[Former PM Jean] Chretien was born on January the 11, 1934 in Shawinigan, Quebec, as the 18th of 19 children (10 of whom did not survive infancy) to Wellie Chrétien and Marie Boisvert...Not that long ago, really.
And the new, from the results of Monday's election:
"Left-wing party aiming to 'share the wealth' gains a foothold"And why can't they just vote Green or NDP like normal people, and try to, you know, actually build something that might spread? Oh right -- because they have to add that souverainiste bit. There's no chance that the comfortable artsies on the Plateau are actually serious about that, but god forbid that they should give up on the reflexive fuck-you to the rest of Canada, it's a sacred moral requirement.
In the surprise breakthrough of the election, physician Amir Khadir picked up a first seat for the Québec solidaire party, a fledgling formation whose policies for big government would place it on the fringes of the Canadian political spectrum.
Dr. Khadir, an Iranian-born father of three, ousted a two-term Parti Québécois incumbent to win a riding in the heart of Montreal.
Québec solidaire brands itself as leftist, ecologist, feminist, pacifist, pluralistic, democratic and sovereigntist.
Ah, Quebec -- always inspiring, heartwarming and totally aggravating in equal measure.
2 comments:
Small world - my former roommate from McGill, May Chiu, was a Quebec solidaire candidate this time around (lawyer for the oppressed, important person in Chinese community, semi-famous for having run against Paul Martin a couple of federal elections ago while seven months pregnant, and capturing a very respectable chunk of the vote, AND has her very own Wikipedia entry). My impression of QS (aka the opinion of the two Montreal friends who email me a lot) is that they're playing the Waffle to the PQ's NDP ( or playing Jesse Jackson to the PQ's Democratic Party, for our American friends), i.e. trying to push the souverainiste movement back towards the left, out of concern that it's drifting towards the centre, rather than actually expecting to win. May was Bloc candidate in her run against Martin. QS apparently has quite a bit of ideological, if not electoral, support from Quebec unions, women's organizations (which are politically powerful) and the usual social-democrat suspects. For myself, if the Bloc ran in Alberta, I'd vote for them, simply because they seem to have all the right (left) ideas about how to run a province, above and beyond that silly sovereignty thing.
Yeah, I could imagine voting for the Bloc, given the option -- the souverainisme makes little difference, given that all Quebec politicians are all about maximizing powers for Quebec anyway. But I fear there really was something of a backlash of ignorance and hate in some quarters of English Canada recently, against the very idea of a Bloc-backed Coalition. And if you point out to a hater that the silly sovereignty thing is neither here nor there, they can object that sovereignty *is* important, inflammable stuff and shouldn't be toyed with -- a party that has either a dangerous or an insincere position on it is at some fundamental level irresponsible. And they'll be right, so it's not an argument we can win.
But I would love to see you run on a 'Bloc Quebecois for Alberta' slate next election. Probably quite a few people would grasp the point that Quebecois interests are in most respects a better proxy for the real interests of the average Albertan than the interests of the tar sands lobby, the gun nuts, the wheat-board haters and the rest of the mouthbreathing Con party base. And it would drive the chauvinists and bigots on both sides stripes completely round the freakin' bend.
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