25 Şubat 2013 Pazartesi

Quebec's Employment Insurance Nightmare

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Somewhere along the line, UI or Unemployment Insurance became the more politically correct Employment Insurance, but just the same, Quebecers haven't given up the term "chômeur" to describe being out of work or 'Assurance chômage' to describe the  government insurance plan that pays benefits related to loss of employment.

The Harper government enacted a massive reform of the system that came into effect early this month, which will have an important impact on Quebec and the Maritimes.
It targets those who repeatedly go on and off benefits, forcing them to seek alternative employment under strict new rules.
It not only seeks to get rid of freeloaders who only work long enough to become eligible for payments, and then return to the workforce to repeat the cycle over and over again, it attacks another big sector of the benefits pie, that of 'seasonal' workers, who legitimately work only part of the year, in industries like fishing or tourism that can't offer steady year-round employment.
For seasonal workers, EI benefits are less an insurance program than an income maintenance plan.

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party was just such a worker for many years.
Ms. May said that from 1975 to 1980, she received what was then called unemployment insurance during the off-season while working as a waitress and cook at her family’s restaurant and gift shop business in Cape Breton, she says.
Labelling regular users of EI, such as herself, as lazy or abusing the system is unfair, she said.
“I paid into employment insurance. When I needed it, I used it. When I didn’t, I didn’t. I raise my personal experience because I don’t think anyone should be ashamed that seasonal businesses in this country that are big, or small, have benefited from a legal system of insurance that pays for itself....”
“I’m coming out myself and saying this was my life. If you want to say this is a wrong way to live, fine,” she said. “Let’s have that conversation....” Read the whole story
The National Post explains these changes clearly.
Read: What exactly are the changes to the Employment Insurance system?

One thing is painfully clear, the reform will affect seasonal workers in the Quebec fishing industry in the Gaspé and Îles de la Madeleine, where fishermen work about four months and remain on EI the rest of the year.
This has set off a panic in the regions affected with demonstrations protesting the new rules held in several Quebec towns.
One demonstration against these EI changes brought out 4,000 of the 14,000 residents of ÃŽles de la Madeleine, an island in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that depends on the seasonal fishing and tourist industry to survive. Fully 40% of the workforce collects EI during the 'off' season.
One of the fears is that the changes will lead to an exodus out of the region, something that happened in Newfoundland after the failure of the fishery.

The Quebec minister responsible, Agnes Maltais, in a televised interview was absolutely furious with the Conservatives decision, going so far as calling the changes illegitimate because Ottawa never consulted Quebec.

Why is Quebec so angry?
Because those who will fall off the EI payroll may just fall onto the province's welfare role, a downloading of responsibility that Quebec doesn't want.
How much will all this cost?
Nobody knows, the Marois government hasn't even evaluated the effect of these new changes, another sad remark on its competence.

Before the election that brought Marois to power, Pauline made it an election promise to repatriate the Employment Insurance program from Ottawa to Quebec jurisdiction.
"One of the first battles that a Parti Québécois government will undertake is the return the Employment Insurance program.
On Wednesday, Pauline Marois reiterated its commitment to implement its own Québec program because it believes that the workers are not sufficiently protected.
Marois noted that the reform recently announced by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper on tightening eligibility criteria for EI makes the return
even more urgent." Link{Fr}
Not many of us, smart or dumb, will put our hand into a flame. It only takes one bad experience to understand the negative consequences.
Yes, even stupid people can learn from experience, unfortunately Pauline Marois is not one of them.

Let's go back a bit when the Quebec government of Jean Charest followed up on a longtime PQ initiative led by Pauline Marois to repatriate the parental leave program from Ottawa to Quebec jurisdiction.
When Marois was a PQ minister she promised that this eventual transfer would be paid for entirely by the repatriation of the $350 million in annual taxes that Ottawa would forgo in Quebec's favour, for taking the program off it's hands.

In 2009, Quebec's repatriated parental leave program didn't cost the $450 million (adjusted for inflation) that Marois predicted, but rather $1.7 billion, this while taking in only $1.4 billion in premiums.

Today, the cost of the parental leave program run by Quebec has skyrocketed to $1.9 billion dollars.
In the first five years of the program, premiums went up on an average of about 6% a year, but still not high enough to reach an equilibrium between revenues and expenditures.
Despite these massive increases in employer and employee contributions, the program will have accumulated a $713 million dollar deficit by the end of 2013. Link{fr}
Add to this deficit another $349 million that Quebec owes Ottawa for a loan the province made when the program was transferred to its jurisdiction. The money was used to reimburse Ottawa for furture payments owed by Ottawa to claimants that would survive the transfer.
Quebec has never paid back the loan and so has paid about $29 million to Ottawa each year in interest. Link{fr}
That puts the program's deficit to over a billion dollars since the its inception.

You'd think that the debacle would serve as a cautionary tale, but alas, no.

Which brings us to the proposed repatriation of the Employment Insurance program from Ottawa to Quebec, an idea so financially ruinous that any Quebec politician who advocates such folly, should be fitted for a straight jacket and sent to the loony bin.

Quebec with 23.9% of the Canadian population, receives about  40% of the total benefits paid out by the federal program.
In fact Quebec 'chomeurs' and 'chomeuses' receive $800 million more  each year than Quebec workers contribute to the Employment Insurance fund! Link{fr}

If Quebec takes over the program from Ottawa, it would have to double premiums paid by employers and employees just to offer the same benefits.

If as the PQ promises, that its version of EI will be more generous than Ottawa's, it could mean a tripling of premiums!
A transfer of the EI program to Quebec will cost the province close to a billion dollars a year, at a minimum and if the parental leave program is any example it could easily balloon to two billion dollars a year extra.

I'm sure if Pauline makes a formal request to Prime Minister Harper to take over the program, the Conservatives would be fine with it, unlike Pauline and the PQ, federalists can do their sums.

So where does that leave Quebec?
Well, firmly between a rock and a hard place, its only option is to lose with the present cuts or lose more by taking over the program.

Considering that Quebec has a higher percentage of seasonal workers collecting EI benefits than most other provinces, it means that up to half of all those struck from the EI rolls across Canada in relation to the proposed changes, will come from Quebec. That's quite a pill!

Aside from that, the losses will hit certain coastal regions of Quebec especially hard, Gaspé and Îles de la Madeleine where its been a way of life for a couple of generations to combine EI benefits with seasonal work.
As for alternate employment, don't hold your breath finding it in the boonies.
One of the provisions of the new rules is that workers be required to travel up to 60 miles if a job is available, and for those islanders living in ÃŽles de la Madeleine, travelling sixty miles puts them smack dab in the middle of the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence!

For the PQ and the Quebec government this EI debacle is a painful lose/lose situation with Quebec taking  the biggest hit of any province, by far!

One can only wonder if it isn't political payback courtesy one Stephen Harper.

Readers, is the Prime Minister that evil and conniving?

Quebec's Alternate Universe

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The maddening and bewildering world of Quebec's  alternate universe
Like it or not, agree or disagree, the use of a common language, different from Canada, has resulted in Quebec developing in a different societal direction than that of the ROC or in fact, English North America altogether.

While the federal government binds Quebec to the rest of Canada with both societies sharing many common experiences, it is what is unshared,  including language, law, culture, media and education that sets us apart.

It's like placing two closely-related groups of people on two separate desert islands and watching them naturally develop in different directions over time.

Sometimes, we on the English side sit back and wonder at the decisions Quebecers make as a society, but everyday in the Quebec press, a similar voice is raised about us, that it is we who are paddling up the wrong river and that it is Quebec that has chosen wisely, making societal choices that favours the collective over the individual.

Most people in the ROC, as well as the English speaking people in Quebec, view Quebec society as nothing less than an alternate universe, as strange and bewildering as the world experienced by Alice on her trip through the looking glass.

Let's peek in and take an allegorical and whimsical tour of this place, with apologies to Lewis Carrol.
I've put together a compendium of stories, which like Alice's experience through the looking glass, will take the reader on a bewildering and maddening voyage, one where normal as we define it is abnormal and where sense as we define it is nonsense. 

a caveat: Not everybody in Quebec agrees with this alternate view of society, not by a long shot.
But it is the agenda sold in the media, the schools, and the intelligentsia, the concept of massive government spending and massive government intervention in society, a policy adopted by both federalist and separatist Quebec governments going back to Jean Lesage.

Quebec's "sustainable un-development"

Let me credit the above phrase to Alain Dubuc of La Presse who coined the original French version of "sous-développement durable," in an article which described Quebecers sometime pathological fear of fossil fuel development and which describes more specifically the city of Gaspé where the town council enacted legal roadblocks bringing to halt the drilling of an oil well near the town. The mayor insisted on protecting the town's water table despite the fact that  the well, which incidentally, was only a test well, was being drilled over five kilometres away from homes.
"What is surprising, however, is the contrast between the mayor's vehemence and the decay of his city's economy. Mr. Roussy said that "we will not compromise" on the water quality, even if the threat seems virtually nonexistent. Read the story in French
Like most other towns in the peninsula, Gaspé's economy depends largely on fishing and tourism, both purely part time affairs and it's no surprise that chronic unemployment is a hallmark of the region where those on government benefits are double the Quebec average and of those who do work, 38% depend on government related salaries.

In choosing to block oil development, just about the only thing that can bring jobs and prosperity to the region, the local citizens led by the mayor are smugly telling all who will listen that they are choosing to protect the environment over  economic benefit. Hmm....

In a stinging blog piece, entitled "Gaspé and other people's money', a blogger points out rather cruely, just how dependant the area is on handouts from the federal and provincial governments and just how much of a drain the region is to Quebec's financial well-being..
"When you live in the land of Cain and you're as poor as Job, unless you are completely masochistic, you'll jump for joy to learn that you've found oil on your land ..." Link{fr}
err...Not the people of the Gaspé!

Now the fun starts in the comments below the story where Gaspésian after Gaspésian defends the right to live as they do, this letter, pretty typical.
"Gaspé has clean air, pure water, nature, unpolluted beaches. There is no corruption, no corrupt municipal employees, no murders every week, no home invasions, no mafia, no traffic jams, no road rage, no senior homes with malnourished, ill treated and abandoned seniors, but rather, hospitable caregivers, proud to be  Gaspésians. We have the best quality of life that you could imagine and the most beautiful view in the world, as well as the most beautiful part of the country imaginable .... that must be why Montrealers come to buy our homes to spend their retirement ... Gaspé is paradise... Montreal is more like hell ... I'm sorry, David, money does not buy happiness" -Marie-Jeanne Fiola ....
Comment after comment of sanctimonious wailing, was finally interrupted by this one which made me smile.
"Clean air? Please stop being an idiot, The air in Montreal would be as pure as in Gaspé, if we were as lazy as you. And for a people who don't work hard, you still managed to virtually exterminate the fish stocks.
You say to us that we have corruption, but YOU ARE WORSE, how about all the welfare money and under the table earnings.
You are all just pathetic and useless and I dream of days that Quebec will turn its back on you!."- Françis Éliotte
And so these Quebecers are against the development of natural resources in their backyard, but not necessarily against the benefits of natural resources. What they are in favour of is someone else developing these resources, somewhere else and shipping a portion of the profits over here.
Are you listening, Alberta?

So it's no surprise that some Quebecers are demonstrating against Quebec's vaunted 'Plan Nord' a project to develop Quebec's vast resources in the uninhabited hinterland in the vast wastelands of the north.

Poster calling on Quebecers to demonstrate against Quebec's plan to develop natural resources

And so as we begin our Alice in Wonderland trip through Quebec, our first experience is the discovery that it's first holy principle, is called 'Other people's money'

Quebec stamp collecting raised to an art form

In Quebec's alternate universe, people have the absolute right to work for four months a year and collect unemployment benefits for the remaining eights months.
It's normal, fair and absolutely justifiable.

Those who defend the practice, tell Alice that just because there are few employment opportunities where they live, they have an absolute right to live where they want to and if the government can't produce jobs for them, then working Canadians in Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, will just have to pay to support them.

While unemployment insurance was invented as a safety net to help people get over a rough spot after losing their job, in parts of Quebec, it is simply an income subsidy program where participants in places like the ÃŽles de la Madeleine get benefits every single year and where it is a way of life.

Recently the Harper government brought in reforms that will have the effect of reducing these benefits, something that has the region up in arms.
A recent demonstration against these reforms in Cap-aux-Meules, the main town in the ÃŽles de la Madeleine, turned out one third of the population, panicked by the idea of being cut off.
In fact, the 300 local lobster fisherman are not only opposed to the stricter rules, but are in fact demanding that benefits be extended by another five weeks, because the fishing season is less than three months long and that they face a 'black hole' between the time the benefits run out and fishing season begins!

The practice of working the qualifying period for employment insurance even has its own sarcastic euphemism, called "Collecting Stamps"
I first heard the term many years ago, while travelling on business through the region. It is a term used to describe someone who works just long enough to qualify for benefits and no longer.

It seems that in the old days before computers, workers kept booklets in which they would affix stamps that employers included with their paycheck. When a worker 'collected' enough stamps, he or she could qualify for unemployment benefits.
The concept is pretty much the same as the  'Pinky' or 'Gold Star' stamp program that food stores conducted in the fifties and sixties, if you are old enough to remember. (which I doubt)

When Alice asks those on the program how they can justify Canadians paying them eight months of benefits for four months of work, year after year, they  become indignant, warning her that without these benefits, everyone will have to move where there are jobs, an unacceptable burden!

Students being students...Quebec style

When the PQ won a slim minority mandate, it had to face the reality of its election platform, part of which was the promise to support a freeze in tuition for college and university students until a conference it was to call to discuss the issue.
Now the PQ government is facing that conference, but like all the other promises it made, is searching for a way out of it.
The radical students who demand free tuition have been told that this idea is now off the table and won't even be discussed, triggering a decision by some of them to boycott the conference.
The less radical student groups, who opposed the large increase, but called for a freeze instead, are also learning that a promise is not a promise and that Pauline who wore a symbolic red square and banged pots in the street in support of the student strike, actually doesn't give a crap.

Students are not amused and many feel betrayed, threatening a return strike action if their demands are not met.

Alice is surprised, she asks the student leader how a strike can hurt the government, when the only thing at stake is the student's education.

"When I refused to eat my dinner because I didn't like it, my mother took it away and served it for breakfast and then lunch the next day, until I ate it. I learned a good lesson. How can going on strike hurt anyone but yourself?"

"Ah, but this is Quebec!" answered the student leader. "You should have done as we did. You should have broken the windows in your home and slashed your mother's tires so she couldn't go to work!"

"Oh my.. " said Alice..."If you do that, how will she support your family?"

"You obviously don't understand," answered the student leader... "how else will we be heard?" 


Quebec's  fossil-fuel-phobia

As Alice continues her visit through the alternate universe of Quebec, she is surprised to find that its citizens have a pathological fear of fossil fuel development. She is told patronizingly, that exploration of oil and gas is feeding an unhealthy dependence on polluting energy.

Alice is perplexed, because if Quebecers are against using fossil fuel energy, why are they in fact the province that has the highest per head ratio of vehicles on the road?

In fact, Quebec leads the country in the use of 'dirty' wood stoves. Used for heating, the majority of these haven't been updated to cleaner versions that create up to 90% less pollution.
The fact that just one of these dirty stove heaters creates more pollution in 24 hours than 9 cars in a year, doesn't seem to faze the Quebec government, which otherwise claims to be obsessed with the enviornment.
Surprisingly, the government also has no plans to restrict these stoves or phase them out, nor even to ask users who do heat with wood, to upgrade to the newer and vastly cleaner models!
Instead the Quebec government is looking at making pollution standards for cars even tighter and more expensive.
"Go figger...." Alice thinks to herself.

Now years ago, Quebec put a hold on shale gas exploration (exploration, not development) because of the furious outcry by people in the communities close to where the gas wells would be drilled.
The Charest government sent the whole issue for study to the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE), a government commission that assesses the ecological impact of development. This had the effect of freezing things until now.

When the PQ government was elected, those running the BAPE were fired, deemed to be too industry-friendly  and replaced by radical environmentalists.

Then the Marois government decided to throw out all the previous studies conducted by BAPE concerning shale gas development and decided to start deliberations from scratch, claiming that the old studies were biased in favour of industry, declaring a moratorium on the exploration of the resource, in the meantime.

The bewildering part in all this is, is that the commission needn't bother deliberating at all.
All the companies that do the exploration have packed up and left Quebec!
If somebody in the PQ would bother to read the newspapers, they would know that the shale gas industry has already matured and that production in North America is now so high that prices have fallen in half.
While mature shale gas wells on-stream for many years remain profitable because start up and development costs have already been paid for, new wells are not economic under current and foreseeable market conditions.

Alice asks Pauline, "You've missed the boat, so why are you studying the ecological impact of shale gas development, if no company is prepared to develop shale gas at all?"

"Because we have to be prepared, that's why!" snorts Pauline.

SNC Lavalin & HQ..... pride of Quebec

There's no doubt that Quebecers are proud of the two biggest symbols of its economic emancipation, Hydro-Qubec and SNC-Lavalin, and it seems that nothing but nothing can be allowed to shake that confidence.
Like those fans of Lance Armstrong who believed that he was innocent in the face of overwhelming evidence, self-deception is a powerful thing when people are so deeply invested.

So it is actually no surprise at all to see that in the face of so many negative and shocking revelations in regard to these two pillars of Quebec economic development, the province has collectively decided to "stand by her man."

SNC-Lavalin has developed into one of the most powerful engineering/consulting firms in the world, with billions of dollars in projects spread across the globe. The fact that the company is Quebec-bred and that its head-office remains in Montreal, remains a powerful symbol of Quebec know-how.

Recently however, that reputation has not only been tarnished, but absolutely sullied with revelations of bribery of officials in order to win contracts, that may have been standard operation procedure in the company's business development plan.
A bizarre story came to light exposing this dirty secret when a plot to smuggle one of Colonel Gadhafi sons out of the country during the revolution, to safe haven in Mexico, fell apart.
Allegedly, SNC paid up to $160 million in bribes to Saadi Gadhafi, which successfully led to lucrative contracts in Libya.
One ex-SNC employee is sitting in jail in Switzerland and the company has distanced itself from other employees involved, throwing them all under the bus.
All this led to the dismissal of the president of the company, who is now charged with fraud. The RCMP is also investigating whether the company paid the infamous Arthur Porter a bribe of up to $22 million to secure the contract for the new super hospital now under construction in Montreal. Link

But like a wayward son, Quebecers seem forgiving.
"Quebec’s pension fund giant Caisse de dépot says it will continue to support SNC-Lavalin because it sees the engineering firm’s potential of becoming a “true global leader” once it gets over its current problems.
“I know now that SNC is tarnished because of what’s happened but you can’t lose the forest through the trees,” Caisse CEO Michael Sabia told reporters Tuesday during a discussion of its new strategy to shield itself from market volatility." Link
 As for the public, they do seem somewhat enraged, but not over the scandal itself, but rather the repercussions.
It seems that in conducting a cleanup, a lot of old francophone bosses including the president, have been replaced by Anglophones and that has the press seeing red.
"The reshuffle announced Friday morning in the senior ranks of SNC-Lavalin is another blow to the French presence at the highest levels of the company, until recently seen as a jewel of 'Quebec Inc.'

Since coming into office, the boss of SNC-Lavalin, Robert Card,  an
American who replaced Pierre Duhaime, has made multiple appointments that lead  to the diminished  presence of francophones at the highest levels of the company." Link{fr}
As for Hydro-Quebec, support for the utility remains steadfast, despite having up to twice as many employees as it needs and perhaps the highest operating costs of any North American utility.
But all this isn't important as long as the company records billions in profits, notwithstanding the fact that most of the money it makes is based on the power that it gets from Newfoundland for pittance.
But bad decision after bad decision, coupled with collapsing export prices has people starting to look closer.

While Hydro is mothballing power plants that it owns because it has piled up a massive amount of surplus generating capacity, it is paying for power it doesn't need from third parties at exorbitant prices.
The company is also committed to useless and expensive wind-farm projects and other stupidities.

But so far, nobody in government is willing to bell the cat, it is just too unthinkable.

As Alice hears the story she shrugs her shoulders.

"This place is curioser and curioser!"

Honesty and Quebec values

While taking a break, Alice is invited to watch the goings on at the Crime Commission that the government of Jean Charest was browbeaten into convening.

She watches a few witnesses who tell a harrowing story of corruption wherein Quebec's first and third largest cities seem to be run by criminals doing business with criminals, aided by criminals.
The scale of dishonesty is so large and widespread that Alice asks the Cheshire cat who is sitting beside her why not one person ever became a whistleblower.

Read "125 years of corruption commissions"
"Ha Ha!" he retorted." How little you understand. Quebec has been corrupt forever, it is the way things are.
People aren't even that upset, in fact despite the horrific tales of corruption coming out about the city, a majority of Montrealers still believe that their city is well run!" 

 "Oh my," said Alice, as she got up to leave, "I've got one more stop to make on my quest to better understand the queer nature of this place. 

"Where are you going, my dear?" asked the Cat,

 "I've an appointment at a place called 'l'Office québécois de la langue française,' they promised to clear things up for me."

"Really....the OQLF?" answered a grinning Cheshire cat,

"Then Good luck, my dear"



Thank you readers for coming along on this journey. I shall leave with a  final quote from the original work, Alice in Wonderland;

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

PQ's Magical Mystery Tour

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"Roll up,
WE'VE GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED
Roll up for the mystery tour.... Roll up!,
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED,
Roll up for the mystery tour.
The magical mystery tour is hoping to take you away,
Hoping to take you away... take you away!!"

I have to say, if Pauline Marois is nothing else, she is predictable.
Her latest sovereignty 'push,' announced with much fanfare is actually just another cynical ploy dedicated to deceiving the weak of mind and the ideologically over-committed.

When one considers her actions, in light of her true motivations, which is to  retain power at all costs, it makes certain sense to engage in another silly round of loud sovereigntist chest-thumping.

Like jogging, where the object isn't to get anywhere, but rather to exercise, Pauline's sovereignty push is not really an effort to re-animate the moribund project of sovereignty, but rather to satisfy the militants who demand action.
As they say "busy hands are happy hands!"

And so Pauline hopes to tire them out in a useless bout of sovereigntist exercise.
Her new push should be nicknamed Sovereignty 5BX, a tiring stand in place, go nowhere program which uses up a lot of effort and doesn't cost a lot.

To dedicated sovereigntists, Pauline Marois' announcement that her PQ government  is undertaking a new and robust campaign to promote sovereignty is perhaps music to their years, but I'm not sure that they are entirely fooled, so naked is the deception.

To that end, they will be utilizing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, a decidedly low-cost approach.
Let us consider that one television commercial on a top-rated French TV show can garner up to two million views while an internet infomercial promoting sovereignty will be hard pressed to hit 10,000 views and all of those views are likely to come from dedicated hardliners.

At any rate, Pauline has launched the campaign with a speech worthy of  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, cherry-picking a few facts to make the point that Quebec is done wrong by Canada.
Her argument is so glaringly infantile that only the delusional can swallow it.

Telling her minions that Quebec is being short-changed because the big ship-building contract was given to the Maritimes, she actually said that had Quebec gotten that same $20 billion money to invest, they wouldn't need equalization payments! Link{fr}
Think about that statement....
She is actually telling the audience that if Ottawa gives Quebec money, Quebec wouldn't need any money from Ottawa!
It makes as much sense as Robert Mugabe telling his followers that ;
“We don't mind having sanctions banning us from Europe. We are not Europeans.” Link

I'm afraid that there are more of these type of pronouncements that we can expect, patent nonsense, this from our Premier who is fast becoming a Mugabesque buffoon.

How's about this Pauline gobbledygook about the bothersome subject of university and college tuition fees;
“For me, indexing means a freeze because indexing means that with the cost of living increasing from year to year, if we freeze without indexing, we reduce tuition fees,” Marois said. “We have to be clear on that.”
Marois said she wants “a balance,” to reduce student debt and make university more accessible.
In a tweet, ASSÉ, the Association pour la solidarité syndicale étudiante, which has called for free tuition, replied to the premier.
“The freeze on tuition fees its not indexing. Pauline Marois should open a dictionary!” Link
It would be funny if not so sad......

Was Sunday's Demonstration a Success?

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Readers, I'm out of town and actually unable to complete the post I had planned on publishing today.

I apologize.

I've opened up this new post to allow readers to comment on yesterday's anti-Bill 14 demonstration.
Read a story about it

If you attended, how about a first person description?

Otherwise it's an open forum today, anything goes!

I am traveling back home to Canada today (Monday)  and will resume posting  on Wednesday....the title....
"Radio-Canada serves up Chinese Fodder"

Bill 14 a Pernicious Attack on Minorities

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  One doesn't have to look much farther than the second provision of Bill 14, to understand that the law is one of the most pernicious attacks on the rights of minorities ever undertaken by a government in this country, one dedicated to disenfranchising minorities and anglophones from forming a recognized and valued element of society.

In one fell swoop the government of Quebec has taken the unprecedented step to relegate the over 21% of those Quebecers who do not share a French mother tongue and who do not share the 'common culture' of poutine and maple syrup, to second class citizenship, a situation where their culture and language is no longer recognized as part of the greater Quebec society.

According to Section 2 of Bill 14, as pertaining to French;
“It constitutes the foundation of Québec’s identity and of a distinct culture that is open to the world.”
To those francophones reading this and pooh-poohing my interpretation as overly harsh and who believe that minorities and Anglophones are not being marginalized, I would ask them to consider the following;
What would be your reaction to the Government of Canada enacting the similar legislation on a national level.
English constitutes the foundation of Canada’s identity and of a distinct culture that is open to the world.”
I'm sure francophones wouldn't be excited to see their language and culture excluded from the definition of how Canada defines itself and if there is a difference between what the Quebec government is planning and what I propose above, I'd like to see someone attempt to do so in the comments section.

Come to think of it how about New Brunswick enacting the same type of legislation, one that erases in one fell swoop the value and worth of francophone culture in that province.

English constitutes the foundation of New Brunswick’s identity and of a distinct culture that is open to the world.”

Do you find this insulting to the 30% of francophone New Brunswickers?
I certainly do, but to Quebec's French language militants and the PQ, it is perfectly normal to marginalize a significant minority of the population, telling them that their particular language and culture may be valued only as it pertains to being adjunct of society in general.

There is only so much tap dancing that one can do to justify such a draconian, hurtful and exclusionist provision.
It is a law conceived in discrimination and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created unequally. (apologies to Abraham Lincoln)

And I am tired of hearing the excuse of that old chestnut that 'desperate times require desperate measures,' it is patently untrue that French is in any sort of danger in Quebec.

More people speak French today than ever before and more people will speak French in Quebec tomorrow.
French has achieved a critical mass that precludes it from being in any sort of danger. To say otherwise is a naked attempt to manage public opinion through lies and chicanery.
Any talk of French being in danger is just separatist talk by militants meant to frighten Quebecers into buying the sovereignty pipe dream.

Twenty years ago there was hardly a politician in the National Assembly who couldn't speak English, good English at that.
Today, how many French members of that august assembly can actually watch an English television show or movie and have an acceptable level of comprehension. Less than 20% I imagine.
Most in the PQ (save for half a dozen) rehearse in the mirror the one or two lines of English they will speak to reporters and then quickly retreat into cloistered world unlingualism.
Is this the new bilingual Quebec?

Bill 14 and Bill 101 and attacks on bilingual store signs is an attempt to alter perceptions, in other words, putting English out of sight and out of mind.
With English signs removed from view, militants can foist the fiction upon an unsuspecting public that Montreal is a French city, when clearly it is bilingual and ethnically diverse.

And when French language militants tell us one more time that the English are the best-treated minority in Canada, they should be reminded it isn't true.
In fact it is the French minority in Canada that enjoys financial, social and linguistic benefits far beyond its demographic footprint.
With sovereignty out of the question, the the only option left to the nasty and vindictive French radicals, is a legislative attack on their enemies, the English and Ethnics.

If the Liberals and the CAQ allow the travesty of Bill 14 to proceed, it will send the message that they are not honourable or brave enough to face down an evil attack on their own citizens.
It will demonstrate once and for all that those not with a French mother tongue are to be expendable and that the reach for power justifies the betrayal and marginalization of a million of their co-citizens.

If the CAQ and Liberals betray us on Bill 14, there is no going back. If they allow our language and culture to be relegated to second class status, they betray every value that makes us who we are. If that betrayal comes to pass, we too must make a stand and say no more and that we will not choose from the lessor of two evils.

If the CAQ votes against Bill 14 and the Liberals avoid taking a stand by not showing up as before, then the Liberals are dead to me and they should be dead to you, damn the consequences.

If the CAQ votes for the bill or doesn't show up for the vote, well a pox on both their houses and for us it means that there is no political route left in Quebec to defend the interests of our community,

We are getting close to the time when it is time to move towards street activism.

....yup.....I said it.
If Bill 14 passes, it is time to give up on the political route and take the argument to the streets...


What does that mean....well we can start with humiliation and ramp it up from there, but that is for the future...

Credit: Red, White Blue.

24 Şubat 2013 Pazar

Bill 101- You Can't always Get What You Want

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I am always amused by those who deem that it is not only reasonable but desirable to legislate social behaviour, as if personal choice is something repugnant, and that the public, like an untamed horse, needs to be whipped into submission and obedience for the greater societal good.

Much to the consternation of these social engineers, state intervention into social issues and personal choice seldom works. As Woody Allen told us about falling in love with his step-daughter,... The  heart wants what the heart wants.

Perhaps the best example of misguided social engineering is the desire by environmentalists to ban the sale of bottled water, despite the fact that people want to buy the product.
To social engineers, the product is stupid and environmentally wasteful and as such should be banned.
But what would be the reaction to such a ban?
Would consumers run to the water fountains instead?
Would they accept as an alternative, begging at the fast food counter for a Styrofoam cup of tepid tap water, in lieu of a sanitary and perfectly chilled bottle of purchased water?
The reality is that such a ban would probably increase the amount of soft drinks or juices sold, a disastrous and unintended consequence of deciding for others how they must act.

No society in North America compares with Quebec when it come to government social engineers telling citizens how they must act, think and function.  Front and center in the pursuit of state mandated behaviour is the foulest of all agencies, the Office québécois de la langue française, otherwise known as the OQLF.

Last week an article published in La Presse complained that certain retailers were contravening Bill 101 by not offering a French language website comparable to that offered in English. Link{Fr} .

The article named a few companies but particularly singled out Urban Outfitters because it services Canadian customers from an American website which is unilingually English, something that Bill 101 forbids. (or so the newspaper article concludes)

So why has the company not been fined or otherwise punished by the OQLF over the last four or five years?

Quite simply, (contrary to what the newspaper article tells us,) it is because the company hasn't  broken any law or regulation, much to the outrage of the OQLF, which is powerless to do anything about it.

Somewhere along the line, Urban Outfitters deemed it too expensive or inconvenient to open a website exclusively for francophone customers and as I told you before, Canadian customers are directed to the English website based in the USA.

In order to comply with Quebec law that demands that French customers be treated equally to English customers, Urban Outfitters decided (quite bizarrely) to treat English customers from Quebec as badly as it treats French customers!
What they have done, is to ban any online sales to Quebec from their English website, an embarrassing work-around copied and repeated by other American retailers.

If you go online to Urban Outfitters, don't bother trying to order something to a Quebec address, it isn't possible and for consumers, both English and French it is quite galling.

No QC -Quebec
Notwithstanding what La Presse or the OQLF says, Urban Outfitters is actually following the letter of the law, so what's the beef?

The problem is that it's a bit humiliating that the OQLF cannot force a company to offer French online shopping based on the fact that such a service is available to customers in California or Ontario.
So to retaliate, the OQLF, (instead of just admitting it is powerless,) has organized an underhanded intimidation and smear campaign, by falsely suggesting that Urban Outfitters is acting illegally.

CLICK photo to enlarge
Recently I received an offer from Costco in my inbox for a home telephone system at a substantial discount if I ordered online.
I was interested and went to the checkout page only to be informed that the product was not available in Quebec. The notice didn't say why, but I can imagine it was because the product did not have French instructions.
The same goes for Canadian online websites that have toys or other products that only interact in English, you have to buy them through US based online retailers.
Read my previous post  Buzz Lightyear -Parlez-vous Francais?

French language militants will tell you that this is only fair, that because a French customer cannot buy a product in French, an English customer shouldn't be allowed to buy the product in English...Hmm....

The politics of Bill 101 are strangely paradoxical, forcing some areas of the marketplace to comply with French language requirements while ignoring others.

Take for example, books, which may be sold in English in Quebec without a French version.
Why is this?
You may think that cultural products are exempt from the law, but Hollywood movies may not be shown in Quebec without a French dubbed version being available at the same time.
Not so for coffee house movies or foreign language movies (other than English) , probably because nobody cares.

How is it that Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift, aren't required to record French lyrics for Quebec?
Why do real cars have dashboards with English words only, yet toy cars must be French or bilingual at the least?

The truth is that if French were required in the above examples, Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift wouldn't bother selling their product in Quebec, a humiliating situation that the OQLF recognizes and avoids by remaining silent. By the way, even the English only packaging is allowed. 

As for cars, it would be easy enough to add French to the dashboard, but the car companies wouldn't pass off the added cost to customers across North America, the additional expense would be added to the sticker price in Quebec only, (like higher car prices in California because of tougher emission standards) making cars more expensive in Quebec than in Ontario, something francophone consumers would be up in arms over.

The reality is that the OQLF is fine with forcing French onto businesses as long as the additional cost of the French is passed on to the greater English market, as is the case with dubbed movies, which moviegoers across Canada pay for.
Could you imagine the outrage if theatres in Quebec charged an additional dollar or so for French language version movies versus their English counterparts, to reflect the added expense of dubbing?

These are the anomalies of Bill 101 that intrigue me. It is a law that does what it can to socially engineer society, but fails because of certain economic and social realities and constraints.

While Bill 101 tells French Quebecers and Allophones that they must attend French school as a child, it dares not forbid them from watching English TV or attending English language movies.
Believe me that there are militants out there who would see English TV and movies banned, just like the social engineers who want bottled water bottles gone from the marketplace.
Again, could you imagine the riot in front of a theatre, if ticket sellers refused entrance to Francophones attempting to watch an English film. It may sound North Korean, but it is done in our schools every day.

When it comes to online sales, the legal choice in Quebec is clear, retailers must offer equivalent French services or not offer them at all.
It is when companies choose the latter alternative that the hackles of the OQLF are raised and where in response the agency reacts with an calculated smear campaign that intimates that the retailers are acting illegally, a shameful practiceunbecoming to any reputable government agency.

And so, the OQLF, the guardian of the French language has evolved into a slimy, deceitful and underhanded organization that is not averse to intimidation, misdirection, lying and coercion, when faced with the limitations of its own law.

Such is the lesson of Urban Outfitters.

For the OQLF, the choice by this company and other American retailers to forgo online sales because of French language requirements should be a choice to be respected, if not appreciated. In other words, tough noogies.

Unfortunately, like dirty cops, the OQLF enforces the law where it can and uses underhanded frame tactics where it can't.
What better example of going outside the law is the agency telling the public that even though certain bilingual practices (like greeting customers with a Bonjour/Hi) may be legal, they are socially unacceptable.
Here is a quote about bilingual greetings in stores, from Louise Marchand,  head of the OQLF;.
 "It is not a violation of the Charter, but it can contribute to the feeling that Montreal is anglicizedLink{Fr}
The effect of statements like these is to encourage French language militants to intimidate those who use English quite legally and to frighten company executives from offering English services as the law provides.

How many retailers have given up posting signs in English, even though the law allows for it, this even in towns and cities that are overwhelmingly English?

You know the answer as well as I.

Quebec's Employment Insurance Nightmare

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Somewhere along the line, UI or Unemployment Insurance became the more politically correct Employment Insurance, but just the same, Quebecers haven't given up the term "chômeur" to describe being out of work or 'Assurance chômage' to describe the  government insurance plan that pays benefits related to loss of employment.

The Harper government enacted a massive reform of the system that came into effect early this month, which will have an important impact on Quebec and the Maritimes.
It targets those who repeatedly go on and off benefits, forcing them to seek alternative employment under strict new rules.
It not only seeks to get rid of freeloaders who only work long enough to become eligible for payments, and then return to the workforce to repeat the cycle over and over again, it attacks another big sector of the benefits pie, that of 'seasonal' workers, who legitimately work only part of the year, in industries like fishing or tourism that can't offer steady year-round employment.
For seasonal workers, EI benefits are less an insurance program than an income maintenance plan.

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party was just such a worker for many years.
Ms. May said that from 1975 to 1980, she received what was then called unemployment insurance during the off-season while working as a waitress and cook at her family’s restaurant and gift shop business in Cape Breton, she says.
Labelling regular users of EI, such as herself, as lazy or abusing the system is unfair, she said.
“I paid into employment insurance. When I needed it, I used it. When I didn’t, I didn’t. I raise my personal experience because I don’t think anyone should be ashamed that seasonal businesses in this country that are big, or small, have benefited from a legal system of insurance that pays for itself....”
“I’m coming out myself and saying this was my life. If you want to say this is a wrong way to live, fine,” she said. “Let’s have that conversation....” Read the whole story
The National Post explains these changes clearly.
Read: What exactly are the changes to the Employment Insurance system?

One thing is painfully clear, the reform will affect seasonal workers in the Quebec fishing industry in the Gaspé and Îles de la Madeleine, where fishermen work about four months and remain on EI the rest of the year.
This has set off a panic in the regions affected with demonstrations protesting the new rules held in several Quebec towns.
One demonstration against these EI changes brought out 4,000 of the 14,000 residents of ÃŽles de la Madeleine, an island in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that depends on the seasonal fishing and tourist industry to survive. Fully 40% of the workforce collects EI during the 'off' season.
One of the fears is that the changes will lead to an exodus out of the region, something that happened in Newfoundland after the failure of the fishery.

The Quebec minister responsible, Agnes Maltais, in a televised interview was absolutely furious with the Conservatives decision, going so far as calling the changes illegitimate because Ottawa never consulted Quebec.

Why is Quebec so angry?
Because those who will fall off the EI payroll may just fall onto the province's welfare role, a downloading of responsibility that Quebec doesn't want.
How much will all this cost?
Nobody knows, the Marois government hasn't even evaluated the effect of these new changes, another sad remark on its competence.

Before the election that brought Marois to power, Pauline made it an election promise to repatriate the Employment Insurance program from Ottawa to Quebec jurisdiction.
"One of the first battles that a Parti Québécois government will undertake is the return the Employment Insurance program.
On Wednesday, Pauline Marois reiterated its commitment to implement its own Québec program because it believes that the workers are not sufficiently protected.
Marois noted that the reform recently announced by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper on tightening eligibility criteria for EI makes the return
even more urgent." Link{Fr}
Not many of us, smart or dumb, will put our hand into a flame. It only takes one bad experience to understand the negative consequences.
Yes, even stupid people can learn from experience, unfortunately Pauline Marois is not one of them.

Let's go back a bit when the Quebec government of Jean Charest followed up on a longtime PQ initiative led by Pauline Marois to repatriate the parental leave program from Ottawa to Quebec jurisdiction.
When Marois was a PQ minister she promised that this eventual transfer would be paid for entirely by the repatriation of the $350 million in annual taxes that Ottawa would forgo in Quebec's favour, for taking the program off it's hands.

In 2009, Quebec's repatriated parental leave program didn't cost the $450 million (adjusted for inflation) that Marois predicted, but rather $1.7 billion, this while taking in only $1.4 billion in premiums.

Today, the cost of the parental leave program run by Quebec has skyrocketed to $1.9 billion dollars.
In the first five years of the program, premiums went up on an average of about 6% a year, but still not high enough to reach an equilibrium between revenues and expenditures.
Despite these massive increases in employer and employee contributions, the program will have accumulated a $713 million dollar deficit by the end of 2013. Link{fr}
Add to this deficit another $349 million that Quebec owes Ottawa for a loan the province made when the program was transferred to its jurisdiction. The money was used to reimburse Ottawa for furture payments owed by Ottawa to claimants that would survive the transfer.
Quebec has never paid back the loan and so has paid about $29 million to Ottawa each year in interest. Link{fr}
That puts the program's deficit to over a billion dollars since the its inception.

You'd think that the debacle would serve as a cautionary tale, but alas, no.

Which brings us to the proposed repatriation of the Employment Insurance program from Ottawa to Quebec, an idea so financially ruinous that any Quebec politician who advocates such folly, should be fitted for a straight jacket and sent to the loony bin.

Quebec with 23.9% of the Canadian population, receives about  40% of the total benefits paid out by the federal program.
In fact Quebec 'chomeurs' and 'chomeuses' receive $800 million more  each year than Quebec workers contribute to the Employment Insurance fund! Link{fr}

If Quebec takes over the program from Ottawa, it would have to double premiums paid by employers and employees just to offer the same benefits.

If as the PQ promises, that its version of EI will be more generous than Ottawa's, it could mean a tripling of premiums!
A transfer of the EI program to Quebec will cost the province close to a billion dollars a year, at a minimum and if the parental leave program is any example it could easily balloon to two billion dollars a year extra.

I'm sure if Pauline makes a formal request to Prime Minister Harper to take over the program, the Conservatives would be fine with it, unlike Pauline and the PQ, federalists can do their sums.

So where does that leave Quebec?
Well, firmly between a rock and a hard place, its only option is to lose with the present cuts or lose more by taking over the program.

Considering that Quebec has a higher percentage of seasonal workers collecting EI benefits than most other provinces, it means that up to half of all those struck from the EI rolls across Canada in relation to the proposed changes, will come from Quebec. That's quite a pill!

Aside from that, the losses will hit certain coastal regions of Quebec especially hard, Gaspé and Îles de la Madeleine where its been a way of life for a couple of generations to combine EI benefits with seasonal work.
As for alternate employment, don't hold your breath finding it in the boonies.
One of the provisions of the new rules is that workers be required to travel up to 60 miles if a job is available, and for those islanders living in ÃŽles de la Madeleine, travelling sixty miles puts them smack dab in the middle of the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence!

For the PQ and the Quebec government this EI debacle is a painful lose/lose situation with Quebec taking  the biggest hit of any province, by far!

One can only wonder if it isn't political payback courtesy one Stephen Harper.

Readers, is the Prime Minister that evil and conniving?