MONTREAL- It's a very good first step: 14 arrests, 46 charges.
But they also brought in the biggest fish of all in Tony Accurso, the king of construction in Quebec. Of course all of these people have only been charged and have not been found guilty. Convictions will indeed be something else.
It's too early to tell if this will lead to the end of an ingrained culture of institutionalized corruption in Quebec—a culture of brown envelopes stuffed with cash, bribes, threats, you scratch my back I'll scratch yours.
The length of the investigation shows just what police are up against; where silence is the golden rule. This is also a mixed blessing for the Liberal government because it doesn't take much to connect the dots between some of those arrested this week and the Quebec Liberal party.
One of them was a volunteer of the year for the Liberals.
It may just be a taste of things to come once the Charbonneau Inquiry gets going. This indeed may be just the beginning as once the genie is out of the bottle, there's no knowing where it will lead. Which is why, we may see a Quebec election, sooner than later.
Those who call these student protests over entitlements, the Quebec Spring, are sadly mistaken and misguided.
To compare the fight for lower tuition fees to struggles for human rights and freedom is odious. This is no Arab spring a la Quebecoise. But there are those using the comparison in an attempt for political gain. No lives are on the line here.
What is also disturbing is that the PQ and the students and the unions and other left wing anti-establishment groups are blaming the government for the vandalism and violence.
This is dangerous because those who do that are complicit. They are saying that urban terrorism is a necessary means to an end and a refusal to denounce it takes us one step further away from democracy and one step closer to anarchy
I saw the Hunger Games not long ago.
It's a very good movie with a very disturbing theme, kids against kids in a battle to the death competition—a reality show gone terribly wrong. So when I saw what happened at a Hudson high school, I wondered how far we really are from that.
It was more than disturbing to see one student viciously beat up a smaller fellow student. It was more than outrageous to see other students just standing around watching and recording it. This was a planned event; word was spread on social media.
The students who did nothing but watch should be charged.
You see Quebec is unique in Canada. We have a Good Samaritan law. It's a legal requirement, a duty, to help anyone in peril. Is this what we have come to? School beatings on YouTube? These teens should be ashamed.
Indeed, how far is this really from something much worse?
