The Park Ave. YMCA has decided to replace their frosted windows with unfrosted ones, wasting yet more money on this stupid reasonable accomodation debate. (Fark thread)
Tag Archives: Quebec politics
Those lefties know their online video
Vanou points me to this video from Quebec Solidaire’s candidate in Terrebonne Jean Baril, who is frustrated that our public institutions are serving crappy cafeteria food and letting people go to McDonald’s instead of buying locally-produced (and he argues healthier) food. Le Devoir has a short story.
Meanwhile, the Bloc Pot’s Richard Lemagnifique (yes, that’s his real name) has a slightly less serious video about the benefits of hemp.
Clear as mud
Now that the debate is over, the media is ready to declare a clear winner:
Glad we cleared that up.
And they’re off
Not the leaders, the Canadiens. And they’re already down 1-0. Mike Boone has details.
Meanwhile, Quebec’s political party leaders are having their makeup done while they practice memorizing which members of opposing parties’ teams have put their foot in it since the campaign began.
Live blog of the debate after the jump.
YouTube, the neverending pit of content
I stopped by YouTube today and did my usual search for things Montreal-related:
- Concordia’s TV journalism students have this week’s Concordia Reports focusing on the Quebec election, talking to some angryphones in the West Island including Ste. Anne mayor Bill Tierney and political columnist (i.e. failed politician) Ricky Blue. I’m actually pretty impressed with what has been coming out of Concordia’s budding journalists lately in terms of quality. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re getting better, because real TV journalism requires so little real effort, or because even half-assed videography is light-years beyond most of what YouTube has right now.
- Two Marianopolis kids started a Rock-Paper-Scissors league.
- Even street kids are videoblogging.
Bad timing? Does it matter?
Adrian muses about the scheduling of tomorrow’s debate between Charest, Boisclair and Dumont, coinciding with a Canadiens game and American Idol.
But is that really a problem? The debate is in French, so anglophones aren’t likely to tune in anyway. As for the Habs, who are desperately playing musical chairs with a half dozen other teams for two remaining playoff spots, are their fans likely to watch a political debate? Or are political junkies going to be seduced by hockey?
The only person I know who’s going to be flicking back and forth between hockey and the debate is me.
Besides, the debate starts a half hour after the hockey game does. That’s plenty of time for the Habs to flush the rest of their season down the crapper.
The numbers are in
The deadline has passed for candidates to apply for the March 26 Quebec election, and the DGE has a profile of the candidates (French only). Some numbers:
- 680 total candidates in 125 provincial ridings
- 125 Liberal candidates
- 125 PQ canidates
- 125 ADQ candidates (for now, anyway)
- 123 Québec solidaire candidates (pretty impressive for a new party – only Îles de la Madeleine and Dumont’s Rivière du Loup don’t have a QS candidate)
- 108 Green Party candidates
- 24 Marxist-Lenninist candidates
- 12 Christian Democratic Party candidates
- 9 Bloc Pot candidats (8 of whom are in the greater Montreal area)
- 26 independent candidates (including Andy Srougi)
- 3 candidates with no designation
- 9 candidates with the last name “Tremblay”
Andy Srougi is running
Andy Srougi, the Fathers 4 Justice guy who climbed the Jacques Cartier bridge, is running as an independent in the Jacques Cartier riding (“a coincidence”, he says).
Srougi, who I interviewed last year, is a conspiracy theorist who believes 99% of judges are “complete idiots”, and that the government is conspiring with feminists to discriminate against men.
Last month Srougi was named a “quarrelsome litigant” by a Quebec judge and prevented from filing lawsuits, after an “avalanche” of filings against his ex-wife and the government.
“It’s not the language”
Interesting discussion at Michael Lenczner’s blog on what it means to be an anglophone in Quebec.
I was born here, I’ve lived here all my life, and I don’t plan to go anywhere soon (one job possibility notwithstanding). But am I truly a Quebecer?
Sorry, I don’t speak mass-hysterianese
Metroblogging Montreal points out something I hadn’t heard yet from the overblown lead pipes saga: the advisory letters sent to people’s homes were in French only.
E-file is now truly e
The Gazette’s Andy Riga is now blogging his E-File on the Quebec election.
Meanwhile, John MacFarlane is blogging from SXSW.
CBC podcasting Quebec election
The CBC is running a weekly podcast of news in the run-up to the Quebec provincial election. It’s short (about 10 minutes) and seems to be just a series of radio news stories strung together by Laurent Lavigne’s very news-like introductions.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Getting the week’s election news digested into 10 minutes should find an audience.
Will blogs affect this election?
Looks like I missed this article from my former classmate Jonathan Montpetit on blogs in the Quebec election campaign.
Will blogs change the election? No, not by themselves. But if some blog-discovered dirt gets picked up by the mainstream media, that could make a difference in some ridings. Let’s see if something like that happens.
Missing in plain view
Le Devoir laments the lack of a powerful left-wing force in this election.
Sure, we have Québec solidaire, the Green Party, the Communist Party, the Parti Québécois, but where’s the left-wing parties?
Bloc Pot: role model?
Michel Leblanc looked at all the websites for the provincial parties and concludes the Bloc Pot’s is the best, mostly because of its use of bleeding-edge open source technologies.
I have to agree that it’s pretty impressive for a fringe party in a provincial election, and not just because the header vaguely resembles my own.