You have to hand it to the PQ and leader Pierre Karl Peladeau. They are believers in recycling.
They recycle old ideas and old hurts and old feelings of victimization. And now they are recycling a long-time veteran of the constitutional wars to head PKP’s pet project; the sovereignty think tank.
Daniel Turp is charming, a bright guy, a law professor, a former PQ MNA and Bloc MP. But if this is the new face of the modern separatists, then I don’t think we have too much to worry about.
Most of the issues that require some in-depth analysis are what would happen or should happen if Quebec was independent.
It will be interesting to see if it can come up with something we missed after mind numbing decades of talking and talking and voting and voting again. The discovery of a new sovereignty revelation that no one else had ever considered. Liberal Jean Marc Fournier
"They are trying to make us believe there are new answers," said Liberal MNA Jean-Marc Fournier. "We all know the question: do we want to separate from Canada? We know the answer, that there is a cost."
For those of you old enough to remember, we have been down this road before. In the lead up to the 1995 referendum, the PQ government financed a whole series of studies into the disadvantages of Canada. They have long since been buried in the dustbins of history
The name of this group of deep thinkers will be the Institute of Research on Self-Determination of Peoples and National independence. The acronym is IRAI, which is not quite IRIE
Aveos not going away
Not much sticks to Premier Coulliard but I have a feeling this Aveos issue isn’t about to go away
This week, both main opposition leaders united to urge Quebec not to drop its legal challenge against Air Canada. The Quebec government launched a lawsuit against Air Canada, arguing the airline broke a federal law that required the airline to have its planes serviced in Montreal. But a backroom deal saw Quebec drop the lawsuit after Air Canada announced intent to buy Bombardier planes. The opposition says the government sold out the former Aveos employees, all 1,800 of them. It’s hard to argue with that. Just smacks of cheap politics.
BDS vote a sad turn for McGill
For a world renowned university, a jewel of Montreal, it was a sad week.
The McGill students' union somehow managed to pass a motion demonizing Israel.
It was the third such BDS vote in the last two years. It was defeated both times previously. They finally got it through with a small fraction of the students actually voting. BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It’s a movement whose propaganda strikes at the very heart and existence of the Jewish state, the only democracy in a very troubled part of the world. The real objective is to destroy Israel, because it proposes a right of return, which aims at protecting rights of Palestinians and their descendants to return to their homes and properties they left in 1948. If that were to happen, no more Israel.
There was some comfort in the House of Commons this week supporting a Tory motion condemning any and all attempts to promote the movement. Although it must be noted that the NDP, showing its traditional colours, voted against the motion.
But a black mark was etched on McGill this week.
At the end of the day, votes like this won’t have any tangible impact. The university already says it will ignore it. But they do send a message that the fight is never ending. and motions like this must be denounced by right-thinking people everywhere with reason, passion and determination.
