Pardon me.

Seems a lot of criminals in this country are getting them these days, and it includes convicted sex offenders like Graham James.

He's the former junior hockey coach who abused two of his players. He was convicted and sentenced in 1997.

Now we find out the National Parole Board issued this guy a pardon.

A pardon does not erase a criminal conviction, but it does make the crime seem less violent, less damaging, and the records are kept separate from other records making them easier to fall through the cracks.

There is also perhaps an element of forgiveness in a pardon. Sexual offenders and predators should never be pardoned. Ever.

Getting a pardon is about as easy as buying a bus ticket.

In the last five years, 112, 000 pardons were issued. Let's hope the Parole Board gets a good deal on rubber stamps. They must go through them quickly.

The Tories have promised they would do something about this pardon business three years ago. We are still waiting. And the pardons just keep on coming.

The Anglophone menace

Remember that movie that was out not long ago called 2012? The world as we know it ends.

Now the PQ is working on a new version called 2016: the year Montreal becomes a majority English-speaking city.

And the subtext is first Montreal, then Saguenay. That's kind of like the old domino theory of stopping the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. It is not going to happen. Look around. Francophones outnumber Anglos about ten to one.

It's just fear mongering

Montreal is and will be for a very long time, a bilingual city . It's what makes it such a great place to live. My friends in the PQ need a new issue to get their knickers in a knot about because as they say in the south, that dog won't hunt.

Jacques Parizeau: we wish him well

Jacques Parizeau was admitted to hospital this week.

And some eyebrows were raised, because the author of the infamous money and ethnics comment was admitted to the Jewish General. I say "so what".

Health care should have no language.

We often hear stories of English-speaking patients being treated with outstanding care in the French hospitals .

At the MUHC about 50% of the clientele is served in French. In fact, Rene Levesque, whose name is enshrined in the pantheon of gods of the separatist movement, was treated and died at the Montreal General.

You can disagree with what Jacques Parizeau did politically, and he should never be forgiven for those words on that October night in 1995, but I for one wish him a speedy recovery in English or en francais.