London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

The Frozen North

With a 60.5% turnout, here are the results of the elections for the House of Commons:

Party
 % 308
Liberal Party of Canada/Parti Libéral du Canada 36.7 135
Conservative Party of Canada/Parti Conservateur du Canada 29.6 99
New Democratic Party/Nouveau Parti Démocratique 15.7 19
Bloc Québécois 12.4 54
Green Party of Canda/Parti Vert du
Canada 		4.3 –
Non-partisan 1

The Bloc Québécois had the advantage of a very catchy election theme.

I must admit I rather have a soft spot for Québec, probably due to my general francophilia. Quebec is a nation that doesn’t live up to potential and I mean this in a very different way than the Bloc Québécois probably think…


The seperatists these days, and I mean the leadership of the Bloc and Parti Québécois, are thoroughly uninspiring. Their vision for independence is ultimately self-contradictory and useless.

The main reasons one might support independence are A) cultural nationalism and B) economic opportunity. And in both regards, Québec has something to gain.

A) Cultural Nationalism

Québec is primarily a francophone nation which by the accident (or blessing) of being part of the British Empire was lobbed into the primarily anglophone Canadian Confederation. Curiously enough, Québec was included in the Confederation, while Newfoundland was not (until 1949). Cultural nationalists are usually conservatives, as they seek to preserve their nation’s culture (duh!) against cultural internationalism/globalism which is primarily liberalising. But the Bloc Québécois are not cultural conservatives; on the contrary they are pro-abortion and aren’t going to complain about gay ‘marriage’ either. Not much in keeping with traditional Québécois values, which are traditional Catholic Christian values.

B) Economic Opportunity

The Canadian government is a tax-laden monolith. Seceding would mean the ability to end federal taxes, and roll back the welfare state that has stifled entrepreneurial spirit and encouraged oafish dependencies on l’etat. Québec could become a low-tax, pro-growth haven. Because most Quebeckers have a working knowledge of both French and English they are the ideal place for brining together the economies of Western Europe, Francophone Africa, and the English-speaking world. But this is not the vision of the Bloc Québécois. They are economic leftists as well as cultural leftists, supporting the leviathan social spending that Canada might one day implode under unless reform is forthcoming (it isn’t). There is a chance this would change after independence, as they would no longer have Ottawa to subsidise their misadventures.

If the Bloc Québécois woke up and smelled the proverbial coffee, then they could join with the Conservatives in a pro-life and (less importantly) pro-economic reform parliamentary bloc. Some may point out here that the Conservatives are ardently anti-seperatists, and this is true. But if dividing the Confederation is the price of saving the lives of millions of innocent children, it’s a price well worth paying.

Published at 8:20 am on Wednesday 30 June 2004. Categories: Canada Politics Quebec.
Comments

Unfortunatly since the “revolution tranquile” the canadiens (note that I don’t say quebecois a creation ex nihilo from leftist of the 1960) are turning left, at such point that we are spining in circle for a while…

Do canadien needed some change in their way of doing things, most will say yes, but by the way of evolution not revolution. Revolution never ever gived anything good to those who practiced them. All revolution leaded to diaster, like in France after the murder of our good king Louis XVI, France suffered massive massacre of peoples who do not agree enough with the new ideology. This made the before that greatest Kingdom a country many years if not a century behind in term of industries and developement. In Russia when the leftist murdered the Tsar and sended thousan up on thousand of people to goulags or to death for the crime of not be enough enthousiast., etc, ect. In Quebec the Quiet revolution gived us the quiet diasaster… With a quiet evolution, we will be now enjoying a quiet progress.

And if it was not enough we (and the western world as a whole) had to pass thru the femist revolution who will give us (already in fact) the feminist desaster. I just hope some day people will learn that revolution is very bad and that the way of changing things is by an evolutionary path.

— Henri 25 Sep 2013 4:16 am
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