France: Socialism at its Best

“Not surprisingly, the economy has worsened since the Socialists swept into power in May. Unemployment in November hit a record high, nearing 11%. The recovery of GDP stalled over the summer under the weight of lacklustre consumer spending and shrinking industrial output, especially in the beleaguered auto sector. The iconic firm Peugeot Citreon announced 14,000 layoffs, despite €7-billion in bailouts, as it teeters on the brink of bankruptcy.”

Financial Post, January 8, 2013

By Philip Cross

François Hollande, the president of France, claims to be Mr. Normal. By the standards of France, he may be. He has continued the unbroken string of annual budget deficits that stretch back over 30 years. He wears the anti-business culture of France like a second skin, focusing on preserving ossified existing companies instead of promoting the creation of new ones. No wonder that Gaspard Koenig, a leading libertarian politician in France and former speechwriter for then finance minister Christine Lagarde, called Hollande “the ultimate — and probably also terminal — embodiment of the European-style welfare state.”

The first dramatic gesture he made to his Socialist brethren was to hike the income tax on individuals earning more than €1-million ($1.3-million) to a confiscatory rate of 75%. Even Ontario and Quebec, which raised tax rates on the rich on Jan. 1 to help plug the gaping holes in their budgets, dared not break the 50% barrier, with marginal rates of 49.97% and 49.53% carefully calibrated to stay below the level at which you work more for the government than yourself.

In response to this rampant Jacobinism, the renowned actor Gerald Depardieu renounced his French passport, accepting a Russian passport (in return for calling Russia a democracy, which probably forced him to summon all his acting ability) while taking up residence in Belgium.

In a parting shot to Holland, he said in an open letter that “you think that success, creativity, talent … should be punished.” No word on whether in his next movie he will play George Harrison singing Taxman, a song the Beatles composed in reaction to Britain’s Labour government raising the marginal income tax rate to an extortionary 95% (this also led the Rolling Stones to flee Britain, ironically establishing residence in France, where they recorded Exile on Main St.).

After the ritual accusations by ministers that Depardieu was being selfish and unpatriotic, Hollande weighed in that the solution was greater harmonization of tax rates among EU nations. The problem is that this harmonization won’t be at the rates France wants, not with Germany sitting next door and the French Constitutional Court declaring part of the tax unconstitutional.

The punitive tax hike on the rich was part of a budget that has to meet an EU-mandated target of a deficit no larger than 3% of GDP in 2013 and 2% in 2014. The government decided to try and rein in its deficit mostly with higher taxes and not spending cuts, the opposite of what most economists recommend (money was found for 2,700 inspectors to patrol trains, on the lookout for bad manners, which in France is a national sport). With government revenue projections at risk as growth falters, Moody’s in November followed Standard and Poor in stripping France of its coveted AAA bond rating.

Not surprisingly, the economy has worsened since the Socialists swept into power in May. Unemployment in November hit a record high, nearing 11%. The recovery of GDP stalled over the summer under the weight of lacklustre consumer spending and shrinking industrial output, especially in the beleaguered auto sector. The iconic firm Peugeot Citreon announced 14,000 layoffs, despite €7-billion in bailouts as it teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. The sclerotic state of France’s business sector is best summarized by how no new firm has entered the CAC stock market index of France’s 40 largest companies since it was founded in 1987. This is not “preserving France’s industrial base,” as the government advocates; this is freezing it in the past while the rest of the world innovates.

Read more:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/01/07/philip-cross-adventures-in-socialism/

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Quebec’s Separatists Reach Pathetic New Low

“"Of course, the best way to fight French “ethnocide” in the rest of Canada would be for French-speaking parents to send their children to French schools — and, if no such schools are available, to demand the creation of more. The reason that isn’t happening has nothing to do with any evil conspiracy to commit “ethnocide.” Rather, Canadian parents — English and French alike — are surveying Canada’s economic landscape, and realizing that few of the opportunities available to their children will come from Quebec, which persists as a have-not welfare state that survives largely on the basis of equalization handouts from Alberta.”

National Post, February 5, 2013

By Jonathon Kay

Eleven years ago, when Quebec’s provincial government announced it was going to boycott the Golden Jubilee, Mark Steyn provided the definitive explanation for why separatism in that province is doomed. “I’m open to persuasion on the separatist thing,” he told readers. “If Quebec declared independence tomorrow, I’d stick around here. I love the land, I love the food, I love the women. Given the choice between another 20 years under Papa Jean [Chrétien] or a leap into the unknown with a bunch of economic illiterates in thrall to North America’s laziest unions, I’d be willing to take a flyer on the latter, just for a laugh. But it’s never going to happen, and sniping about the Queen is a good example of why the PQ’s doomed … It’s small-minded, and successful nationalist movements need to be grand and romantic.”

At the risk of giving helpful advice to Pauline Marois, I’d say she might take a lesson here. From the point of view of the rest of Canada, the biggest turn-off about Quebec separatism these days isn’t the fact that something like a quarter or a third of Quebecers want to leave Canada — it’s the sad, crabby, passive-aggressive nature of the whole project.

From the top of Mont-Tremblant to the boardwalk on Hallandale Beach, one of Quebec’s claims to “distinct” society status is its flair and joie-de-vivre. Instead, we get a bunch of sour-faced mandarins snooping through municipal newsletters and workplace bulletin boards for English phrases. Who wants to start a new country with a bunch of pouters and professional victims? Even Quebec’s own separatist cadres realize this is a problem: Witness the emergence of the Option Nationale, whose ads and messaging during the 2012 provincial election welcomed Anglophones, and deliberately emphasized the positive aspects of Quebec nation-building.

The latest outbreak of separatist grievance-mongering comes in the form of a new PQ-funded report that claims Ottawa is allowing Anglophone provinces to commit “soft ethnocide” on French speakers around the country. “We’re reminding people of the evolution of Canada when we systematically eliminated French at the start of the 20th century,” said the lead author this week.

What’s “ethnocide” you ask? It’s an obscure term, very occasionally seen in UN reports about Burundi and the hunter-gatherer tribes of the Amazon basin, and such. According to an online encyclopedia, it’s a term that came about during the Jewish holocaust: “The concept of ethnocide was created at the same time as the concept of genocide in 1944 in the United States by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer. Ethnocide is a term that is an alternative to genocide according to Lemkin. The terms were created precisely in regard to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis in the Second World War … For some, [the term now] is also used interchangeably with the term ‘cultural genocide.’ ”

Wow — cultural genocide. What monsters we Anglophones have become.

The reality, of course, is that the greatest act of “ethnocide” (if we are to use that term with a straight face in this context) was self-inflicted by Francophones during the Quiet Revolution. For it was during that period that almost all of the truly distinctive aspects of French-Canadian culture — including farm life, the cultural domination of the Catholic church, and French monolingualism — were swept away by secularism, urbanization, the consumer society, television, and the sexual revolution. And every single one of these latter cultural influences remains powerfully rooted (and even celebrated) in Quebec society to this day — meaning that the “ethnocide” of French Canada is proceeding right under Pauline Marois’ own nose. Ethnocidally speaking, she’s a regular Idi Amin.

Read More:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/02/05/jonathan-kay-with-the-claim-of-soft-genocide-quebecs-desperate-separatists-reach-a-pathetic-new-low/

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Francophone Quebecers are insecure and …

…. unhappy in their own shoes; they are a people with a serious, but unacknowledged, identity problem.

Francophone Quebecers have a predilection for nanny-state legislation enacted to bolster their wobbly self-esteem and protect them from life’s little surprises.

They are especially prone to enacting stringent language laws that will somehow imbue them with powers to vanquish Canadians. To that end, they surreptitiously send their language police into Canada to check restaurant menus for French listings, into airport bookshops to count the number of French titles, and into the crowds to see how many folks respond to their inquiries en francais. An avid franticphone went so far as to sue Air Canada last year, successfully – for $12,000 - for failing to respond in French while serving him his Sprite. The anglicised version of petit is petty; a word that nicely captures their character.

They frantically demand that Canada be bilingual and, inanely, insist that Quebec be unilingual.

There is an English word for this: puerile.

Are these the actions of a capable, confident, and vibrant culture? Hardly. These are the actions of a perpetually troubled people fearful of having to fend for themselves. They are desperately afraid of separating from Canada because their ineptly governed province, riddled with corrupt politicians, faced with an immense provincial debt, decaying infrastructure, loss of transfer payments, and hobbled by a dysfunctional educational system, would promptly collapse into bankruptcy.

If Quebecers were a confident, mature, resourceful people, they would have negotiated a right-of-way with Newfoundland for Churchill Falls power. Not these folks; they petulantly stamped their little feet – and squeaked NON!

If Quebecers were a resolute people, they would have gone their separate way long ago. But then, perhaps they are haunted by their historical inadequacies:

• July 26, 1758: Fort Louisbourg. French commander Ducour surrenders to the British force under Lt. Colonel Wolfe.
  
  
• September 13, 1759: Plains of Abraham. Following a 15-minute battle, French troops under Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm surrender to the British army led by General James Wolfe. Both Wolfe and Montcalm die.
  
  
• February 10, 1763: Treaty of Paris. France cedes Canada to Great Britain.
  
  
• August 3, 1798: Battle of the Nile. The French Navy carrying General Napoleon’s expeditionary force to Egypt is decimated by the British Royal Navy under Rear-Admiral Nelson.
  
  
• March 1803: Napoleon prepares to invade England.
  
  
• November 1803: Saint Dominique (Haiti). Napoleon withdraws 7,000 surviving troops from the island following revolts by the slaves. Abandons efforts to rebuild France’s New World Empire.
  
  
• December 1803: Louisiana Purchase, Needing money to invade England, Napoleon finalizes the sale of territory, stretching from Louisiana to the Rocky Mountains to (what is now) Alberta, to the United States.
  
  
• October 21, 1805: Battle of Trafalgar. The combined French and Spanish navies are defeated by British Royal Navy under Admiral Lord Nelson.
  
  
• June 23, 1812: Napoleon invades Russia. Napoleon commits some 400,000 troops to the campaign and, although he wins in battle, he loses the war. The Russians refuse to capitulate, burn Moscow, and retreat into the hinterlands. Wrote Napoleon, “the French showed themselves to be worthy of victory, but the Russians showed themselves worthy of being invincible." He returns home with a ragtag remnant of 40,000 exhausted troops.
  
  
• April 14, 1814: Britain exiles Napoleon to Elba.
  
  
• February 26, 1815: Napoleon Escapes.
  
  
• June 18, 1815: Battle of Waterloo. Anglo-Allied forces under the command of the Duke of Wellington, along with the Prussian army under Gebhard von Blucher, defeat the French army under Emperor Napoleon.
  
  
• December 1815: Britain exiles Napoleon to Saint Helena.
  
  
• November 1894: The Dreyfus Affair.
  
  
• June 14, 1940: German army enters Paris, without opposition.
  
  
• June 17, 1940: French Marshall Petain capitulates.
  
  
• June 22, 1940: French General Charles Huntziger signs Hitler’s articles of surrender, at Compiegne. Winston Churchill warns the French that Britain will fight on alone whatever they (the French) did. The French Prime Minister tells his cabinet, ’In three weeks, England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.’ Retorted Churchill: ‘Some chicken! Some neck!’
  
  
• June 28, 1940: Britain recognizes General De Gaulle as Free French leader.
  
  
• July 3, 1940: Battle of Mers-el-Kébir: British Navy bombards French Navy, sinking a battleship, damaging five other ships, and killing 1,297 French servicemen. Although France and the United Kingdom were not at war, France had signed an armistice with Germany, and Britain feared the French fleet would end up as a part of the German Navy.
  
  
• August 20, 1941: Drancy internment camp: French police conduct raids throughout the 11th district of Paris and arrest more than 4,000 Jews. Other concentration camps were constructed by the Vichy Regime in which they imprisoned French Jews – 75,000 of whom were transhipped to Nazi camps to be exterminated.
  
  
• February 30, 1966: De Gaulle orders NATO out of France: A few days after returning from his USSR visit, President de Gaulle, “… to preserve French independence in world affairs”, orders the immediate withdrawal of all NATO troops from France soil. Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State, asks de Gaulle “Does your order include the bodies of American soldiers in France's cemeteries?" Mr Rusk writes that de Gaulle  ‘ … did not respond’.
  
  
• July 17, 1995: President Jacques Chirac apologizes.
  
  
• March 12, 2009: Nicholas Sarkozy invites NATO into France "… to ensure French national independence."
  
  
• Le Francophonie, a peculiar collection of French-speaking entities – including the ‘Nation’ of Quebec, met recently in Senegal, a spectacularly corrupt nation in Africa. Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, publicly commented that subsequent meetings should be held in democratic nations. I think not; I think it is entirely appropriate that the Francophonie continue to hold its gatherings in such places; Quebec, at least, would be right at home.
  
  
• Gilles Duceppe, the man pictured above, is the defeated leader of the Bloc Quebecois, the federal separatist party. He lost his seat in the last federal election because he promised yet another separatist referendum. Imagine that: a political leader losing his seat for supporting his constituents' – indeed, his party's - raison d'etre. Does one need further evidence that Quebecers are indeed a conflicted people?
  

(And by the way, here is a link to a site that describes what others, particularly the Brits, think of the French: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1161642/As-France-rejoins-NATO-humorous-reminder-missed-them.html)

Notwithstanding Duceppe’s political machinations dedicated to leading Quebec out of Canada, Canadians will be paying him $140,000 a year for the rest of his life. In other nations, this guy would be tried for treason; in Canada, we file it under Babysitting our petits enfants. JGP

 

The link below from Kim McConnell of Canadians for Language Fairness in Ottawa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABS_VP9gRZA&feature=relmfu

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“English Canadians have nothing to offer us but their stupid mediocrity.”

Canadian Forums, January 2010

Folks, these are the people who transformed our nation.  They consider their task unfinished.

“English Canadians have nothing to offer us but their stupid mediocrity. Everything that weakens and humiliates Canada must cause us to rejoice". Jeanne Sauve, former governor general, 1984-1990"

 

 

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"My roll as Secretary of State of Canada is first and foremost to ensure that my French compatriots in Canada feel with deep conviction, as I do, that this is their country and that it reflects their image".
"I too had some difficult years as a politician; I'm still having them, in fact, because everything we undertake and everything we are doing to make Canada a French state is part of a venture I have shared for many years with a number of people".
"You know the idea, the challenge, the ambition of making Canada a French country both inside and outside Quebec -- an idea some people consider a bit crazy, is something a little beyond the ordinary imagination". Serge Joyal, Secretary of State, but now in the Senate. 'ENOUGH' by J.V. Andrew, P 2.

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“Unilingual Anglophones will be sentenced to a lifetime of job immobility" - Pierre Trudeau.

Pierre Trudeau in 1966. . . when he was parliamentary secretary to PM Pearson stated, “There is no way that two ethnic groups in one country can be made equal before the law! “To say that it is possible is to sow the seeds of destruction”!

Knowing that it was immoral and wrong, two years later as Prime Minister Trudeau forced through his infamous Bilingual program. "Quebec can make French the only official language in spite of the Constitution". Pierre Trudeau, 1967.

" ....Given these facts, should French-speaking people concentrate their efforts on Quebec. or take the whole of Canada as their base? In my opinion, they should do both; and for the purpose they could find no better instrument than federalism", Pierre Trudeau, Page 31 "Federalism", (1968).

"The Canadian community must invest, for the defence and better appreciation of the French language, as much time, energy, and money as are required to prevent the country from breaking up" - Pierre Trudeau, Page 32, "Federalism" (1968) also quoted in “Farewell The Peaceful Kingdom” by Joe Armstrong. 

"Quebec can make French the only official language in spite of the Constitution". Pierre Trudeau, 1967.

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"Bilingualism, in truth, was nothing less than a social revolution…no one in Ottawa in the later 1960's let on that a massive change was about to happen… Trudeau knew this all along. He lied about it as a necessary means to an end". Richard Gwyn in his book the “Northern Magnus”.

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"The separatists' Bill 101 is a brilliant piece of legislation" - Stéphane Dion, Federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs (2001), President of the Queen's Privy Council and newly appointed watchdog over official bilingualism. Presently leader of the Liberals (2001).

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"If Québec separates, I will go with it; my loyalties are with Québec" - Pierre Pettigrew, Federal Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (2001).

 

 

 

 

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"We are never entirely satisfied and we want to promote bilingualism (French) even more than we do now" Lucienne Robillard, President of the Treasury Board, 2001.

 

 

 

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"The French language is mandated for use by government and its agencies throughout the country's capital in an effort to promote the French language, therefore there is no longer a career for Anglophones in the federal civil service in Canada". -Dr. Marguerite Ritchie, President of the Human Rights Institute of Canada, admitting during a panel discussion in 1995.

 

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"I cannot swear it, but I think we were thinking to ourselves,... we are a small group, Trudeau, Pelletier, Marchand, Lalonde, Chrétien, myself and a few people in the civil service, say 50 all told… we were bringing off a revolution. We held the key posts. We were making the civil service bilingual (French), kicking and screaming all the time". Jean-Luc Pepin, Minister of Industry, 1970.

 

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"Canada is going to be a French speaking nation from coast to coast and anybody opposed to this is opposed to the best interest of Canada". Leo Cadieux - speaking to French National Assembly, 1973.
"Canada is going to be a French-speaking nation from coast to coast". Leo Cadieux, Canadian Ambassador to France, 1973.

 

- - - -

Dr. Jim Pankiw, Canadian Alliance MP for Saskatoon-Humboldt, stood up in the house of commons on April 6th, 2001 and asked the liberal government the following questions:
Question No. 1: "Mr. Speaker, Treasury Board statistics confirm that for every increase in the number of federal public service jobs designated bilingual, there is a corresponding decrease in the participation rate of Anglophones in the public service. I should like to know what steps the government is prepared to take to end the systematic discrimination against English speaking Canadians with respect to hiring and promotions".

Response: "Mr. Speaker, this is probably the most insulting question I have ever heard in the House of Commons" Don Boudria, Liberal house leader.

Question No. 2 "Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government's application of forced bilingualism is costly, discriminatory and a source of national divisiveness and disunity. Not withstanding, I ask the Justice Minister why she intervenes on behalf of Ontario Francophones but does not request intervener status to protect Anglophones in Québec. She is prepared to defend the interests of French speaking people in Ontario but she is not prepared to defend the rights of English speaking people in Québec. Why is there a double standard?"

Response: None.

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"There will be no retreat in Quebec on the French language policy". Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Dec. 12th, 1986.

 

 

 

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"The government of Canada has no right to promote English in Quebec". Gil Remillard, Minister for Inter-Governmental Affairs, 1988.

 

 

 

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"Bilingualism is unthinkable for Quebec". Robert Bourassa, 1988.



 

 

 

 

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 "Language legislation is utterly insane and is designed to encourage bigotry. There is no precedence anywhere for unity being enhanced through a policy of two official languages". Peter Worthington, Financial Post, July ‘88.

 

 

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 "Anyone with a pea for a brain knows that our Canadian federal government is today firmly under French Canadian control". J.V. Andrew, Ret. Lieut. Cmdr. Navy, in his book 'ENOUGH' (Published 1988).

 

 

 

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Dr. Ron Cheffins, Victoria's political science professor and host on CFAX Tuesdays in B.C., is shocked at the new Official Language policy being worked in for April 1, 2004 under the blind eye of unilingual English-speaking Canadians.
The new policy states that all people applying for the top jobs in government, crown corporations, health care among other sectors must be fluent in written and oral French. Prior to this, the policy was that anyone who wanted these jobs had two years to bring their French language skills up to whatever level they needed to do their own job. They would be required to learn it while working on the job.
However, now the policy states that English only speaking Canadians (which of course we know is the majority) are literally locked out of these best jobs and leadership positions! We now have a full fledged dictatorship! What is even more shocking is the fact that no conservatives in any political party in Canada have ever tackled the French on this bilingualism issue. They have remained silent!
This new policy now slams the door on Western Canadians permanently! As it is now, the French control 65% of all administrative positions in government and the military. But the new policy states that everybody applying for any of these jobs must be totally fluent in French, both oral and written before even applying!

A National referendum on this crucial matter has never been conducted in Canada. If a referendum were held, Official Bilingualism would fail and the Constitution would have to be changed! This would end the French domination of the Anglophone population. That is why Ottawa has never permitted nor even discussed a referendum. It is the only way to understand the true needs and wishes of the majority.

In our parliamentary system, the people have no power, Ottawa has it all. In all the past years, not one Conservative leader has dared confront this issue. English speaking Canadians have never had a voice. They were manipulated into it by the leftist Trudeau Liberals. It is obvious that Canadian conservatives have always been impotent in this socialist regime. Why have they left millions of English speaking Canadians and their children unrepresented in the matter?

As long as it remains in place, it will continue to drain the Nation’s coffers while millions who make up the majority of Canada, English speaking, will be discriminated against and will fester with the resentment, anger...you will not be working in the future, or you must speak French to be employed by any level of government.

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http://www.canadaka.net/forums/jibber-jabber-f9/famous-quotes-on-the-language-issues-in-canada-t86426.html

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English Should be the Language of Europe

“English should be the language of Europe, claims Germany's president as he begs Britain not to leave the European Union”

Mail Online, February 22, 2013

By Allan Hall (photo unavailable)

Joachim Gauck

English should become the language of Europe, the German president has claimed. Joachim Gauck made his comments in Berlin as he pleaded with Britain not to leave the European Union.

In remarks unlikely to please the French, Mr Gauck said English had become the ‘lingua franca’ of the continent. ‘One of the main problems we have in building a more integrated European community is the inadequate communication within Europe,’ he said. It is true to say that young people are growing up with English as the lingua franca. ‘However, I feel that we should not simply let things take their course when it comes to linguistic integration.

‘More Europe means multilingualism. I am convinced that feeling at home in one’s native language and its magic and being able to speak enough English to get by in all situations and at all ages can exist alongside each other in Europe.’ Mr Gauck also pleaded with Britain to stay in the EU.

Referring to David Cameron’s pledge of an in/out referendum on the EU Gauck said in a keynote speech: 'Dear English, Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish and new British citizens. We would like to keep you! “We need your experiences as the country with the oldest parliamentary democracy, we need your traditions, your soberness and your courage.”

'You helped with your deployment in World War II to save our Europe - it is also your Europe.  ‘More Europe should not mean "without you," he said to thunderous applause at his palace in Berlin in his first major address since taking on the job nearly a year ago.

Aware that a powerful Germany is now seen as a bully in many European countries - dictating austerity in cash-strapped nations - he insisted in his televised speech: “We don’t want to browbeat others, or press our concepts on them. We stand however by our experiences and would like to convey them,' recalling that less than a decade earlier Germany had been the 'sick man of Europe’.”

The president, whose has a largely ceremonial and moral leadership role, conceded that a 'structural flaw' led to an imbalance in the European Union which was only “patched up by emergency measures, such as the European Stability Mechanism and the fiscal compact.” He also conceded that most of what the EU’s 500 million citizens have read or heard about the 27-member bloc over the past few years has tended to be about the eurozone crisis. “This is also a crisis of confidence in Europe as a political project. This is not just a struggle for our currency; we are struggling with an internal quandary too.”

The president then went on to remind his audience, which was largely made up of people under the age of 30, of the achievements of the EU since it began as a trading block in the post-war years - including the fact that the bloc 'has been at peace ever since.'

After all, he said, 'it was from our country that the attempts to destroy everything European, all universal values were unleashed.

Despite everything that happened, the Allies granted our country support and solidarity straight after the war,' he said. 'We were invited, received and welcomed.' The president also stressed that despite its economic might, Berlin had no aspirations of imposing 'a German diktat.'

Gauck, an activist pastor from former communist East Germany, defined what Germany owed to Europe and the western Allies in rebuilding after the devastation of WWII. 'We were spared at the time what could have easily followed after our hubris, an existence as an outcast stranger outside of the community of nations.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282992/English-language-Europe-claims-Germanys-president-begs-Britain-leave-European-Union.html

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The Corrupt Children of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution

“The promise of 1962 was that a new elite would leave behind the cronyism and corruption of the old order, ruled as it was by the Church in culture and the English in business. That, 50 years on, Quebec would be having yet another of its periodic corruption inquiries was not the dream of 1962.”
“This is something more than just another Quebec corruption scandal. It is the betrayal of the grand project of 1962. The new masters of the house came, and they looted it.”

National Post, November 15, 2012

By Father Raymond J. de Souza
 

Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

So there are some limits. Gilles Vezina, a senior Montreal bureaucrat, testified this week that bribes and kickbacks were part of the “business model” of his city’s public works contracting. However, on Tuesday he told the Charbonneau commission that he turned down the offer of prostitutes. Hockey tickets, yes; hookers, no. There is apparently still honour among thieves.

Monsieur Vezina was, once upon a time, among the new generation of leaders who would build the new Quebec - secular, centralized, nationalist - under the direction of the state. They were the bold souls who would lift the veil on la grande noirceur (“the great darkness”, as it is called) of the Maurice Duplessis years. It turns out that Quebec’s new bureaucratic elite rather liked working the shadows themselves.

Gilles Vezina

Wednesday marked the 50th anniversary of the provincial election that gave birth to modern Quebec. After the death of Duplessis in 1959, and of his successor Paul Sauve only a few months later, Liberal Jean Lesage swept to a majority in 1960, defeating the Union Nationale. Yet only two years into a majority mandate, Lesage returned to the polls early on Nov. 14, 1962, winning a fresh mandate for a radical new vision. While in 1960 Lesage ran under the slogan of generic change – C’est le temps que ca change (it’s time things changed) in 1962, he unfurled the banner of the Quiet Revolution: Maitres chez nous (Masters in our own home).

The key proposal was the nationalization of the hydroelectric industry. The new pilot of Quebec’s economic development would be Lesage’s star minister, Rene Levesque.

The promise of 1962 was that a new elite would leave behind the cronyism and corruption of the old order, ruled as it was by the Church in culture and the English in business. That 50 years on Quebec would be having yet another of its periodic corruption inquiries was not the dream of 1962.

If 1962 marked a new moment for Lesage and Levesque, it also brought Pierre Trudeau to new prominence. That year, he published in Cite libre his famous essay, La Nouvelle Trahison des Clercs, excoriating Quebec’s new intellectual class. Trudeau accused them of betraying Quebec by their embrace of nationalism and separatism.

Trudeau’s title was adapted from Julien Benda’s 1927 book La Trahison des Clercs, in which the French writer assailed his own country’s intellectuals for abandoning their classical Christian tradition in favour of ignoble political ideologies, including those of nationalism and race. It was translated into English as the “betrayal of the intellectuals.” But clercs in the original French has a powerful dual significance. The secular intellectuals were the new clercs, taking over the role once played in France by the actual clergy.

Quebec decided in 1962 to entrust its future to another breed of clercs, the actual clerks of the modern state bureaucracy. If the problem of the great darkness was that it was priest-ridden, the new Quebec would be led into the light by the trained, efficient clerks of its public service. They would run not only public services, but the electricity industry, the education establishment and much else besides.

Trudeau saw all this emerging, and sounded the alarm in that critical year. The new clercs were committing a new betrayal, he argued. They were handing over the rights of Quebecers to another collectivist dream.

Read more:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/11/15/father-raymond-j-de-souza-the-quiet-revolutions-corrupt-children/

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