It's hard to believe that we've gotten this far, but as I look down on the statistics page attached to this blog it tells me that this is the 1,000th post, which actually surprises me because I never thought I would stick with it this long.In those 1,000 posts, I've written somewhere in the neighborhood of a million and a half words garnering some 35,000 comments!
Considering that in the first year I was basically writing to myself, excited to see a comment or two, we've come a long way.
This year we've approached, but not quite reached a million pageviews, something again I never believed could happen given the narrow scope of this blog.
It never was and remains today my intention to preach, I've realized that it is almost impossible to change somebody's mind when that person has firmly decided on a position.
My main goal is to call out separatist politicians and militants for misleading, lying and otherwise using dirty tricks to dishonestly advance their separatist agenda.
The militant separatists who come to our site do so to either troll or to recharge their separatist batteries by observing we, their 'enemies,' in our natural and unbridled element. To them I say, Welcome aboard, we aren't going anywhere.
I sum up their attitude with a paraphrased line that I repeated in a blog post a while back from the classic movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. When Humphrey Bogart asks an obviously phoney policeman for identification, the bandit answers;
"We don't need no stinkin' badges" (actually the line is a little different, but has become popular in this form)
Why this line?
Because it is the answer that separatists give every time they are reminded what their radicalism costs.
We don't need no stinkin' Walmart.
We don't need no stinkin' jobs.
We don't need no stinkin' investment.
We don't need no stinkin' head offices.
We don't need no stinkin' skyscrapers.
We don't need no stinkin' Anglos.
This morning I read this story in Le Devoir
"Air Canada hurts Montreal's growth"
(Air Canada nuit à la croissance de Montréal)
The story goes on to say that Air Canada is hurting Montreal by making Toronto its hub for international flights.
The truth is that Montreal will soon slip to fourth place in terms of air traffic behind Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto. Of course the writer of that article blames the sorry state of affairs on Air Canada, for being a bad corporate citizen.
In his opinion the airline shouldn't arrange its affairs to maximize profits, if it hurts Quebec!
The separatist response?;
"We don't need no stinkin' Air Canada"
Sadly, Air Canada's gradual shift away from Montreal is an allegorical description as to what has happened to our province. Link {fr}
How many companies have said no to Montreal because of high taxes and prohibitive language laws?
What right-thinking international foreign company would choose Montreal as a location for their head-office when they conduct their business in North America in English and must afford employees the right to work in French?
Waivers you say? That is what the separatists will answer, to which these companies reply;
We don't want no stinkin' waivers! We're going somewhere more hospitable"
When it comes to a list for possible location, be it a multimillion dollar corporation or an NHL free agent, Montreal and Quebec are generally struck from the list of possibilities, with good reason. Call it the "Lindros Effect."
Watch this old video from the CBC and tell me that Quebec's sour grapes attitude isn't exactly what I describe above.
Readers, I guarantee someone in the comments section will point out that Lindros was a bust, so no great loss. In other words;
"We don't want no stinkin' Lindros!
The dirty secret is that in order to attract any foreign investment that creates jobs, the Quebec government has to offer massive amounts of tax breaks, six times more than Ontario does per capita.
The hidden cost of these forgone taxes costs the Quebec treasury billions, but the figure never shows up because it is money never received.
But in Quebec, these facts aren't important.
When you are a separatist, you can explain anything away.
Remember the righteous outrage when Maclean's magazine called Quebec the most corrupt province? When it turned out to be true, the narrative changed.
Today the separatist line is that the corruption is due to federalists and at any rate, all the other provinces are just as corrupt, only Quebec has the courage to face it down. Hmmmmm.....
So that is why I don't bother arguing with separatists, they will never, ever believe that the sovereignty or language issue has been and remains detrimental to Quebec's growth and prosperity, this despite the clear evidence staring them in the face.
There are enough separatist charlatans on the airwaves telling us that an independent Quebec will be a paradise and that the repatriated taxes sent to Ottawa will be enough to make Quebec a gloriously successful and economically sound country. People believe what they want to believe, damn the evidence.But the harm that these separatist con artists have brought down onto our economy is devastatingly real, sending Quebecers on an ever-downward spiral to economic disaster.
This week, my favourite Montreal city councillor Marvin Rotrand proposed hiking parking meter fees to match those in Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver, a reasonable argument until one takes into consideration that Montrealers are at least 25% poorer than citizens in those boom towns, when one considers income and personal and consumption taxes.
We have become little league, courtesy of language militants and separatists and that's the plain truth.
Sadly all this is done for no good reason, the French language in Quebec is in as much danger as Danish in Denmark or Hebrew in Israel.
The language issue is manufactured to boost support for sovereignty and nothing else.
Back in the days of the FLQ, Montreal was ten times as bilingual as it is now and yet language was never even brought up in the FLQ famous manifesto and nobody on the French side was 'anglicized' because of signs and store names.
Back then, the sovereignty issue was economic, the fact that francophones didn't control the economic levers of society.
We all know that the situation changed over the last forty years and now francophones are truly masters in their own domain.
But this left separatists without a burning issue to fire up the independence movement and so the phoney language issue was invented.
Every time you hear the language debate brought up, it is just a separatist wanting to drum up support for sovereignty. The unintended consequence of this underhanded, phoney separatist issue is that it hurts the economic well-being of our province, but to separatists it cannot be true, because they don't want it to be true.
The separatist/language flirtation has turned Quebec into a basket case, deep in debt and beholding to other Canadiens for its yearly allowance. We have gone from being a powerhouse to living in the poor house.
When Sun Life of Canada told the PQ government that Bill 101 made Quebec an inhospitable home back in 1978 and moved to Toronto, it marked a watershed moment in Quebec economic history, the province set on a course of economic decline that still hasn't run it course.
Do Quebecers realize or care that the jobs provided by that one company, would support a town of 40,000-60,000 people?
Think of all the other head offices that left, perhaps less flamboyantly, but nonetheless taking tens of thousands of jobs with them.
But the separatist response now, is the same that we heard back then.
"We don't need no stinkin' Sun Life!
Today we are caught in an unenviable Catch-22 situation, ruled by separatists who don't and never will have enough support to separate.
Like a child playing house, it is all make believe, except that the damage caused by pretending that this province is on the march to sovereignty, is oh so real.
And so I shall continue to write about the lies, misinformation and cruel manipulation that is the separatist/language movement and hope that some of the facts that I point out will become part of the debate.
I'm not hopeful, but try I must.
Try we all must.
A note to readers.
I have heard the call about the comments section becoming unwieldy and promise to move to a new platform like Disqus or Facebook commenting as soon as I find someone able to help me with the migration.
It has become practically impossible to follow a discussion or train of thought when there are 300 comments.
I believe that BLOGGER isn't really designed for so many comments, as they don't seem to make updating the comment section a priority.
The new comment section will probably be a lot smaller, but more readable and interesting.
I promise to enact more control on trolls and eliminate one line comments that don't add anything to the conversation.
It is an evolution that is necessary, like a tree in need of pruning.
I know the regular contributors will come along, making the necessary effort to participate and that is probably all that counts
As always, I want to thank you the readers without which I would have been long gone before this 1000th post.
Best regards!
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder