Seldom in the modern era have the choices been more clearly presented by the parties and their leaders. Seldom has more been at stake, beginning with the social peace and economic prosperity of Quebec.
In the Quebec proposed by Pauline Marois and the Parti Québécois, a petition signed by 15 per cent of the population could trigger a referendum on independence. Or maybe not. Marois, and Marois alone, would determine the calling of a referendum. Check.
Citizens would be required to speak French as a condition of seeking public office. Or maybe this restriction would only apply to newcomers — as if anyone would move to Quebec under such conditions.
Voters of the Muslim faith would be barred from wearing hijabs if they worked for the Quebec public service — as if any of them would want to work there under those conditions.
A PQ government would also issue citizenship cards, with newcomers required to have a working knowledge of French. So there would be two classes of citizens, first and second.
Francophone and allophone college students of voting age would not be permitted to attend English-language CEGEPs, as a new Bill 101 would extend the restrictions now in place for primary and secondary schools.
And under this legislation, to be passed within 100 days of taking office, Marois would require French as the language of work in businesses with more than 10 employees, rather than the current threshold of 50 employees. So much for new investment and startups.
Marois even has the temerity to lecture Robert Card, the new chief executive officer of SNC-Lavalin and an American, that he must become “at least bilingual.” Actually, his job is to clean house after a major governance scandal, in which $56 million disappeared from the company’s balance sheet, some of it to Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya.
In laying down these hardline markers on the language issue, Marois is said by political commentators to be playing “the identity card.” Maybe it’s time to call it what it is: the race card.
The PQ’s founding father, René Lévesque, would be ashamed of a party that has become so narrow-minded, bigoted and xenophobic. He used to define a Quebecer as “someone who lives in Quebec.”
Marois is the worst kind of demagogue, one who will say and do anything to get elected, with no regard for the higher public interest. It’s all about consolidating the PQ’s separatist base. And to all appearances, it is working.
Then there is the Coalition Avenir Québec and François Legault, who will campaign neither for a sovereign Quebec nor a united Canada — as if a responsible leader can simply sit on the sidelines. This is the same guy who, as a PQ minister, used to talk about “the tools” of sovereignty. But it’s working for him, too; the CAQ has the upper hand over the PQ in the struggle for ownership of the opposition-ballot question of change and corruption. If he has really moved into second place, as Léger and CROP polls suggest, there’s a possibility that strategic federalist voters could move to him to stop the PQ.
At least Amir Khadir, Françoise David and Québec solidaire are intellectually honest. They are separatists and socialists, and it’s working for them, moving their support to near double-digit territory at the expense of the PQ, mostly in east-end Montreal.
There’s only one party in this race whose Quebec clearly includes Canada: the Liberals and Jean Charest.
In the closing days of the campaign, Charest retains a comparative advantage over his opponents on two issues: a Canadian Quebec and the economy. The Liberals own both issues, but they haven’t found a way to frame and leverage them over the cries of scandal from the opposition parties.
I’ve known Jean Charest since he first went to Ottawa as a 26-year-old freshman MP in 1984. He’s spent his entire adult life in the service of Canada and Quebec. While his government could do a better job on the ethics files, no one has ever questioned his personal integrity.
And he remains the best campaigner of his generation, one with a history of finishing strong in the home stretch. That’s just what he needs now in what is, at the end of the day, a question of country.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: L. Ian MacDonald
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