The Olde Adage …

 

Those who cannot remember the Past are Condemned to Repeat it.

And the latest to fall into that trap is none other than our one and only Lord Black of Crossharbour.

Those longer time readers of this Blog will know that I have on several occasions come to the defence of Conrad Black; I see him as a very capable, if not tragic figure, hard done by.

That does not mean that I agree with Mr. Black in all instances… take his column in today’s National Post, where he states that Justin Trudeau is Quebec’s last chance to “resume the great role they played in the whole country from Lafontaine to Jean Chretien”.

Moreover he sees Young Trudeau as being the “last train leaving the station for the double majority of French and English in the whole of the country..”

Black holds himself out as a student of history but it appears to me that he missed a couple of chapters on Quebec’s Quiet Revolution beginning with the 1960 election of Premier Jean Lesage and carrying on to this very day.

Let’s review some vital facts that he has so conveniently overlooked:

• I mentioned the Quiet Revolution kick-off in 1960, this marked the beginning of Quebec’s modern era of discontent with the Rest of Canada;
• Young Trudeau’s daddy, Pierre Elliot, was elected in 1968 by the English, ‘to put Quebec separatism in its place’… I am old enough to remember it well;
• And this, in turn, led in 1976 to the first separatist government in Quebec’s history led by Rene Levesque;
• It was followed by a Referendum on Separation in 1980, in both instances, Trudeau senior was in the chair federally;
• Pierre Trudeau’s contributions, other than failing to stop separation, was to introduce official bilingualism which made second class citizens out of 85% of Canadian citizens.  He also fathered the great Contribution Payments to the have-not Province of Quebec, while allowing it to exclude its great Hydro Electric Resources from the Contribution equation. (Talk about tough??)
• And then came Brian Mulroney…another Quebecer who promised to get a handle on Quebec’s separatist aspirations.  Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accords followed under his tutorship and both failures deepened the angst among Quebecers;
• It also led to the creation of the Federal ‘Bloc’ Separatist Party under the leadership of Mulroney’s former treacherous friend and colleague, Lucien Bouchard;
• Are you still with me?
• And then came Referendum 2 in 1995 which came within a whisker of success.  The then Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, who also got elected on the basis that he could handle Quebec, virtually had a nervous breakdown as poll after poll came out in advance of Referendum Day depicting a strong Separatist victory.  Had it not been for a last minute federalist rally in Montreal and organized outside of Quebec, Chretien’s worst fears would have been realized;
• Today, we see the Separatists back in power in Quebec and on the verge of calling an election which will likely see them back in majority status if the polls are to be believed. Another Referendum would most likely follow.

But dear reader, the futileness of seducing Quebec back into the fold is probably best described in the following numbers:

• English made up nearly 14% of Quebec’s population in 1951;  today it stands little more than half – 7.6%.
• At the start of the Independence Movement in the 1970s until the 2011 census, some 200,000 Anglos had fled the province.

(As an aside, our many successive Language Commissioners were silent on the treatment the English received in the once Belle Province but when out of their collective ways to criticize the English in the remaining 9 Provinces for the way in which the Francophone minority was treated – i.e. not being able to order a chocolate bar en francais).

Pathetic.

So much for effectiveness of Prime Ministers from Quebec!!

And now with have Mr. Black suggesting once again that Canada / Quebec’s salvation rests with another francophone leader… this time, Justin Trudeau.

I know one thing from all of this and that is if Justin Trudeau is successful in winning the Prime Ministership next year – as well he might be, his tenure will not have any positive effect on Quebec’s place in Canada.

If you think otherwise, you simply do not know your history.

 As I see it …

‘K.D. Galagher’

Hudak For Premier

 

In spite of the fact I think Tim Hudak has been a disaster as the Provincial Progressive Conservative Leader, I am going to vote for him.

In fact, I would rather vote for a dead dog rather than vote for either Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee.

Dum and Dee aka Wynne and Horwath (along with their God Father - Dalton McGuinty) have collectively pulled off the greatest fraud on us taxpayers.

I will not get into reciting the various scandals and frauds since, unless you are Rip Van Winkle, by now you must know the infamous list by heart.

From his actions to date, Hudak has shown time and again that he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and I would even go so far as to say both Horwath and especially Wynne are much sharper than he.  Neither though are clever since clever people would not have dumped Ontario into the mess it finds itself today.

Simply stated, Ontario is the basket case of all North America.  Clever people would not have allowed that to happen.

Hudak does have an attributes that the others appear to lack; he comes across as both a decent, and honest person, albeit he is most naive and politically left footed.

Tim Hudak will have my vote come Election Day.

As I see it…

‘K.D. Galagher’

 

Reports or Rumours of His Death …

 

Are Greatly Exaggerated.

My apologizes to the late Samuel Langhorne Clemens – aka Mark Twain.

The His in this instance is of course our aloof and oft times rather dour Prime Minister Stephen Joseph Harper.

Media and Pundits are united in their belief that Young Trudeau is on a roll and is destined to become the next Prime Minister of Canada.

Indeed, Polls are showing YT with an up to 10% lead over the star crossed Harper.

With their policy convention closing this weekend in Montreal, those numbers should and likely will, rise even more.

But, as Yogi Berra is famous for saying, “it ain’t over til it’s over” and dear reader, it is a long way from being over.

All one had to do was listen to YT speak on Saturday night – why the young fellow said he stands for a ‘stronger economy and more jobs’.  Who’d have thought – though the same can be said for the Tories as well as the NDP and let’s throw in the Greens and the Bloc’ers too.  I was beginning to think Trudeau was going to come out next in support of  ‘apple pie’ but of course, that would be an Americanism … but still.

Bottom-line, the guy is deep ….as in a 1 inch lake.

The one area where he has made a bit of a splash is with respect to the debt / deficit.  He wants to make them greater.  What a thinker.  Does he not realize that such a policy is a job killer …. what was I thinking …of course he is not aware of that.

But beyond this, are a host of other ‘wedge issues’* upon which Harper can distinguish his party from the nipper’s:

• marijuana;
• climate change;
• tough on crime;
• abortion / euthanasia;
• provincial demands;
• Quebec’s continued demands;
• native demands;
• the pipelines;
• taxes.

* Wedge issues, for the uninformed, are those that split the opposition and allow a party to come down the middle successfully even if it lacks the support of the majority.  Brian Mulroney did this with free trade in 2008 – the majority of Canadians voted for other parties but Mulroney was able to secure a plurality to secure victory.

The list goes on and on. There is much ammunition for a guy like Harper to use against Young Justin without having to turn to negative personal attacks, which if he does that, runs the danger of turning off voters who might otherwise have voted Tory. 

Let’s hope Harper et al have moved on from such negativity. 

The other problem I have with YT is in trying to visualize him as PM dealing with world leaders who are less naive and inexperienced than he – the Putins, the Ayatollahs, the Chinese leadership, and such.  They would eat the poor lad for lunch and not even burb.

So dear folks, it is long from over. But that is not to say that in the end I trust the voter to do the right thing …after all, once upon a time they elected his father PM and Canada has never been the same.

Pity.

As I see it …

‘K.D. Galagher’