AngryFrenchGuy

Canadians have always had a hard time telling the difference between a country and professional sports franchise.  They love anthems, logos, flags and little patches on their backpacks that neatly tells you which team everybody is playing for.  They also, just like sports fans, have no problem whatsoever with the fact that their country shares its branding with a beer company and a major retailer of replacement wipers and cheap camping equipment.

The important thing is that they are recongnized.  As long as people stop confusing them with Americans, they’re good.

Micheal Ignatieff, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and one of our time’s great intellectual fashion victims – support for the war in Irak?  Support for torture? But everyone was doing it! – apparently believes that the Québec independence movement and the forty or so years of important political upveal that has rocked the province stems from the same petty insecurity.

Speaking about the concrete effects of Québec being recognized as a “nation within a united Canada” by Canada’s House of Commons last year, the would-be Prime Minister candidly admitted that the whole idea, for which he has often claimed credit, was just a whole lotta nothing.

“The Charest government has all the powers it needs to do excellent work for the citizens of Quebec and I see no reason to revisit the issues of jurisdictions and powers,” Ignatieff told the The Canadian Press on Thursday.  According to him the canadian federation is “working well and that  he “sees no need to increase either the central government’s power or the power of the provinces.”

So, Micheal Ignatieff thinks that fatal waves of terrorism in the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, four election victories by Québec’s seccessionist party, two referendums on sovereignty, one of which came within a statistical error of being successful was only about the Québécois longing to be recognised?

This wise thinker and writer thinks that the reason every political party in the province refuses to sign the canadian constitution is not because of an unnacceptable allocation of powers or because for four decades English-Canada has aggressivly rejected any possibility of discussion or change.  Nope. The professor thinks all about English-Canada.  He thinks all the Québécois really want is for Canada to acknowledge that they exist, in the same sad way that canadians feel vindicated whenever Access Hollywood recognizes that Micheal J. Fox or William Shatner are Canadians.

As of today  Mr. Ignatieff is on the record saying that the Canadian Federation will not change.  It’s the status quo or else.

That’s what the sovereingtists have been saying the whole time.

That’s called scoring in your own net, Mike.