Oh, for sure. What I was trying to say is that I prefer to donate what money I have to donate to other causes than that of politicians, who in general do not come off as worthy causes in my book, which might be one explanation why people in general tend not to donate to the political parties. I’m willing to get in the polling booth and make a choice, but usually I feel it’s the best of a bunch of bad choices, making me less than keen to give that less-than-stellar choice money too. I suppose (until someone shows me better information to the contrary) that the Conservatives get more donations than other parties because they are more successful at imploring their supporters for the green stuff and that this is healthy for their viability. Obviously the other parties will have to get better at this too, and sooner rather than later.
Agreed regarding the "tools of big business"label getting stuck on the Conservatives, although I think that may have had more to do with general Conservative policy re: corporate tax cuts. That link quite surprised me - not so much about the Libs currently as about how they had also been slower to adapt their fundraising when rules were previously changed.
As for the miscalculations, I think they were bad on both sides. I think everybody on the Hill got high simultaneously, and chaos ruled from there. Judging by the continuing bad judgement being displayed in some quarters, some of them must still be stoned out of their minds.
OK, for you it would take the BQ both becoming a national party and renouncing separation. Very unlikely, but fair enough. I’d personally just be satisfied with the temporary renunciation of separation for the duration of the proposed Coalition.
So, you are saying that Quebec could never separate unless the ROC agrees to it, right?
The Bloc would be a part of a coalition government because that government would only be able to be a government at the consent of the Bloc. There is no way that the Niberals could put through any legislation without the Bloc having a veto on whatever it was. So if it walks like a duck, etc., it’s a duck.
It makes sense that if a party can’t market itself to its supporters then it should retool itself in such a way that people will actually support them. They certainly won’t do it if they get free handouts from the government. Think of it as a form of natural selection that would weed out the cranks and crackpots (NDP, etc.).
Ah, I went back and reread your post and saw that I missed “for the duration”. My answer was towards a permanent view on the Bloc where they become, eventually, a provincial rights groups. Which was why I proposed the regions I did for potential growth.
As a temporary measure to placate me? I can’t imagine any since my objection is to their basic principle of disengaging Quebec from Canada.
Both the original Conservatives and the Liberals used to raise most of their donations from big business (who tended to donate to both parties so as to have an in with whichever won the election) while the Reform/Alliance party lacked the existing business donation base and was originally a Western regional protest party (much like the BQ without the language issue) and had to raise cash from individual donors, as business was very wary of their regionalism and hard right-wing social attitudes (including a measure of anti-big business ideology).
When the Conservatives imploded after Mulroney, and were expropriated by the Reform/Alliance party, the renamed party already had a strong individual-based fund-raising structure in place, while the Liberals are still struggling to create one. The Liberals have the additional handicap IMHO of being centrist. If the Liberals were to go under, another party would quickly move to replace them in the centrist slot, so their supporters tend to be less emotionally committed to a specific party and less likely to feel strongly enough to donate to the party. The NDP probably have the required dedicated grassroots support, but haven’t yet managed the transition from a large union donations based funding basis. The BQ IMO have a handicap in that a lot of their supporters like having a left-wing Quebec issues party available, but don’t actually feel strongly enough about most of the BQ signature issues (such as separatism) to support them with anything other than election votes.
While all three opposition parties are getting enough under the current funding arrangements to continue to exist, none of them have the extra cash required to fund an election-winning campaign. The Liberals managed for a while by using their position as the government for the usual taxpayer funded political PR disguised as “government announcements”, but are at a severe disadvantage now that this subsidized PR is controlled by the Conservatives and they have no cash cushion to fall back on. Both the NDP and the Liberals are going to have to take some strong action to fix this problem if they want to challenge the Conservatives (I suspect the BQ is quite happy with the existing arrangement).
Heh. A “sick society”, I suppose, is a society whose values are seriously flawed, but unfortunately I don’t have a cite of Canadian media calling Quebec a “sick society”. I saw this term in a blog comment, but the poster didn’t give any cite.
I’m not saying Western Canadians have no reason to feel alienated. From what I’m seeing, they have many reasons to do so. What I’m saying is that your comment that nobody is allowed to criticize Quebec because of some sense of political correctness is wrong. English Canadians can and do criticize Quebec, sometimes with no reason at all. This has nothing to do with Western Canada.
I’m not making anything personal, though I will admit that I found your comment that nobody was allowed to criticize Quebec because we’d be sure to scream bloody murder a bit insulting. Especially since it’s wrong.
In any case, Grey cannot be wrong when he says that he’d find it legitimate to have the Bloc play a role in government only if the Bloc formally renounced separation and ran candidates all across the country, since that’s his opinion. (Of course, what running candidates “across the country” means is another question; was the Reform Party legitimate in 1993, when they didn’t run candidates in Quebec?) Where I’m calling him wrong is when he says the Bloc could initially expand in Eastern Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick. Sure, I guess he’s not technically wrong in the sense that they could run candidates there and get a few dozens of votes, but for the reasons I’ve given, these aren’t the places where they would consider expanding if they decided to become a pan-Canadian party. As matt_mcl says, Grey’s comment betrayed a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Bloc. It’s not a “French-Canadian” party – which the Bloc populaire canadien was --, it’s a provincialist party.
If the Bloc ever decided to become a pan-Canadian party, I wonder if Newfoundland wouldn’t be the best place to initially expand. Newfoundlanders have a strong sense of their cultural distinctiveness, and I from what I’m seeing want their provincial government to defend them from attempts by the rest of the country to impede on their sovereignty, but unlike Albertans and British Columbians, who have chosen the Conservative Party as the defender of their rights in Ottawa, Newfoundlanders have specifically rejected the federal Conservative Party. Of course, the chance of this happening is nil. It would be more likely for the Bloc québécois to eventually ally with other regional or provincial blocs.
Uh, what I’ve said is that I don’t think Quebec could be expelled from Canada unless the National Assembly of Quebec agrees to it, but that if we ever reach the point where the federal government and some provincial governments actually want to expel Quebec, Quebec should soon enough elect a government that would be willing to agree. (Does anyone know what is required to expel a province from Canada?)
Does Quebec require the agreement of the rest of Canada (in any form) in order to separate? I guess it’s possible that it require at least the agreement of the federal Parliament, but it’s really never been tested. So I don’t know. But then again, if Quebec ever democratically votes for separation (this is unlikely to happen anytime soon), the federal government would probably agree soon enough.
The Conservatives also cannot pass legislation without the approval of the Bloc, if the Liberals and NDP are intent of defeating it. So it’s really not different. Of course, since it seems most people think that, in a moral if not a legal sense, the Conservatives “won” last election while the Liberals and NDP “lost” it, the Conservatives’ dependency on the Bloc is seen as normal in a minority setting while the Liberals/NDP’s is seen as abnormal and giving more power to the Bloc than it should have. But that’s not how things work in a Parliamentary system; I’m sure to people in many countries the idea that the party with the largest number of seats should form the government would be seen as unusual.
Explain to me in which way do Eastern Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba want “provincial rights”.
Didn’t your Premier a few days ago say he was worried that the negative talk about the BQ/Liberals/NDP forming a coalition could affect the outcome of the provincial election and get the PQ elected there because of it? He made is sound like a bad thing that other Canadians should care about. Why should anyone outside of Quebec care what party runs Quebec? What is the insinuation there?
I never said the ROC would expel Quebec. I said what would happen if the ROC decided to leave Quebec, just as Quebec would leave Canada if they vote ‘Yes’ on their next referendum (whenever that is).
But they haven’t made any deals with the Bloc to support them to get the legislation passed. Frankly, I wish MP’s would vote independently of their parties so that legislation would get passed without party politics interfering with good legislation, or keeping bad legislation alive when it should be killed.
You and matt are simply not reading what I’m writing. I do not need you to tell me what the Bloc is about. There is no actual residency requirement for that particular skillset.
If the Bloc evolved into an actual federal provincial rights party they would naturally want to run candidates in various parts of the country. Since most parties actually want to win seats they tend to focus on regions they can actually win. The best place, initially, for the new kids in the Bloc would be Franco Ontario, Manitoba and parts of New Brunswick. Why there? Obviously because as a party that grew out of Quebec and filled to the rafters with French speaking members, adjacent or linguistically similar regions hold the best chance for initial electoral success.
And I can’t believe you don’t consider Churchill Falls to be an obstacle to an evolved Bloc in Newfoundland and Labrador.
You can find blogs that claim the moon landing didn’t happen.
Look, there are assholes on the Internet who say nasty things about Quebec. I hate that and wish they’d shut up. But you cannot deny that criticism of Quebec in polite society and the media is something people are extremely sensitive about as evidence by this very board and the talk in the Canadian media TODAY. Anyone who criticizes the BQ is almost obliged to point out that the BQ doesn’t equal Quebec. It’s already been implied that I’m a bigot and I haven’t said word one about Quebec being a “sick society” or any such nonsense.
Much of the talk these last two weeks has been about how all this criticism of the BQ is great for separatists and would hurt the Charest campaign in today’s election (the latter of which appears, from polls, to be nonsense.) “Whither Quebecois opinion?” is one of the major themes of this crisis - in fact, in many respects it’s overshadowing CANADIAN opinion; the fact that the country as a whole is strongly opposed to coalition, would rather have no change in government and would rather have an election if there is a nonconfidence vote, and would likely vote in a huge Conservative majority if an election was held today is something that’s being reported by every major polling agency but isn’t even being reported by some major media outlets. Of course you can track the likelihood of mentioning this by political position but, still, it’s amazing to me the Toronto Star would deliberately avoid reporting objective evidence that Canadians are opposed to this. And I’ve heard very, very little commentary from the media, and then only from specific sources that are already Conservative-leaning, about how a coalition government would infuriate Western Canada and result in a huge political backlash.
To be honest, that was one of the reasons I didn’t vote for them, though to be fair I don’t know if they didn’t run candidates there because they didn’t want to or because they simply couldn’t organize sufficiently to get on the ballot. But they paid for it. It’s notable that the Conservative movement didn’t get back into government UNTIL Stephen Harper made it a priority to win seats in Quebec. And rightly so, I think.
Matt was wrong, b ecause he didn’t understand what Grey was saying. Grey is envisioning what the Bloc would have to do to impress him, and he’s right. It’s not going to happen, but that’s not his point; he’s speaking in hypotheticals.
I’d think Grey’s approach for what the BQ would have to do to become a national, provincial-rights party is about as reasonable a strategy as any; win the support of FRancophone voters. Campaign hard for language rights. You could take the other approach, which is to swing towards a hard line provincial rights stance and then it might make more sense to approach disaffected provinces, e.g. Alberta or Newfoundland & Labrador. But that’s an issue of strategy for a hypothetical scenario that isn’t going to happen and we could argue either side with whatever imaginary scenarios we want. Matt’s comment was, in my opinion, nothing more than “you’re ignorant” and there’s no evidence Grey is ignorant.
There is no constitutioanl provision for this and any attempt to do so would almost certainly be shot down by the Supreme Court faster than an Iraqi fighter plane. It’d be unconstitutional for more reasons than I can count. It could only happen with Quebecs approval, in which case it’s not “expulsion.”
Technically yes, since it’s a constitutional amendment. Quebec could always unilaterally secede, but it would have no legality and would open up the possibility of civil war. As you point out, Constitutional agreement of some kidn would likely happen if Quebec voted to separate in accordance with the Clarity Act.
Why should you care what Charest says? He only wants you to care because it serves his own political purposes. He called this election not because we needed one, but because, like Harper, he thought he could get a majority, and unlike Harper, he may actually pull it off. It’s true that when Quebecers perceive that the rest of the country despises them, they’re more likely to vote for the PQ, but if you don’t care about this (and I don’t think you should care what government Quebec or any other province other than your own elects), no one is stopping you from saying whatever you want.
But many Canadians outside of Quebec seem to care what government Quebec elects. This leads me to wonder whether you (generic you) just don’t trust us to be able to govern ourselves, and if this is the case, why. I tell you, just stop looking at us and everything will be better.
What does this entail? I don’t think I understand what you mean.
So you want a system closer to the American one? This may or may not be a good idea, but realize that if we remain in a Parliamentary system, we will in fact need to keep a fair amount of party discipline in place.
But that’s the thing: francophones in Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick do not want to vote for a provincial rights party, and I certainly don’t blame them. Unless they’ve given up on the whole French thing (which happens), what they want is a strong federal government to support official bilingualism policies and try to convince the provinces to offer minority language services. They do not want the issue of language to be left to the provinces. This is what I was trying to say: Quebec nationalists and minority francophones do not have the same goals, and in fact their goals are near-impossible to conciliate.
If I may have been a little curt with Grey, it’s because I feel the idea – apparently held by many Canadians – that Quebecers (francophone ones anyway) and minority francophones are part of the same people is a bar to what we’re currently trying to do in Quebec, that is, build a nation (not necessarily an independent country) operating in French out of people of many origins.
What I’m saying is that I saw on a blog a reference (unsourced, I admit) to English Canadian major media calling Quebec a sick society. I can certainly believe it. There are whole books devoted to the issue of Quebec-bashing in Canadian media, but feel free to refuse to believe it exists. I already [thread=388957]pitted the issue[/thread] in the past, and your response was that the author of the column that prompted my pitting had no credibility anyway. But she’s far from the only one; I guess all of them have no credibility as well, right?
I deny this, obviously. I think it’s quite common for Canadian “polite society” and media to criticize Quebec, sometimes for no good reason. And while Quebecers do criticize the rest of Canada, they very rarely criticize how the rest of Canada operates, and how you people govern yourselves. For the most part we don’t care.
Not really, but people have wondered why you’re so violently opposed to the Bloc québécois. I don’t think you’re a bigot, but I must admit that when what you’re saying is basically “unlike other Canadians, francophone Quebecers cannot tolerate any kind of criticism”, which is not only untrue but also rather offensive, I wonder what your opinion of Quebec and Quebecers is.
I know Western Canada is opposed to the coalition, you know Western Canada is opposed to the coalition. How can you claim it’s being suppressed? I certainly heard about it in the media I peruse (Quebec media, which if anything should be even more all-about-Quebec than Canadian media from outside Quebec).
Now you’re backing away. Grey was wrong, he didn’t know that francophone Quebecers and francophones in the rest of Canada had different political goals. It’s not such a big deal, he’ll know it in the future. The odds of the Bloc starting to “[c]ampaign hard for language rights” are about the same as the odds of the Conservatives suddenly converting to social democracy.
Just another thing:
I did say that the odds of the Bloc starting to run candidates in Newfoundland were nil. But in theory, it makes more sense than them starting to campaign for official bilingualism and running candidates in francophone ridings outside of Quebec. But yes, I believe Newfoundlanders tend to be suspicious of things coming from Quebec, in part because of the Labrador territory and hydro power issues.
This said, if I remember correctly, the Churchill Falls issue was that Newfoundland and Quebec had signed a contract stating that Newfoundland would sell electricity to Quebec at a fixed rate for a certain number of years, and while this contract was quite fair at the time, ultimately it ended up favouring Quebec. And the Quebec government didn’t want to renegociate the contract since it was under no obligation to do so. But for some reason, when the issue flared up, all of the English Canadian media took the side of the Newfoundlanders against the eeeevil heartless Quebecers who didn’t want to pay their electricity at a decent price. But it was mostly a commercial dispute, and no side had the moral high ground over the other. While this is not “Quebec-bashing”, it seems to me that it shows that English Canadian media tends to disfavour Quebecers. Correct me if I’m wrong.
All of who? You’ve referred to a blog that refers to a column written by a nitwit. I don’t know how to respond to that.
Holy moly. You’re wondering? Why? It’s no mystery; I must have explained this a hundred times, and it’s not like I don’t feel the way millions and millions of other people feel. But let me spell it out a little more clearly:
I DESPISE THE BLOC QUEBECOIS BECAUSE THEY ARE DEDICATED TO DESTROYING MY COUNTRY. They want to break the country up. I believe, with good reason, that this would fundamentally and profoundly damage both Quebec and the rest of the nation.
Again; if you DON’T think they’re a separatist party, read their platform.
I have said nothing of the kind. I’ve said not a single word about what Quebecers will or will not tolerate. Please retract this statement.
You’re not reading people’s posts carefully. My point was not just that Western Canada is opposed to the coalition but that ALL Canada as a whole is opposed to it - every major polling firm has found this - and that the story has been deemphasized in most outlets, except for some notable right-wing sources, who of course play it up for all the reasons you’d expect.
You would think that the massive opposition to the coalition government would be not just another story, but a lead story.
I suppose he would be wrong if he’d said that. But he didn’t, just as I never said a goddamned thing about whether or not Quebecers can take criticism. I’m sorry, but if you’re just going to argue against what you assume other people are writing, rather than what they actually are, we’re not going to be able to exchange information. Perhaps you’ve had bad experiences with people from the rest of Canada being assholes about Quebec; it’s certainly possible and would predispose someone to assuming that they’re going to just get more of the same. Maybe that’s the issue, I don’t know. But you keep ascribing things to me (and Grey) that we never said, never implied, and don’t believe. How’m I supposed to defend words you’re putting into my mouth? (Or fingers, I guess, this all being written?)
Hey, it’s nothing personal, but when you tell me that I’m saying “unlike other Canadians, francophone Quebecers cannot tolerate any kind of criticism” when I didn’t say anything of the sort, how do I respond to that? I really have no idea. Perhaps my point wasn’t clear, and if so, I apologize for not being as clear as I could be. But I sure as shit didn’t say THAT. I’ve read my posts again to make sure, and didn’t even come close to that.
Newfoundlanders are, remember, the rest-of-Canada paradigm for jokes about stupid people, so it’s not like they have a huge amount of sympathy out this way. While I’m sure the folks in Newfoundland made much talk about theeeevil Quebecers, bear in mind it’s a Newfoundland cottage industry to say everyone else is eeeevil. The rest of Canada’s always evil. That’s standard politics there.
Only a complete fool or idiot fails to care or be interested in the government of a region of their country that hold 20% of the population.
But again you resort to a defensive posture based only on your own personal imaginings.
Grey was just fine actually. You simply don’t listen, nor do you instruct particularly well even when it isn’t needed or requested.
You do realize it was a hypothetical as to what the Bloc - a separatist federal party - could do to make me accept their role in the government of this country? Right? You caught that I hope because the plan I laid out seems the most reasonable, to me, for them to achieve it. Of course french speaking regions are not likely to vote for a provincial rights party. HOWEVER, and pay attention here the hypothetical gets thick, if you are a Quebec based party trying to grow outside your traditional base, then the most (again pay attention) likely course of action is to grow in regions geographically close and linguistically similar.
As far as I can tell you have a deep desire to have such a decentralized federal system that Canada as a nation state would ultimately disintegrate into loosely coupled regions that would become either subsumed or relegated to rump nation status. I have no desire for such a decentralized plan and no plan to try and help achieve it.
Not at all. Is full scale civil war unlikely? Of course. Possible? You’d have to be Pollyanna to think some violence is not possible. Think of the ugliness and sociopolitical implications; half of Quebec is populated largely by aboriginal bands implacably opposed to separation. Tensions would be high. The eastern townships would be intensely bitter. Various territorial and access disputes would arise.
A separation could go very smoothly, of course, as it did with Czechoslovakia and various Soviet republics, but you just don’t know what might pop out of Pandora’s box once it’s opened. Obviously I think we could do it peacefully, but I think we should be aware of the possibility of ugliness as the best defense against letting it happen.
Fair enough; I shall try to find a scholarly exposure of the phenomenon of Quebec bashing in Canadian media. I said whole books were written on the subject, it’s up to me to find them.
Yes, this is what you’ve said, but I must admit that have trouble understanding what, at a basic, emotional level, is your attachment to Quebec being a part of Canada. I know this is because of our different political opinions and the different views we have of Quebec and Canada, but in my mind, if Quebec separates from Canada, most of the problems that may ensue will happen inside of Quebec. You’re in Ontario so this won’t affect you, and in fact it seems likely that if Quebec separates but maintains close economic ties to Canada so there is no major disruption (which is what should happen), Canada would become wealthier, Quebec being an important recipient of transfer payments and all this stuff. So why do you object?
Yes, you’ve said before that you expect the separation of Quebec to lead to the complete dissolution of Canada and I’ve said before why I don’t expect this to happen. Maybe I’m underestimating the disruption that would happen, but as I’ve said, most of this disruption would happen inside of Quebec.
And once again, while the Bloc is officially committed to Quebec independence, we all know this is probably never going to happen. The time has passed, and there’s nothing the Bloc can do about it. So they’re not even “dangerous”, if we consider sovereignty a danger for Canada. But the current unofficial orientation of the Bloc (provincial autonomy) is the direction a plurality of Quebecers have chosen. What people were objecting to in your posts, I believe, is the idea that no matter how popular this orientation is, it’s still illegitimate as a part of government or in an official deal with the government. We have to be Liberals, Conservatives or New Democrats if we ever hope to legitimately be able to influence Canada. But what if we agree with none of these parties’ political orientations, and we’re numerous enough to elect an alternative?
Hmmm… I guess you’re right. What I was thinking about was this statement:
I inferred that this meant that you thought Quebecers were more sensitive to criticism (calling it “provocations” and “insults” and “bigotry”), and this is why you were told not to say anything less than nice about us. I guess it doesn’t say anything about us, just about the media you peruse (and “everyone in the Ottawa Valley”, whoever this is). So I did put words in your mouth and I’m sorry. I still think Canadians – even “Ottawa Valley” publications such as the Ottawa Citizen – are much less shy about criticizing Quebec, sometimes in unwarranted ways, than you think they are.
What I’ve heard in the media is that many Canadians oppose the coalition, while many others favour it, and some in these two groups oppose or favour it strongly enough to demonstrate on Parliament Hill. I guess it’s possible that the media didn’t trumpet strongly enough the fact that nearly all Canadians (except in Quebec) are opposed to the coalition. I did see some poll results (after a brief search I found this on Radio-Canada’s website; it points out that the coalition is seen differently in Quebec and in the rest of Canada but still mentions that 45% of Canadians – 68% of Quebecers – think the coalition is democratic; I also found this article in Le Devoir (may require a subscription) that points out the “lukewarm” – I guess you would say this is an understatement – reaction of the Canadian population to the coalition). I could check some English-language news sources as well, but I don’t think the fact that most Canadians disapprove of this coalition has been suppressed.
Uh, what I’m saying is that if I remember correctly, the vast majority of English-language Canadian media took the side of Newfoundland. Not only the Newfoundland media. But it’s been a long time, I was much younger and not really politically aware then, so I may be misremembering.
Well, I am of course interested in Canadian provincial politics, especially large provinces such as Ontario, BC or Alberta, or close ones like NB, but that’s because I’m a political nerd and it’s interesting to see what is the prevailing political climate in my country. But I’m not trying to pretend that it’s any of my business (and I’m not saying you think this either). I won’t try to convince Ontarians to vote Liberal because I don’t like the Conservatives, only they can decide for themselves. (My mother probably has an opinion on Ontario politics, seeing how she’s employed by the Ontario government; I do know that she liked Bob Rae a lot, and still likes him, because his government raised her salary by something like twenty thousand dollars; but how Ontarians govern themselves is still none of her business.) So be interested, sure, but if Jean Charest tells you to do something to ensure his being reelected and getting a majority government, why should you obey him?
OK, fair enough; I can’t read your mind so I can only go with what you’re saying here. The only way you could accept the Bloc ever playing a role in government is if they started being a pan-Canadian party, and you think the most likely way to do this would be to expand in francophone regions; you are aware that this would entail quit being a provincial rights party and adopt a constitutional position closer to the Liberals’ (and in all likelihood lose much of their support in Quebec). In fact:
If I understand you correctly, you will never see the Bloc as legitimate as long as they will push for increased powers for the provincial governments and lessened powers for the federal government. That’s all right, I can respect that, but I’m sure you’ll understand how from your posts I got the idea that you misunderstood the nature of the Bloc and of Quebec nationalism.
And yes, I could certainly go for an even more decentralized Canada. Maybe not to the level of the European Union, but that does seem like an interesting model, about which I unfortunately know very little. (Still, some people, notably in the UK, think the European Union is too much of an infringement on their freedoms.)
Not to get into an argument of who has it worse, but I got chastised on a different message board for calling people “rednecks” there - apparently it is quite rude, but I didn’t know that, since people in Alberta are referred to as rednecks quite frequently. Make of that what you will.
Gah, I give up. You say extreme decentralization will lead to “disintegrat[ion] into loosely coupled regions” that will be “subsumed or relegated to rump nation status”. And that’s not what you think Canada is or should be. Would you still think the result would be legitimate if most Canadians voted for a party or parties with this goal?
I’m trying to understand your point here, but when you’re saying that the most likely way for the Bloc québécois to become a pan-Canadian party is to expand in Eastern Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba, I hope you’ll forgive me for wondering how you got such an odd idea. (Don’t try to re-explain it, you’ve told me how you got this idea and I accept it, but I still think it’s very odd.)
I don’t know if “redneck” is rude (some wear the label proudly, but then again some black people call each other “nigger”), but have Albertans been called rednecks in otherwise serious Canadian media?
As I said in the other thread, I don’t think any answer I provide will not be accused of being “wrong.” I could explain at great length the myriad other possible negative results of bisecting the country, the importance of Canada’s dual-founding-nations character to its ongoing experiments in multiculturalism and tolerance, my belief in the value a citizenship based on civic identify and responsibility rather than cultural or ethnic identities, and why I think Canada is a wonderful experiment in that regard and why its dissolution would likely reverse that experiment, so and and so forth, but I’m honestly unable to muster the energy to write a few hundred words on something that I don’t think anyone will seriously read or care about.
A “sick society”, I suppose, is a society whose values are seriously flawed, but unfortunately I don’t have a cite of Canadian media calling Quebec a “sick society”. I saw this term in a blog comment, but the poster didn’t give any cite.