Tag Archives: Quebec politics

Bouchard-Taylor love wasting paper (literally)

So as I was taking a short break from doing my job yesterday, I downloaded this report that everyone’s talking about, in its original French. I expected a long report taking up far more paper than is necessary, and I wasn’t disappointed.

But I noticed something on one of the pages of the report:

I thought that was funny because the report had so many blank pages in it, to serve as bookends for the title pages. I did a quick count of the blank pages and mentioned to my boss that of the 310 pages in the report, 34 were entirely blank (not a single dot of ink).

She asked me to give her a couple of paragraphs saying that, and it turned into the shortest article I’ve ever written, in today’s paper. (It was a bit longer than that to begin with, but it was cut down for space, and also because it went on a bit too long, by a ruthless copy editor who ironically turned out to be myself).

Admittedly, both the environmental policies and the blank pages are common practice in government reports. The Johnson Commission report (PDF) has a similar notice (though it actually calculates how much of the planet you’re saving), and also has blank pages (though not as many).

Without the blank pages and title pages (including pages that repeat the title page or just include photos of the commission chairs, but not including the environmental/copyright notice above which is on an otherwise blank page), the Bouchard-Taylor report would have 60 fewer pages, for a 19% reduction in paper use.

Wouldn’t that have been better for the environment?

Municipal democracy is for losers

So the Ile Bizard 2004 demerger referendum vote has been annulled, because with the ridiculous requirements for the vote (i.e. that 35% of all those registered must vote yes, making everyone who doesn’t vote a de facto “no” vote), 400 people who were on the voter rolls but moved away or died before the vote made the difference between it passing and failing.

So now that we’ve rewritten history and Ile Bizard did, in fact, vote to reconstitute itself as a city, what’s being done to ensure the democratic will is being followed?

Apparently, absolutely nothing. The judge didn’t order a new referendum, nor require the government to reconstitute the municipality. Instead, it will be left to a “political” solution. In other words, let the government do what they want. In other words, nothing.

Isn’t that great?

UPDATE (May 17): The Gazette’s Henry Aubin says don’t hold your breath waiting for the government.

By-elections today

Gaétan Legault of Québec solidaire, who is apparently either a communist or a separatist (or a communist-separatist) is just one of 20 candidates running in three by-elections today in Quebec: Hull, Bourget (east-end Montreal) and Pointe-aux-Trembles.

Aside from the Big 3 parties, there are candidates in each riding from Québec solidaire, the left-wing party, the Green Party, which still takes itself seriously despite never winning anything, and the new Parti indépendantiste, which thinks the PQ is too soft on sovereignty. There are also two independents running in Pointe-aux-Trembles.

If you live in one of these ridings and for some reason haven’t been bombarded with information about this vote, check out the by-elections website.

.qc? No

The PQ’s Daniel Turp is flogging the idea that the Internet should have a .qc domain. Separatists with nothing better to do are angry over having to type “.qc.ca” to get to Quebec-based websites

It’s this kind of thinking that has forced Quebecers to file two tax forms every year, pay two different kinds of sales taxes, and deal with all the other pointless duplication of federal services just to make us be different for difference’s sake.

And until Quebec reaches the promised land, which PQ hard-liners unilaterally declare to be an eventuality, websites based here will need to have both a .qc and .qc.ca domain.

Can someone tell these people that they lost the referendum? Twice?

UPDATE: Wow. 14 comments. Most are, of course, insulting, but I’ve responded to some of the counter-arguments brought up below.

The McKibbin’s kinda-non-story

I should give fair play to Jamie Orchard. My last post about her blog was unflattering. But her latest post, about the whole McKibbin’s language-police debacle, is much more interesting:

The OLF insists that all the owner has to do is write back and explain that the signs are artifacts. In fact, when the OLF saw our TV footage of the signs, they said right away the case could be solved easily – here’s the quote from Gerald Paquette:

There are many Irish pubs in Quebec that have these kinds of artifacts and they have all asked for an exception.”

We told this to the owner of the pub on Thursday, and he seemed relieved. But then, on Friday, the co-owner of the pub was on talk radio insisting that he would have to go to court to fight this, making a big show of inviting the premier to his pub to look at the signs, insisting he would refuse to pay the fine. He was getting all the sympathy in the world from the host, from the callers, from everyone, and never once did he mention it could all be solved with a simple letter.

I like this post (especially compared to the previous one) for two reasons:

  1. It’s a simple, rational, thought-out opinion rather than an uninformed reactionary “stupid OLF” rant
  2. It brings some new information to the table (Global’s conversation with the bar’s owner) that is perfectly placed in a journalist’s blog.

I’m not going to leave the OLF (actually the OQLF) off the hook entirely, since they did, in fact, bring up these signs in their complaint (which was from a customer who said he wasn’t served in French and an outdoor menu was in English only).

But it’s clear the media (and I have to include myself here, since I edited the big article in Friday’s Gazette about it) played up the signs and outrage campaign while burying the other complaints and the comments from the OQLF that they could easily get an exemption. (Second-day stories are pointing these things out, but that wouldn’t have been necessary if they weren’t buried in the first place.)

And McKibbin’s owners are clearly using this as an excuse to launch an anti-OQLF publicity campaign to boost anglo business and line their pockets with outrage money (or just get their name in the news). They’ve already got a Facebook group. And another. And another. And another. And another.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere:

UPDATE (Feb. 27): A video on YouTube shows the original letter from the OQLF to McKibbin’s, which clearly is much more about the posters than the office later suggested to reporters. Also plenty of discussion on some franco forums.

Concordian interviews Boisclair

The Concordian interviews André Boisclair, who recently started giving lectures on crisis management at Concordia as a teaching assistant under former Liberal Party activist John Parisella. It starts off with marketingese about how happy he is to teach there (in response to questions about the controversies surrounding his appointment) and then descends into a confrontational debate over whether sovereignists should teach at anglo universities:

Is coming to Concordia a sign that you’re no longer a sovereignist?
What are you getting at?

Well, I don’t know, a lot of people say that a sovereigntist might have rather chosen to go to Universite de Montréal or UQÀM to teach.
Why is that?

Well. Because they’re French universities.
Are you defending the principle of segregation sir?

Boisclair also says pretty definitively that he’s done with politics.

No word on whether he spent any time doing lines with CSU executives or checking out the stalls in the Hall Building’s 8th floor men’s bathroom (ok ok, that one was unfair).

Nothing says environmentalism like the NHL

For those of you wondering when Québec solidaire would sell out to the lowest common denominator: They’ve added “bring hockey games back to Radio-Canada” to their platform.

As for their argument that so many people don’t have access to RDS, I’d point out that only 13% of households with televisions in Canada don’t have cable or satellite service, and that number is going down. It’s not trivial, but it’s not that big either.

Clearer picture about overpasses

At-risk overpasses

I’ve updated my map of Quebec’s at-risk overpasses to reflect the current state of inspections at the Ministry of Transport. More than half of the original 135 overpasses have been inspected, and most have had weight restrictions lifted.

The map (which started six months ago) contains about 150 bridges and overpasses, including the 135 deemed requiring inspection by the ministry, others whose structures were looked at by municipalities in the past year, and historical notes of ones that have collapsed or been demolished.

In the map above:

  • RED indicates bridges and overpasses which have been closed, demolished or are to be replaced
  • YELLOW indicates bridges and overpasses which require repairs or continue to have weight restrictions
  • GREEN indicates bridges and overpasses whose restrictions have been lifted and no repairs are deemed necessary
  • BLUE indicates bridges and overpasses which still need inspection or whose inspections are still under analysis

UPDATE (Jan. 22): Radio-Canada mentions the map on their “Sur le Web” site, complete with video summary. They got it from the Courrier International blog.

Journal does it again

The Journal de Montréal has a … let’s call it a talent, for creating news with its investigations. Usually it involves a reporter going undercover, tricking a group of people into doing something they shouldn’t and then proudly writing an exposé about the whole topic.

And it gets everyone talking. People chat about it on the bus (as I heard this week), other newspapers comment on it and run follow-ups, and politicians react with promises to deal with the situation somehow.

The latest one involves a young reporter going out and pretending to be a unilingual anglophone while applying for jobs. Despite telling them she speaks no usable French, about 15% of them agree to hire her. Rather than focus on the 85% who thought that not knowing enough French was reason enough not to hire someone with experience during the busy Christmas rush, they proclaim that anglophones have it easy here, even in such predominantly French areas as the Plateau. (Really? The Plateau?)

There’s also a video with the journalist in question which basically has her explain what she did and what the legal implications are (apparently, none). Though she proclaims to be able to speak English without a noticeable accent, she didn’t give an example during the video, which would have been nice.

Like most of these pieces, there is a certain amount of legitimate public interest and a certain amount of needless sensationalism involved here. You really don’t need to know that much in either language to work at a coffee shop, especially in Montreal where most people are bilingual. The Gazette points out that the 85% who denied her employment because of her language is more interesting, while denouncing the whole idea as the kind of journalism “we do not need.”

At the same time, I think a lot of the criticism comes from people who compete with or just don’t like the Journal. Had La Presse done the same experiment and treated it with less sensationalism, their reactions would probably have been different. The ability of people to be served in their own language is a legitimate public concern, even if it seems nobody actually ran into problems here.
Either way, now the issue is out of the hands of the media and in the hands of the hot-button reactionary provincial politicians who would bathe in giant buckets of horse manure if they thought it would win them votes in swing ridings.

Let’s hope they don’t go overboard on a minor issue like this.

UPDATE (Jan. 17): Affiliation Quebec says they’re filing a complaint with the Quebec Press Council:

That the Journal de Montreal, in it’s (sic) front page expose on January 14, 2008, intended to inflame the already tender sensibilities of Quebec’s political and social balance, by acting as an “agent provocateur”, in its worst sense.

As a leading daily newspaper, Journal de Montreal has acted in an irresponsible and reckless manner by featuring an article of questionable news value, placed in a position where the editors knew a maelstrom would ensue.

Further, the story’s headline is quite unrelated to the subject of the material, and fails, in any way, to prove that customers are unable to be served in French.

Gosh, to think the Journal would be so bold as to print an article that provokes public debate on a controversial topic. Those bastards.

GST, PST, MST?

Montreal is pressuring Quebec to approve a 1% municipal sales tax so that cities can get a piece of the lucrative extra charges tacked onto our purchases, just days after the federal GST got reduced from 6% to 5%.

I hope this isn’t a selective thing, in which some cities will charge different tax rates from others. That would be a recipe for disaster and rampant loophole-exploitation.

Instead, perhaps the provincial government should increase the provincial sales tax by one point, and put that money into something important like health care.

UPDATE (Jan. 8): No dice, Quebec says.