Desperate times call for desperate measures.
That's what our friends in the Bloc Quebecois are resorting to these days.
The party that was founded to be around for one term and outstayed its welcome is now downplaying its raison d’etre.
It was almost pathetic this week to see leader Gilles Duceppe announce that the Bloc was shifting its campaign focus from sovereignty to talking about all those wonderful gains the Bloc has made for Quebec.
Gains like a total lack of interest in the governance of Canada for a couple of decades and opposing anything in the national interest.
If you aren't at the table eventually you are on the menu.
But the message was sent loud and clear in the last election.
A clear majority of Quebecers has decided that Canada is their best bet for now and the future.
The Bloc is an anachronism, stuck in the past and the politics of grievance.
Duceppe, for some reason, thought people missed him.
Not so much Gilles.
And the way it looks now, he may, once again, not even win his own seat.
The Bloc this week also fended off criticism this week that one of its candidates is a voodoo sorceress.
Kedina Fleury Samson once invited people on Facebook to a magical ceremony.
She denies the voodoo connection but if her ceremony involved talking to the dead she is really in the right party.
CAQ in favour of Canada
Our friends at the CAQ made some news this week with word that they ready to toast with some Canadian Club.
We always suspected the Francois Legault crowd went both ways, sovereignty if necessary but not necessarily sovereignty
Not anymore.
Looks like we can all sleep a little better now.
SAQ should be dissolved
Finally, some needed common sense in a report this week on what the government should be sticking its nose in and what it shouldn't be.
The Quebec government doesn't have a monopoly on the sale of shoes or ice cream, so really what business does it have regulating the sale of wine and spirits?
We aren't living in the dark old days where drinking was considered a sin and consumption had to be regulated.
Why cant the SAQ compete with private companies?
The SAQ is a tax collection machine which sells many of its products at inflated prices.
Its operating costs, says the study, are among the highest anywhere.
The government could still collect taxes on sales but the huge SAQ bureaucratic beast should go.
It would open the markets.
Ontario and BC are making some of finest wines in the world, but try to find them in an SAQ. They are usually under the “other countries” sign and the selection is terrible.
Try to order them yourself from the wineries. Sorry we don't deliver to Quebec is the answer.
So can we get the government out of our lives on this one?
You see the SAQ and the Bloc have something in common.
Both are holding on to the past when the world is changing so quickly and people are moving on.
