Harper might boost Quebec seats: Layton

CBC – Sat, 28 May, 2011

Opposition Leader Jack Layton says he believes Prime Minister Stephen Harper is prepared to find common ground with the NDP and give Quebec more seats in the House of Commons.

In an exclusive interview with CBC Radio's The House, airing Saturday, Layton said he talked to Harper about the issue on the night of Harper's majority victory, which also saw NDP make stunning seat gains in Quebec at the expense of the Bloc Québécois.

"I said to Stephen Harper on election night, 'Look, we now have most of the seats in Quebec  , you don't have very many,'" Layton told host Kathleen Petty.

"One of our challenges and one of the opportunities both that we have, as different as we are on so many issues, is we gotta make this country work. And let's put a real focus on that. I'm ready to work with you on it."

When asked whether Harper has since showed a willingness to compromise on seat re-distribution, Layton said his party has heard from government sources that the Conservatives are "beginning to understand that perhaps an adjustment there might be necessary."

"That's good news," Layton said. "We've got to remember all the principles that make this country work, and yes, we need those additional seats [in Quebec]."

The Conservatives proposed in April that Canada's three fastest-growing provinces should get more seats in the House of Commons by 2014, with Ontario gaining 18 seats, British Columbia gaining seven and Alberta five.

Under the proposed legislation, all other provinces, whose populations are not growing as quickly, would be guaranteed to keep the number of seats they have. Quebec currently holds 75 out of 308 seats, 24.4 per cent of seats, despite having 23.2 per cent of Canada's population.

When asked whether Canadians would accept Quebec getting more seats despite already being over-represented in terms of population, Layton said a balance must be struck.

"We have to represent and recognize in this delicate dance of statecraft some of the other principles that were on the minds of our founders when they set down and laid things out, that striking that balance and having Canadians accept that there need to be some kind of compromise," he said.

Canada's three large provinces are already scheduled to gain more seats after the 2011 census under the existing formula. Ontario is set to gain four seats, British Columbia will get two and Alberta will get one.

The last time the government changed the seating formula was in 1985.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/harper-might-boost-que-seats-layton-142344096.html

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Quebec makes itself the most unpopular Province in Canada

May 29, 2011

By Kim McConnell

Quebec goes out of its way to make that province the most unpopular in Canada.  It was bad enough when it was led by the Bloc Quebecois but now that it is led by the NDP, it is even more obnoxious.  Layton, an ex-Quebecer who left that province because as an English Quebecer, even though he was a perfectly bilingual one, he had no future there. 

However, now that he has managed to con the BQ supporters into giving him a chance, he is using all his car-salesmanship to show them that he can get all the goodies that the BQ promised but couldn’t deliver.  Here is what he has promised them:

• 1. Quebec can separate from Canada with a 50% + 1 vote in a referendum.  The Supreme Court has ruled that a clear majority is needed (that’s at least over 60%).
  • 2. Quebec can write its own question – no need for the Supreme Court to decide whether the question is clear enough.
  • 3. Quebec can demand an increase in representation and ensure that its proportion in Parliament is kept the same.  Quebec is guaranteed 75 seats (no matter what happens to their population).  With the current situation Quebec is already over-represented (it now holds 24.4% of the seats while only having 23.2% of the population).
  • 4. Quebec can impose Bill 101 on all federally run agencies (at the moment, they have to follow the rules of the OLA).
  • 5. Quebec can demand that Canada gives them compensation for the harmonization of the PST & the GST even though the harmonization they did was 20 years ago and they were the sole beneficiaries.  The other provinces (Ontario & B.C.) gave control of the collection of the HST to the Federal government.  Quebec still controls the collection of the taxes.

Through the years when a Quebec Prime Minister was in charge of Canada (Trudeau, Mulroney, Chretien & Martin), Quebec has been given one concession after another.They have total control over :

• immigration
• tax collection
• their own police force
• their own language laws. 

Have I missed anything?

Harper made a serious error of giving them the status of a “nation”.  He meant that the Quebecois was a “nation”, same as the Indian tribes were known as “nations”.   This was an attempt at appeasement that didn’t work.  All of that to no avail – Quebecers (at least a substantial number of the noisy ones) are still not satisfied.

Now it is suggested that Harper is going to concede to this seat representation demand?  I hope that Harper won’t do such a foolish thing.  Already he is being severely criticized for having an over-sized Parliament.  The proposed increase in seats will give Ontario 18 extra seats (total 124); Alberta 5 extra seats (total 33) & BC 7 seats (total 43).  The House will have to accommodate 351 MPs. 

Bob B. writes:

“I believe the US, with 10 times our population, has only 435 members in their House.  Are we THAT inefficient, or our Members THAT incompetent,  that our only recourse is to add more and more MPs?”

Supporters of the Conservative government are very unhappy at the thought that they are still pandering to Quebec:

Absolutely Kim. There is no need whatsoever for the government to pander to Quebec on this issue. It is time to say NO to their ridiculous demands. Layton of course is the new guardian of Quebec’s interests in the federal parliament and will continually ask for all kinds of outrageous political concessions. 

There is no need to compromise on this issue.   Alberta, B.C. and Ontario qualify and deserve the representation that these new seats will give them. Quebec does not qualify. Period. You can be sure that if the shoe was on the other foot Quebec would  not give an inch.

The Conservatives have to be seen as a party of fairness and not just another vehicle to promote the interests of Quebec. Layton of course could be just out fishing with his comments. He  is an unprincipled scoundrel who totally exemplifies the term ‘self serving politician’. I will get some letters off on this. Thank you for the spread sheet.

As an after thought, Quebec is grossly over represented in the Supreme court of Canada. It is guaranteed three Justices, the same as Ontario which has over fifty percent more people. The west with a combined population of over ten million people only gets two. The Maritime provinces get one.  Maybe Layton would like to address all of that. 

Orlin 

-----

Hi Kim,

This better just be wishful thinking on the part of Layton, as that smiling little piglet is now representing his constituents just the way they expected him to; by demanding that Quebec continue to be over-represented in the House of Commons and that the Western provinces and Ontario continue to be under-represented.

If Harper caves on this issue, after the shit-sandwich served to him by Quebec, I'll lose all respect for him. We need to get on this issue immediately and make sure that Canadians in Ontario and out West know the nasty little game that Layton and Quebec and trying to play in order to perpetually ensure French Canadian dominance in the political affairs of our country.

Tony

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“The Trouble with Canada….still”

Author William Gairdner interviewed by Mark Sutcliffe of CFRA

Canadians for Language Fairness, December 28, 2010

By Kim McConnell

It still puzzles me why most Canadians are still not aware of the reasons for Canada being such an unhappy country – there are so many problems and none of them are easy to solve. 

Listen to this interview by CFRA’s Mark Sutcliffe and send your comments to William Gairdner at wgairdner@gmail.com

Those of us who have been paying attention will agree with Mr. Gairdner’s list of problems.  I mention here just a partial list:

 

• Welfare Statism
• Canada’s Health-care
• The Criminal Justice System
• Multiculturalism, Immigration and Terrorism
• Trudeau’s Charter

My focus is on Chapter 14 entitled, French-Fried – Official Bilingualism, Separatism and the Politics of Language & Culture.  He gives a complete history of how this is the result of the attempt to turn Canada into a socialist state. 

“The crucial national factor in this story was that Canada’s history of blandishments to French Canadians, once in the hands of the master politician Pierre Trudeau, became a key tool in the creation of his dream:  a more socialist nation, from sea to sea, along French rationalist lines…..What Trudeau’s Charter would eventually achieve legally, his 1969 OLA achieved culturally.  But his game plan went unnoticed by most English Canadians, who still see the learning of French simply as a fine (even a snobbish) cultural achievement.  Of course, learning any additional language is indeed a fine achievement.  But Trudeau’s official bilingualism was not primarily about language.  It was about national political power and unity.  What Trudeau wanted most---disliking intensely what he considered irrational English-style checkerboard federalism in general, and free-market capitalism in particular--- was a strong socialist nation governed by uniform national regulations, standards, and funding, coast to coast.”

The paragraph on the cost of Official Bilingualism ended in this sentence:

“Federally at least, Canada would today be a debt-free nation”

if not for the mandated spending on bilingualism by the public and private sectors over the past 40 years. 

There is so much that I could quote from Mr. Gairdner’s book but I will be selective.

“So here’s the picture:  we have a situation in which full and free language rights have been legally suppressed for English speakers living in Quebec, at the same time as all other Canadians are being told their public and commercial world must by law become increasingly bilingual.  The result is that since the 1970s unilingual Canadians have had a much harder time gaining public or private employment wherever bilingualism is required.  The government of Canada is our largest employer by far, and as we have seen, offers very cushy jobs with wages above the private sector equivalent with dream pensions.  But as journalist Richard Gwyn puts it, those in the majority were destined “to be disadvantaged in life, through no fault of their own…The central inescapable fact of bilingualism [is] clear: it mean[s] loss of power for unilingual English Canadians.”

Gairdner also quotes from Peter Brimelow:

“they [unilingual Anglophones] constitute an improbably large bloc…to be permanently reduced to the status of second-class citizens”.

He continues:

“That the children of the majority should be required to bear the brunt of acculturation, particularly when their language is that of the entire continent, is a measure of the extent to which the [French] minority has the moral [and political] initiative in Canada”

My particular interest is in his final paragraph, “What’s Next?” 

“Canada must return to a condition of true federalism….means a return to our original pre-Trudeau decentralization:  more or less a sovereign nation of sovereign provinces, the central government and the provinces each with well-defined rights and obligations according to general or local matters, accordingly.  That is exactly what Canada’s original Constitution – the 1867 BNA Act—prescribed.  That was our founding British vision”

“But to return to the vision of our founders, to that original freedom and independence from all-pervasive Statism, we would need to scrap the Charter, return to our Common Law roots, stop all socialist transfer payments to provinces (and regions); live within our means both provincially and nationally, withdraw central government from all provinces in all areas from which the general government is barred by the BNA Act.  Then Quebec, like every other province, could live in peace and tolerably run its own affairs.  Quebec could continue as a French-style welfare state within Canada all on its own but without taking money from the rest of us to do that.”

Now who can disagree with that?

Kim

Un tete-a-tete

 

… Quebec's workplace health and safety board had deleted its "Press 9 for English" option on its automated telephone answering service.

National Post, December 11, 2010

By Kathryn Blaze Carlson

In its 40 years of existence, official bilingualism in Canada has been conferred a sort of religious mystique--heralded as a unifying force, accepted as an untouchable sacred cow, and decried a decade ago by the current prime minister as the "god that failed."

And yet, for a policy that riles nationalist sentiment -- and costs the federal government upward of $1.8-billion annually, according to a Fraser Institute report -- official bilingualism is the elephant in the room: Few federal politicians have dared to deal with its weight, which over the decades has crushed those who challenge Canada's linguistic duality or the way it is implemented.

Nevertheless, there are those who now ask: Is it time for a frank conversation on bilingualism in Canada, where 40% of federal public-service positions require knowledge of both official languages? Is it time for Canadians, whose rate of bilingualism has hovered at roughly 17% for years, to take a hard look at the way the government administers language policy from sea to sea to sea?

Is it time to examine the $1.8-billion annual bill to see what, exactly, those taxpayer dollars glean -- especially at a time when one in five Canadians are foreign-born, and are likely to speak a number of other international languages?

More importantly, is this kind of national discussion welcomed, or even possible?

"If we're spending as much as we seem to be spending, and if we're getting as poor a result as we appear to be getting, then maybe we should reconsider the whole thing," said Link Byfield, former publisher of the now-defunct Alberta Report and a Wildrose Alliance party founder and candidate.

"It may be that the time has come to review the application of the Official Languages Act to see if there can be some savings," echoed Donald Savoie, a Moncton, N.B., scholar who says he firmly supports linguistic duality. "It's a sacred cow, but that doesn't mean that it should be a sacred budget."

In the past eight days alone, Canadians have on four occasions been reminded of the cost and contentious nature of Canada's linguistic duality: First, the B.C. RCMP announced that the publication of online news releases would be delayed by a day to allow for French translation - in a province where 1.5% of the population declares French as their mother tongue, and where Chinese and Punjabi are heard far more often.

Second, it was revealed that language-training expenses at the Treasury Board Secretariat have jumped five-fold in the past five years, from $428,490 to $2.1-million in the latest fiscal year. Next, news broke that Quebec's workplace health and safety board had deleted its "Press 9 for English" option on its automated telephone answering service.

Finally, the Senate (for the 15th time) hotly debated a bill that would require Supreme Court judges to be fluently bilingual. The controversial bill has already passed third reading in the House of Commons -- proof, some have argued, that official bilingualism is almighty, trumping even legal competency.

Official language rights are entrenched in Canadian legislation that dates as far back as the Constitution Act of 1867, but which are most famously outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and then prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau's 1969 Official Languages Act.

"In all parts of the country, within both language groups, there are those who call for uniformity," Mr. Trudeau told the House of Commons in 1968, before the act was enshrined. "It will be simpler and cheaper, they argue. In the case of the French minority, isolation is prescribed as necessary for survival."

Today, naysayers still question whether the cost of official bilingualism fits the benefits.

"The federal government's approach to official bilingualism is kind of like this: They want to paint one object, but they line up 10 and they throw a bucket of paint at them all," said Kevin Gaudet, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. "Of course they end up painting the one bucket, but you also end up painting the other nine. It's overkill."

Mr. Gaudet questions whether federal offices should be forced to offer both French and English in areas where the linguistic minority comprises as little as 5% of the population, as mandated by the Official Languages Act.

The government is also obliged to offer services in both official languages at all departmental headquarters, as well as to the traveling public, for example at border crossings or at airports that serve more than one million passengers annually.

"Something like 15% of the population [speaks French], and some small subset of that number doesn't even speak any English," Mr. Gaudet said. "And yet the thought is, 'Let's spend billions and billions every year for fear that one of those people could trip into an office in Meadow Lake, Sask., and be upset because they couldn't get a government service' " in their mother tongue.

Also among the most hot-button issues is the makeup of the federal public service, where 40% of positions require knowledge of both official languages. About a third of all federal offices are required to offer services in both official languages.

"Services to the public are the face of Canada saying to Canadians, 'This is your country,' " said Graham Fraser, the Official Languages Commissioner of Canada, who was reached this week in Spain after attending a UNESCO conference in Egypt.

Over the past decade, Ottawa has imposed stricter bilingualism requirements on senior public servants: Incumbent executives in designated bilingual regions had to improve their language skills to reach an advanced level of bilingualism, and deputy ministers were required to reach proficiency in French and English.

Some argue that those sorts of language requirements unfairly squeeze out anglophone Canadians, particularly in the West, who seek to rise in the federal public service. They argue that this in turn perpetuates resentment of Ottawa by the West, which decreasingly sees itself reflected in the federal government.

And then there is the cost of language training: Across the country, unilingual employees striving for a promotion can seek approval from their manager to leave their post for months on end to learn French or English at the expense of Canadian taxpayers.

Recently, though, individual departments took over responsibility for language training, and their budgets dictate a tighter leash on those taxpayer dollars, Mr. Fraser said. When asked whether any federal dollars have been wasted or misspent on official bilingualism, Mr. Fraser said "yes," and said he believes the training program "got misused."

It is all but impossible to know exactly how much the federal and provincial governments spend ensuring official bilingualism in Canada. But one of the firmest federal numbers yet emerged last year, when a Fraser Institute study found that the federal government and its Crown corporations spend somewhere in the order of $1.8-billion annually providing French-language services. That amounts to $55 per Canadian.

Mr. Fraser said he does not "challenge nor vouch for" those numbers, and added that it is "not an unreasonable price to pay for what is basically the cost of equality."

The $1.8-billion price-tag includes the cost of an $800 bilingualism bonus paid to federal employees who occupy a bilingual position and meet the language requirements. That amounts to $51-million in bonuses per year-- an amount Mr. Fraser called "an inappropriate use of public funds."

In fact, as was pointed out by Mr. Trudeau in the House of Commons, a salary differential has been paid since 1966 to those holding secretarial, stenographic and typist positions in which both languages are used.

"My predecessor - and my predecessor's predecessor - stopped beating this horse because it's part of the collective bargaining process," Mr. Fraser said of the bilingualism bonus. "Any time I have raised it, people have said, 'Don't go near that.' "

Mr. Byfield said it is precisely this "don't go near that" mentality that has stalled official languages policy in Canada.

"When you see the number that says about 20% of Canadians are now foreign-born, the old sort of 1960s bicultural, binational delusion is seen for what it is," he said. ''There has to be something of a national discussion on this.... But it's hard to do this if you can't talk about it in Parliament, and you can't."

Indeed, even musing on official bilingualism -- and even doing so outside of Parliament -- draws fire upon politicians.

Conservative MP Scott Reid, author of Lament for a Notion: The Life and Death of Canada's Bilingual Dream, suggested in 2004 that it might be time to reconsider offering bilingual services coast to coast, in turn forcing Conservative leader Stephen Harper to launch into damage control.

"People have different views on different criteria for service or language of work, but the fundamentals are things we support," Mr. Harper told reporters in Winnipeg at the time. Just three years prior, Mr. Harper wrote in a Calgary newspaper column that, "as a religion, bilingualism is the god that failed. It has led to no fairness, produced no unity, and cost Canadian taxpayers untold millions."

Prof. Savoie, of the Universite de Moncton, said that is not the case in New Brunswick, and said Ottawa could learn from the experiences of Canada's only officially bilingual province.

"First, one has to be patient -- you do not create a bilingual nation overnight," he said from Moncton, the country's first officially bilingual city. "Second, it takes a fair bit of good will, especially as we see governments struggling with some pretty stubborn deficits. There will be pressure to cut or tone down bilingualism, but I would urge caution."

New Brunswick's Official Languages Act is up for review in 2012, after it was declared in 2002 that the act would be revisited each decade. Mr. Savoie said the federal government should take up this 10-year review model, although he conceded that it will take a "fair bit of courage to launch a review."

Mr. Byfield, of the Wildrose Alliance, said "the government cannot touch this under the current parliamentary system," because national parties depend too heavily on support from both French and English speaking Canada. The only thing that would open the door for a political discussion, he said, would be via a provincially elected Senate.

"Until you can talk about official bilingualism in Parliament, I don't think much can happen," he said.

---------

THE SHIFT AWAY FROM FRENCH

As the proportion of francophones declines in Canada, other languages are increasingly heard in major cities across the country - marking a significant shift in the nation's linguistic landscape.

The 2006 census was telling, and showed that francophones are making up a smaller and smaller proportion of Canada's population: 22.1% of Canada's population reported French as their mother tongue, as compared with 22.9% in 2001. And within Quebec, the francophone population had dipped to 79.6%, marking the first time in 75 years that francophones comprised less than 80% of the population in that province.

Indeed, in many Canadian cities, French is being outpaced by other languages, namely Chinese, Italian, German, Punjabi and Spanish -- all of which have risen in use across the country over the past three decades. About 38% of those in Vancouver report Chinese as their mother tongue, and 8.8% of Torontonians say Italian is their language of choice. There, only 1.7% of the population is francophone.

"I think schools should start to encourage the acquisition of English, French, as well as other global languages," said Fred Genesee, a Canadian expert in second-language learning, adding that the European Union is on track with its own "2+1" language approach. "For those who are a bit lukewarm on bilingualism because they're soured by the nationalism debate, it might be beneficial to conceptualize bilingualism within the idea of preparing our children for a global village."

In fact, there are already those who argue that Canada's linguistic duality drives economic development -- whether via trade, tourism or services offered.

"Come to Moncton, look at the number of jobs that have been created by bilingualism," said Donald Savoie, who holds a Canada Research Chair in public administration and governance at the Universite de Moncton. "There are call centres and businesses in Moncton that service French-speakers in Quebec and France, for example."

Beyond that, Mr. Savoie said, official bilingualism holds an intangible value, as linguistic duality is "part of Canada, it's part of who we are."

He said New Brunswick -- Canada's only officially bilingual province -- has come a long way, offering hope to Canadians who question whether the nation is, after all these years, still headed down the right path.

"I'm of the vintage that remembers Leonard Jones," he said, referring to Moncton's anti-bilingualism mayor. "I remember, on the streets of Moncton, people saying 'Speak white.' You don't hear that any more."

Source: Kathryn Blaze Carlson, National Post

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BY THE NUMBERS

• 24 in millions, approximate number of Canadians likely to interact with the federal government in English
• 7 in millions, approximate number of Canadians likely to interact with the federal government in French
• 6 in millions, approximate number of foreign-born people in Canada
• 4 in millions, approximate number of unilingual francophones in Canada
• 3.9 in million, approximate number of unilingual francophones in Quebec
• 38 as a percentage, Vancouverites who report Chinese as their mother tongue
• 17 as a percentage, Canadians who consider themselves bilingual
• 40 as a percentage, federal public-sector jobs that require knowledge of both official languages
• 33 as a percentage, federal offices that are required to offer services in both official languages
• 1.8 in billions of federal dollars, estimated cost to provide French-language services in Canada in 2006
• 55 in dollars, per capita cost spent federally on official bilingualism in 2006

Sources: Statistics Canada, Fraser Institute report titled Official Language Policies at the Federal Level in Canada

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nationalpost.com/todays-paper/TETE+TETE/3962187/story.html

Supreme Court of Canada remains intact

National Post, December 10, 2010

By Lorne Gunter,

Thank God for the Senate and its willingness to thwart Bill C-232.

It would be far better if the Senate were elected. Then this would be a case of one elected body overturning the will of another. There would be more democratic legitimacy to the move.

Nonetheless, the Senate should be praised for being willing to stop the House of Commons in its attempt to bring in a disastrous, divisive new piece of legislation that would require all future appointees to the Supreme Court to be fluently bilingual -- and not just fluent in conversational French and English, but fluent in the vocabulary of both our Common and Civil law traditions.

The bill, supported by the Liberals, News Democrats and Bloc, would require all future appointees to our highest court to be able to hear cases without the aid of simultaneous translation. Future justices would have to have an understanding of both English and French legalese nearly equal to that of the professional translators currently employed by the Supreme Court.

It is a ridiculous requirement that would limit the pool of potential justices to a few hundred legal scholars and lower-court justices. It would place language competence above legal knowledge as a prerequisite for sitting on the court and, more disturbing still, it would have the effect of limiting selection to a tiny geographic area -- the so-called "bilingual belt" from Ottawa, through Montreal and Quebec City, to Moncton. Outside that region, few lawyers or judges posses the linguistic requirements to sit on the court that decides important Charter cases and sets the precedents that directs Canada's legal life.

If the bill has teeth, few future justices would come from outside of Quebec, the capital region or northern New Brunswick.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's response to this criticism is that ambitious lawyers and judges could take the time to learn both official languages. But once again, this puts language skills ahead of legal ones. Not only that, it would give a huge advantage to judges and lawyers who live and work in those few regions of the country where both languages are commonly spoke. It is not enough to take classes in another language if one wishes to become fluent, one must also use the new language on an almost daily basis, which is next to impossible outside the bilingual belt.

lgunter@shaw.ca

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Read more: nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Power+periphery/3956077/story.html#ixzz17kY80Kq4

Fiscal crunch? Oh hum

Canada, especially Quebec, faces fiscal crunch in coming decades: study

The Canadian Press, November 18, 2010

By Ross Marowits

MONTREAL - Canada faces a fiscal crisis and the first province to hit the wall will be Quebec, a new report warned Thursday.

The province's heavy debt burden, weak demographic growth and high health-care spending put pressure on it to be the first to make difficult decisions, says the Conference Board of Canada report.

Quebec's fiscal pressures are so severe that, within 20 years, sales taxes there would need to double if the province tried to balance the budget that way alone, the report notes.

The province's debt already equals 47 per cent of its economic output. Combined with its share of the federal debt, that number rises to a debilitating 80 per cent.

Glen Hodgson, the board's chief economist, says that puts Quebec around the same worrisome category as the United States, which, although still far better off than Greece's 110 per cent level, could see debt seriously limit its public spending options.

The report says current trends point to the provincial deficit ballooning to $45 billion by 2030, as health-care spending more than triples to $90 billion over the next two decades.

Health care's claim on overall Quebec government revenues would grow, from 43.1 per cent in 2009-2010, to 63.4 per cent in 2030-2031.

"(Quebec) really is the poster child, unfortunately, for the kind of changes that are going to have to happen," Hodgson said.

Although its report focuses exclusively on Quebec, the conference board announced it will create a new body to track health spending in various provinces.

"We think that health care is one of those issues that has been asleep for the last few years," Hodgson said.

"It is now time to wake it up again and have an honest national dialogue about the sustainability of our health-care systems."

Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand downplayed the report, calling it incomplete.

"In fact, this report does not take into account all the courageous choices made by the government in the last budget," he said in a statement.

Program spending growth will be capped at 2.9 per cent this year and 2.2 per cent thereafter.

"Our plan to restore fiscal balance includes all measures necessary to restore fiscal balance in 2013-2014. Unfortunately, the study did not take all those into consideration."

Bachand said the province will also reduce the debt by setting higher electricity rates as of 2014 which, he claimed, the study does not take into account.

The conference board is creating a new group called the Canadian Alliance for Sustainable Health Care to conduct analyses of other provinces.

It warns that Quebec isn't alone but may be more ready for the debate than many provinces because it put in place a tough budget last spring and made hard decisions including raising the sales tax by two percentage points by January 2012.

While Hodgson doesn't believe the government will succeed in balancing the budget in four years, it was a starting point.

Said Hodgson, the Ontario government, by comparison, "punted" the tough choices until after next year's provincial election.

In the report titled, "Quebec's Fiscal Situation: The Alarm Bells Have Sounded," the conference board said Quebec's revenue growth will be limited to four per cent a year and its population will grow by 0.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, spending is forecast to grow 5.1 per cent per year and Quebec's real economic growth should be 1.6 per cent per year through 2030-2031.

If Quebec's taxation rates and historical trends in actual per-capita program spending are maintained, the budget becomes unsustainable, warned Mario Lefebvre, the board's director of Quebec affairs.

"The status quo is no longer an option. There are difficult choices to make," he told a news conference.

The Conference Board didn't prescribe any specific solutions but said the room to manoeuvre will lessen if painful decisions are put off for several years.

Lefebvre said Quebec's population has to decide how it wants to close the financial gap.

"If we want to maintain universal health care, it's a totally justifiable and honourable choice, but you just have to know that there is a cost."

Politicians would need to raise the provincial sales tax to 19.5 per cent to balance the budget in 20 years, assuming the current rate of growth in federal transfers and the projected growth in health spending.

While the report's authors said they weren't pointing fingers at specific government decisions, Parti Quebecois finance critic Nicolas Marceau said the Conference Board doesn't believe the government can control its spending.

He said it's time for the finance minister "tells the truth to Quebecers" about the real state of public finances.

Bachand plans to present his economic update before the end of November.

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winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/conference-board-of-canada-says-fiscal-health-of-quebec-is-at-risk-without-reform-108961254.html

Quebec nationalism still at war – with itself

Mr. Separatist Hero couldn’t turn on the lights in his party’s office without the generosity of Joe and Jane Canadian.

National Post, editorial, November 2, 2010

If it is possible, Quebec nationalism is becoming even more intellectually inconsistent. It has always attempted to sell its followers on its ability to achieve two diametrically opposed outcomes at the same time - insisting that it can win Quebec freedom from Ottawa's control, while at the same time maintaining Quebec's transfers and other subsidies from Canadian taxpayers. That, in a nutshell, is what "sovereignty association" has always been about.

Monday, 50 young Parti Quebecois (PQ) members published an open letter in the separatist-leaning Montreal newspaper, Le Devoir, calling on party leader Pauline Marois to push harder and faster for separation at a time when fewer Quebecers favour breaking away from Canada than at any time in the past generation.

In the background of this current PQ schism is an implicit threat: Cater to the aspirations of the party's hardcore nationalists or they will entice Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe to leave federal politics and come back to Quebec to replace Ms. Marois, who, by the way, does not want to give up her post.

Mr. Duceppe is the most popular active political leader in the province -- federal or provincial -- and sovereigntists cling to the hope that he could revive momentum for their movement, which since its narrow loss in the 1995 referendum has never come as close again to fulfilling its dream of an independent Quebec.

The irony is that Mr. Duceppe and his federal BQ party are at one and the same time the most disloyal party in Ottawa and the party most dependent on federal taxpayers.

The BQ have time and again made it clear they are ready and willing to tear Canada apart. Mr. Duceppe is a sovereigntist folk hero because he has never wavered from his belief that "Canadian federalism can never be changed to accommodate Quebec," unlike Ms. Marois who has, since becoming PQ leader in 2007, toned down her separatist rhetoric. She now proposes shelving a third referendum while seeking new powers from Ottawa.

Duceppe's stated commitment to separation was always why the proposed 2008 coalition between the Liberals and NDP was such a dangerous idea. It would have had to be held in place by a man and a party determined to exploit the first opportunity to ruin the nation.

While the Tories rely for about 40% of their funding on taxpayer subsidies, the NDP 60% and the Liberals 70%, the Bloc does almost no independent fundraising. Its annual political budget derives over 90% of its revenues from the $2-per-vote grant registered parties receive from taxpaying Canadians. 

Mr. Separatist Hero would be unable to turn on the lights in his party's offices were it not for the generosity of Joe and Jane Canadian.

The philosophic confusion among sovereigntists is also apparent in their revulsion for Ms. Marois's go-slow approach. It is nothing more or less than Lucien Bouchard's "winning conditions" strategy. Mr. Bouchard remains the most popular figure in Quebec, even among sovereigntists. Yet during his tenure as premier -- when momentum for sovereignty remained high -- he was never able to arrange another vote on separation because he could never find a time when the stars lined up for a win. Ms. Marois is merely confronting the same reality faced by the lauded Mr. Bouchard. Yet, the knives are out for her.

Still, none of this is new for sovereigntists. Their inconsistency is their most consistent trait.

When Brian Mulroney was prime minister, for instance, the Quebec wing of his caucus dictated that half of all defence spending had to occur in Quebec. During the Canada Round of constitutional negotiations in the early 1990s, there were demands from Quebec that part of the National Archives and other national museums be given to Quebec, should it decide to leave. Nationalists insisted all of Air Canada and any other federal asset residing in the province would belong to an independent Quebec, but not part of Canada's national debt.

Jacques Parizeau even had some unusual calculations during the 1995 referendum about how Quebec was bleeding money every year to the rest of Canada, despite being by far the largest recipient of transfers and equalization.

The current PQ troubles are nothing new. Quebec nationalism has been an idea at war with itself for 40 years.

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