The NDP Is Back

The NDP has finally gotten back to defending left leaning Canadians in a positive and constructive style. It took time, but they’re finally back.

I can tell you that we missed them, and I’m not saying that as a left-winger –I’m not one-. The fact simply is that Canada benefits from having a balanced parliament, and with a Conservative government and a weak NDP, we were starting to see some legislation pass through Commons without proper debate (recent criminal-code amendments…). Now that the party has finally come back, we’re less likely to see those sorts of things happen.

So what’s changed in the NDP?

Well, there are a number of things actually. Most importantly, they’ve finally quit the useless Dion-bashing in which they had engaged following the Liberal convention. One couldn’t really blame them for wanting to attack Dion, because his political positions clearly posed a much more direct threat to the NDP than, say, Michael Ignatieff’s. But it was costing them the positive and constructive party image which they had worked so hard to build.

They also seem to have made an effort to ditch some of their interventionist ideology which was putting a few people, including myself, off. They haven’t turned into to the Blair Labour quite yet, but they’re certainly looking much more rational.

Somewhat less importantly, Jack Layton’s French has just dramatically improved, he’s really made a major breakthrough. That really doesn’t matter in the traditional Anglophone NDP ridings, but if they want to make up inevitable Ontario seat losses to the Liberals, a minor Quebec breakthrough may be necessary. And with their new star candidate Thomas Mulcair, who knows, they might get a seat. After all, Quebec is pretty left-wing, and if the Conservative can win seats there, why not the NDP?

I don’t know what this will turn into. Will they gain seats, will they loose less, it’s up to you to decide. But all things put aside, it’s nice to finally have an effective NDP and a balanced parliament.

Vampire Dion

Les Conservateurs viennent de lancer une nouvelle vague de publicités négatives intitulées: « Stéphane Dion n’a pas l’étoffe d’un chef ». Ils se sont vraiment façonnés un kit complet : des publicités télévisées et radiophoniques dans les deux langues, et même un site internet high-tech dédié entièrement à la dénigration du leader libéral.

Ça commence à devenir assez rigolo; ce parti nous sort un nouvelle campagne de publicités négatives deux fois par mois, et le plus drôle, c’est qu’elles sont toutes d’une inefficacité absolument hilarante. Prenez par exemple les pubs les plus récentes. A entendre parler le narrateur, on se croirait au cinéma en train d’assister à un film d’horreur. A certains moments, on anticipe presque un truc du genre «Stéphane Dion va vous manger tout cru».

A un autre moment, ils reprennent dans deux discours un passage où Dion affirmait ironiquement pour faire rire le public qu’il était le chef de l’opposition le plus influent depuis une génération, et qu’il était un héros. Ouais, peut-être, mais le méchant Dion avait le sourire aux lèvres en prononçant ces terribles paroles. On remarque même que le son s’arrête pile après les derniers mots de Dion, sans doute pour masquer les rires de l’auditoire. Mmmmm, un peu bizarre...

Quand au site internet, n’en parlons pas. Il est non seulement laid, risible et franchement mal fichu, mais il est aussi assez choquant. Il y a une rubrique qui s’appelle « Le Blog de Kyoto (le nom du chien de Stéphane Dion) » qui est en fait un blog écrit par les conservateurs dans lequel Kyoto raconterait ses sentiments et la méchante personnalité de son maître. Ce blog est une pure ordure. Le message du 29 mai, par exemple, débute avec la phrase : « Lors de journées comme celle-ci, j’aimerais tant que nous soyons de nouveau en France ! » qui est censée se moquer de la double nationalité canadienne-française de Dion. Eh bien moi, j’ai un parent néo-zélandais et j’obtiendrai sans doute la double nationalité. Cela ne m’empêche pas d’être fier d’être canadien et de dédier un blog tout entier a la politique de mon pays. Et ce n’est pas la seule page choquante, le site est truffé de petits sous-entendus malhonnêtes et de fausses pistes.

Bref, je vous donne les liens pour que vous puissiez visionner ces trucs vous mêmes. Apres les avoir vus, je vous parie tous que vous voterez pour Dion.

Site du Parti Conservateur, cliquez sur « senate » dans la rubrique de droite dediee au pubs pour voir la plus recente (in English) : http://www.conservative.ca/?section_id=&language_id=2

Site internet PasUnLeader : http://www.pasunleader.ca/kyotoblog_f.html

Blog de Kyoto : http://www.pasunleader.ca/kyotoblog_f.html

Options

I’m feeling much better today so I have time for a quick post about the budget showdown in Quebec. So as you may know, the budget which is due for a vote in the National Assembly next week, will apparently be opposed by both the PQ and ADQ. The governing Liberals, for their part have indicated that it was non amendable and that the vote would go ahead.

So what’s going to happen? Well, obviously, nobody knows. There really are an endless number of options.

The most likely scenario would see the Liberals and PQ to reaching a last minute agreement –can you believe it, the Liberals and PQ agreeing- and thus keeping the government afloat. This would probably come in the form of a minor budget amendment which would limit the political damage done to both parties.

The second possibility would be for the PQ to abstain from voting. This, in my opinion, would have been their best solution as it would have let them indicate their opposition to the budget without having to trigger an early election. But strangely, the party has already indicated it would not do so, meaning that this move would now carry some political cost.

The third scenario would see the government defeated by both parties; this is when it would get interesting. Premier Charest would be obliged to present his resignation to the Lieutenant-Governor, who would have the choice of calling and election OR asking Mario Dumont’s ADQ to form a government. And because the last election was only a few months ago, the second possibility would appear to be the most likely.

But in either case, the Liberals would benefit. If the ADQ were asked to form a government, Mr. Dumont would actually be expected to implement his delirious platform, and to make matters worse for him, he would have to do it with his team of novices. Put it this way, the ADQ went from seven seats to forty-one in a single election. Most of the candidates expected to lose, and a number of them barely even campaigned. It’s hard to see how Mr. Dumont could form a successful government and implement his crazy platform with a caucus like that.

Now, if the Lieutenant-Governor opted instead for an election, the opposition would be attacked by Quebecers for having triggered it only a few months after the last one, which had cost the taxpayers 72 million dollars. Add this to the fact that this budget contained 850 million dollars in tax cuts for the middle class, and you’ve got the making of a third Liberal victory.

I don’t know what will happen, nobody does. All I say for sure is that the next few weeks will be full of surprises.

Malade

Je n'ai pas pu écrire de message aujourd'hui car je suis un petit peu malade. J'essayerai d'en publier un demain.

Salut

Just Try

Photo AP

That’s Trafalgar Square. Yes, the famous one, with Nelson, the pigeons… and the Canadian Embassy.

WOW! Can you believe the change? It’s just staggering. They’ve actually had the nerve to cover the pride of the British Empire in grass! But don't worry, it'll be gone in two days.

Talk about creativity. Who on earth could have come up with the crazy idea, it’s just beyond belief. Isn’t it just so cool! Imagine walking down The Strand to have a chat with Nelson and ending up… on a big green field covered in lawn chairs!

Imagine how nice it would be to pull off something like that in Ottawa. The possibilities are just endless. We could construct a giant swimming pool on Wellington St. (more likely a giant hockey rink), or put up a roller coaster on Majors Hill Park, and maybe we could even dump some colouring in the Canal to make the water pink (it’s not like any fish would be harmed, they’re already all dead).

But don’t count on it. After all, Ottawa is Ottawa, and the city would far prefer staying a “happy and modest” little capital to a dirty, dangerous and mean place like London. Well, maybe they’d consider painting a sidewalk or two dark Grey, if the federal government paid, but not much more.

I don’t totally disapprove of this modest mentality. After all, Canada is a modest little country so it’s fitting that its capital should try to reflect this temperament. But Ottawa just takes it too far, I mean, they won’t try anything! Sure, turning the Canal pink may offend a few people , and building a giant swimming pool on Wellington may disrupt traffic, but what about the fun and excitement it would generate, what about the culture, the buzz.

Ottawa shouldn’t try to become a world class city, because it will fail. But it should still aim to generate a minimum of excitement, some youth and vigour. It should make people curious and interested. It’s not about being bold for the sake of being bold, only contemporary artists believe in that. It’s really about creating a capital that reflects the Canadian reality, not only by being friendly, modest and green, but also by being progressive, enterprising and creative.

Bilingual Schools? Sure!

Justin Trudeau caused quite a stir last week when he mused about making all public schools bilingual. I must admit that it really was pretty reckless on his part. I mean, what better way to ignite a fire in French Quebec than to give the impression of wanting to diminish the French language.

But you know, I actually like the idea. To be honest, I’d been thinking about it for a long time. I mean, we’ve been trying for ages to bridge the gap between French Quebec and English Canada, so this may just be the miracle solution (though I doubt it).

I understand why Francophones would want to keep things as they are. It’s already such a struggle to keep French alive in North-America that one can understand their desire of having unilingual schools. But as far as I’m concerned, with languages, one doesn’t exclude the other.

I don’t have to look further than myself for an example. I was brought up in both French and English, meaning that I split my time between the two languages. One could therefore conclude that I am now less fluent in either language than unilinguals, but this is simply not the case. Actually, whatever I learn in one language seems to be automatically duplicated in the other.

Here’s another way of putting it: Imagine that a brain were a computer. Every new language learnt would become a folder, in which memory containing words, expressions and cultural knowledge would be stored. Well, I am convinced that all children have a program which allows them to effortlessly duplicate any new saved file into all other language folders. In other words, when they would save the file info.doc into the folder C/language1, it would automatically get copied into the folder and C/language2/.

The result: children learnt their language at a normal pace, except that they end up with two!

Now, I don’t know if this concept of bilingual schools could ever be successfully implemented -sorry, but it really would be hard to find a proper French teacher in Moose Jaw-, but as far as ideas go, it deserves to be heard.

Symbols Can Go A Long Way

I was watching a program on which an environmentalist proposed that we have PEI running exclusively on wind-power by 2015.

Now, PEI only has a population of 135 000, so this measure wouldn’t really represent a major energy economy, but for some reason, it spoke to me. I really liked the idea of a Canadian province becoming self sufficient in energy, I liked the idea of a Canadian province showing some leadership and proving to the world that a full energy conversion was indeed possible.

Symbols matter in life. We’ve all seen the tremendous power and courage that they can extract from people. I am convinced that when fighting climate change, we also need symbols. I’m not saying that we should construct a billion dollar monument to climate change in Ottawa (though I would far rather see a billion dollars being spent on a monument than on tanks, as is currently the case), but we should really push for small and achievable projects with great symbolic value, like making PEI energy sufficient.

Those projects won’t get us to our Kyoto targets, but they’ll create additional public awareness, backing and pride. And once we have the public supporting the fight against global warming and taking pride the role our country plays, we’ll meet our targets.

Vive la décentralisation

Comme vous le savez peut-être, j’habite cette année à Paris dans un charmant petit appartement donnant sur une rue bruyante. Bien que je sois étranger, je mène mes études dans une école secondaire locale, ce qui me permet de m’imprégner de la vie et des coutumes du pays.

Dans l’ensemble, j’ai trouvé cette expérience très agréable. J’ai eu la chance de tomber sur un bon groupe de camarades et de professeurs et j’ai aussi beaucoup apprécié l’atmosphère sympathique et détendue règnant dans les couloirs.

Evidemment, j’ai aussi eu quelques surprises, dont certaines se sont avérées très désagréables. Je me souviens par exemple d’avoir été littéralement enguirlandé par un surveillant pour avoir osé mettre le pied sur le tapis rouge menant au bureau du directeur.

Bref, aujourd’hui, j’ai eu ma plus récente surprise. Pas désagréable cette fois ci, mais quand même ahurissante. J’ai découvert en cours de maths que la date de notre conseil de classe (conseil réunissant le directeur, les professeurs et les délégués parents et élèves, chargé de discuter des notes de chacun des élèves de la classe) était fixé à l’avance par le Rectorat de Paris. En d’autres mots, c’est le conseil scolaire de Paris, une ville de deux millions d’habitants, qui décide du moment précis auquel notre directeur, nos professeurs et nos délégués devront se réunir pour parler de nos notes.

C’est quand même idiot. Comment le Rectorat serait-il en position de pouvoir déterminer la meilleure date pour notre conseil de classe? Le directeur de notre établissement ne serait-il pas mieux placé pour prendre cette décision?

Evidemment que si, mais je vous rappelle que j’habite en France, le champion par excellence de la centralisation. Dans ce pays, tous les organismes, qu’ils soient gouvernementaux ou indépendants, sont composés d’un cerveau central prenant toutes les décisions et de satellites chargés de les exécuter. C’est ainsi que la date de notre conseil de classe est établie par des fonctionnaires de l’Education Nationale n’ayant jamais mis un pied dans notre école et sans contact avec notre personnel administratif. C’est aussi ainsi, j’imagine, que la couleur d’un emballage de shampoing l’Oréal en vente dans une pharmacie de Rio serait choisie par un employé travaillant au QG de La Défense.

Au Canada, on pense parfois que nos villes et provinces ont trop de pouvoirs, que le Fédéral est trop faible. C’est peut être vrai, mais je vous assure que compte tenu de mon expérience en France, notre système à trois niveaux est bien plus efficace que l’alternative où Ottawa se prendrait pour Kasparov et les villes et provinces deviendraient ses pions.

Muzzle Coderre and Co.

I’ve never had much respect for Liberal Defence Critic Dennis Coderre. He’s always struck me as a useless opportunistic loud-mouthed bulldog, and the recent Shane Doan affair, of which he was the principal instigator, has only reinforced my point of view.

He actually used to be quite an effective parliamentarian while the Liberals were still in government. Not that he was an exceptional minister or a cunning debater, but his bass voice and pugnacity made him an important player on the Chrétien and Martin teams.

But the new Liberal boss is Stéphane Dion, and that changes everything!

The rough and tough Coderre doesn’t have much to contribute to a Liberal leader attempting to sell Canadians on his sincerity and principle. It’s difficult for Dion to look principled when he his own Defence Critic calls Gordon O’Connor an arms dealer (he actually wasn’t too far off the mark on in particular case, but it’s still not appropriate to use such language on Parliament Hill).

Even worse, Coderre has a well known habit of causing mayhem in Question Period by yelling foul quips to members from across the floor during debate.

Josée Verner, The Minister of International Cooperation, la Francophonie and Official Languages brought that point home in Question Period when she told the house: “The member for Bourassa Coderre) keeps making comments. For quite some time now, he has been showing this House that he speaks three languages: the French language, the English language and the dirty language.”

To make matters worse for Dion, Coderre isn’t the only one –albeit the most disgusting. The Liberals have a stack of trouble making backbenchers whose only contribution to Parliament seem to be the undermining of their own leader’s credibility.

This all has to end now if Dion is serious about getting his image sorted out. I’m sorry, but you don’t have a hope of looking principled when your own MPs have made a habit of engaging in shameful behaviour.

Jokes

Today’s Sunday, and Mother’s day, so I decided to submit a light post: my favourite Canadian jokes.

In Canada, we have four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, construction.

You know you’re living in Canada when:
-your municipality buys a Zamboni before a bus.
-People leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put their useless junk in the garage.

Mike Harris: basically a sober Ralph Klein

A Canadian analog to "as American as apple pie.": "as Canadian as possible under the circumstances."

Best sign reported today at the anti-Bush protests in Ottawa: "Please Leave"

Q: How many Canadians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. Canadians don't change light bulbs, we accept them as they are.

Now, here’s the cherry on the icing: this is the transcript on an ACTUAL radio conversation of a US Naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10 - 10 - 95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again you divert YOUR course.
Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES` ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

I hope you had a few good laughs; I’ll talk about something more serious later!

Blair

So Blair’s leaving; finally! He certainly hung onto power for as long as was humanly possible. It’s pretty clear that most people had had enough, both in and out of his caucus. Sure, he was an effective and charismatic leader, but after ten years of power and a fiasco like Iraq, it was time to move on.

It’ll be interesting to see how Labour fares in the next election. I could be wrong, but if I were to base myself on the similar situation faced by the Martin Liberals a few years ago, I would conclude that the Conservatives will have a pretty easy ride to power. It’s funny how the current British political situation seems to be three years behind the Canadian one; if, in newspaper articles, we were to replace the name Labour with Liberals, Blair with Chrétien, Brown with Martin and David Cameron with Stephen Harper, the we’d be turning them into Canadian history books.

But you know, despite all his faults, I really like Tony Blair.

He just strikes me as a perfect leader: charismatic, innovative, efficient and pragmatic. His ability to balance policies and to make compromises is unequalled, and his communication skills would make JFK blush (well, maybe I’m pushing it, but you get the point).

I’m not going to say anything much about his long reign, as any attempt to cover it in a single blog post would be incomplete and misleading. Instead, I’ll just tell you one anecdote which I feel summarises the Blair government better than any expensive book or movie.

As you may know, the Labour Party published on YouTube a set of interviews with the Prime-Minister in which he talked about the highs and lows of his mandate and his experience as leader of the UK. At one point, the interviewer asked Blair to explain the widening gap between rich and poor, which he had promised to tackle in each election. I was expecting some Question Period gibberish or an accusation that the Tories would have fared worse, but instead, Blair gave a simple, concrete and believable answer.

He flatly told the interviewer that this figure was simply due to a minute percentage of the population getting infinitely rich, which is an undeniable reality of capitalism. That was all fine, but there are lots of other capitalist countries in which the gap is narrowing, so why not in Britain. But that was the heart of his argument. He explained, in his trademark casual style, that though the government could decide narrow the gap by taxing the very rich more heavily, like in the sixties, this would simply cause them to leave the country. Instead, he had decided to leave them alone and let them contribute to the economy by spending their riches, while focusing on narrowing the gap between the relatively poor and the relatively rich. Thus, he explained, if we compared the top thirty percent to the bottom thirty percent, which would erase the impact of the few extremely wealthy individuals, we would find that the gap had actually narrowed.

That’s what the Blair government was all about. Like the Clinton administration: well presented pragmatic ideas.

So you can say all you want about Tony Blair being unethical or addicted to power, it’s undeniable that he has been a gift for his country.

Le lobbying

Je viens d’apprendre par la presse que le Canada a décidé de hausser ses limites nationales de résidus de pesticides pour les rendre conformes à celles des Etats-Unis. Nos limites plus européennes gênaient apparemment le commerce entre les deux pays, et les Ministères du Commerce International et de la Santé ont cru bon de corriger la situation.

Seulement, si cela constitue un net avantage pour notre industrie agro-alimentaire, c’est bien au détriment de la santé des Canadiens qui se verront obligés de consommer des aliments encore plus toxiques. C’est précisément le genre de politique économique que l’on déteste voir, et qu’on peut reprocher à tous nos gouvernements.

J’ai toujours trouvé ce genre de comportement bizarre. Pourquoi des gouvernements habituellement si occupés à acheter la classe moyenne prendraient-ils la peine de favoriser l’industrie, au détriment de ces mêmes électeurs? Eh bien, voilà, je venais de me heurter pour la première fois à la triste réalité du lobbying.

Oui, le lobbying, ce travail mis en oeuvre par l'industrie qui consiste à faire chanter les gouvernements pour leur extorquer des profits supplementaires. C’est précisément à cause de lui que nous nous retrouvons si souvent avec de l'équipement inutile ou des mauvaises politiques fiscales.

Certes, le lobbying présente évidemment certains avantages, mais ceux-ci sont largement éclipsés par la monstruosité de certaines des politiques économiques qu’il engendre. A bien y penser, c’est quand même plutôt logique qu’un processus si anti-démocratique soit nocif pour le citoyen moyen. L’industrie investit rarement son argent pour le profit des autres!

Je ne crois pas qu’on devrait interdire le lobbying, mais comme la période des questions (voir message précédent), il faudrait l’encadrer d’une règlementation stricte et rigide pour qu’il devienne un outil au service de l’économie et de notre pays.

Restoring Dignity and Utility to Question Period

My dad and I both watched question period online today. There wasn’t much news; the Liberals spent most of their time attacking the government on the Afghan detainee issue, the NDP focused on Labour Minister Blackburn’s hidden travel expenses and the Bloc, as is usually the case, harped on about minor Quebec regions and sectors which were being shamelessly attacked by the evil anti-francophone Canadian government.

Papa had been looking forward to watching with me, and seemed curious to discover how question period had evolved since he had seen, as a young university student, P.E.T. call Joe Clark “the Honourable Blockhead”.

Well apparently, it hasn’t changed much, and though I haven’t been around long enough to watch it evolve, I must say that it would have been difficult for the quality of the debate to drop any lower.

Today, for instance, Jack Layton asked Minister Blackburn a simple question relating to his travel expenses, only to have Government House Leader Peter van Loan rise and start musing about the NDP leader’s frequent limousine use while serving on Toronto City Council. A few minutes later, Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon answered Gilles Duceppe’s question related to government funding for St-Hubert airport by informing the House that PM Harper had spoken on the phone with newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It went on like that for the rest of the hour.

Sometimes, I just can’t help thinking of the taxpayer dollars being wasted on running this useless comedy show. Couldn’t we scrap it and donate the saved funds to UNICEF.

NO, that would definitely be a premature plan, because Question Period CAN work, and SHOULD work. Indeed, the local equivalents in the British, Australian and New-Zealand parliaments are all very productive sessions which give the Prime-Minister an opportunity to answer questions from across the floor and give the government’s response. Why not in Canada?

The main problem is the absence of clear and enforceable rules and regulations. With the current system, there is nothing preventing agitated House members from deliberately breaking the rules or engaging in shameful conduct. This needs to change if we are to have the slightest chance of restoring dignity to the house.

We need to introduce a much stricter set of rules and regulations and give the Speaker the necessary powers to enforce them. Among those new rules, we should include provisions such as:

-A system of “two strikes and you’re out”, meaning that a member who violates parliamentary rules more than once in a single week would be ejected by the speaker from the current debate and suspended from the next. This would stop rogue ministers such as John Baird from violating 3 rules in one single answer.

-The possibility of aiming questions at particular ministers, giving them a binding obligation to answer. This would prevent ridiculous scenes such as the recent muzzling of Defence Minister O’Connor, who had questions aimed at him answered by ministers like Stockwell Day and Peter van Loan, neither of whom had any connection to the Ministy of Defence.

These are just ideas and by no means miracle solutions, but I am convinced that we will need to go down that tougher path if we are to succeed in restoring dignity and utility to Question Period. If all parliamentarians were like Ed Broadbent, it wouldn't be necessary, but, unfortunately, that's simply not the case.

Constitution

There’s been a lot of talk in the province of Quebec about the most recent national fad (by national, I am referring to the Quebecois Nation): autonomy. The ambiguous constitutional position brought forward by Mario Dumont’s ADQ, which Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson calls the “have you cake and eat it solution”.

One of the pillars of the autonomy doctrine is the signing of a Quebec constitution, which would entrench the common values of Quebecers, and see the province recognized as the Autonomous State of Quebec.

Dumont’s party is obviously trying to navigate the line between soft federalism and tentative sovereignty, but autonomy clearly crosses it. Let me make things clear: a province which has the right to have its own constitution and to be called the Autonomous State of is not only unworthy of being part of our Federation, but legally unable.

A constitution, by definition, establishes the key governmental framework of a country, as well as embedding a set of rights and responsibilities which apply to all of its citizens. In Canada, those rights and responsibilities are enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Basically, the charter is ground zero of our legal system: Charter trumps all. ANY law, policy, or action–from banning same sex marriage to not letting a Sikh boy wear his Kirpan to school- is illegal if the courts determine that it goes against the Charter.

Now imagine having two ground zeros, and the possibility for Quebec citizens to switch between the two depending on the scenario. Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and therefore our whole constitution would become a farce. Its raison d’être would have to be changed to “guaranteeing rights and freedoms to all Canadians and to Quebecois when it suits them”.

Here’s another scenario. The Quebec government is still unable to control spending while other have-not provinces are making inroads. Its equalization payments therefore skyrocket. The same week, Quebec decides to opt out from a federal agriculture plan, its right to do so being guaranteed by its autonomous position inside Canada. Get the picture?

I haven’t gone to Law school, but I’m rational enough to understand that a constitution is worthless unless it is applies to every single citizen. If Quebec signs its own, Canada’s won’t always apply and are current Constitution will be junk.

The solution is simple: tell the ADQ NOW (while sovereignty support is low), that there is no way a province will ever be allowed to posses its own Constitution. Calmly watch Dumont go mad and sovereignty support go up, and once that's all over, focus on something else.

Les détenus Afghans

Bon, maintenant que le niveau de tension a un peu baissé, je vais finalement traiter de la question des détenus Afghans.

Pour être franc, je ne suis ni surpris, ni troublé; c’est la guerre. Nous serions vraiment en train de pousser les limites de la naïveté en affirmant qu’une guerre aussi dangereuse que celle-ci puisse être menée sans scandales ou injustices. Oui, nous aimerions tous croire notre armée et notre Ministère de la Défense au-dessus de tout soupçon, mais ce n’a évidemment jamais été le cas.

Mais là n’est pas la question.

Le plus important était la réaction du gouvernement. Il avait le choix entre la confirmation ou la dénégation, entre la vérité qui fait mal ou le mensonge qui fait honte. Pas besoin de se casser la tête pour connaître sa décision. Au lieu d’admettre cette infraction, hélas, facilement pardonnable de la convention de Genève, de corriger le tir, puis d’enterrer l’affaire, il s’y est pris de manière totalement désorganisée, tentant à la fois de semer le doute sur la validité des allégations et de créer une illusion d’action.

Il doit maintenant récolter les fruits de sa maladresse : un harcèlement continue de la part de l’opposition, une mauvaise figure pour le Canada sur la scène internationale, et une chute dans les sondages. De plus, il sera encore parvenu à se mettre à dos les médias, car, ne l’oublions pas, c’est bien d’eux que provient toute l’affaire.

Et vlan! C’est ce que j’appelle la justice.

A New Hope

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has just announced his intention to push for an interprovincial carbon emissions “cap-and-trade” system at an upcoming premiers meeting in Toronto. This system, which would initiate the creation of an interprovincial carbon market thus putting a price on emissions, is precisely the type of effective market based solutions to global warming that we should be supporting (see previous post: New Plan?).

It has already received a full approval from BC Premier Gordon Campbell, whose province is already working on a similar plan with neighbouring American states, as well as a tentative yes from Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador. Alberta is obviously opposed, but both Premiers McGuinty and Campbell have indicated that, though it was preferred, a consensus wasn’t required to put the system in place.

You can see how excited I am, because this is exactly what needs to be done to fight climate change: market based solutions. If the provinces decide to act, we might actually see some movement, regardless of the federal position.

You know what, if this system ends up being implemented, I might even forgive McGuinty for breaking his numerous campaign promises, including shutting down the coal plants.