With everything else going on in the world, did you notice the Parti Quebecois has a new leader?
Jean Francois Lisée has become the party’s 5th leader in a decade.
It is the toughest job in Canadian politics, where the party’s mothers in law are always hovering and where they tend eat their young.
Lisée has worked the political back rooms for years. He knows how to get things done and his intelligence is unquestioned.
You have to give him credit for his reach out to Anglos during his victory speech.
“As leader I will make sure that we have an open and fruitful dialogue on who we are and what we can build together,” he said.
Golly gee. It’s almost like he wants to be our BFF.
But hold on. Despite his considerable charm, Lisée was behind much of that identity nonsense from the PQ last time around. Don’t be surprised if he tries to make it a wedge issue in Quebec politics once again.
The PQ Charter of Values 2.0 is about to come your way.
And I’m not so sure that Lisée really loves us for who we are.
Back in 2012, L’Actualité magazine ran an Anglo-baiting cover story, Ici on parle English.
The major theme of this diatribe was the horror that English-speaking Quebecers don’t necessarily buy into Quebecois culture.
There were torqued questions designed to produce a picture of Montreal that lives in the twisted fantasies of language hawks and ethnocentric nationalists.
So what if a majority of Anglos don’t spent their time oohing and ahhing over the celebs in the French star system?
It wasn’t a very friendly look at English Montreal, but it was signed JF Lisée .
In 2012, when he was appointed Minister Responsible for Anglophones, he came to CTV to offer reassurance.
“I had that fibre within the sovereigntist movement as a defender of the English community,” he told CTV at the time.
So Lisée may offer comforting words, but he was also in the last PQ government that tried to strengthen language laws with Bill 14 to further diminish our community.
Maybe it’s a case of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Some BFF!
The vile campaign’s end is near
The freak show which has become the U.S. election is almost over, thankfully.
It is so hard to believe in a country dedicated to democracy, truth and freedom and it’s so sad.
Here’s the way voting works:
Voters don’t elect a president, that’s the job of the Electoral College.
Each state has Electoral College votes. There are 538 in total; the number from each state is based on the number of members of congress per state. 270 votes are needed to win.
Polling guru Nate Silver has run the numbers and come up with a massive gender split in America.
If only women voted, it would be a Clinton landslide with 458 votes.
If only men vote, Trump would win with 350 votes.
How did American men get so dumb?
This of course has led some of Trump’s dimwit followers to call for women to lose their franchise.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that the worst fears of a Trump victory will not be realized, but only 38 percent of Trump supporters believe the vote will be counted fairly.
In a climate of fear and paranoia, what comes next may be equally as frightening.
