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.”