manning was saying things of this sort for more than a decade, since the late 1980s. But it was people like Mr. Simpson and his journalist friends in Toronto and Montreal who repeatedly accused Manning of racism and anti-Quebec intolerance just for saying them.

Nice to see that the Glob columnist has come around, even if it only has taken him two decades to see past his own mental block.

Alleluia for Simpson!

What’s next? Will he now join Stockwell Day’s Church, whose beliefs he so vehemently smeared with the same petulant conviction that he once smeared Preston?

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe wants to reduce Quebec’s dependence on oil by half within 10 years.

Mr. Duceppe has been saying since the beginning of the [election] campaign that oil impoverishes Quebec while making Alberta rich [Apparently we are the only people in the world --let alone the country-- who sell oil!!!].

“It’s a real drain on the province’s economy,” Mr. Duceppe said Saturday during a news conference in Montreal.

Once again, Quebec separatists are promoting greater animosity toward Alberta and Albertans in order to get votes. Oil makes Alberta rich on the backs of Quebeckers, don’t you know.

Duceppe is welcome to buy his oil exclusively from Hugo Chavez if he wants. But let’s be fair: if wants nothing Albertan, he should also petition the feds to stop sending Alberta’s money to Quebec?

For years Quebeckers have so ignored Jack Layton that he now looks new and fresh to them. That’s just a little bit funny. Good for them, I guess. Jack’s fortunes seem to be on the rise in the province the more they see of him.

Stephane Dion, on the other hand, has the opposite trouble. The more voters learn about him over the country, the less they like him. It doesn’t matter who is standing next to him.

But for all of Layton’s popularity in La Belle Province, he may not win much in Quebec, except to funnel away from Liberals and left-leaning Bloc supporters getting a few more Tories elected. Go, Jack Go!!

The now typical Liberal flogging of a “hidden agenda” notwithstanding, according to most polls the Tories are inching toward the finish line at a steady pace. The slow pace will get the “league of the perpetually scared” Ontario voters more and more used to a potential Harper majority. What is more, Ontario voters are used to mimicking Quebec in the federal scene. As Quebec becomes more comfortable with Harper, most likely so will Ontario. Chances are that Newfoundlandes will also demonstrate that they are not Williams’ sheep.

There is no great Tory surge in the polls. That’s true. But that means that there is no great monster with which to scare CBC viewers and latte-sipping central Canadian urbanites.  In true conservative fashion, just slow and steady advance that is less likely to be shaken by electoral mood swings.

Michael Coren has chosen to be charitable in his interpretation of how Quebec journalists, politicians and members of the intelligentsia in general are reacting to the news that some of the candidates in the present election campaign have Christian beliefs of one sort or another.

Coren thinks that Duceppe is stupidly going after Opus Dei caricature, disingenuously detaching it from the Catholic Church.

 But Dan Brown is evidently big in Quebec and, much to the chagrin of the Bloc, so might be the Conservatives. Accordingly, Gilles Duceppe announced that the Tory candidate in Saint-Hubert-Saint-Bruno, Nicole Charbonneau Barron, was an Opus Dei member. Then Raymond Gravel, a Catholic priest and outgoing Bloc MP, opined that, “Social conservatives such as members of Opus Dei may be running for office in order to change policies concerning abortion and same-sex marriage.”

Earth to dotty separatist: It’s not Opus Dei but the Roman Catholic Church that teaches that life begins at conception and that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. You might know that if you weren’t suspended from almost all priestly duties. Indeed it is entirely likely that in a less liberal place than Quebec in the 1980s, this former prostitute who worked in Montreal’s gay leather bars would never have been ordained in the first place.

They are not at all detaching it from the Roman Church. They know very well that their smear of an Opus Dei candidate is also an attack on the Church. They also know well that there will be no backlash. Quebec is the same province in which a bunch of radical feminists desacrated Mary Queen of the World cathedral but the police refused to press charges.

Among journalists, academics and politicians of most stripes in Quebec it has for long been fashionable to ridicule Christianity, and Catholicism in particular. It is the bigoted fetish of their Intelligentsia to claim that the Christian faith renders one incapable of occupying and exercising public office. It’s what passes for intellectual enlightenment and sophistication. It’s as fashionable in Quebec as their anti-semitic cousins were in the nineteenth century. Quebec’s anti-Catholicism has become the last refuge for ‘enlightened’ scoundrels.

See also here for a peak on how Le Devoir reports the presence of Christians on the ballot as though they were announcing that candidates have cancerous moral failures (en francais). Barbara Kay examines the double standard.

a federal politician in this country dares say what we all know about Bloc jobs:

Mr. [Michael] Fortier said the Bloc has achieved no real results, spearheaded no major projects and created no employment.

"The only jobs that Bloc MPs have created in 18 years are their own," he said. "A vote on the Bloc is a wasted vote – Quebecers are already realizing the Bloc can’t deliver, and are already turning their back on this powerless party," he said.

It’s about time.

When Quebeckers complain about the price of gasoline, they often think that Albertans are ripping them off.

Well, Quebeckers may be getting ripped off at the pumps, but it’s other Quebeckers doing it.

Scott said the charges stem from an extensive investigation that showed gas retailers in the four markets phoned each other and agreed on a price.

“The evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of gasoline retailers in these markets participated in the cartel,” the Competition Bureau said in a news release.

[...]

Those who were charged operated in Sherbrooke, Victoriaville, Thetford Mines and Magog, cities that are all south of Montreal.

The companies that were charged are: Les Petroles Therrien Inc., operating under the Petro-T banner, and Distributions Petrolieres Therrien Inc. ($179,000), and Ultramar Inc. ($1,850,000). One individual, Jacques Ouellet, an employee of Ultramar, also pleaded guilty and was fined $50,000.

Writing for the Glob, Lysianne Gagnon makes several arguments pointing to the sham of the official Canadian multicultural policy. Her arguments are incidental to her point against the Bloc’s phony desire to see Quebec exempted from the official federal policy. Her piece is evidence of how sound arguments can be used to marshal fallacious conclusions.

Never mind the official ideology of “multiculturalism,” a gimmick set up by Pierre Trudeau to facilitate the adoption of the Official Languages Act. At the time, some ethnic groups, especially in the West, were furious at the privilege bestowed on French Canadians, whom they considered to be just another ethnic group. Very well, said Mr. Trudeau - we’ll promise that these groups will also be able to retain their cultures of origin.

In effect, this policy turned out to be nothing more than another way to pander to ethnic communities. While their folk-dance troupes received generous grants, young Italians, Ukrainians and Chinese were quickly integrating. Multiculturalism is just another word for tolerance and reasonable accommodation. Cultural practices that go against basic Canadian values - arranged marriages, genital mutilation, polygamy, sharia-based family law - are actively discouraged.

Contrary to another myth circulated by anglophone Canadian nationalists (who want to distinguish themselves from the Americans as much as the Quebec nationalists want to be distinct), the integration of immigrants into the Canadian mainstream has followed the same pattern as in the United States. The second generation of immigrants is integrated and the third is assimilated.

In most cases, the original language is lost. What remains are certain family and culinary traditions. When some ethnic groups are ghettoized, it is not because they are encouraged to do so by some crazy multicultural authority. It is either because they are religious fundamentalists or because they belong to poverty-stricken communities.

Let’s leave the assumption that there is such thing as “basic Canadian values” for now. Let’s focus on the political “gimmick.” Gagnon’s piece goes no further than suggesting that Quebec should not be allowed to set up its own brand of multicultural gimmick because their gimmick is not really distinct from the federal gimmick. The federal gimmick is thus good because it is federal. Long live provincial autonomy!

That’s one heck of an argument. If it occurred to her to erase the gimmicks on both sides, it is not apparent in this piece. Against the very logic with which she makes her argument, she goes on to conclude that both societies live under an artificial, calculated political gimmick, as though it were a virtue:

English Canada integrates its immigrants pragmatically, without much fuss, while Quebec, true to its Cartesian tradition, has developed plans and theories about the issue. But the end result is the same. Quebec is a multicultural society, just as Canada is.

At least Quebec’s policy typically acknowledges that what they seek is cultural integration. It’s a more honest gimmick.

In the end, Gagnon just muddies the waters on this one. It really would help Ms. Gagnon to learn to distinguish more clearly between the official, fragmenting “multicultural” federal policy and the sociological reality on the ground of mixed cultural variety that leads to ultimate integration, whether in Quebec or in the RoC.

Except, perhaps, for the ADQ’s tumble in the polls, last night’s Quebec by-election does not change much in the immediate setting. But it does seem to set the stage for the next general election in the province. Assuming that the fortunes of the ADQ do not return, it will likely be a classic show down of soft federalists and hard separatists. Consider what the PQ leader had to say:

“This sends a message to the Charest government, a status quo government … at a time when he should be out there defending Quebec’s interests,” Ms. Marois said Monday night. “Maka Kotto will help us advance Quebec, help it progress so that finally we can give ourselves one day soon, as quickly as possible, a real country that will be ours … a sovereign, independent Quebec.”

Marois is not sugar-coating it. If she makes her party’s goals this much clear in the next general election, the election itself will turn out to be a prelude to a future referendum. Charest should be comfortable with his odds in that kind of contest.

The Sûreté du Québec is investigating after graffiti was found on the mausoleum that serves as the final resting place of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.A spokesperson for the Sûreté du Québec said it appears the graffiti was left sometime Friday night or early Saturday morning.

It was spray-painted on to different parts of the grey limestone mausoleum in St. Remi de Napierville, a town just south of Montreal in the Montérégie region.

[...]

The word “traitor” in French was also found on one wall.

This blog is no friend of Pierre Trudeau, but one doesn’t have to be a recipient of brown paper bags filled with money in the Montreal area to recognise tomb-desecrating, FLQ-sympathizing cowards for what they are.

Benoit Corbeil has become the sixth suspect to be charged for activities in AdScam. Corbeil is one of the central figures in the Liberal-orchestrated plot to funnel tens of millions of dollars from the public coffers into the Liberal Party of Quebec and selected friends.

Corbeil is also accused of defrauding the Party that defrauded the country.

The Mounties, in a news conference Friday morning, announced charges against Benoit Corbeil, who ran the Liberal party’s Quebec wing from 1999 to 2001.

Corbeil was arrested Friday and charged with influence peddling, fraud and conspiracy against the party and the federal government between 1997 and 2000.

He is accused of conspiring to defraud the party of $100,000 during his tenure by authorizing payment of false invoices. He will also be charged with breach of trust in an unrelated federal land deal.

Liberal Party spinner Scott Reid, of “pop corn and beer” fame, immediately took distance from Corbeil, trying to make his party sound like the victim.

Scott Reid, a former senior advisor to Martin, noted on Mike Duffy Live that Corbeil is charged with “money he took from the Liberal Party.”

“Frankly, he’s no friend of ours,” he added.

Is it a sin to steal from those who steal from others?

Miro Cernetig of the Vancouver Sun thinks that the writing may already be on the wall. Some people are going to be gunning (again) for Alberta.

Wishing to outdo Citoyen Stephane Dion, perharps, Jean Charest has already declared that he wishes to become Canada’s new Captain Environment.

None of Canada’s premiers wants to say it. But here it is: We’re probably seeing the beginnings of another national showdown with Alberta, not unlike the battle over the National Energy Program, when Albertans complained the rest of the country was trying to steal their birthright: oil.

[...]

But make no mistake about it, there’s a battle brewing. If three out of four of Canada’s biggest provinces are going to be putting in steep reduction targets in carbon dioxide emissions, measures that will cost their taxpayers and economies dearly, the question will inevitably arise of why Alberta should be an exception.

[...]

But a showdown would be a distinct possibility if a Liberal government — now with a Quebec leader who has named his dog Kyoto (after the climate change accord) — comes to power. Leader Stephane Dion, thanks to Trudeau’s NEP, doesn’t have to worry about losing seats in Alberta. He doesn’t have any. So a national climate change plan that zeroes in on the oilpatch is a pretty good bet if Canadian voters continue to see climate change as a top issue.

Quebec’s premier is certainly getting ready for the green new world. On Tuesday, Charest outflanked all the other premiers by declaring Canada’s future carbon-trading exchange will be in Montreal.

Alberta must make sure that the only wall on which central Canada can write is a firewall!

Manitoba and B.C. joined Quebec and Ontario yesterday in trying to figure out a way to milk money out of Alberta through a so-called “cap-and-trade emissions system.” It is being done under the guises of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions lest the world comes to an end in the immediate future, a central Canadian version of the failed Kyoto Accord. “Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Charest began talking privately about working together on a plan three weeks ago, according to an Ontario government source.”

The targets of the two central Canadian Liberal politicians are a pair of Albertans:

The premiers of Canada’s two largest provinces said they have grown impatient waiting for other provinces, notably Alberta, to overcome their sharp differences, and for the federal government to take a leadership role in developing a cap-and-trade emissions system.

Watching the oil prices go up and coveting Alberta’s wealth from afar has indeed become a thing to foster impatience among those who will stop at little and justify their coveting in the name of whatever to get to Alberta’s prosperity. Under their plan, Alberta’s oil and gas companies would have to buy credits from central Canadian companies, all of which amounts to massive transfers of cash from here to there while they continue to run their vehicles and heat their homes with oil that we produce. They need our oil, and we’ll have to pay them to produce it for them! Does that sound market-based?

“We want this to happen,” Mr. Charest said. “We’re going to work to make this happen.”

If what central Canadians truly want is clean production of carbon fuels done on a market basis, they should pay for their ideological proclivities. One may have to start thinking about ways to get Ontario and Quebec to pay for such market preferences. Instituting a special Alberta tax for all crude and refined petrol and all natural gas exported to carbon trading provinces in order to offset the wealth funnelled out of Alberta sounds pretty good to me. We’ll even use some of the money to transform the tar sands into a natural paradise.

In a heated and emotional debate yesterday about the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, the former chief of staff of Jean Chrétien, Eddie Goldenberg, accused former Quebec premier Bernard Landry of comparing Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.

In his speech delivered to law students in Quebec City, Mr. Landry quoted the late Liberal prime minister and driving force behind the patriation of the Constitution as saying at the time: “This Constitution will last 1,000 years.”

The pious Trudeauvian hordes can throw their arms up in the air and cry foul all they want. Goldenberg, it is evident, objects to the comparison to Hitler, but does not dispute the fact that the then prime minister used those exact words in that exact context. They just happen to be the same words that Adolf Hitler often used in reference to his Third Reich, the new regime and its constitution.

Goldenberg downplays Trudeau’s words in the same way that they did decades ago: “The media reported that this sentence had already been used (by Hitler) and that it was a bad choice. That’s it,” he said. None of it addresses the crucial question as to how Trudeau found himself repeating Hitler’s words. Was it a coincidence?

It’s more than just about Hitler and it’s no mere coincidence. The use of that formulation is part of a long tradition of prophets and messiahs which places Pierre Trudeau in good company. St. John the Evangelist uses the same formulation about 1,000 years in the Book of Revelations, chapter 20. This is what John has to say:

¹ Then I saw an angel come down from heaven with the key of the Abyss in his hand and an enormous chain.

² He overpowered the dragon, that primeval serpent which is the devil and Satan, and chained him up for a thousand years.

³ He hurled him into the Abyss and shut the entrance and sealed it over him, to make sure he would not lead the nations astray again until the thousand years had passed. At the end of that time he must be released, but only for a short while.

⁴ Then I saw thrones, where they took their seats, and on them was conferred the power to give judgement. I saw the souls of all who had been beheaded for having witnessed for Jesus and for having preached God’s word, and those who refused to worship the beast or his statue and would not accept the brand-mark on their foreheads or hands; they came to life, and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

⁵ The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were over; this is the first resurrection.

⁶ Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection; the second death has no power over them but they will be priests of God and of Christ and reign with him for a thousand years.

⁷ When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison

St. John was writing about the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgment. The image of a thousand years in St. John conveys the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God and the perfection of human existence upon the final defeat of Evil. At least since then, there have been hundreds of political leaders of this type who have borrowed John’s language in reference to their own rule.

Bernard Landry is more correct than he knows it in comparing Pierre Trudeau to Adolf Hitler. They were both millenarian leaders, though they used different means. They were both charismatic prophets in the technical sense of the term. They believed themselves to be the chosen tools of History for the transformation of their world. They both believed they were engaged in a project that would bring about the final perfection of human society.

Bernard Landry can sometimes be a despicable character, and he himself has said lots of really stupid things. But when it comes to this, there is nothing for which Bernard Landry needs to apologise. When Pierre Trudeau used those words, he made himself the object of the comparison with Hitler, and with many similar transformative political and religious leaders (Ayatollah Khomeini, Louis Riel, Pol Pot, Augusto Sandino, Louis Farrakhan, Osama bin Landen, David Koresh, and many others).

He said it was "magical" watching hundreds of people wave Canadian and Quebec flags on every overpass, as the hearses carrying the soldiers’ bodies passed below.

"All the people that were there, all of you that actually came to see them and honour them when they returned, I can just tell you the experience we all had as families, was pride all the way," he said Saturday before his brother’s funeral.

"That was really impressive. It was a big salute to the troops. For every soldier that listened… take this as a source to remember that people do support the troops. It’s important for the troops and the families to feel that support."

The stretch of highway between CFB Trenton and Toronto was renamed the Highway of Heroes to honour Canadian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan. It is the route taken by hearses that transport repatriated bodies to Toronto, where autopsies are performed.

Private funeral services were also held Saturday for Levesque in his Laurentian hometown of Riviere-Rouge, Que., about 200 kilometres northwest of Montreal.

Pte. Levesque had returned to Afghanistan from leave about a week before the bomb blast. He recently had been engaged to his 18-year-old girlfriend, who is pregnant.

Meanwhile, in St-Hyacinthe, Que., about 800 mourners marched with Cpl. Beauchamp’s family behind a military procession, which led them a short distance through town.

Cpl. Beauchamp’s son Alexandre, 7, and daughter Josian, 6, each clutched fluffy, brown teddy bears as they flanked his parents as they approached the doors of the grey-brick church. The children appeared oblivious to the events unfolding around them.

As the Museum Just Pour Rire (Just for Laughs) shows, comedy is a component of our culture. Comedy and satire have been imprinted in Western culture all the way back to the Greeks. But Elections Canada will have none of it in today’s Quebec by-elections.

This [electoral] provision allows women who wear veils for religious reasons to vote without revealing their faces. However, Elections Canada advises those obviously mocking the law by wearing Halloween masks or the like will be turned away.

Can’t mock bureaucrats any more, eh?! Is Rick Mercer about to have his right to vote revoked? Not likely, but the humourless mandarins will need to decide who is funny and who is not: they’ll  probably lobby for a new mandatory federal license to practice comedy.

The Church of the Box has just bought a building on Ste.-Catherine Street East in Montreal for $4 plus million, likely with Hollywood money but allegedly with local donations.

Ironically, the building is the Fatherland Building (Le Pavilion de la Patrie) that belonged to UQAM (The University of Quebec at Montreal). UQAM is in many ways a microcosm of Quebec’s underbelly: it has traditionally been the home of radical separatists, communists, anarchists of all sorts, embezzling Liberal AdScammers and the spiritual home of convicted terrorist assassin, Paul Rose, who taught sociology there. It’s is not impossible to find folks there that answer to most of these rubrics.

UQAM are happy to report that they bought the building for less than two million, more than doubling their investment in about three years. The Fatherland, like federalism was for Robert Bourassa, has turned out to be profitable to the Quebec nationalist and the enemies of capital.

Religion will have to be redefined for sociology classes at  UQAM as “the profitable opiate of the people.”

The Province claims that Albertans are the most pessimistic among Canadians regarding Canada-Quebec relations. It must be summer and there’s not much else to report but a dumb survey. Still, the headline that Albertans are most pessimistic is hardly justified. Have a look:

Respondents were asked if they expected Quebec and the rest of Canada to be getting along well 10 years from now — in time for the nation’s 150th birthday in 2017.

Nationally, a solid majority of the 1,500 people surveyed — 68 per cent — were either somewhat optimistic or very optimistic about the future of Quebec’s relationship with the rest of the country.

Even in Quebec, the traditional flashpoint for Canada’s unity crises, 65 per cent were optimistic about the prospects for good relations a decade from now, although only 11 per cent said they were “very optimistic.”

However, just 55 per cent of Albertans had positive feelings about the matter, and 34 per cent - tops in the country - were explicitly pessimistic.

Maritimers were most optimistic at 74 per cent, and about 70 per cent of respondents in Ontario, the Prairies and B.C. expected fairly smooth relations with Quebec in 2017.

Given that the majority of Albertans still expect things to be fine between Quebec and the RoC, there is no reason to attach the pessimist label to Albertans. Albertans are not generally pessimistic and their optimist is usually guarded. Typically, and especially when it comes to politics, Albertans are realists. The headline hints, by using the pessimistic formula, that Albertans would be unhappy if Quebec and Canada got along well a decade from now. Let me repeat it again, 55% answered optimistically. Insofar as 45% did not, it may just be a manifestation of Alberta’s experience that one way or the other, somebody has to pay the federal bills for that relationship. That’s just realistic.

Quebec is the newest member of the club among Canadian jurisdictions jumping in further to  regulate energy markets, and gasoline pricing in particular.

[Quebec] Natural Resources Minister Claude Bechard said Friday that he wants oil companies to justify in writing every time they increase prices.

He says that oil companies will have to provide a written explanation to the provincial energy board.

The wonderful thing about this one is that the Quebec government is at least partially responsible for the rise in gas prices in Quebec.

Quebec has already announced that oil companies and energy producers will pay a carbon tax to finance its plan to reduce greenhouse gases.

Aside from the fact that the new tax is simply another Quebec government cash grab, the high school economics course (Vie Economique) mandatory in the Quebec curriculum would offer enough knowledge for any one to realise that a rise in the cost of production of pretty much any commodity results in price increases.

The Quebec government is shifting the blame to the oil companies for part of the gasoline price increase that Quebec has caused, then the government presents itself as a protector of the public against evil big oil, and it gets to make lots money in the process.  Sweet deal.

The Quebec license plates read: Je me souviens, which means I remember. Nations, as Ernest Renan tells us, choose what they wish to commit to memory and what they chose to commit to oblivion.

Part of what Quebeckers remember from their past is the defeat of French forces at British hands at the Plains of Abraham, just outside Quebec City, in 1759. Remembering is fine, but some don’t want to see it re-enacted. Some history is fun to remember, other is not.

Nicole Madore, spokeswoman for the Societe nationale des Quebecois et Quebecoises de la Capitale, says her group won't speak out against the production because it teaches history, but fears the re-enactment may spark divisions in Quebec society.

"We say go ahead, but you'll face the consequences if it ends up dividing people," Madore warned. "Some people will probably be upset. We're not keen on celebrating our defeats."

Ms. Madore is unwilling openly to express her opposition to the re-enactment, so she displaces her attitude to portray it as that of other people in Quebec. But she stumbles and uses “we” in her last sentence, taking ownership of her phobia of specific parts of history.

The battle at the Plains of Abraham was a defeat for France and the New French then became British subjects; there are worse fates than being subjects of the British Crown.  Let’s look around and compare Quebeck today with any off-shore former French colony: Vietnam? Haiti? Senegal? Would Quebeckers rather have lived the history of Haiti, who became independent in 1804, and would they rather live its present? The Quebecois were not defeated in 1759 for there was no such a thing as Quebecois. Most of the New French colonials who stayed in these parts of North America became Quebecois in the 1960s, under the godfatherhood of Britain and later of the Canadian state they willingly joined in 1867.

France does not object to us celebrating their defeat; so many countries do it so often that the French have become used to it. Are there objections from Paris to El Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Mexico and the US? If the Quebecois don’t like to celebrate defeat today, it is precisely because under British rule they did not have to become used to defeat as their continental cousins did. Quebeckers should also remember that.

Madore assumes that Quebeckers today should not be shown anything that might foster disagreement among them. The people are one, she figures, also assuming that Quebeckers are not mature enough to disagree without getting upset. Quebeckers are a people, to be true. They are a confident and culturally robust people who can handle disagreements and the re-enactment of a foreign country’s loss without feeling threatened. The Quebeck separatists should stop projecting their own pathologies on the rest of Quebecois society. Il faut se souvenir, et je me souviens.

Gilles Duceppe, the Bloc Quebecois leader, has made a significant contribution to the political vocabulary of public affairs. To pull a Duceppe in Canadian politics has for a while meant to pose for a ridiculous image, to appear silly, and/or is synonymous with cheesy hear gear.

But pulling a Duceppe has just acquired new meaning, a meaning likely to remain with us for generations to come. From now on it will evoke a superlative in flip-flopping, displacing the masterful John Kerry from that summit of notoriety. But to pull a Duceppe will be more than giant flip-flopping, an activity at which so many politicians excel.

To pull a Duceppe will mean even more. It will also evoke running away cowardly after rashly mounting half an attack. Datis ran away from the Greeks on the plains of Marathon but at least he put up a fight. To pull a Duceppe will will give a sense of an action designed to advance and strengthen one’s power but resulting in the destruction of that power. It will evoke greater self-inflicted humiliation than the expression previously conveyed. It will be bathed in such a blinding hue of political self-emasculation as to make Joe Clark secretly jealous.

Pulling a Duceppe will mean retreat and surrender in proportions only surpassed by Duceppe’s cousins sitting by the Maginot line in 1940. It will mean even more than botched calculation, hasty attack and lightening retreat. It will be also associated with condescendingly “making room” for women and/or visible minorities to access positions of power at one’s own  political expense (something that I had recommended for Michael Ignatieff to do some months ago). It will be associated with the failed artistry of offering the lamest of political excuses.

Don Martin has a few other meanings in mind:

Now they say a week in politics is a lifetime, but for a guy to help create a vacancy, rush to fill it and run for cover all in the space of 72 hours is a cycle of life, death, resurrection and reconsideration of almost biblical proportions.

Quebec newspaper letters pages were delivering scathing reviews on Mr. Duceppe's decision yesterday - buffoon, chicken, weakling, you get the idea.

For such rich contribution to our political vocabulary, we owe monsieur Duceppe our gratitude.

The rumours began the night of the election, and bookies in Montreal must have been taking bets as to how long Andre Boisclair would last a PQ leader. Yesterday, the reports told of a paranoid Boisclair, who accused Gilles Duceppe of orchestrating his ousting. Seldom do politicians with secure positions lash out in public to express their paranoia.

Today, Boisclair quit in an emotive display.

He failed to do all that was expected of him. He failed to recapture power from the hands of an unpopular Liberal government. He failed to attract the much touted youth vote. He failed to prove that Quebeckers are as enlightened as to put a coke-snorting gay man in the premier’s office. He failed to keep his core supporters, some of whom went on to found Quebec Solidaire. In the end, he not only failed to stop Jean Charest but he also failed to stop the ADQ, led by an equally young leader, who relegated Boisclair and the PQ to third place.

The PQ is not out of the woods with its leader humiliated, but Boisclair’s resignation does clear the coast for Gilles Duceppe to take over. None of the reasons that compelled Duceppe to remain in Ottawa during the last PQ leadership race are necessarily valid now. It’s a new ball game. There is no place but down for the Bloc Quebecois at present time. Jumping to the PQ to play the acclaimed messiah for a couple of years will prove irresistible for Duceppe this time around.

Let the record reflect that, for the first time, I am in agreement with Jack Layton.

Layton, adding his party was also approached by Ms. May, but turned her down. " We're going to make sure that we offer a choice to vote for a New Democrat candidate in every riding, because we think that's Canadians' right. Why should people in some ridings be denied the choice that other Canadians have in other ridings? You don't predetermine those things through back- room wheeling and dealing, That's what Canadians don't like about politics."

Layton is correct to point out that the Green-Red deal reduces the political choices of some voters. Since one of the markers of democratic politics is to offer choice, citoyen Dion and Elizabeth May are depriving voters of democratic choices and empoverishing Canadian democracy as a result.

If I were a Green supporter in St. Laurent-Cartierville (Dion’s riding), unhappy with the fact that citoyen Dion is unable to arrange his priorities, unhappy with Liberal involvement in one of the most corrupt schemes in Canadian politics, I would have just been robbed of my choice to vote for a Green candidate.

If I were a Liberal in Central Nova I would be concerned that my leader has to be propped up by the leader of a minor left-wing, single-issue party; I’d be concerned that my party has abandoned its historic position to run candidates in all of the country’s ridings.

Lysiane Gagnon examines with some care the Tory prospects in Quebec, where she reckons the party’s positioning has improved significantly with the rise of the ADQ, the diminishing of the PQ and the rather poor performance of citoyen Dion.

The Conservatives could even start eroding the traditional Liberal stronghold in Montreal. Mr. Harper’s strong stand in favour of Israel, during the Lebanon war, has won him the hearts of many Jewish voters who used to be unconditional Liberal supporters.

Much can still happen between now and the next election writ, but in her opinion the blue stars (subscription required) seem to be aligning pretty well.

Ontario remains a question mark.

 The wheels of justice grind slowly, but cops seem finally to be moving in the direction of Jacques Corriveau, the man without a memory; one of the key figures in the Liberal sponsorship scandal. Also known as AdScam, the sponsorship programme was designed under the leadership of Jean Chretien to funnel millions in public funds into the pockets of Liberal Party loyalists in Quebec while projecting the appearance of fighting separatism in that province.

A source who has been interviewed by the RCMP said that police are asking more and more questions about Jacques Corriveau, a Liberal organizer described by Mr. Justice John Gomery as the “central figure in an elaborate kickback scheme.”

The source said he and other acquaintances have been interviewed recently by the RCMP about Mr. Corriveau.

Mr. Corriveau was a friend and supporter of former prime minister Jean Chrétien, and he earned about $10-million in subcontracts from advertising firms involved in the sponsorship program, which was a national-unity initiative. Evidence at the Gomery inquiry showed that Mr. Corriveau provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to the Liberals, and put Liberal Party workers on his firm’s payroll at no cost to the party.

In the meantime, authorities announced that they have issued an international arrest warrant against Jean Lafleur, one other of the principal  beneficiaries in the Liberal conspiracy massively to defraud the Canadian state.