Tag Archives: Québec Politics

Upon Reflection…

As you might imagine I was pretty shaken up over what happened on September 4th.

The PQ victory doesn’t bother me, Richard Bain does.

Watching it all unfold live on Radio-Canada with Patrice Roy completely flabbergasted at what he had just witnessed, the near instantaneous transition of a boisterous crowd into total silence and the steady stream of updates over Twitter all packed a wallop I hadn’t expected to experience. I felt ill the next day at work. It was awful. Inasmuch as I love the adrenaline rush of watching news happen live in real time, in retrospect the sensory overload and crush of negative emotions was more than I was ready for. It really, truly hurt to see such things happen, in my city, my province.

I find it odd that I never expected it – this city has a bad history when it comes to mad gunmen. Perhaps it is the tradeoff for having such a generally low homicide rate – crime here isn’t rampant, it’s momentarily terrifying, and maybe that keeps us in check.

You can tell I didn’t grow up to experience the October Crisis. The Oka Crisis may have been on Mars for all I knew as a five year old.

This was new in a very precise way – an Anglophone shot two men in an attempt to assassinate the duly elected premier of Québec and possibly kill many PQ supporters and a good chunk of the organization in one swift blow. His motivation is not know – he may be a paranoid schizophrenic, a psychopath, or just a rage-head fuming over rejected plans to enlarge his hunting resort. But regardless of his mental state, he thought he was striking the first blow in an armed insurrection of Anglophones in Québec. To what end is unclear. What he thought he’d accomplish still a mystery.

I cringe thinking about what might have been. From the looks of things Denis Blanchette and Dave Courage, lighting technicians enjoying a smoke behind Metropolis, were in the wrong place at the right time. It seems as though they confronted Bain before he had a chance to get into the venue. His Chinese knock-off AK-47 jammed after a single round was fired, but it would tear through them both. Despite having other weapons in his nearby van, not to mention a pistol in his bathrobe, Bain retreated some to light the rear of the venue on fire. He would be subdued by Montréal police shortly thereafter. It could have been so much worse. Blanchette and Courage prevented a disaster of mind-boggling proportions.

There’s no question they are heroes in my book, but heroes through victimhood.

If it seems odd to you that I’m publishing this now, perhaps that says something too. I find it incredible how quickly we move on from something like this. Then again, what are we to do but move on. All I can hope is that we will all think before speaking in the future, and ask ourselves whether or not we’re individually stocking the fires of inter-ethnic discord and aggressive rhetoric, and what we can do as individuals to mitigate this problem. Violent language is far from harmless, as we saw with this latest electoral campaign. The campaign was vicious and people were too. And look what happened.

We can’t ever forget that we exist in a society, and we’re a society that swore off violence many years ago. Our differences, our problems – these will all be solved with the law we have.

After-thought: if you see any of that awful ‘Free Bain’ graffiti, write ‘Bath Libre’ directly underneath it. I will.

The Line That Ended Expansion


From 1962 until 1988 a common sight – Métro tunnel construction – photo found on
urbanphoto

News from LaPresse today that Pauline Marois wants to prioritize an eastern extension of the Métro’s Blue Line towards Anjou, with a planned initial development of three stations in the direction of Lacordaire Boulevard from Saint-Michel station.

No word yet on planned delivery of the project, no timeline though a proposed (and certain to increase) budget of just under $1 billion according to Marvin Rotrand, vice-president of the STM and leader of the Union Montréal party.

For comparison, the three station extension into Laval cost $745 million in 2007.

The Métro’s Blue Line is arguably the least effective in the system. Ridership is at its lowest, the trains are shorter and service stops forty-five minutes earlier on this branch. Unlike the other three lines which funnel people from first and second ring suburbs into the urban core, the Blue Line is peripheral and connects two high-density, low-income large residential areas with one of the richest neighbourhoods in the city (in the middle), and not where their jobs might be. Moreover, though it could be useful in funnelling people towards either end of the Orange Line, the number 80, 165, 166 and 535 buses (to name but a few), seem to remain the preferred method to reach the city from the northern inner suburbs. For everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the design, history, architecture, artwork, and technical aspects pertaining to the Blue Line (and every other line, fasset and component of the Montréal Métro), I recommend clicking here for the excellent Métro de Montréal fansite.

The line was originally conceived to extend past the Orange Line in both directions. Marois’ plan is to develop three stations towards the East, and none towards the West (insert mandatory statement about how Anglo needs are being ignored) and eventually build two additional stations terminating at the Galleries d’Anjou. I’m not sure why they’d plan to break the project into two separate developments, but I would assume that the province may want to wait and see if the initial extension drives up usage. This would not be the first time the Blue Line would be built in a separate, disjointed fashion – during the original line’s development, it was proposed that the segment connecting Edouard-Montpetit to Parc be cancelled given that ridership in between would be so low. It seems obvious to me that a five-station extension may actually serve to draw a considerably larger number of people, not to mention potentially allow the STM to re-design bus lines to potentially feed an even greater number of people, so why they’re planning on cutting it short off the bat is beyond me. The current eastern expansion will serve Rosemont, Saint-Leonard and Anjou, though plans dating back to the late-1970s wanted the Blue Line to extend towards the Northeast with a terminus at Amos (likely at Lacordaire Boulevard) which in turn would have also allowed access to the high-density, low-income neighbourhood of Montréal-Nord. This plan was modified when a Métro line under Pie-IX was proposed that would funnel people down to Pie-IX station on the Green Line. Both proposals were still on the table (even appearing on Métro maps) into the late-1980s, at which point the Liberal Government of Robert Bourassa placed a total moratorium on Métro expansion.


Conceptual rendering for a proposed intermodal station under Edouard-Montpetit

The principle reason for this moratorium was, among others, declining revenues and budgets, not to mention the fact that the heavily truncated Blue Line simply wasn’t pulling in new passengers nor did it ease congestion on other parts of the system. Part of the Blue Line’s undoing was that, as mentioned previously, it was still preferential and more convenient to use buses to get to and from the city (the 80 and 165 are two of my favourite bus routes; though they’re generally packed, if you manage to get a window, a pleasant and exciting voyage awaits). This may not have been the case if a planned inter-modal station at Edouard-Montpetit (connecting to the AMT’s Deux-Montagnes line within Mount Royal Tunnel) were completed. The principle technical difficulty was building a train station fifty meters under the existing Métro station, not to mention acquiring high-capacity, high-speed elevators, but the station itself was designed for the higher capacity.

If they had built this crucial component, the Blue Line could have also served to better connect the northern ridge suburbs with the city centre.

Therefore, any move to lengthen the line, east or west, should be done in conjunction with a connection to the Mount Royal Tunnel firmly in mind, so that the Blue Line could finally be used to ease traffic congestion elsewhere in the system.

Also, we’d be wise to voice two other considerations for our elected officials to consider. First, placing a moratorium on moratoriums and segmented construction. If we were to plan Métro development ten or twenty stations at a time instead of in threes or fives, we may be able to save money long-term through bulk purchases of materials, not to mention increasing operational efficiency as the project goes forward. Let’s end this self-retarding piecemeal development and plan continuous lines. The Pie-IX proposal, which would link the Olympic Park with Montréal North through Rosemont, Petit-Patrie and Saint-Leonard, should be given top priority for new line construction. Second, we might be wise to consider inter-lining the system so as to allow trains that start on the Blue Line to transfer onto the Orange, so that one could go from Saint-Michel to Bonaventure, or from Outremont Laval without changing trains. This is a very complicated proposal, but it would allow greater flexibility with the system we already have.


A future expansion map including talked about extensions and proposed lines; of all the different proposal maps I’ve seen, this one still seems very realistic, very useful.

I Spoke Too Soon… Assassination Attempt Against Pauline Marois


Photo credit to PC/Paul Chiasson

I’m devastated.

Il doit être dit, cet homme est un fou, et il n’est en aucune manière représentative de la communauté anglo-québécoise. Nous sommes de tout coeur un peuple de paix. Nous l’avons vu etla choc et la terreur se fit sentir dans les profondeurs de toutes nos ames. C’était écÅ“urant. C’est horrible, mais c’est l’acte d’un fou, et non un peuple.

Nous sommes tous fiers Québécois, et je lève mon chapeau à Mme Marois pour calmer une foule joviale et montrant un réel leadership dans le visage d’une hostilité fou.

At about Midnight, September 5th 2012, a deranged man in a bathrobe entered the back of Metropolis and opened fire inside the venue, hitting two people, wounding them critically. He then tried to set fire to the building, site of the Parti Québecois victory party. Madame Pauline Marois, premier-elect of the Province of Québec, was in the middle of her victory speech when intercepted and whisked off stage by Sureté-du-Québec bodyguards. She was not injured though it appears as though the insane gunman got perilously close to her. I watched it happen live and it made my heart skip a beat.

The man apparently screamed in French that the Anglophones will rise, or revolt.

Police cannot confirm the type of number of weapons used. So far only one arrest and one suspect. Fire’s been put out, Metropolis safely evacuated, Marois uninjured as of 12:44am September 5th 2012


Photo credit to Olivier Pontbriand, La Press – A photograph of the apprehended gunman

CJAD now saying one dead. Unconfirmed. Video of the gunman has been released. Confirmed at 12:58am September 5th 2012 on CBC as they sign off to the National. They better be back in twenty-two.

Switching back to RDI. I think CTV has a live feed too.

Live feed on RDI

The gun looks a lot like an AK-47. I doubt its an airgun as some had stated earlier. It’s unclear how many victims. Conflicting reports about how many brought to hospital as of 1:06am

RDI just reported (1:20am) that the first victim was a replacement bus-driver for the media caravan. A last minute replacement bus driver.

Word has come out the victim is in fact an audio technician, and the bus driver is in critical condition (1:34am)

RDI video footage confirms the man was yelling “les Anglais se réveillent”, “this is payback” and “you wanna make trouble?” as he was being led to the police cruiser.

At 1:36am unconfirmed report comes in from La Press indicating a van filled with weapons has been found near Metropolis.

1:45am – Urgences Santé confirms, one dead at the scene, one in critical condition and one being treated for shock.

Yay?


Francoise David & Amir Khadir of Québec Solidaire

So was this Québec’s “everybody wins” election?

Charest is out and free to face the Charbonneau Commission.

Pauline Marois has become premier, a job she arguably deserves if for no other reason than her tenacity at retaining her seat and knowing her support base. Québec’s first female premier, a mere sixty-eight years after women gained suffrage in the province. I have sincere reservations about Ms. Marois, but she is now premier, and what got her to power may be very different from what gets her over the many coming hurdles. Among others, the Spring budget. As it stands, the PQ will not be able to pass a budget by itself. It will have to reach out to the Liberals and/or Caquistes for support. No easy task, but if she is as devoted to the prosperity and progress of this province as she says she is, she will gladly reach out to ideological opponents and govern by consensus. If not, we’ll be reminded of why there were so many defections but a few months ago, and in seven months will be right back where we started, another election.

Francois Legault holds the balance of power and performed admirably for his first effort leading his own party. He was gracious in defeat and a class act all the way. It’s not impossible to make the breakthrough he did, but rare, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the CAQ comes together in the National Assembly.


Pauline Marois, the premier-elect of the Province of Québec

The students have an elected representative in Leo Bureau-Blouin.

Amir Khadir and Francoise David have united two neighbouring ridings and will stand together in the National Assembly.

And lastly, the QLP did not implode, and retains the respect of official opposition. A good number of former cabinet ministers will keep their seats and the rump party has held a good portion of its territory and big name candidates. For Québec’s centrist-federalist middle-class, I can imagine this will be quite a relief.

As of the time of this writing, the typically firebrand Jean-Francois Lisée is dodging direct questions about if and when a referendum question will be called. He explains that the PQ will not impose a referendum. For the province’s federalists, perennially trying to explain the merits of Canada and cultural integration to people convinced they’ve been robbed of Shangri-La, there is comfort in knowing the party is stronger than its leader, and can survive without populism.


Jean Charest of the Québec Liberal Party

Charest will either choose to stay on to fight again, or retire in ignominy. Who knows what his fate is at this point. But after what he’s had to deal with in the last two years, and the last few months in particular, he may very well likely wash his hands of what can only be described as the least describable job in the world. Few Québec premiers get the chance to go out in any other way than ignominiously.

The biggest obstacle to moving forward has been removed without leaving a cataclysm in his wake. The first test will be how Pauline Marois deals with the inevitable – the difficulties of adequately funding our massive public post-secondary education system, not to mention striking a balance with all student groups. The election of Bureau-Blouin can be a major tactical advantage, and a successful resolution could be an easy quick win for the PQ. I’m not so optimistic however, as I believe she may in fact have to retract on several promises. We’ll have to see.

The early word is a participation rate in excess of 70%, not great, but not dreadful as in the case of most recent federal elections.

In broad terms we had a managed shake-up. All the necessary changes occurred, the autocracy of populism & majority government momentarily undone while retaining stability and all the necessary checks and balances. There’s no reason for any kind economic panic, as we all know this may be very short lived.

Prime Minister Harper acted quickly and congratulated Ms. Marois’ victory while reminding the Québecois now’s not the time to get into a constitutional mess. Sometimes I wonder how he opens a chess match…


Francois Legault, leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec

Independence was polling at the bottom of the charts despite the apparent PQ victory but a few days ago and from the talk of the party’s big mouths, restraint seems to be the order of the day.

The next seven months will doubtless be very interesting.

And tomorrow we can all go back to enjoying life and ignoring politics…

Mountains out of Molehills (and Mountains beyond Mountains)

This man is not yelling in French.

And it’s pissing people off.

This is Randy Cunneyworth, the new Interim Head Coach of the Montréal Canadiens, hired after Jacques Martin was dumped by General Manager Pierre Gauthier on Saturday. He’s been an assistant coach with the Habs for a little while, and distinguished himself with a long career in the NHL.

The problem is that Cunneyworth is unilingually Anglophone and that has upset the hard core lingua-fascists over at Impératif Francais (a Gatineau-based organization) and Movement Québec Francais. These groups have, astoundingly, called for a total boycott of all Molson products, though it is unclear if this includes attending Habs games, buying Canadiens ball caps and hoodies etc. And to be fair I’ve never met an ultra-nationalist who drank Molson; Labatt Bleue all the way.

Today Geoff Molson fired back, stating simply that Cunneyworth is a good choice given the disappointing start to the season, and that ultimately, Molson and the Canadiens’ management pays its dues to the fans, the merciless Montréal fans. Thus, they made the call and will consider Cunneyworth’s linguistic abilities (or lack thereof) as part of their on-going search for a permanent coach. If Cunneyworth can manage to teach himself some half-decent French between now and the end of the season, he’ll be in a better position to graduate from interim to head coach. If he manages to bring home the cup, you and I both know no one will give a flying Philadelphia fuck.

That’s the reality. Money talks, and the Habs need to keep attendance and sales up. A new coach may be able to turn the team around, which in my opinion is considerably better for morale in Montréal and Québec than the apparent ‘attack against Franco-Québecois society and culture’ that is a unilingually Anglophone coach.

What’s flat-out retarded is Christine St-Pierre’s decision to weigh in on the issue. The worst thing the PLQ could do was implicate itself in an issue brought up by radical pseudo-linguists. The smart thing to do would be to focus on your job and not the twitter-verse. We’re paying her to improve the condition of women, culture and communications. Well guess what? Women are still not making as much as men (on average, in Canada), our highest high-speed internet is ludicrously expensive and a hundredth of the speed of Korean or Japanese hi-speed and myopic mono-culturalists are raising this Cunneyworth stink in the first place.

C’mon! Get it together!

It’s not the government’s business. Leave the world’s most successful hockey club alone and let them do what they’ve done so well for years. I love government intervention, but not in this case. There’s simply no good reason.

If Cunneyworth and Molson are smart apart and smart together they may conspire to set Cunneyworth down the fast track towards official bilingualism – intensive courses, Bescherelles, subliminal training, whatever it takes.

Point is it’s clear to the capitalists bilingualism in Montreal is vital, but they’re caught between a rock and a hard place managing a losing team that desperately needs to be shaken up. Another fabricated language politics scandal isn’t going to help anyone, especially not the Canadiens.

So, though Cunneyworth may have a hard time expressing himself to the French media, if he wants to keep his job and bring the Habs to the cup, he’ll learn, and quick too. Be patient. Calm down.

And keep this in mind too – there are only three Québecois on the team. Three. They’re all bilingual and have been trained under Cunneyworth for several years now. They all understand him just fine.

We may have birthed the modern game of hockey here in Montréal, we may have the winningest team in NHL history. Hell, we may have even founded the NHL and saw the first Stanley Cup match. But it’s not our game anymore. It’s a multi-national entertainment corporation with assets, capital and international interests. We’re lucky we still retain such a privileged position within the hockey hierarchy, but who are we kidding? Our success spread the game across oceans and united enemies, all this is true. But to play at the international level, you may need to shed provincial attitudes. We are intimately tied to hockey here in Montréal, of this there can be no doubt, and no reasonable person would actually believe an Anglophone acting-coach poses any sort of threat to that cultural institution and element of local national character. Only weak-willed shrill people with a lot of time on their hands would proselytize such nonsense. And it being a slow-news day (Havel who?), our idiotic mainstream media decided to make yet another mountain out of mole-hill.

The self-depricating, self-perpetuating national inferiority complex rearing its ugly head once more.

How do these things happen?

*** Coda ***

Just realized the song Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) would be a great campaign song for when I run for mayor, though I’d somehow need to explain to those congregated that the band (like myself) is critical of the rampant excess of suburbia, and that I’m not generally in favour of dead shopping malls rising with no end in sight.

How’s subtlety doing these days?

Getting Smarter About Public Education in Montréal

Once again, Montréal parents are caught fighting each other to keep their children’s respective schools open. This time, the parents of St. John Bosco and St. Gabriel schools, located in the working class neighbourhoods of Ville Emard and Pte. St. Charles respectively, are trying to convince the English Montréal School Board each should be saved at the other’s potential closure. How sick.

Parents should not ever be forced to fight each other for access to schooling near their homes, and unfortunately, you see this sort of thing happen frequently in the first rung suburbs of Montréal – there are and have been cases in Ville Emard, St-Leonard, Cote-des-Neiges etc over the years. Under no circumstances do I personally feel this is right or justifiable, the school board should have more sense than to do this to hard-working people who need small community schools for their children. It’s unnecessarily traumatic, can disrupt family and neighbourhood life and cohesion, and in no way serves the interests of the People it is supposed to serve. The positive public effect of small public schools intimately tied to the surrounding neighbourhood is quite simply a necessity for modern urban living, and the benefit of small class sizes is particularly desirable in situations where the majority of parents work full time in potentially unstable work environments. Children in working class neighbourhoods need strong schools integrated into the local community – ideally with teachers and staff who live in the same neighbourhood so that a fuller sense of community attachment can be established, and the apparent transition of authority from inside the home to inside the school is maintained. This is difficult to do when the children have to go to another neighbourhood entirely, and potentially never see the teachers or classmates outside of school. Moreover, by forcing these two schools to merge, it doubtless means class sizes will grow. This is far from ideal. And more often than not residents of these communities find themselves without the resources to fight the school board and save their schools. The EMSB ought to be ashamed of itself.

This is not news – Montréal parents have been fighting each other and the government (physically, figuratively, rhetorically) for more than forty years, stretching all the way back to the St-Leonard Riots of 1969-70. You’d think we would have learned something since then.

The problem is supposed to be declining enrolment and funding for the EMSB, but I’m very suspicious. The EMSB has been caught up in hot water pretty much since it was created, it is hardly a pillar of stability in the Anglo-Québecois community, not like the old PSBGM. What I fail to comprehend is why the EMSB would ever consider closing a school, which is very much a nail in the coffin of a community – and it flies in the face of most modern education theory, which stresses small class sizes as being ideal. Seriously, what are they thinking?

I don’t think we’re being very smart w/r/t to public education here in Montréal, here’s why:

For one, whereas Montréal once benefitted from public education facilities and programs that could easily compete with private schools, today incompetence, corruption and the appearance of instability have led many parents to pursue private alternatives to the weakened public system, which has led to a proliferation of private schools. This in turn has had a deleterious effect on the public system and has further led to many school closings. As such, urban neighbourhoods which have undergone substantial gentrification in the past decades are now without schools, libraries or churches (not that I’m religious in any way, but churches do make for excellent community and cultural centres) given that many have been turned into condos.

For two, we still have a linguistic divide in education, as though we were purposely underselling our real level of bilingualism and multi-culturalism. So why do we still have multiple independent linguistic boards serving a single region – it’s inefficient. If all boards were united into a single operation we’d be in a better position to keep schools open (as overflow from the French sector could be placed in what was once an ‘English’ school), and thus could mitigate the need to build new schools and pay for expensive bussing in the urban core. We could also stabilize class sizes. And all of this would still be secondary to the fact that we would finally be in position to educate bilingually, a necessity for this city. If the City of Montréal were to undertake creating a single, bi-lingual, multi-cultural school board (run as a city department), it would not only allow us to guarantee full bilingualism of generations of children, it would also provide the necessary means and operational efficiency to once again make public education the preferred option for Montréal residents. I would encourage a 75/25 linguistic instruction split for all students regardless of mother tongue, with the majority of classroom instruction talking place in French to counter the dominance of English in North American media. Ultimately, we need to fill our schools with teachers who are comfortable switching languages and can speak both with full fluency. This should be what we want for our children, who will certainly live in a world where both are fundamentally useful. Why even attempt anything less?

Finally, third point, our city needs to run private schools out of business, but this won’t happen unless we have the business sense to plan for long-term development in a city-run school board.

For me, it boils down to this. A child can’t choose the circumstances they’re born in to, and yet the school they go to will be decided by factors well beyond the child’s grasp. If current trends continue poor kids will end up in underfunded public schools while rich kids and the remaining children of the middle class will end up in various private schools, operating beyond the regulatory reach of the government. As far as I’m concerned, all elements of society, rich or poor, would benefit from future generations educated equitably, and private schools should thus be minimized and rendered obsolete by heavily investing in a renewed public system.

Education is basic human right, and I would expect the leaders of my city would do everything they could to ensure our city offered the very finest in public education. But such is not the case, and we close schools to later be recycled into condominiums, leaving neighbourhoods without the societal anchors necessary to build healthy communities and healthier families. By refusing to acknowledge some of the realities of our city, we hold ourselves back, and we’re not doing our kids any favours either.

So, let’s smarten up and try something different. It is the very definition of insanity to expect a different result after repeating an action, and it further leaves people in a rut that may seem impossible to get out of. Plus, we’re Canadian, so everyone’s too embarrassed to propose anything too radically hors-du-commun.

It’s costing us the money we can’t generally see. We could do much better.