Swompdonkey

Quebec Dehors!

The veil has been lifted from my eyes and like the song says, was blind,
but now, I see...

Quebecers have it too damn good in Canada to ever willingly leave! A net benefitter of Federal Transfer payments, the province will continue to hold the sword of Damocles over Canada's head as long as it can. The minority, those hardcore sovereignists who favour outright independence --Parizeau comes to mind --can at least be admired for their willingness to cross the Rubicon. I think most soft-sovereignists, who are in the majority, secretly dread the prospect of going it alone. That doesn't stop them from leaving that tantalizing possibility on the table. And every once in a while they make the right noises and rattle the cages in what has become a particularly clever democratic con. Separatism is a chimera, a bluff that has somehow lasted 40 years.

As the only "viable Federalist alternative" the Liberals (both the provincial and federal varieties) also benefit from this shell-game, vowing to defend Quebec's interests in the Federation (read: allow Quebec to continue to take out more than they put into the Federation) even as they raise the specter of the unholy alliance of separatists and those scary Western Conservative-Reform-Alliance freaks who don't represent mainstream Canada. They are right about the Conservatives being freaks, but so what... At this point, I'd vote for the freaks over the crooks.

I think the secret of the separatists' success is to just keep coming up with clever ways of making us believe their impotent little threat is real, while reassuring Quebecers that a vote for sovereignist candidate is really a vote for a voice for Quebec --seemingly contradictory messages.

Every 15 years or so they have taken to holding a referendum (preferably immediately adjacent to another constitutional humiliation), just to remind us they have us by the short-and-curlies. The referendum question is just ambiguous enough that people don't really understand what they are voting for.... Theirs is a policy of uncertaintly, and their domain is a land of bright futures, emotional appeals, and promises never realized.

Ultimately, the separatists devour their leaders as eagerly as they acclaim each successive saviour as they arrive on the scene. We've gone through two supposedly separatist premiers who were too milquetoast to bite the bullet and re-referendum since Parizeau went down in flames a decade ago.

Now, no matter how badly Federalists cock things up in the coming months and years, I predict that Quebecers will not go all in on a clear question in the next Referendum, tentatively scheduled for October 2010. When all the smoke clears, everything will be the same as it ever was, and the litany of grievances can continue.

The man that Ghazi Algosaibi, the Saudi cabinet minister, described as "the dismantler of sovereign nations and destabilizer of whole regions" wrote about the bizarre little polity right across the Ottawa river in a recent issue of The Western Standard.

You oughtta read it, there are some very juicy bits!

At this point, I'm starting to wonder how soon it will be before someone outside Quebec decides to start an expulsionist movement.

Andre Boisclair should be treated humanely by Quebecers -- as in put down like the Humane Society puts down stray dogs.