And it comes back to haunt Harper

[prior-of-verity*shake-hands-with-your-devil]

With the possibility of a majority Parti Québécois government for the first time in almost a decade, federal parties are closely watching the Quebec election. CBC News has learned that earlier this week, when the prime minister and the leader of the Official Opposition met to discuss Ukraine, the prime minister also asked Tom Mulcair for his take on the election.

In all his time as prime minister, Harper has never faced a majority PQ government or the very real threat of a referendum.

Well Stevie, this is the result of you saying "That this House recognize that the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada."

Never open a Pandora's box, you may not like what's in there waiting to get out.

[valve37]

Only Harper? I'd say you and me, Art and all of Canada!

[art-in-the-making]

This situation can be blamed on Harper and many things but - first and foremost I believe is the media (in the present and going back decades) creating English vs French and QC vs ROC antagonism.

This is especially true in the "working class" media i.e. Sun News/QMI/Quebecor. Controlled by one of the most ferociously anti-labour, pro-corporate 1%-er figures in Canada, Pierre-Karl Peladeau.

What they do is devious and diabolical. By their news selection and tone of their articles and reports, these media have been highly successful in replacing any whiff of "rich vs poor discussion" in this country with a bogus English vs French and QC vs ROC "mutual antagonism" which, in actual fact does not exist. At least since the '80s E vs F or QC vs ROC has been mostly irrelevant - yet the media especially Sun News/QMI continue to stoke these passions with all their might, creating this imaginary boogey-man at which everyday ordinary Canadians vent their frustrations. Whereas anything that working Quebecers or Canadians should really care about, like 1500 factory jobs going to Memphis because of globalization, is conveniently swept under the carpet.

Of course, Harper is a player in the charade and is in complete sympathy and collusion with the Peladeaus of the world. And who knows, maybe he will go down in history as the destroyer of Canada. But he has had major assistance from the subverted Canadian media.

[valve37]

In the 1980 referendum federal party held the most seats in QC? You guessed it, Liberals held all but one and were in majority government. Who was in power during the 1970 FLQ  crisis? You're right again, Pierre Elliot Trudeau with a majority government.

Now we see Justin gaining ground in the polling. He's Liberal.

God help Quebec and Canada if he ever becomes PM.

Time to move to Ontario Art. You could become a valuable Ontario Liberal asset wherewith your wind and solar obsession!  

[nuvistors]

All a  majority vote on separation would do is let Quebec begin negotiating with the other provinces about separation.  If the a majority of provinces will not agree to the separation these can be none.        If the other provinces agreed to let Quebec separate then they would need to decide whether the new Quebec currency would be known as the FLQ    .               In good faith Quebec could not be allowed to continue using the Canadian dollar.

[prior-of-verity*shake-hands-with-your-devil]

Only Harper? I'd say you and me, Art and all of Canada!

What do you mean, that we all said Quebec is a Nation within Canada? Don't count me in on that one. We are all Canadians as all people in every US state are all Americans.

The French/English argument has been ongoing since the first invaders came to Canada and there has always been those in Quebec who want to make a name for themselves by making Quebec independent. If they want to leave that's fine with me. We'll either end up with a very big lake for fishing or we can bring the east coast closer and it will be easier for us Newfoundlanders to go home for visits.

All kidding aside, if Quebec left Canada they couldn't and wouldn't have it all. The people have a right to decide who they want to go with and based on a poll many years ago there wouldn't be much left for the separatists to have. They would also have to change a lot of things from money to passports and they would lose a lot of businesses with offices in Quebec and they would have to pay back Canada for all money owed and the list goes on and on and on.

Personally deep inside I would not want to see Quebec separate because it defines Canada as every other area in the country does.

[art-in-the-making]

It has to be considered a major failure that the NDP has not established a provincial presence in QC. Therein lies the real reason for the Parti Quebecois rearing its tired old head again. The only other alternatives to the Liberals have always been radical separatists or some kind of weird quasi-right-wingers like the CAQ. (not to mention the unfortunately-conceived anglo rights "Equality" Party RIP)

The federal NDP made a conscious decision I think a couple of years ago to put renewal of the QC provincial wing on the back-burner - a disaster as far as Canadian unity is concerned because provincially the Liberals are seen as the party of big business and English... ...which makes voting PQ the only alternative for a lot of people who wouldn't normally be the slightest bit interested in separation.

But... the PQ also has some significant business elements to it, not the least of which Madam Marois herself, who was forced to sell her grandiose mansion due to the negative pr she was getting over it... So it is true that both the PQ and Liberals have at least some appeal across all income groups. The PQ still tries to do lip service to its faded image as a "socialist" party and the Liberals certainly continue to be the only voting option for most non-francophone Quebecers.

[femmefan1946]

The NDP has long recognized that Quebec, or at any rate the pure laine Quebecois, are a 'nation'. Just as the Irish are a 'nation' within the United Kingdom. And the Scots, the Cornish, the Welsh, the Manx.

It' s one of those cases where the word has multiple meanings. Most anglophones think of a nation as what more precisely should be called a nation-state. But a group of people with a common language, culture and history, and to a great extent religion , are also a 'nation' .

One of the problems in Africa is that states/colonies were formed while ignoring the 'nations' that were already in place. Borders cut through those nations and lumped people in with other nations with whom they had nothing in common but a few thousand years of antagonism.

[valve37]

They've failed Quebec. Multiculturalism, another major Liberal Trudeau failure.

Time to Change Tune on Official Multiculturalism
by Licia Corbella,CalgaryHerald -

About one dozen families who recently immigrated toCanadaare
demanding that the Louis Riel School Division inWinnipegexcuse their
children from music and co-ed physical education programs for religious
reasons. The familiesbelieve music is un-Islamic~ just like the
Taliban believe and then imposed on the entire population of
Afghanistanand thatphysical education classes should be segregated
by gendereven in the elementary years.

The school division is facing the music in a typically Canadian way -
that is, bending itself into a trombone to try to accommodatethese
demands, even though inManitoba, and indeed the rest of the country,
music and phys-ed are compulsory parts of the curriculum.Officials
say they may try to have the Muslim children do a writing project on
music to satisfy the curriculum's requirements. The school officials
have apparently consulted the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, and
they have also spoken to a member of the Islamic community suggested
by those very same Muslim parents. In any event,the school district
is trying to find a way to adapt the curriculum to fit the wishes of
these families, rather than these families adapting to fit into the school
and Canadian culture.

Mahfooz Kanwar, a member of the Muslim Canadian Congress, says he has
a better idea."I'd tell them, this is Canada, and inCanada, we teach
music and physical education in our schools. If you don't like it,
leave. If you want to live under sharia law, go back to the hellhole
country you came from or go to another hellhole country that lives
under sharia law,"said Kanwar, who is a professor emeritus of
sociology atMount Royal UniversityinCalgary.

That might be putting things a little more forcefully than most of us
would be comfortable with, but Kanwar says he is tired of hearing
about such out-of-tune demands from newcomers to our country.
"Immigrants to Canada should adjust to Canada, not the other way
around,"he argues.If they did not like these things inCanada, why
did they not go somewhere else? If they wantCanadato be like their
homeland why don't they go home?

Kanwar, who immigrated toCanadafromPakistanviaEnglandand then
theUnited Statesin 1966, says he used to buy into the "mosaic,
official multiculturalism" (nonsense). He makes it clear, that like
most Canadians, he is pleased and enjoys thatCanadahas citizens
literally from every country and corner in the world, as it has
enriched this country immensely. Butit's official multiculturalism -
the state policy "that entrenches the lie" that all cultures and
beliefs are of equal value and of equal validity inCanadathat he objects
to.

"The fact is,Canada has an enviable culture based on Judeo-Christian
values - not Muslim values - with British and French rule of law and

traditions and that's why it's better than all of the other places in
the world. We are heading down a dangerous path if we allow the idea
of sharia law a place inCanada. It does not. It is completely
incompatible with the idea and reality ofCanada,"says Kanwar, who in
the 1970s was the founder and president of the Pakistan-Canada
Association and a big fan of official multiculturalism.

Kanwar says his views changed when he started listening to the people
who joined his group. They badmouthedCanada, weren't interested in
knowing Canadians or even in learning one of our official languages.
They created cultural ghettos and the Canadian government even helped fund
it.

"One day it dawned on me that the reason all of us wanted to move here
was going to disappear if we didn't start defending Canada and its

fundamental values."That's when Kanwar started speaking out against
the dangers of official multiculturalism. He has been doing so for
decades. So, it's no surprise that Kanwar is delighted with the recent
speechBritish Prime Minister David Camerondelivered to the 47th
MunichSecurity Conference on Feb. 5.

"Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism," said Cameron, "we
have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to

belong. We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving
in ways that run counter to our values. So when a white person holds
objectionable views - racism, for example - we rightly condemn them.
But when equally unacceptable views or practices have come from
someone who isn't white, we've been too cautious, frankly even
fearful, to stand up to them.

This hands-off tolerance," said Cameron, "has only served to
reinforce the sense that not enough is shared. All this leaves some
young Muslims feeling rootless and ... can lead them to this
extremist ideology."

Kanwar actually credits GermanChancellor Angela Merkel for being
among the first of the world's democratic leaders to take the
courageous step in October to say that official multiculturalism had
"failed totally.." It appears leaders are getting bolder.During an
interview with TFI channel on Feb. 10,French President Nicolas
Sarkozy declared: "We have been too concerned about the identity of
the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the
country that was receiving him."Cameron ended his speech by saying:"At
stake are not just lives, it's our way of life.That's why this is a

challenge we cannot avoid - and one we must meet."

That democratically elected leaders are at long last starting to sing
a different tune on official multiculturalism is sweet music to Kanwar.
Here's hoping those poor kids inWinnipegwill get to hear some of it.

Licia Corbella is The Herald's Editorial Page Editor

[art-in-the-making]

Someone oughta ask Angela Merkel whether it has been at all successful celebrating Oktoberfest in Canada.

It makes me wonder if The Calgary Herald actually requires its editorial page editor to have a functioning brain.

I would pontificate at greater length but we're busy here in Montreal getting ready for one of the largest St Patrick's Day parades anywhere, coming up a week tomorrow...

The biggest problem IMHO with integrating immigrants is the understandable desire they have to immerse themselves in satellite and internet media from their homelands, which has become widely available over the past ten+ years... Western countries such as Germany and Canada that take in a lot of immigrants need to counteract this effect somehow...

[valve37]

So do you support Marois's stand on multiculturism in QC? Is she caught between a rock and a hard place? 

[art-in-the-making]

Marois and her idiotic charter of values is the same exact thing as your Calgary Herald "writer" stands for. They are both anti-multiculturalism. I am in favour of multiculturalism. Does that spell it out clearly enough?

As I have said many times, the core instincts of fear and suspicion of different people are the same in Quebec separatists as they are in the Harperist Reform-Conservatives. They are two sides of the same apple.

What no one foresaw was that a large number of immigrants would become more isolated from mainstream Canadian society in recent years because of the proliferation of ethnic media channels, the demise of local community newspapers, etc. It doesn't really have anything to do with multiculturalism. There is an opportunity here - the need to communicate effectively with ethnic communities but who is going to come up with the way to fill it, hard to say.

[art-in-the-making]

Now Pierre Karl Peladeau announcing he's running for the PQ.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/03/09/pierre-karl-peladeau-parti-quebecois_n_4929588.html

As one commentator said, it would be as if Conrad Black ran for the NDP and was promised the finance minister job...! He still controls Sun News, Videotron, TVA network, the whole Quebecor media empire.

There are few people even among Harperists who are as anti labour as Peladeau. He is the total antithesis of the original socialist roots of the PQ(!). Really pretty amazing.

Just in terms of the level of conflict of interest, controlling all that media and being in politics at the same time - unbelievable.

[valve37]

Sounds like it's time for you to leave QC Art before the mass Exodus!

[valve37]

The CRTC might regret how they pandered to Quebecor in their decision to allow BCE to aquire Astral Media.

Maybe it's time for BCE to move it's headquarters out of Quebec.

 Likely to be on the Peladeau/Marois hit list is CKGM.

CKGM Montréal

Finally, the CRTC is allowing BCE to operate four English-language radio stations in the Montreal market, including CKGM. Given the strong support expressed by Montreal’s English-language minority community for this station, BCE will have to maintain its current sports format for at least seven years. This decision constitutes a positive measure that will ensure the needs of the community are well served.

[art-in-the-making]

All the media conglomerates should be broken up into their individual components and split away from the telecom network owners.

Peladeau is saying he would refuse to sell off shares in Quebecer "even if ordered to". Sounds like a true Harperite, making up his own rules as he goes along.

[stevephinn2012]

not sure why this would haunt Harper??  if Quebec decided to separate then both official opposition parties lose their leaders as both Trudeau and Mulcair have seats in Quebec which would then not be part of the Federal government.!  WIN WIN!!!!

[valve37]

Not to mention Steve all the seats held in QC by the NDP and a few by the Liberals would decimate those two parties (with Libs already decimated) leaving a huge majority for Stevie boy. I suppose those seats left in limbo could and would likely join with the PQ. 

[valve37]