Thanks But No Thanks Quebec: Take My Ballot And Shove It

Well, I have decided not to vote in this charade of an election.  My principle reason is that my vote does not count -- it is totally ineffective -- because I live in a region where the same political party, the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), has taken all of the region's seats for the last forty years.

Last election, I "lent" my vote to my wife and dutifully went down to the polls and voted strategically for the party that had the best chance of defeating the outgoing Liberal Member of the Quebec National Assembly, which at the time was the Parti Quebecois (PQ).

But even that didn't work out since the Liberal candidate won the riding.

As a last resort, I would go out and vote if I knew that the manner I voted controlled how the state subsidy for each vote was awarded.  I would make the trip to the polls if the Quebec Green Party and only the Quebec Green Party would receive an extra dollar fifty each year because I had voted for them.

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But the greedy bastards that run this province, the PLQ and the PQ, changed what was previously in the electoral law so that they would be the principal beneficiaries of my right to vote.

In the recently adopted amendment to the law, each name the appears on the electoral list is worth $1.50 and goes into a pot to be split up on the basis of percentage of the vote each party receives during the general election.

WTF?

That means that the lion's share of the state subsidy will go to the two political parties I detest.  If the PLQ gets 40% of the vote, they will get 60 cents each year because my name appears on the electoral list. 

The same goes for the PQ.  If they get 30% of the vote, they will receive 45 cents each year.

In total, the two political parties that refuse to change the voting system so that my vote might be effective in determining who gets to sit in Quebec's National Assembly by introducing a proportional voting system into the electoral process, actually use the principle of proportionality to fund themselves, and thereby keep the voting system from changing as they have done for the last forty years.

As a former candidate for the Quebec Green Party and a plaintiff in an unsuccessful suit against the Quebec Government to have the present voting system declared unconstitutional because it does not respect my right to participate meaningfully in the electoral process, a right supposedly protected by Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I think you can understand that right about now I am feeling that I have been royally fucked over.

In short, in Quebec we have two political parties that control the province and have funded their campaigns largely on the basis of illegal donations and then rewrite the electoral laws for their benefit while systemically discriminating against the smaller political parties.

So much for any semblance of democracy.

I guess the only meaningful gesture left to me is to vote with my feet and get the fuck out of here.

Three Reasons Why This Anglo Is Thinking About Leaving Quebec: Breach of Trust, Loss of Confidence, Demographics

Truth be told, I have lived in Quebec for the last twenty years.  Last week, not much of a surprise, a poll revealed that about 50% of the anglophone and allophone respondents were thinking about moving out of Quebec.  Too bad I wasn't contacted.  I would have loved to explain why. 

So here goes.

For me, unlike many anglophones living in the Montreal region of Quebec, language is not the problem.  I live in Gatineau. I am fluently bilingual, as is my wife, as are my kids.  Communicating in French is something I do every day without much effort.  It doesn't matter to me in which of the two official languages the communication exchange takes place.

What irks me is something else.  In short, I live in a province where corruption is chronic and widespread, touching all levels of the society.  Second, over the last ten years, the political class has proven themselves to be incredibly inept.  Finally, given the aging population, declining productivity, and a belligerent attitude towards immigrants, in my opinion, the quality of life has peaked in Quebec and the society has entered into a steady period of decline, with little hope for a better future.

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Don't get me wrong.  I love to live where people speak French, but sadly Quebec has lost its appeal.  As I approach my retirement years, I think I would be better off living part of the year in the south of France, and the rest of the year in a small francophone community in eastern Ontario.

Looking back at the last twenty years, I can't help feeling that I have been fleeced.  I have been active politically, only to find that for the last thirty years the elections have been rigged thanks to the illegal funding of the major political parties.  Moreover, I am one of those who is taxed at a marginal rate of almost 50%.  Then I find out through the revelations of the Charbonneau Commission that taxpayers are exploited for an extra 30% over and above the real cost of public works due to the endemic graft in the political system.

It doesn't end there. Not only have we overpaid for the infrastructure, it is literally falling apart. The Olympic Stadium in Montreal is the symbol of the shoddy construction practices in Quebec that were accompanied by huge cost over-runs.  From time to time, parts of it fall off.

Taking a further look around Montreal, one cannot help but notice that the busiest bridge in Canada, the Champlain bridge looks like its about to collapse, the Mercier bridge is even in worse shape, and the Turcot Interchange is falling down, each one requiring a multi-billion dollar investment.

Problem is that Quebec is short on cash.  It has European style social programs but with a very limited tax base. More than fifty percent of the adult population does not pay any income tax.  Without the equalization payments from the federal government, which make up almost twenty percent of the provincial budget, we would be seriously fucked.

To make matters even worse, Quebec's pension plans lost approximately 25% of their value during the financial market crash of 2008.  Having put into place very generous pension benefits for themselves, the boomer generation have stuck subsequent generations with the hefty tab.  Simply put, Quebec's boomers did not make the necessary investments to keep the public infrastructure in good shape, and they did not contribute enough into their pension plans to make them sustainable over the long-term without asking for larger contributions from their children.

As the workforce continues to shrink -- we are only at the beginning of the waves of boomers retiring -- who is going to pick up the slack?  Immigrants?  Why would they settle in Quebec, the highest-taxed region that also has the highest per capita debt in North America, when Ontario and the Western provinces offer much better economic futures and embrace the principle of multi-culturism?

Without question, old stock Quebecers of French origin make up the ruling class in Quebec, but for those of us who have the means to simply move out, why wouldn't we?

Why should my wife and myself pay approximately $100,000 in income taxes (about $20,000 more than what we would pay in Ontario) and have to put up with a third-class health system in the Outaouais, when I can just move across the river to Ottawa, where more than 20% of the Quebec side go when we need health care.

WhyTF would I want to stay here? My vote doesn't count.  My wife already works in Ottawa, and we both have defined benefit, pension plans outside of Quebec.  If the kids were finished high school (only one year to go), we would have already left.

So, don't be fooled by the spin doctors who like to place this all upon a PQ government.  Quebec's problems run much deeper than the nationalist option. 

The cracks in the foundation of Quebec society run as deep as those on the Turcot Interchange.

    

We Need More Than Two Hands on the Wheel

Almost two years ago, Jean Charest the leader of a minority government in Quebec decided to call a general election to take advantage of a significant drop in the polls of the official opposition, the Action Democratic of Quebec. Our dysfunctional electoral system is unforgiving for political parties whose support is a mile wide but an inch deep. A 15 point drop in the popular vote reduced the number of ADQ seats in the National Assembly from 41 to 7. As a result, the Charest-led Liberals formed a majority government with the support of only 23% of the electorate.

During the campaign, which was launched at the onset of the Great Recession, Charest's slogan was that in troubled times, Quebec needed to have just two hands on the wheel. Two years later is there anyone -- other than die hard Quebec Liberal Party supporters -- that believes that Quebec is better off now that we have a false majority government rather than a minority government that depended on the support of another party to maintain a government.

Essentially, the incontestable control and political power Charest now enjoys means that he can effectively tell the rest of the population to go to hell with regard to holding a public inquiry into the link between the construction industry and the financing of political parties in Quebec. This would not be the case if we had a minority government or a majority coalition.

We thought that things had come to a head with the publication of an edition of Macleans magazine that claimed Quebec was the most corrupt province in Canada. The claim seemed to be dismissed in the media as another instance of Quebec bashing.

Well, a few weeks later we learn that a vast majority of appointees to the Boards of Directors to Quebec's crown corporations made financial donations to the Quebec Liberal Party. In the case of the most important, Hydro Quebec, 85% of the Board had contributed to the Liberals. No surprise that they would approve the award of approximately $800 million in contracts to the family businesses of Franco Fava, one of the Liberal Party's principle fundraisers.

Worse yet, new revelations have come to light. According to Montreal journalists, André Noël and André Cédilot, more than 600 businesses pay Mafia protection money in Montreal alone, handing organized crime leaders an unprecedented degree of control of Quebec's economy.

When questioned in the National Assembly, Charest made another pathetic reference to
his laughable Operation Hammer, and allowing the police squad, Quebec's answer to the Keystone cops, to do its job.

Without question, Quebec has come full circle to find itself exactly where it was 50 years ago. Charest has undone the work of Jean Lesage,and we have returned to the dark days of Duplesis.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Voting out the Liberals will only treat the symptoms and not the cause of the problem. What underlies the manifestation of corruption and influence peddling is a political system that in effect places the control of the province's political machinery in the hands of the Premier.

From time to time, one of those hands slips into the public purse to provide support for one of his friends.

Therefore, what needs to be done is to bring more hands to the helm in order to share political power and the place to start is the electoral system. The abuse of power begins with the abuse of each voter whose vote is simply discarded and not used to determine who will seize power in Quebec, Canada, and all other countries which use a plurality voting system.