Posts Tagged ‘Harper’
Separatists Pay Taxes Too
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 word separatist on 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…
Harper Trades Minority Rights for Votes
In 2000 Stephen Harper’s National Citizens Coalition financed lawyer Brent Tyler’s attempts to strike down parts of Québec’s French Language Charter. The Calgary-based NCC was even the biggest donor in Brent Tyler’s attempt to change Québec’s laws in the provincial jurisdiction of language and education.
The challenge to Québec’s language law was considered a civil rights issue by it’s Brent Tyler and his backers.
Seven years later Stephen Harper is actively trying to win the support of the strongest supporters of Bill 101.
Since he became the head of the Conservative Party Stephen Harper has performed better than expected in Québec, winning 10 seats in the last general election and an eleventh in a by-election last year. His success in Québec has been attributed to his openness to Québec nationalists and his pledges to keep the federal government out of provincial jurisdictions.
As Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a vote in the House of Commons recognizing Québec as a Nation within a united Canada and recently hinted that wants the recognition of the Nation of Québec to be part of the Canadian constitution.
Québec’s French Language Charter, bill 101, is considered a near-fundamental law by many in Québec and several hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in 1988 when the Supreme Court invalidated some dispositions regarding commercial signs.
In 2000 stepehen Harper was not considered a friend of Québec. Along with Stephen Harper, others who were financing Brent Tyler’s efforts were Howard Galganov, Diane Francis and the weekly newspaper The Suburban, all of whom have often been accused of racist sentiment against French-Canadians.
Many of the people represented by Tyler were even angry to learn that their legal campaign was being financed by money from Alberta.
In his attempt to build a coalition large enough to win a majority in the House of Commons the Prime Minister has actively been reaching out to French-speaking nationalists and Québec right-wingers, a group that generally supports Québec’s language legislation and does not approve of Canadian activism in Québec politics.
The Supreme Court of Canada rejected Brent Tyler’s attempt to open Québec’s English schools to francophones in 2005. The English-Rights lawyer recently announced that all his legal campaigns were jeopardized by the Conservative government’s decision to abolish the Court Challenges Program, a program designed to help minorities fight for their rights in court.
AngryFrenchGuy 