La Nation Québécoise

Dans un article paru dans La Presse ce matin une excellente question est posé par Mme Marois, chef du Parti Québécois, par rapport à leur projet de loi qui veut créer deux classes de citoyens au Québec : ceux qui parlent français et ceux qui ne le parlent pas. La deuxième classe de citoyens, ceux qui ont de la difficulté avec la langue dominante de la province, la minorité évidemment, seront privé de certains droits constitutionnels comme par exemple le droit de se présenter aux élections en tant que candidat.

Pauline Marois « Dites-moi en vertu de quelle rhétorique le « nous » canadien serait inclusif et le « nous » québécois, exclusif? Ne sommes-nous pas une nation, reconnue par les partis fédéraux? Alors en quoi l’affirmation de nous-mêmes serait-elle un projet ethnique? »

Dans le sens où le terme « nation québécoise » indique un fait sociologique indéniable, je suis d’accord. Cependant, je reconnais le problème de vendre ce concept aux autres provinces canadiennes, qui eux, soupçonnerait peut-être une signification différente. Or en effet, on voit dans les questions de Mme Marois la migration de ce concept vers un autre sens.

C’est bien Mme Marois, elle-même, qui suggère la solution au manque de francisation des nouveaux arrivés au Québec en répondant aux accusations de Phillipe Couillard, ministre Libéral. « C’est vous, monsieur le ministre, qui créez deux classes de citoyens. C‘est vous qui avez coupé dans la francisation des immigrants… » Alors, pourquoi pas remettre les fonds dans ces programmes, Mme Marois? (L’éditorialiste Nathalie Collard p. 14 en arrive à la pareil conclusion).

Il semble assez clair que le PQ va se servir de cette situation à des fins autres que la francisation.


Comment juger la popularité au Québec d’un tel assaut radical aux droits constitutionnels de certains de nos concitoyens? Le meilleur indice se trouve dans le titre d’un autre article sur la même page du journal : « Le PQ prêt à faire tomber le gouvernement demain matin »

While you were sleeping...

Parliament has not yet reconvened and Stephen Harper has already goofed twice.

The promise to make every government bill an automatic confidence motion will with time look more and more like dumb bluster. Not only does this directly contradict his previous public statements, there are enough democrats in the country (in every political party) who realize that minority parliaments cannot function under such conditions and, if we are to have more minority situations, Stephen Harper’s promise is a dangerous and unworkable precendent. If an election occurs over a minor piece of legislation, the Harper Conservatives’ carry the full responsibility.

Secondly, the claim that striking a committee of unelected private citizens, who already appear to favour an extension of the combat role in Afghanistan, will neutralize the issue is ridiculous not brilliant. Imagine Stephen Harper’s response during an election Leaders debate to questions about the combat role that has resulted in increased levels of violence and instability in Afghanistan. Will he say that a committee is studying the issue and that election campaigns are not the time to talk about policy? Brilliant. Even those media commentators who loudly applaud Stephen Harper’s every word must be getting tired of being jerked around by the erratic Conservative message machine.

Some have argued that our leader Stephane Dion must have far-reaching, bold, even controversial policy pronouncements. Well what do you think his environmental policy is? The debate has not been settled. Stephen Harper’s government is doing everything in its power to not act and in addition to deceive the public about the costs and Canada’s goals. And targets like those contained in the Kyoto treaty are just an initial step. Media commentators can announce that the issue has been neutralized all they want, but does anyone believe them? Does anyone believe Stephen Harper? On the environmental file, we will witness the spectacle of the Liberals once again dragging the Conservatives kicking and screaming into modernity. These sorts of impressions can last for a generation and more.

I guess the Dion teams’ positioning of the Liberal party on the major issues of the day happened while many were sleeping. I am really pleased by the announcement of corporate tax cuts, a policy similar to “socialist” Sweden, to promote economic growth. The Afghanistan position is reasonable. We will end our combat mission in 2009, although further peace-keeping and aid efforts remain possible. It is time that our other partners in the NATO coalition do their part, otherwise it is not much of a coalition really.

In fact, the party has been positioned in what I think of as a policy sweet spot on most of the important issues. And there is no lack of talent in the federal Liberal caucus to get the message out. In the one-on-one debates of televised political discussion panels, the Liberal representatives leave the Conservatives looking like uniformed angry hacks which is why I would prefer at least another month or so for Liberal MPs to rake the Conservatives over the coals and to get Stephen Harper or one of his bumbling ministers on the record about the Conservative money laundering scandal.

Either way, its up to Stephane Dion to call the plays as he will be the leader for at least the next two elections. The talent and ambition of the current crop of MPs as well as the policies the Liberals are advancing, win or lose, make me proud to be a Liberal. Don’t expect an audience for excuses after the next election. Return victorious or on your shields.

Scott Brison and about time

I was beginning to forget what I liked about Scott Brison so much. He totally clobbered that sack of wind Van Loan on Duffy tonight from start to finish. Scott needs more airtime. We need Scott to have more airtime.

In other news, its nice to hear some positive managed leaks for a change even if they are mixed with negative ones. Check out Diatribes.There will be some housecleaning later in the week?

To present a sense of direction there must be some winners and some losers. Hopefully, those who do not fare as well realize that it is not the end. Its nothing personal and politics is full of well deserved come-backs. Nothing is forever.

We’ll see what happens….

The Leaker has got to Go

The coverage of the Jamie Carroll affair in the francophone press this week was outrageously bad for the Liberal party. I am not going to link to any of it because its all garbage. The journalists were doing their job trying to create heat, but it was all garbage just the same. The person who initiated the leak of the private conversation must be forced to resign.

Let’s be clear about something to begin with. The alleged “joke” was not funny and no excuses should be made for such a joke. Humour is a social phenomenon and the scripts for what is funny and what is not are implicit. You know it when you hear it. Take for example the n----- word. When Chris Rock uses it: funny (sometimes). When the tall weird guy from Seinfeld uses it: not funny. Dave Chapelle: always funny, etc… You get the picture. An anglophone can tell the same joke word for word as a francophone about francophones and it is not funny. In fact, it is a sure-fire conversation stopper. That’s the script. And in this case even a francophone could not pull off such a quip (I am not interested in exceptions that prove the rule here). Liberal MPs in Quebec are a bit of a survivalist club. They know the script and to survive they know that they must immediately denounce such a joke on the spot without hesitation otherwise they will be wearing the blame for it too.

The person who leaked this story (whether it is true or not) also knew the script. Fortunately, this did not happen during an election. If the person who initiated the leak is left in place, it will happen during an election. Following the reasoning of my post yesterday, for the good of the party this individual must resign or be forced to resign immediately.

After the Turner defeats in the 1980’s, we lost a lot of seats permanently. And now there is more than one party that is all too eager to occupy space vacated by the Liberals. The idea of throwing an election is arrogant in the extreme.

We are asking for peoples’ trust. And that starts by respecting them. The leaker must go.

Tyranny of the Few

Sometimes those who follow politics too closely forget the simple truth that in the mind of the average voter all Liberals are the same. When adscam hit, we all took it. There were no good Liberals and bad Liberals. The public was not willing to make a distinction between this one and that one. We were all Liberals. The punishment was collective. In Quebec, it has been particularly severe and we are still suffering from the aftershocks.

There are some (a small minority) that never accepted the will of the party when we democratically elected Stephane Dion as our leader. Rather than convince others by the force of their ideas, they are the kind that prefers to hiss and boo those with whom they disagree. And they prefer to speak about leadership for the same reason Harper likes to speak about leadership; it is easier than formulating a real argument, an argument that they could lose.

The leak to the media this week about a private conversation with Jamie Carroll was absolutely shameful. In addition, it was bad politics. To the average voter we are all Liberals. The complaint is ostensibly about Dion, but the average voter hears: Liberals are backstabbing snakes who are only looking out for their own personal interests; they care more about their own egos than the environment or the economy or pulling our troops out of that suckers game in Afghanistan; Liberals can’t be trusted; if a crisis struck the country they wouldn't be able to cope with it because they are so divided; they only want my vote to increase their own self-importance.

The Liberals have had at best a tenuous relationship with Quebeckers for more than a generation now. Publicly attacking the leader will ensure that voters even in the “safe” seats of Montreal will start to seriously consider a new permanent home. To be honest, it has crossed my mind. Those who pretend they are trying to save the party from Dion, if they were to succeed, would find themselves with very little left to save. They will not succeed.

On the positive side, I think that the haters have overplayed their hand this week. Let the backlash begin…

Ideological war on terror,drugs,Islam and common sense

A report on efforts to eradicate the opium harvest in Afghanistan came out this week in the New Yorker which I would recommend reading. Written very much in the style of that magazine, the article is entertaining as well as informative. The shooting scenes almost read like an engaging piece of short fiction.

What is the position of our government on the opium fields in Afghanistan? Are we helping or making things worse?

A dark glimpse in the Afghan mirror

Is that really me?

Canada caught a sinister glimpse of itself this week in the mirror of Afghanistan. Distorted only in part by the realities of that violent third world country, the Canadian “War on Terror” in Afghanistan reflects back at us a projection of our own fears and anxieties, wishful thinking, short-sightedness, deceitfulness, sloppy reasoning, delusional self-righteousness and ignorance.

Some of us recoiled. Some have turned away.

Last year I wrote a series of posts on Afghanistan:
A rude awakening
A reasonable criterion for military engagement
Who exactly are the enemies of freedom part I
Who exactly are the enemies of freedom part II
Who exactly are the enemies of freedom part III
What Canada learned in Rwanda

The storyline has become more complicated since then --not because of a change in the Afghan situation but because of us and how the mission has become a partisan fight. Two issues, though, press to the front: the new government’s continued failure to articulate a clear and reasonable set of objectives in Afghanistan and the manipulation of information that Canadians need to judge the success (and appropriateness) of the objectives. I will ask about the objectives of the Afghan mission in a later post, titled: No blank cheques.

With regard to manipulation of information, The Globe and Mail reported this week that detainees handed over by Canadian soldiers to the Afghan authorities had been tortured. When the Harper government denied knowledge of torture, the Globe further published an internal report from the department of foreign affairs that described torture and executions of detainees in Afghan jails. Either the government was negligent by not reading the report or they had read the report and were lying when they said they had no knowledge about prisoner abuse. The foreign affairs document released to the Globe and Mail under the Access to Information Act had been heavily edited, although the Globe had access by another source to the unedited document. The edited version of the report had removed all mention of torture which suggests that the government was actively trying to cover up its mistake of either not reading the report or lying about it. The government further muddied the water by arguing that the detainees were obviously Taliban trying to embarrass Canada by inventing accounts of torture. Yet if these detainees were Taliban, then the government must also explain why these individuals had been released from prison by the time the Globe and Mail had interviewed them. Either the detainees were Taliban, and the prison system had failed by releasing them, or the detainees were innocent and telling the truth. There were also chilling intimations by many of the Harper government’s supporters, that torture was not necessarily a bad outcome. Several contradictory accounts were given by different government ministers of how prisoners are monitored. Some of those accounts must be false. And finally, Stephen Harper wrapped himself in the flag and argued, preposterously, that those who were raising questions about prisoner abuse were disrespecting the Canadian troops and that only his party represented the military.

The government is not being honest with us about what is happening in Afghanistan. Emotional appeals to patriotism are not sufficient. Without accurate feedback on the effects of the military occupation, Canadians cannot judge whether to proceed or withdraw. Insulated from the facts, the mission is nothing more than a reflection of our worst failings.