Saturday, October 23, 2010

Quebec and the Fairy Godmothers

Calgary Herald
By Licia Corbella

Licia Corbella Today, let's have some fun and play Fairy Godmother to Quebec. Let's grant the province the wish it articulated in Copenhagen. Wave the magic wand and poof, wish granted. Shut down Alberta's oilsands, except, since it’s Quebec making the wish, we have to call it tarsands, even though it's not tar they use to run their Bombardier planes, trains and Skidoos.

Ah, at last! The blight on Canada's reputation shut down. All those dastardly workers from across Canada living in Fort McMurray, Calgary and Edmonton out of jobs, including those waitresses, truck drivers, nurses, teachers, doctors, pilots, engineers etc. They can all go on Employment insurance like Ontario autoworkers and Quebec parts makers!

Closing down Alberta's oil industry would immediately stop the production of 1.8 million barrels of oil a day. Supply and demand being what it is, oil prices will go up and therefore the cost at the pump will go up, too, increasing the cost of everything else.

But lost jobs in Alberta and across the country along with higher gas prices are a small price to pay to save the world and not "embarrass" Quebecers on the world stage. Not to worry though, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Nigeria can come to the rescue. You know, the guys who pump money into al-Qaida and help Osama bin Laden target those Van Doos fighting in Afghanistan. Bloody oil is so much nicer than dirty tarsands oil.

Shutting down the oilsands will reduce Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 38.4 Mt (megatonnes). Hooray! It's so much fun to be a Fairy Godmother! While that sounds like a lot, Canada only produces two per cent of the world's man-made GHGs and the oilsands only produce five per cent of Canada's total emissions or 0.1 per cent of the world's emissions. By comparison, the U.S. Produces 20.2 per cent of the world's GHG emissions, 27 per cent of which comes from coal-fired electricity.

The 530-square-kilometre piece of land currently disturbed by the oilsands (which is smaller than the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. At 570 square kilometres) must be reclaimed by law and will return to Alberta's 381,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, a huge carbon sink.

Quebec, of course, has clean hydro power, but more than 13,000 square kilometres were drowned for the James Bay hydroelectric project, permanently removing that forest from acting as a carbon sink.

But Fairy Godmother is digressing all over the place. While the oilsands only produce five per cent of Canada's GHGs, it contributes much more to Canada's economy. After all, oil and gas make up one-quarter of the value on the TSX alone. Alberta is also the largest net contributor per capita by far to Confederation and there are only two more -- B.C. And Ontario.

Quebec hasn't made a net contribution to the rest of Canada for a very long time. This is not to be critical (after all, Fairy Godmothers never criticize), it's just a fact. In 2009, Albertans paid $40.46 billion in income, corporate and other taxes to the federal government and received back just $19.35 billion in services and goods from the feds. That means the rest of Canada got $21.1 billion from Albertans or $5,742 for each and every Alberta man, woman and child. In 2007 (the last year national figures are available), Alberta sent a net contribution of $19.49 billion to the ROC or $5,553 per Albertan -- more than three times what every Ontarian contributes at $1,757. Quebecers, on the other hand, each received $627 net or a total of $8 billion, money which was designed to help "equalize" social programs across the country. Except, that's not what is happening. Quebec has more generous social programs like (nearly) free university tuition (paid for mostly by Albertans) and cheap provincial day care (paid for mostly by Albertans).

But in this Fairy Godmother world, poof, those delightful unequal programs have now disappeared! Quel dommage!

The July 2009 Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) report states that between 2008 and 2032, the oilsands will account for 172,000 person-years of employment in Ontario during the construction phase, plus 640,000 for operations over the 25-year period. For Quebec, the oilsands will account for 84,000 person-years of employment during the construction phase, plus 292,000 for operations over the 25-year period.

In total, the oilsands are expected to add $1.7 trillion to Canada's GDP over the next 25 years.

Wave wand and Poof, Jobs, gone! So, now that the oil industry has shut down and left Alberta, Alberta has become a have-not province and so has every other province. Equality at last! Hugo Chavez will be so pleased.

Meeting our Copenhagen targets suddenly looks possible, as most of us can't afford to drive our cars or buy anything but necessities, so manufacturers have closed their doors and emissions are way down.

The dream of many Quebecers to form their own nation and separate from Canada has died at last. Alas, in Alberta, separatist sentiment has risen dramatically, citizens vote to separate and the oil and gas industry returns.

Albertans start to pocket that almost $6,000 for each person that used to get sent elsewhere and now their kids get free tuition. Fairy Godmother's work is done. Wish granted. Quebecers must now sign up for a foreign worker visas to work in Alberta to send their cheques back home so junior can start saving up to pay for college.

Licia Corbella is editorial page editor of The Calgary Herald.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Bribing Quebec corrupts the whole country


The problem with bribes is they don’t just corrupt the bribee; they corrupt the briber as well.

Ottawa Sun, September 29, 2010

By Lorrie Goldstein, QMI Agency

Lorrie Goldstein 

That’s being overlooked in the latest phony, only-in-Canada “controversy” over the Maclean’s cover story describing Quebec as Canada’s most corrupt province.

All the usual suspects in Quebec and Ottawa — provincial and federal politicians of all stripes, both separatist and federalist — predictably have their shorts in a knot over Maclean’s stating what everybody already knows, including inside Quebec.

That is, while there’s corruption in every province, Quebec really is different. That’s because the constant bidding war between federalists and separatists for the affection of Quebecers, using federal tax money, fuels a unique degree of corruption inside Quebec.

But that doesn’t just corrupt Quebec. It corrupts the rest of Canada, too.

Indeed, the most infamous recent case of corruption in Quebec — the “federal” sponsorship scandal — originated in Ottawa.

An idiotic plan by a panic-stricken Jean Chretien to win the loyalty of Quebecers in the wake of the 1995 referendum by buying them a few federalist trinkets with our money, exploded into a scandal in which $100 million of our cash disappeared down the same sinkhole it always does in Quebec, going back decades.

To state the painfully obvious, that constantly trying to buy the loyalty of Quebecers by bribing them to stay in Canada corrupts everyone and everything it touches, is not to insult ordinary Quebecers.

Indeed, they were as infuriated by the sponsorship scandal as the rest of the country, and gutted the federal Liberal party in the ensuing election.

The real disgrace is that our political classes in Ottawa and Quebec constantly attack any mention of the endemic corruption in that province as bigotry, in order to avoid ever having to address it.

Historically, both the federal Liberals and Conservatives (let’s not even get into the provincial parties) have an abysmal history of committing and countenancing corruption in Quebec.

This includes vote-buying, ballot-stuffing, influence-peddling, toll-gating, recruiting party members from graveyards and runaway patronage, to say nothing of turning a blind eye to wholesale corruption inside Quebec’s construction industry.

(That said, recent revelations via a Quebec inquiry that — horrors! — political influence affects who gets appointed as a judge, is hardly a problem confined solely to Quebec.)

While the sponsorship scandal involved actual corruption by federal Liberals, the federal Conservatives under Stephen Harper have corrupted themselves politically by pandering to Quebec — which hasn’t done them any good.

This instead of doing what they said they would do if elected — treat every province equally.

Instead, we get infuriating, pathetic spectacles like eight Conservative MPs donning Nordiques jerseys to show their brainless support for shelling out $175 million of our money for a new hockey arena, so Quebec can get a second NHL team.

That prompted the higher foreheads in the federal Conservative and Liberal parties to say if we’re going to do something that stupid in an era of huge deficits, we’ll have to do it for other provinces, too. Mon Dieu!

That’s another way bribing Quebec corrupts all of Canada, since other provinces are perfectly happy to let Quebec extort whatever it can from the feds, before lining up at the trough to get the same deal for themselves.

In Canada, that’s called taking the high road.

---<>---

lorrie.goldstein@sunmedia.ca

ottawasun.com/comment/columnists/lorrie_goldstein/2010/09/28/15509236.html

Trudeau’s impact is obvious; it’s also mostly bad

 

Pierre Trudeau died 10 years ago this week, so of course the tributes and legacy analyses have been coming thick and fast. Among my favourites was offered up by Chantel Hebert, one of the few people worth reading at the Toronto Star.

National Post, September 29, 2010

By Lorne Gunter

Lorne GunterWell, I have one, too. But unlike most commentators, I come to bury Trudeau (or at least make sure he’s still buried), not to praise him.

While he certainly had a profound impact on Canada, it was mostly destructive. Even the few positive changes he made might be called inevitable; they were the type of changes that were coming to every western society by dint of cultural evolution anyway.

Trudeau was by and large a social engineer convinced of his own intellectual superiority and the cloddish unimaginativeness of nearly everyone else.

Pierre TrudeauNot only was he arrogant enough to believe that the natural laws of society and economics can be ignored by determined central planners without consequences, he was also arrogant enough to imagine the light had been given to him more than anyone else, so that he alone possessed the superior knowledge required to see what needed doing and everyone else should defer to him.

Some have argued that legalizing abortion, divorce and homosexuality were bold innovations by Trudeau. Yet nearly every Western nation did the same at around the same time. Trudeau merely ensured Canada was riding the same waves as the rest.

Give him some due. Trudeau faced down the FLQ during the October Crisis of 1970 and a decade later, while much of our chattering class trembled with fear at the prospect of Quebec separation, he shouldered the burden of defeating the sovereigntists in Quebec’s 1980 referendum.

ROC attacks Quebec, Oct crisis, 1970Still, he faced down the separatist terrorists by invoking the War Measures Act and proving just how shallow his vaunted commitment to individual liberties truly was at crunch time. And he won the 1980 referendum at the price of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — which opened the Pandora’s box of judicial activism — as well as two decades of expensive Quebec appeasement that ended in Adscam.

Of course Adscam came long after Trudeau left office. Still, it was a natural and predictable outcome of throwing gobs and gobs of money at Quebec in an attempt to win the province’s federalist loyalty. When the first money thrown failed to buy Quebec’s love, more and more was thrown until there was so much money being sloshed around at projects of diminishing significance that it was inevitable sticky fingers would grab up some.

While not directly Trudeau’s fault, Adscam was a by-product of his chosen method of fighting Quebec nationalism.

His impact on culture was devastating. He implemented official bilingualism in the vain hope that Quebecers would feel more at home in Canada if they knew the post mistress in Houston, B.C. was fluently bilingual. In the process, though, he failed to placate the Quebecois, but managed to alienate millions of anglophones.

Today, four decades and several billion tax dollars later, we are barely more bilingual as a nation than we were when Trudeau began this social experiment and just as divided (or more so) along linguistic lines.

He imagined that multiculturalism would unify us in our diversity – although he never explained how, practically, that logical non sequitor was supposed to happen. Instead, it has led to divisive ethnopolitics, political correctness dictating national policy, the importation of overseas animosities and the ghettoization of large blocks of new Canadians. Even the inflow of refugee claim jumpers can be traced back to the way that Trudeau thought multiculturalism and easy immigration would make Canada more cosmopolitan.

Human rights commissions are part of his legacy, as was the Court Challenges Program that paid minority plaintiffs to file court cases demanding that they be given Charter rights.

After he left office, Trudeau frequently insisted he had fought for a Charter of Rights to protect individuals from the state, and claimed Court Challenges and the Charter’s provisions authorizing judges to “read in” in rights had both been meant to make that protection easier.

How naive.

Activist judges and activist special interest groups quickly learned they could use one another to advance a radical social remake of Canada, and Ottawa would pay for their court appearances. What was meant to be a shield from the power of the state instead created a cozy little cabal among lefty legal scholars and judges that simply shifted the might of the state from the elected Parliament to the unelected judiciary. Both are, after all, branches of government. So the Charter didn’t protect citizens from the excesses of the state, it merely managed to change the whip from one had to another.

Sure, having politicians vote away our rights is bad, but is it really worse than having overreaching judges do the same? At least the politicians we can vote out of office from time to time. Thanks to the Charter, the new boss is the same as the old boss, only also unreachable by the people.

The CRTC is a Trudeau creation, the people who tell us what we may watch on television and listen on radio.

CRTC So, too, is the notion of the CBC as mouthpiece of social and political activism.

But as bad as that litany is, it is probably on the economy that Trudeau was at his worst.

Inflation, national debt, lost opportunities due to protectionism and economic nationalism — all were Trudeau’s legacy. Because he understood so little about economics and entrepreneurship, Trudeau was easily convinced that history would leave capitalism behind and replace it, if not with socialism, then with some form of command-and-control economy.

His reforms to unemployment insurance (now euphemistically renamed Employment Insurance) ensured our labour market would be badly distorted for nearly 30 years. His scheme of regional transfers — that at one time accounted for 40% of have-not provinces revenue — helped freeze poorer regions’ economies in amber and delay the day when their own desperation would lead to innovation and growth.

He presided over the largest expansion of government in our history; from 1974 to 1976, alone, Ottawa’s spending increased by 50%. He believed we could inflate our way out of debt, so never concerned himself with budget deficit, the consequence of which is an enduring national debt (although Conservative prime ministers have helped him out there). And he implemented wage-and-price controls that further damaged the economy they were meant to resurrect.

He even convinced himself it made sense to beggar a productive region — the West – for the enrichment of less productive ones. So he implemented the National Energy Program, which hurt both the economy and national unity.

Trudeau may have been a great theoretician, but if a solution required even a centesimo of practical understanding — and all successful solutions do — he wasn’t interested.

He may have had more impact on Canada than any other 20th century prime minister. Yet on balance, that impact was mostly bad.

Read more: fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/29/lorne-gunter-trudeaus-impact-is-obvious-its-also-mostly-bad/#ixzz11DkVP7L8

Canada is waking up, finally!


We, the various groups fighting the Official Languages Act, are finally being vindicated by the articles that have been printed over the last few days on the 10th anniversary of P. E. Trudeau’s demise.

October 1, 2010

Lorne Gunter has no qualms about pointing out that Trudeau’s legacy is what has created such a divided country out of the fairly harmonious country of Canada. He referred to all the features of Canadian life that have resulted in great unhappiness across the land – the OLA, Multiculturalism, his Charter of Rights that has led to activist judges and groups, a huge increase in our national debt and a national propensity towards socialism that has destroyed the innate independent nature of Canadians.

What I find most encouraging is the fact that mainstream media is finally coming to the conclusion that Trudeau and his attempts to elevate the position of Quebec & the French fact above the rest of the country is the real reason for the disunity within Canada. It has led to the pandering of ONE province and the vote buying that has resulted in huge sums of money being thrown at that province because they control 75 seats, most held by a homogenous culture of French-speakers whose primary concern is the preservation of the French language & culture. The imbalance thus created, politically, economically, culturally, historically and emotionally explains why there is a general malaise in this country where the English-speaking majority have resigned themselves to a culture of defeat.

However, we are not defeated yet – not while we have people who continue to pay attention, to speak up & protest and, with the help of an awakening media, spread the word!!!

I have included the links to the other columnists on this topic – if you have the time to read their opinions (some for & some against), please do so. There was a very interesting discussion on CFRA this morning between John Robson (History professor at the U. of Ottawa) and Steve Madely about the legacy of Britain (the Magna Carta) and how this has laid the foundation for our concept of Freedom. If you have the time to listen, I’ll include the link at the bottom.

Kim

Sunday, September 12, 2010

NB Francophones plot to increase French language usage


"The Official Languages Act of 2002 has led to major advances in the language employed by municipalities, police, health services, in terms of creating the post of Commissioner of Official Languages.”

The English in New Brunswick have to defend their language rights out of their own pockets, while the French take our taxes to expand French language usage.

Translated from a French New Brunswick newspaper:-

Three groups of Francophone Acadians have been invited to participate in the review of the Official Languages Act of New Brunswick, which must occur by December 31, 2012.  A symposium will be held for this purpose on 19 and 20 November organized by the Association of French Speaking Jurists of New Brunswick (AJEFNB), the International Observatory of Linguistic Rights of the Faculty of Law at the University of Moncton and the Acadian Society of New Brunswick (ASNB) and the timing directly links to the provincial election campaign that officially begins in mid-week. They feel the next government of New Brunswick will have on its agenda the revision of the Official Languages Act since they have no choice - it is required by law.

The three Francophone Acadian groups will be well prepared for the review process and have decided to start the debate immediately, claimed lawyer Michel Doucet of the International Observatory. They already met with the Prime Minister on August 14 and want the Francophone community to have its own working committee for this review. They have declared "If the government is not ready, we will be. "

The conference will primarily be an exercise in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of this Act, and an analysis on the changes needed, if any.

"The Official Languages Act of 2002 has led to major advances in the language employed by municipalities, police, health services, in terms of creating the post of Commissioner of Official Languages. But is seen as having been adopted without debate around the law without any input from the community. Some of the provisions which were considered very attractive are still very ambiguous, For example, the police. When we say that the police officer who arrests someone on the roadside has a duty to provide service in the language of the choice of their client in a reasonable time What does "reasonable" mean? Some courts say that 45 minutes is reasonable. Others say the opposite, "says Michel Doucet. The lawyer explained that the symposium will provide Acadians to review various aspects of the law in deciding whether there should be improvements, especially when it comes to service delivery and working language in the public or powers of the Commissioner of Official Languages.

"What do people want? Do they want to make improvements to the law? It is quite possible that we are mistaken and that people say it is just fine."

"The invitation to the general public, the Acadian organizations. We hope to have a lot of people because it is of public interest," adds his colleague AJEFNB.

Following discussions, a report with recommendations will be submitted to the government. The President said that his organization SANB will push for a committee to be established jointly with the government to follow up on this issue.

How long will you watch?

The Federal Government and the Province of New Brunswick are now under total French control. English speaking Canadians no longer have any Language or Political rights whatsoever. The Province of New Brunswick is now an official Forced Bilingual Province and without a vote or referendum.

image  All bilingual jobs in New Brunswick, which means virtually all jobs, go exclusively to French Canadians, many of whom are transported in from Quebec to replace the English employees as soon as they retire or can be phased out.

The English speaking citizens in New Brunswick can no longer seek employment or gain promotions based on Skills, Merit, Education or Experience anymore in our very own Province. Each Bilingual job posted is one more job taken away from the English citizens of New Brunswick.

We have completely lost our rights of full citizens of New Brunswick. We “The English Canadians” can no longer be employed by our Federal Government, Armed Forces, Police Force or any other Federal Government Corporation, Agency, Board or any other entity.

We watch as the French invasion arrives and become more visible with the backing of the Official Language Act and unlimited Federal billions of dollars in funding. We watch the push for “French First bilingual “signage and the push to have the French language included on all commercial signage in New Brunswick. The end to all unilingual English business as we today know it!  From the proposed takeover of the utilities to the ultimate goal of French being the language of work and the whole total transformation to a French-only province.

We Watch!

We watch as our Province gets switched over to “French only” or “French First bilingual Province” and all traces of our English language are diminished. From the banning of our right to advertise in the language of our choice, the English language to the replacement of road signs from English to French or to bilingual but with French first. All just an attempt to portray New Brunswick as a French only province! We have lost the right to advertise in the language of our choice.

We watch as our English families and friends leave our Province to seek employment only to make room for the new bilingual employees (French first with little or broken garbled English)  as they arrive from Quebec to replace us.

We watch as our fellow employees get bonuses and promotions at work based solely on what language they speak and while we work, stuck at the bottom of the ladder because we don’t meet the language qualifications for a job, bonus or promotion based on our choice of our English language.

We watch as our Government “over run with French control’ tries to sells our utilities and Corporations to Quebec.

We watch as we are discriminated against, looked down upon and treated as second class citizens because of what language we speak or because of what language we don’t speak. We are no longer allowed be English Citizens of New Brunswick.

We watch as the Acadian BANNER , which is nothing more than a flag of France with a star on it be allowed to be flown in front of our Government and Municipal buildings and offices to represent the French language and culture in New Brunswick while the Anglophone flag which represent the English language and culture in New Brunswick is Not allowed to be flown in front of Government buildings.

The Minority population of New Brunswick (the, French) are allowed to fly their flag but the majority Population of New Brunswick, (the English) are not allowed to fly their flag in front of Government buildings. There is something wrong with this picture!

We are forced to learn another language and we watch while the minority controls the majority. We watch as we are forced to preserve another language and culture other than our own. We watch until we have no rights left whatsoever. We are the FORCED people!

We the English speaking Canadians being as trusting and gullible as we are, just sit back and let ourselves and our children get brainwashed into believing that French is a good thing for us and that if we and our children don’t learn to speak French then we will have no future at all in New Brunswick or in Canada.

If you force me to learn another language so that I can communicate with you in the language of YOUR choice and so that you can be served in the language of YOUR choice because that’s your RIGHT, then you are taking away my RIGHT to communicate in the language of MY choice.

We watch until we have no choice in language left. We watch as we have no more rights to seek employment in our own language, Advertise or live in the language of our choice in New Brunswick.

We watch as they strip us of all our rights to exist in the language of our choice! We can no longer be English speaking citizens of New Brunswick! We are being forced to be speak and learn French while they annihilate all existence of the Unilingual English Canadian.

How long will you watch?

Tim Williams (Tiger)

Riverview , New Brunswick.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Supreme Bilingualism

June 4, 2010

by Kim McConnell

Karen Selick Karen Selick, of the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), appeared recently (May 28) on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin.

The CCF’s mission is simple: "To protect the constitutional freedoms of Canadians through education, communication and litigation."

The CCF takes an interest in many challenges in our legal system and this show with Steve Paikin gives you an idea of how lucky we are that there is an organization in Canada that is in a position to speak up about our most urgent problem currently – the bilingualization of our Supreme Court.

Take time to listen to this show and understand how important it is that the Conservative Senators get the help of the independent Senators to effectively block this bill.  Claudette Tardiff is working very hard to get this bill passed which will doubtless ensure that our Supreme Court will be made up mainly of Francophone judges.

The policy of Official Bilingualism has been an unmitigated failure and most Canadians know this – after over 40 years, our general population is still not bilingual and those who are functionally bilingual are mostly French-speakers first.  Can we expect that the legal profession will be any different from the general population? 

Granted they are made of the elite of society and are above average in intelligence but linguistic prowess is not necessarily directly related to intellect – it is more a question of opportunity and living in an environment where the other language is spoken.

How else can you explain why most English-speaking Canadians outside Quebec are not as likely to be fluently bilingual as English-speakers in Quebec where French is heard on a daily basis? 

How else can you explain that the French-speakers are over-represented in the public service, in the Armed Forces and just about everywhere that the policy of Official Bilingualism is the prime criteria for promotion? There is absolutely no doubt that this will happen in the Supreme Court too if Bill C-232 gets through the Senate.

The Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc are solidly behind this bill and the Conservatives are working diligently to stop this bill so it is incumbent upon us to do whatever we can to lobby the Conservative and independent Senators to block it. Send a message to Karen Selick with your views to:

kselick@canadianconstitutionfoundation.ca

Karen is also looking for statistics on the success or failure of the French Immersion program anywhere in Canada because this will help with her arguments that, despite the widespread effort of the Federal government to expand French Immersion, the success of this policy is not impressive.

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779794&ts=2010-05-28%2020:00:00.0

Best,

Kim


CLF received many messages from our support base urging that all Canadians should do something to lobby the Senate to block this bill – here is one written by a retired lawyer:

If it passes the Senate, it will become the law of Canada and given the ever growing power of the Supreme Court of Canada, such a development would be the most dangerous threat to the Freedom of Canadians in memory. 

Bottom-line - it must not be allowed to pass the Senate!

Directly below, you will find a list of reasons why Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada should not be required to be bilingual.

Further below, you will find several ways in which to make your views known to the two (2) people we must all get to before the Senate votes on Bill C232  - the Prime Minister and the Conservative Leader of the Senate.

When making your views known, using some or all of the reasons listed below, try to incorporate them in your own words since that will have the most impact in getting our collective message across.

Okay, here are the Main Reasons why Forced Bilingualism of Supreme Court Justices is a very, very bad idea:

  • With only 17% of the population claiming to be bilingual (the actual number is likely far less), to require all candidates for Justices to be bilingual would mean that you are not ensuring that the brightest and the best lawyers even get considered for these most important positions. (i.e.  at least 83% are not bilingual).
  • Moreover, since  most claiming to be bilingual reside in Quebec and to a much lesser extent Eastern Ontario, it would mean that the vast majority of bilingual candidates would reside in Central Canada.  The East and the West would effectively be shut out of the Court.
  • Related to the above, with Central Canada's greater influence on the Court, its decisions will become even more out of touch with main stream society (i.e. even more politically correct and left leaning).
  • To add insult to injury, it is now mandatory that 1/3 of the nine justices hail from the Province of Quebec, so with a bilingual requirement applying to all Justices, Quebec's contingent can be expected to increase dramatically on the Court.  This despite the fact that with a third of the Justices now having to come from Quebec and given that Quebec contains less than a fourth of Canada's population, they are substantially over-represented already.
  • With the introduction of the Charter of Rights in 1981, the Supreme Court went from interpreting the laws to making laws.  This can be seen from its too often politically correct and left leaning decisions. In many respects it has usurped the power of Parliament. Should the Court become fully bilingual, this can only be expected to get worse, -  again because the area of selection is reduced does not represent the interests of the majority.  In effect, the Court and not Parliament will rule completely Supreme.

Okay, who to Contact:

1. The Prime Minister of Canada:
Mr.  Stephen Harper
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, K1A 0A2
Email address:
pm@pm.gc.ca
Fax: (613) 941-6900

2. Mrs. Marjory LeBreton (she is English)
The Senate of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A4
Telephone - (613) 943-0756

Email lebrem@sen.parl.gc.ca

Best, Kim