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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.