He is the immigrant-born, partly McGill-educated, leader of Québec’s newest sovereigntist party and now the first second Muslim ever elected to the National Assembly of Québec.
That’s quite a brainful for you, isn’t it, Canada?
Born in Teheran, Iran, Dr. Khadir immigrated to Québec with his parents at the age of 10. He is a practicing physician at Le Gardeur Hospital and the co-spokesperson of Québec Solidaire, a small progressive party born of the left wing of the Parti québécois, the lukewarm remains of the Québec NDP and the typical rainbow coalition of hippies, communists, university professors, vegans and failed artists who, in other countries, support Ralph Nader and Jack Layton.
Oh, and he might also be a slightly nutty conspiracy theorist and, according to columnist Pierre Foglia, the Northern Hemisphere’s most far left politician.
In other words, a protest vote, right? A freak disfunction of our British Parliamentary system, no doubt.
And yet… and yet…
Amir Khadir is all that, but he is also a genuinely well-liked man who’s been working very hard at the fringes of Québec’s political spectrum. In Québec, a province where all three leaders of the Liberals, the PQ and the ADQ are career politicians who have never had real jobs, someone like Dr. Khadir, who has lead Médecin du Monde missions in Iraq and the Palestinian occupied territories, and who went to work at his hospital on the morning after his election, commands sincere admiration and respect.
In fact, he just might be Québec’s most charismatic politician since René Lévesque. (Sorry, the Justin Trudeau thing isn’t working here…)
With Québec Solidaire’s co-leader Françoise David, Dr. Khadir has already performed a small miracle in uniting Québec’s far left into a coherent, if not plausible, progressive alternative.
A dream for sure, but a presentable dream. Something solid enough to receive the support of Claude Béland, the former president of Québec’s biggest financial institution, le Mouvement Desjardins, and of Julius Grey, the eminent lawyer who has punched more holes in Bill 101 than any other living person.
It takes quite a man to unite a banker and an Anglo-rights activist in a party dedicated to Québec’s political independence…
Such is the curious but exciting mix of Québec Solidaire, a scrappy coalition of dreamers, feminists and social activists, including a respectable share of Anglos and minorities, united behind the general idea of a progressive and independent Québec.
Kind of like the Party Québécois before it forgot WHY it wanted Québec to be an independent country.
Of course, with 4% of the province-wide vote and a single MNA, it doesn’t cost much to Support Québec Solidaire. Dr. Khadir might have convinced a dozen or so small left wing parties to temporarily put aside their differences over the interpretation of resolution 17.b of the IVth International Socialist Conference on proto-structural gender role-bias in a post-consumer society and unite under the single banner of Québec Solidaire for now, but we’ll see how long that coalition holds once he has to actually vote on legislation in the National Assembly.
Cynics will no doubt keep reminding the good doctor that, although he may claim to speak for the poor and disenfranchised, he was actually elected by the quite well off bobos of the Plateau.
Nor is he done explaining what he meant in 2006 when he said that he was not ready to ‘reject’ the various conspiracy theories claiming that the World Trade Center was an inside job.
Still, few people ever thought that Amir Khadir’s unlikely coalition would hold together as long as it it did in the first place. It will be interesting to see how well he will be able to use his increased visibility and credibility as an MNA.
One thing’s for sure, it’s been a while since anybody in Québec has been this enthousiastic about a politician. At least since Barack Obama…
Did you ever read the Canadian constitution? It’s a very curious document. It describes a political system that bears very little resemblance to the one we think we have.
An immigrant from Utar Pradesh reading the constitution of Canada would learn about a country ruled by an all powerful monarch counselled by a popular assembly of the common people. A country with a very primitive form of democracy and scarcely a check or balance.
Such is the British parliamentary system. A system that evolves slowly with time and with foundations made of traditions instead of words.
The idea that the leader of the party that wins the most votes in the election becomes Prime Minister and he forms a government out of elected members of his own party is not in the constitution. You can ctrl+f the constitution all you want, you won’t find the words « political party » in there.
Political parties were a sort of spontaneous formations – kind of like the alliances in the TV show Survivor – that were never intended by the designers of the game, but became a fundamental part of it nonetheless. The original intent was that any combination of elected (white males who owned land in the original version) members of parliament could get together to form, or support, a government.
That is the government’s only claim to legitimacy vis-à-vis the governor and the Queen: it has the support of a majority of the elected members of the House. According to the letter of the law – if you are to read the actual words of the constitution – the Governor General, and ultimately the Queen, can make her cat Minister of Finance.
In 1999 the British kicked the hereditary lords out of their own house, the House of Lords, ending the centuries old right of blue bloods to oversee the Empires affairs without so much as a vigorous debate. Such is the beauty of the British political system: it can turn revolutions into incredibly boring affairs.
Real power slowly but inevitably is transfered from the Throne, to the Parliament, to the democratically elected members of the House. Without any drama or bloodshed. That is how Britain can have one of the most democratic regimes in the world without having to get rid of it’s hereditary head of state. It is how it can have one of the oldest and most stable political systems in the world, without even having a written constitution.
Change is slow, but it moves in one direction: toward more democracy and accountability.
It works because all the players: the Queen, the governors, the MPs, the Senators, the Lords, the Judges, etc… agree on a few unwritten rules: the House of Commons and it’s elected members hold, not the ultimate legal power, but the only legitimate power and the government must have the support of the House.
Last week the Governor-General of Canada prorogued the session of Parliament to keep a government that it knew did not have the confidence of the majority of the elected members of the House of Commons from losing a vote.
The unelected representative of the Queen disregarded the opinion of the House.
Last week was awesome for Call-centre workers (i.e. Poli Sci majors) across Canada and Québec. We had excitement, drama and intrigue in Parliament. We saw our Head of State act like a Head of State and use her constitutional powers.
That, in our system, is not a good sign for democracy.
Gilles Duceppe was given a choice this week. He had to decide whether he was going to save Stephen Harper or Stéphane Dion’s ass.
No third option. Dion or Harper. Pick one.
Gilles Duceppe also lost the best gig in parliamentary politics this week: perpetual opposition. The right… – no, the constitutional duty – to rip the government and the other parties apart without ever having to offer a viable alternative.
Yesterday he agreed to keep a Liberal-NDP coalition in power for over a year. He signed away the Bloc’s right to oppose their budgets or any other major legislation. If the coalition ever forms the government the Bloc is going to be held accountable for what it does. The Bloc is going to have, ugh… a record.
And you think the Liberals and the NDP are going to have a hard time explaining to their constituents that they signed a deal with the separatists? Gilles Duceppe had to sign a deal with Stéphane Dion! Mister Clarity Act! Canada’s Separatist-Slayer in Chief!
All this for what? Nothing. Sweet fuck all. Gilles Duceppe candidly admitted at the coalition’s press conference that he did not obtain anything substantial for the Québec Nation in return for his support. Layton and Dion had him by the balls. Either he ran with them or he was to become the man who saved Stephen Harper.
And the English Canadian media will have you believe this is the Québec independence movement’s greatest coup in history…
Stephen Harper did not win a majority in the last federal election and guess who he blames?
Money and ethnic votes.
This is the conclusion we can reach from his decision to abolish the public funding of political parties and the unprecedented constitutional crisis that is resulting from it.
It’s absolutely true, by the way. If it wasn’t for the Québécois, who insist on voting Bloc and Liberal, the Conservative party would have a comfortable majority in the House of Commons right now. It’s also true that if it wasn’t for the taxpayer money these parties receive from the federal government, the Conservatives could have easily outspent both of them in the last election.
Harper is factually right just as Jacques Parizeau’s infamous « money and ethnic votes » comment was factually solid: If it hadn’t been for the Anglo vote and federal money today Québec would be an independent country. If it hadn’t been for the French vote and public funding of political parties, today Canada would be the Conservative beacon of the Western world.
» We, the taxpayers of Canada, are underwriting 86% of the expenses of a party whose sole raison d’etre is the destruction of the country. Let them work their treason on their own dime », wrote Andrew Coyne on his Maclean’s blog about the Bloc québécois. This is the party line that continues to be diligently copy/pasted by conservative pundits accross the country.
We, the taxpayers are also separatists, by the way. Bloc voters pay taxes to Ottawa just the same as Conservative voters. The Bloc’s 1,95$ per vote is our ‘own dime’, Andy. It doesn’t matter if the Bloc gets 10%, 30%, 60% or 86% of it’s funding from the federal government. They get their twoonie per vote the same as everybody else. That twoonie comes out of it’s supporters pockets through their taxes. Period.
Jacques Parizeau was straight out offensive in the way he blamed the referendum defeat on one segment of Québec’s population. But Jacques Parizeau never called Anglos traitors. He never said they had destroyed the country of Québec, even though a clear majority of Francophones had voted for independence.
He certainly never cut the funding of Anglo organizations and political parties, even after it became widely known they had illegally used millions of federal tax dollars to thwart the democratic expression of the will of the voters.
These are awfully dangerous times for English Canada to return to the Oka Crisis-style politics of ethnicity and Québec-bashing. An economic meltdown. A constitutional crisis. And now a coordinated campaign by the Canadian Right to blame the whole thing on Canada’s historical scapegoat: Québec.
Update:The Tories back down on the public financing of political parties but the Liberals are still talking coalition.
The Montreal Gazette, making itself useful for once, leaks Conservative talking points for talk radio enthusiasts: « Certainly not a single voter voted for the Liberals to form a coalition with the separatists in the Bloc. »
« There is simply no way Michaelle Jean can endorse a separatist-controlled coalition without triggering a crisis on the monarchy, never mind the Constitution. » – Don Martin, The Calgary Herald
« But we’re now faced with the real possibility that the Bloc Quebecois could have a seat around the cabinet table if opposition members topple the Conservative government next week and replace it with a coalition that includes Quebec separatists. » – Tom Brodbeck, Winnipeg Sun
Now the Governor-General cannot be trusted to do her job. Too French. « Ms. Jean was appointed by former Prime Minister Paul Martin. At the time of her appointment, she also held French citizenship, which she wisely renounced in the ensuing controversy. There was also considerable controversy over whether she and her spouse, Jean-Daniel Lafond, harboured separatist sympathies; in his case, few of those who know him believed the denials. » Norman Spector, the Globe and Mail
It has now become an all out separatist conspiracy! Count how many times the Conservatives use the wordseparatiston their website: « The EFU was merely a trigger to execute a longstanding secret deal between the NDP and Quebec separatists. »
Yeah, I must be paranoid. No one is trying to make this about Québec and the Bloc…
In 1988, just before South Africa’s Apartheid regime was about to expire its last foul breath, an antiapartheid organization called the South African Council for Higher Education put out a small comic book designed to help young black children to learn English. The book was immediately banned by the all-white ruling minority.
Were blacks forbidden to learn English under Apartheid? Quite the contrary. English and Afrikaans, the languages of the white minority, were the sole official languages of South Africa in those days while the languages spoken by the black majority had no legal status. English and Afrikaans were the languages of government, public services and of secondary education, even for blacks.
The novel on which the comic book was based, Down Second Avenue by the exiled South African writer Ezekial Mphahlele, had been freely available in South Africa for three decades. Even the comic book version of the author’s account of his youth in violent and racist Pretoria had been published before.
Why was the government scared of this edition? Because it was a textbook. Because it was a tool designed to get young black kids to reflect on injustice and racism, in their master’s language…
Young blacks were taught English during Apartheid, but they were taught using textbooks from England about white preppy boys in London. Books that perpetuated the image of English as the language of power, and the corollary, that power rightfully belonged to the English. Their reality: black, multilingual and poor was foreign. Defective.
Down Second Avenue: The comic turned that on its head. It taught Blacks the language of power so they could use it to discuss their reality and to empower themselves. They could even use English, as other textbooks eventually did, to teach you black kids about the multilingual reality of Africa and the importance of protecting and empowering African languages.
This is where Pauline Marois comes in.
Ignoring the extremely violent opposition from a certain wing of the Parti Québécois and the even more hysterical cries of madness from the Federalist A-list – who seem to share a belief that almighty English will destroy Québec and must at all costs be kept out of the hands of common people – this week Pauline Marois once again proposed that certain classes in Québec high schools, perhaps history, geography or even math, be taught in English.
This is (almost) a brilliant idea.
Parents have been demanding better English classes and immersion and this is a very positive step, especially for families in the regions who don’t have as much exposure to English as Montrealers.
But Pauline Marois’ truly revolutionary idea, which is also the most controversial, is her twice repeated suggestion that History, be thought in English. Her not-so-great idea is to teach math in English.
Why is it a good idea to teach History in the international language of science and not math? Precisely because we would spontaneously have it the other way around.
Currently, History is taught in French. French becomes the language of the past, of our heritage, of the Plains of Abraham defeat and the failed referendums. English on the other hand is taught as a second language necessary for travel, technology, modernity and international fraternity (as it is always naively portrayed in US and Western-made textbooks).
With Marois’ proposal, English would become the language used to explore the past of French-Canadians, but also their successes, the Quiet Revolution and the ongoing struggle to protect French-language culture in North America. Geography class would become a place to discuss, in English, the linguistic and cultural diversity of planet Earth and the international vitality of the Francophonie, a language that as never had more speakers than it has today.
All this without threatening the overall predominance of the language of Joseph-Armand Bombardier in all other subjects, including the all important sciences.
Teaching History in English would significantly improve the access of Québec kids to English without making them captive of the stereotype that reduces French to the status of heritage language while making English the only language of the modern world outside.
The South African comic book simultaneously helped blacks learn the language of power, but also exposed how that language was a tool of their oppression. In the same way, teaching History and geography in English would give Québec kids access to the international language of business and scholarship, but also some perspective on where Québec belongs in this global multilingual world.
Enough perspective to ask questions like:
If English really is the magic amulet that automatically opens the doors of modernity, technology and wealth, then why aren’t the Philippines the richest country in Asia? And why isn’t Japan the poorest?
My friend Vince is one of those prototypical couch jocks who’s whole lives revolve around NFL football, hockey playoffs and three-day NHL ’08 marathons. Amazingly, Vince also finds time to get some work done between his ultra-realistic and complex online baseball league simulations. He’s a very successful disc jockey who’s been rocking dancefloors since way before he was legally allowed to even be in the clubs.
For the last three years Vince has also been working as the DJ at the Bell Center during the Canadien’s hockey games. Up there on the gallery with the best seat in the house for every single home game and 25 000 cheering Habs fans below, Vince is as close to heaven as he’ll ever be if lust, gluttony and sloth are indeed deadly sins…
Since last May, however, some bad vibes have been drifting up to his happy place. Nothing major. Just a very persistent controversy about the amount of French and Québec music that is being played at the Bell Center.
The debate started with an online petition by publisher Michel Brûlé demanding that the Bell Center respect the CRTC requirements imposed on French commercial radio stations and play at least 65% of French music.
The Bell Center is a private business, not a broadcaster and that idea got very little support. The debate about the amount of French music and local artists played at the Bell Center, however, lived on and today, just like Bob Gainey, Carbo and the guys on the ice, Vince is discovering the joy of hearing people second guessing how he does his job on TV and in the papers.
Vince is very lucky to have his job, but he absolutely deserves it. Before he was drafted by the Canadiens, he was the Expo’s DJ at the Olympic stadium. Not many people know this, but before hockey games on Saturday nights Vince is at the Université de Montréal stadium playing music for the college football team Les Carabins. He doesn’t need the money. They can’t afford him anyway. Vince is just really intense about sports and music.
Ever since Vince first appeared at our school in the fourth grade with his strange and cool breakdance LPs under his arm, it’s always been about the music, and the music could only be about what we were, French-speaking kids from this place called Québec. Singing in English or changing your accent made you a poser and earned you our sincere contempt.
Vince led the way for the rest of us white kids into the then-scary world of Rap or deep into his dad’s collection of old Offenbach, Harmonium and Charlebois records. He can say he’s battled Kool Rock of the first ever Québec Rap crew Mouvement Rap Francophone (coolest band logo in Québec music history) way back when you and your dad wouldn’t even acknowledge Hip Hop as music yet. Fifteen years before the Cowboy Fringants, Vince played the drums for for Trad Rock band les Pères Verts, and wrote the lyrics for their nationalist anthem Racines (Roots).
Later, with his band Phénomen, Vince recorded two crazy eclectic albums, one of which was nominated as best Hip Hop album at the Gala de l’Adisq, the Québec equivalent of the Grammy’s.
Speaking of the Gala de l’Adisq, this year’s edition was held last sunday at, precisely, the Bell Center and I watched the gala with Vince at his house. He’s not going to like me telling you this, but when Luc Plamondon payed homage to Québec’s most successful artist ever, recalling Céline Dion’s rise from Charlemagne to worldwide stardom, her sincere loyalty to the Québec public and how she never stopped recording in French, Vince cried.
A few minutes later another legend, Claude Dubois (the guy the CBC edited out of it’s broadcast of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame along with all the other francophones artists) sang Si Dieu Existe. Vince cried again.
I very seriously doubt that in it’s 100 year history the Montreal Canadien has ever had an employee who is more passionate about Québec music and culture.
The average hockey fan watching the game on TV, however, doesn’t actually hear much of the music played at the arena. The « music » during the game is really just a quick succession of 5 and 10 second snippets: « We will, we will, Rock You! », hand claps, an organ riff and face off. If you listen to any sports event from anywhere in the world, you will quickly notice there is a very small cannon everyone seems to be working with: Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll part two, I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett and… that’s about it.
Vince makes it a point of playing Québec artists that he likes during intermissions, when he actually gets to play the whole song. The TV viewing crowd, sadly, is watching beer commercials or game « analysis ». Montreal already does have it’s hometown classic sports anthems, although they are getting a bit old: Illégal by Corbeau when the other team makes a nasty hit and Éric Lapointe’s Les Boys or Rocket (on est tous des Maurices Richards). In fact, I seriously wonder if you’ll hear as much properly ‘local’ music at any other NHL’s team home games…
Smarter artists, Loco Locass to name one, understood this and instead of calling for legislation or quotas, went to work and did their jobs and recorded a hockey song for Vince. (Btw, les Locos, Vince aimerait bien avoir un .wav…)
And let’s hope they keep doing it and keep putting out high impact rocking anthems Vince can play during Hockey games.
If they can come up with the beats and the chants, they’ve got a very good friend up there.
I’m sorry to go after her again, but I’m lazy and it’s just too easy.
Everybody’s favourite National Post columnist Barbara Kay is all exited about a new film she just discovered called « L’illusion Tranquille » by Joanne Marcotte. The movie is nearly two years old but Barbara just heard about it, presumably because of the dubbed version that just came out.
L’Illusion Tranquille is documentary about what Québec’s Right considers the failure of the Québec Model.
Everything that makes Québec either the shinning beacon of progressive capitalism or a stray Soviet republic, depending on where you stand.
We all know where the National Post and Barbara Kay stand:
« See [L’Illusion Tranquille] to be informed, but if for no other reason, see it to penetrate the wall of silence used by the mainstream francophone media to shield their audiences against criticism of the “sacrosanct” Quebec Model. The wall of silence ensured that press reaction to the French-language version of the film was, predictably, to shoot the messenger rather than acknowledge the message. »
See, this is what you get when you hire someone as uninformed about the society she lives in as Barbara Kay to write commentary about Québec.
L’Illusion Tranquille actually received an unprecedented amount of coverage in the Québec media considering it was small budget film made by a pair with no film-making experience. Just about every political commentator in the province wrote about or discussed the movie.
Canal D, a very popular cable channel, bought the right to air it 15 times.
This is an astonishing response for what turned out to be an uneven movie that even the people featured in it refused to endorse. The more enthusiastic called it a healthy Micheal Moore-style exercise in shit-stirring. The others dismissed it as a Micheal Moore-style exercise in shit-stirring…
L’Illusion Tranquille was first screened in November 2006. Four months later, the conservative Action Démocratique du Québec and Mario Dumont became the official opposition in Québec’s National Assembly on a pledge to overhaul the « Québec Model ». In front of them sat the Premier, Jean Charest, twice elected on a promise to re-engineer the « Québec model ».
In June 2007, six months after the movie came out, the film’s director, Joanne Marcotte, was named by the Premier to a government commission presided by former health minister Claude Castonguay on health care financing in Québec.
In six months Joanne Marcotte went from complete nobody to government consultant on the provincial government’s biggest budget expenditure, health care.
They sure shut her up!
This is the bizarre upside down world of Barbara Kay: a world where marching for peace is an act of terrorism and where speaking French in Québec is an adventure.
What really bothers Barbara Kay about Québec is not the wall of silence, but precisely the absence of this wall. Barbara Kay has a problem with the fact that there is actually a relatively healthy debate on the issues in Québec and that people don’t automatically buy the Right’s Miracle Magic solutions to all that’s wrong in the world.
She has a problem with the fact that people in Québec ask the Right annoying questions like: Why are we in Afghanistan? What good will come of sending 14 year old children to jail when Québec already has the lowest crime rate in Canada? How exactly is the sad parody of capitalism currently collapsing all around us better than the Québec Model?
Or questions like: Am I wrong or is your latest column not just a rewrite of a 2007 column by Henry Aubin?
Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen are in Paris. It’s about midnight and there is no one around. Stephen holds up a small piece of paper with an address on it, not sure he’s at the right place.
-I told you it’s too late, Stephen! Everybody’s gone!
-Trust me honey, this is when French parties get started. We’re fine.
Stephen sees a man smoking a cigarette and walks up to him holding his piece of paper.
-Exkweesay moi, savay vous oo ey l’Eleesaye?
The man smells like cigarettes and Pinot Noir. He doesn’t even look at the piece of paper. He just shakes his head.
-Stephen Harper. Never thought I’d see the day we’d be at the same party.
-AngryFrenchGuy! I thought you looked familiar!
-Stephen Harper, the friend of France! Who would’ve thought? Trudeau was never a friend of France. Chrétien was never a friend of France. And then you, the rigid policy wonk from Calgary, you’re the one who gets the president of France to declare: « Our friends, the Canadians, our brothers, the Québécois ». Way to make it with the cool kids, neighbour!
-Yeah, yeah.. whatever. C’mon I’ll introduce you to everybody.
-Are you sure it’s this way?
-Hey. This is my cousin’s house.
AngryFrenchGuy, Stephen and Laureen walk up the stairs to a vast room filled with people and cigarette smoke. EuroHouse music is playing very loud. AFG points over to a small gray-haired man standing by himself in a corner.
-That’s George W. Bush over there.
-Wow. I thought France and the USA we’re not getting along! Darn, even Republicans don’t want to be seen with Bush anymore!
-Hey, Bush is not only Sarkozy’s friend, he’s his brother! The first thing Nic did when he was elected President was have a barbeque at the Bush house in Kennebunkport. « Even within a family there are disagreements », he said, « but we are still a family. And we may be friends and not agree on everything, but we are friends. »
-Sarko is talking to him. He’s a friend of the family. He invited him to France for his first official visit in 34 years. He also negociated with him for the release of those Bulgarian nurses.
-But you can’t negociate with terrorists! That defeats the whole purpose!
-Sarko also talks to them all the time. When he was mayor of Neuilly there was this guy called the Human Bomb who took an entire class of schoolchildren hostage. Sarko negociated with him on TV!
-On TV!? That’s dangerous! A head of State just can’t go around talking to anyone, giving them credibility!
-Sure he can! Check it out over there: That’s Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia. Sarko talks to him. And over there in the fatigues, that’s the Colombian revolutionaries of the FARC. Sarko also talks to them. Oh! come here!
AFG grabs Stephen’s hand and drags him over to two angry looking men with red, white and blue ribbons accross their chests. One is old and sitting, the other is middle aged and standing.
-Stephen, I’d like you to meet Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National and Vladimir Poutin, President of Russia.
-Le Pen? You can’t be a friend of Sarkozy!
-I am not. He eez a dirtee immigrant.
-But why are you at his party?
-I have to come here to see my friends, now. Before, ze other partees they leeve me alone with my supporters. This Sarkozy he openly copies my ideas and reeche out to my supporters.
-Is there anybody this Sarkozy will not be associated with? My God! Terrorists! Fascists! George W. Bush for crying out loud…
Stephen can’t finish his thought because Vladimir Poutin has him in a jiu-jitsu hold and has his face 2 centimeters from his own.
-You listen. Sarkozy is good man. He is only western leader who call me when I have big electoral victory in 2007. No one else call me. Be careful what you say. Sarkozy is my friend.
Poutin eventually let’s go of Stephen and he and AFG walk back towards the stairs. Stephen turns towards AFG.
-Listen, AFG… I’m going to go, now. I’m just not comfortable with this crowd. I thought this was a good move, you know, normalizing Canadian relations with France and getting the French president to support a united Canada… But I’m not so sure anymore. I mean, this guy will be friends with anyone! It’s ridiculous! How can YOU be friends with him?
-Oh, I think Sarkozy is a fucking jerk! He’s a disgrace and an embarassement! He’s not my friend at all, he’s my cousin! You know what they say: you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family…
You’re all going to accuse me of being a bourgeois socialist so let’s just make one thing clear right away:
I am. Big time.
I’m from the very bourgeois NDG and given we are exactly the same age, I came just this close to being bourgeois pinup Justin Trudeau’s classmate at the very bourgeois Collège Brébeuf. In my youth there’s been yacht clubs and brunches at the Hôtel Bonaventure. I’ve owned plenty of penny loafers and polo shirts.
That said bourgeoisie doesn’t always rhyme with money and I’ve got more working class patches than most of you bitches. I’ve got a taxi driver’s pocket number and I’ve hauled big rigs all the way down to MS and BC. I’ve been union. I’ve even been a Teamster.
(Although looking back at my trucking days, cruising in New England in my Volvo, sipping allongés from my in-cab coffee machine and listening to René Homier-Roy on my satellite radio, I have to admit I was still pretty bourgeois…)
As we head into worldwide financial apocalypse, all indicates that on next Tuesday Canadians are going to re-elect a Conservative government determined to avenge the memory of Herbert Hoover, who was kicked out of the White House in 1933 just as his Great Depression action plan of doing absolutely nothing for four years and letting the markets sort themselves out was just about to show some results, or so he said.
Great Britain is about to nationalize British banks and George W. Bush nationalized AIG, Freddie Mac and Fanny May. It doesn’t matter what your political ideology is or what Stephen Harper thinks about it, this is the new world order.
No other party than the Bloc has as many people who have first hand experience with the Québec tradition of using the state as an economic and financial agent with institutions like la Caisse de Placement et de Dépôt du Québec, Hydro-Québec, la Société Générale de Financement and the like. No party has as much knowledge on how such institutions work and how they fail. Conservatives are hostile to government intervention. The Bloc has people that understand government intervention.
Québec’s Quiet Revolution was Canada’s most wide-ranging, most recent and most successful attempt to use the state to manage and reform an economy. No other party can claim to represent the legacy of the Quiet Revolution better than the sovereigntists and the Bloc. The Bloc can’t form the government but we need their knowledge and expertise in Parliament and in the committees.
By definition sovereigntists have not been afraid of overhauling institutions. At the root of the sovereingtist movement there are people who spent their whole lives taking on corporations for the benefit of people who had no capital and limited power.
The Bloc’s left is not the old left. More than any other party, even more than the NDP, the sovereingtist movement counts people who have been at the front lines of novel and progressive ways of thinking about the markets and capitalism. Think of Yves Michaud (goolge’s sad translation) and what he’s done for shareholder activism or of Parti québécois vice-president François Rebello and his work for socially responsible investing.
The Bloc can’t make Québec an independent country without another referendum. You can support the Bloc without supporting sovereignty. Don’t let your Canadian nationalism stand in the way.
That said, I ain’t voting for the Bloc.
I vote in the riding of Westmount Ville-Marie and in my riding the MP is not chosen by the voters. It’s chosen by the members of The Party. Over here, as in the Soviet Union and in China, people don’t vote for ideas or candidates, they vote for the colour red. In 2006 the Liberals had an 11 000 vote majority. In 2004 it was 16 000.
The Conservatives are not a threat here. Our only hail mary hope for some change is for the riding’s sizable progressives (like myslef) and the handful or separatists (also like myslef) and the enviromentalists (that’s me) unite together like they did in neighboring Outremont and elect the NDP’s Anne Lagacé-Dowson.
In last Wednesday’s Gazette – Montreal’s Anglo newspaper – Lagacé-Dowson and Thomas Mulcair, the NDP MP from Outremont defended their support for a Bloc québécois bill that would’ve extended bill 101’s protection of the right to work in French to the federal service in Québec and to other federally chartered institutions.
« To give you the simplest possible example, a woman working at the Royal Bank doesn’t have the same linguistic rights as her colleague working across the street at the Caisse Populaire », Mulcair told the Gazette.
He did qualify his support, saying he only wanted to extend the debate to committee, but you can’t deny it takes a serious set of mexican huevos for a pair of Anglos to defend the expansion of the Charter of the French Language in an English newspaper in the middle of an election campaign.
In a move that your kids will no doubt study as one of the classic blunders of Canadian political history, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided that the best way to launch the 2008 election was to throw small bone to his loyal base and cut some 45 million dollars of arts funding that only handful of communists, faggots and infidels were going to miss.
Well, it turns out that pissing off underemployed creative types who express themselves for a living and know how to put up a website just might not be the best way to get a good media buzz going.
Only a few weeks ago people who know about this stuff were lamenting the hopelessly archaic web strategy of Canada’s political parties. 2008 was not going to be the year the Internet changed politics, many thought.
They were wrong. At least in Québec.
But the political parties had nothing to do with it.
The first shot came from three of Québec’s most successful artists. Michel Rivard, Stéphane Rousseau and Benoit Brière – the Québec-scale equivalent of Paul McCartney, Will Smith and Jerry Seinfeld – who released a 5 minute video on youtube of their apocalyptic vision of arts in a Conservative Canada.
It’s a strategy that Americans have been using for years. You make a controversial commercial, put it out on the web or on some local community TV station somewhere in Idaho and wait for the big media to pick it up and play the hell out of it for free as a news item.
Harper tried to brush off the attack. Ordinary working people did not identify with « rich artists », he said.
Harper himself might get his political inpiration from Tom Flanagan and the Fraser Institute, but most ordinary people are actually quite attached to « their » celebrities – whether it is in Québec, Canada or Tennessee -and do in fact pay attention to what they have to say. If anything, Harper’s attitude might have encouraged others to act.
Unissonsnosvoix.ca is a website launched by young filmakers and web designers you and I have never heard of. On the site 50 personalities, many artists but also doctors, professors, farmers and the chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Québec, speak out against Harper and the Conservatives.
The concept is simple and everyone with a white wall and a webcam is invited to record their own video that will be added to the site.
Both initiatives are supposed to be non-partisan. Unissonsnosvoix.ca links to another interesting website called voteforenvironment.ca that has a neat little gadget that let’s you type in your postal code and tells you who you have to vote for to beat the Tories in you riding. In tight races in Québec City or in the Pontiac, the site does seem to recommend voting for the strongest runner up, whether it is the Bloc or the Liberals.
Conspiracy Theorists will notice that the look and message of Unissons Nos Voix is just about identical to the Liberal campaign ads that have been running since before the website went online. For the record the « trashing a rival in front of a white background » concept was around way before this election got underway.
In any case, the Bloc, not the Liberal party, is clearly reaping the benefits. While they started their campaign on the defensive, they have now taken back a solid lead while the conservatives have dropped to third place according to some polls.
And you can bet the Conservatives are going to spend the next four years trying to prove the separatists were involved and turn this into the Bloc’s little adscam of illegal campaign finance.
But when you take a minute to think about it, the unprecedended media hype and exposure these artists were able to get with basically a laptop and no money does beg the question: Why do they need federal funding at all?
