It’s a simple truth: What goes around comes around.
When Pauline Marois cuddled up with the students last year and proudly displayed her red square, she should have known all that fawning would come back to bite her.
She even got one of the student leaders, Leo Bureau-Blouin, to run for the Parti Quebecois.
A deal with the devil indeed.
These are the same students who wouldn’t respect their own signature on an agreement with the government so really she should not be surprised that they want more.
A tuition freeze tied to the cost of living is not enough. A sweetened loans and bursaries program is not enough.
The goal was always free education for all in Quebekistan, so Quebec is plowing ahead with its Education Summit, a summit which the Principal of McGill describes as a farce.
The summit is destined for failure because if there is something governments should have learned long ago, it is that negotiation doesn’t work.
That red square worn proudly not so very long ago by our future premier has become nothing more than a symbol of extortion.
Enough with the bigotry
Ask anybody at any bus stop or coffee shop: What do you want from your government?
It’s simple. Jobs, good health care and schools, a sense of security and always looking out those who fall between the cracks.
But what seems to the priority of this PQ government? Sovereignist governance.
It’s like the kid at school which a chip on his shoulder who is always looking for fight.
Quebec wants to take its ball and go home.
This government has no mandate to promote sovereignty. It recorded only 32 percent of the popular vote in the last election, but it wants to jumpstart the separation process by acting like a petulant child.
That won’t work anymore.
The PQ says it will get the message out by going viral with social media.
Somehow I don’t think a PQ message on sovereignty could compete with a waterskiing squirrel on YouTube. Just saying.
This is all about misplaced priorities and tribal ideologies of nationalism and exclusion.
Just look at its anti-English Bill 14 which will be debated in the coming weeks.
This is where English-speaking Quebecers must draw a line.
The legislation is toxic in so many ways and particularly odious is the attempt to strip peaceful municipalities of their bilingual status.
Enough. C’est assez.
Government by incompetents
It is amateur hour on the Grande Allée.
Governance has gotten so bad and inconsistent that even the francophone press is calling it the Marois cha-cha: one step forward, one step back.
This is a government so disorganized that it managed this week to vote against itself in an opposition motion denouncing cuts to university funding.
We will indeed get the chance to change it.
Let’s just pray it is sooner than later. I’ve seen quite enough of this dance.
