It seems a letter writer has found the solution to Quebec’s post-secondary education funding issue: Students are buying too many iced cappuccinos and should be spending it on increased tuition:

Here are a few suggestions: Students – or parents footing the bill – can rent one fewer video a week, go to one fewer movie, buy one fewer latte or iced cappuccino.

And here I was thinking that these students are buying 99-cent pizzas because their maxed-out credit cards won’t allow them any money to live on, and they still owe their four roommates three months back-rent.

How silly of me.

Meanwhile, Henry Aubin points out that Quebec’s adult workforce is the laziest in Canada, with shorter work hours, more sick days, less productivity and more early retirement:

They’ve simply absorbed a ethos that we, their elders, have unintentionally taught them by example. Many of us in older generations have established a culture of entitlement, a sense that everything is due us.

Maybe they’re the ones who should be spending less time sipping lattes and more time on the job?

Yes she is.

But The Gazette’s Liz Thompson has a piece in today’s paper about so-called “lost” Canadians who are now realizing they were never Canadian citizens for bureaucratic reasons. Marlene Jennings is safe, but apparently was worried for quite a while about it.

This concerns me somewhat. Does Parliament not check that MPs are Canadian citizens before allowing them to take office?

Also today: Gazette freelancer (and Habs Inside/Out Puckcast host John MacFarlane lectures educates us about the politics of food, and Part 3 (subscriber-locked) of my supermarket shopper series.

And on Page A6, a far-too-large story on a CanWest spelling bee is surrounded by stories on shootings, stabbings, home invasions and drunk driving.

CanWest Publications, the print media arm of CanWest MediaWorks, which is owned by CanWest Global Communications Corp., is expanding its CanWest News Service to open new bureaus locally and abroad.

What the glowing press release masquerading as a news story doesn’t say, however, is that the reason for this expansion is that CanWest is pulling out of Canadian Press, the national nonprofit wire service that just about every news outlet in the country is part of because of its comprehensive coverage of Canadian affairs.

The expansion is necessary because CanWest has no publications east of Montreal and only a couple of bureaus abroad. Pulling out of CP (and by extension losing Associated Press copy as well) will save the chain a few million dollars but kill its main source of wire copy. Even the hiring of 25 new journalists isn’t going to make up for all of that.

Nevertheless, I’m not entirely denouncing the decision. Wire copy (and especially copy from CP and AP) is so easy to get online that it gives almost no added value to the newspaper. Those 25 new journalists, however, will probably represent a net gain as far as the industry goes; CanWest represents only about 10 per cent of CP’s revenue, far less than it used to now that free wire-service-only papers like Metro and 24 Heures are all over the place.

I could be wrong about this, but I’m hoping that this turns out positively for the industry. I just wish CanWest would do more with its seven-figure savings than hire 25 journalists and pocket the rest.

UPDATE: Deborah Jones has some comments as well on the announced expansion, and some concerns as well.

Now I’m the last person in the world who would make fun of someone’s family name.

But you can’t help but chuckle when the guy whose car is firebombed (subscriber-only, but the intro paragraph should be enough) is named Denis Laflamme.