In the End, Quebecers Are Not All That Different From the Vast Majority of Canadians: They Prefer To Be Governed Than To Govern

Mercifully, this sorry spectacle of a general election in Quebec is over.  I can't remember a campaign so empty of any real debate as it came down to a choice between an extremely lame Charter of Values that would have banned the overly overt display of religious affiliation in the public service and the dubious notion that the new government will somehow better THE economy.

More importantly, this collective decision was made in the context of a pause in the deliberations of the Charbonneau Commission, which will now turn its focus on how the alleged criminal behaviour surrounding the awarding of public works contracts and the illegal financing of Quebec's two major political parties, the Liberal Party of Quebec and the Parti Quebecois.

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Only 18 months ago, the electorate ousted the ruling Liberals, just weeks before the Commission began its work.  Last night, the same electorate re-elected the disgraced Liberals to a new four year term.

What's up with that?

At first glance, it may appear that Quebecers have rather short memories, but it goes deeper than that.

Essentially, Quebecers would rather offload the responsibility of running their own affairs to a small group of politicians that they can always get rid of later rather than being engaged in the messy business of democratic self rule.

That's why when Radio Canada declares a Liberal majority government with only 41% of the popular vote that, other than the two deputies from the leftist Quebec Solidaire who unabashedly contested the legitimacy of a majority government elected with less than 50% of the popular vote, everyone else goes along for the ride.

Whew, glad that's over.  Now we can get on with the important business of piling up more personal and public debt as we pursue a quality of life that we can no longer afford.

No matter.  We'll just pass on the mountain of debt to subsequent generations.

So, deep down Quebecers are not all that different from the rest of the vast majority of Canadians.  We'll gladly defer to authority as long as we can periodically change who exercises that authority over us.

Democratic self rule?

Nah, leave that to the Scandinavians.  I wonder what is the Swedish word for democracy.

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.

Parasites Have Infected And Taken Over Quebec's Body Politic

In nature, there are parasites that invade a host, take control of its movements for their own benefit, often leading to the host's demise.n

My favorite example of this life process is the Lancet liver fluke (Dicrocoelium dendriticum).

In short, as an adult the Lancet liver fluke spends its time in the liver of a cow or another grazing mammal. Here it mates and lays eggs, which are excreted in the host's feces.

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A snail eats the poo, taking in the eggs at the same time. The eggs hatch in the snail and make their way into its digestive gland, where they asexually reproduce. They then travel to the surface of the snail's body. As a defensive maneuver, the snail walls the parasites up in cysts and coughs up the balls of slime...doing exactly what the parasites wanted it to do.

An ant comes along and gobbles up the fluke-laded slime balls. The flukes then spread out inside of the ant, with a couple of them setting up shop in the insect's head. When night approaches, the flukes take control.

They make the ant climb up a blade of grass and hold tight, waiting to be eaten by a grazing animal. If the ant is still alive at dawn, the flukes release their control and the ant goes about its day like normal (if the ant baked in the sun, the parasite would die, too). At night the flukes take over again and the cycle repeats until the ant becomes cattle food.

Essentially, Quebec's two long-time governing options, the Quebec Liberal Party and the Parti Quebecois, have invaded the heads of those who make up the Quebec electorate and make them vote for either one.  It doesn't really matter for which one since the two political parties are in a symbiotic relationship: when one of them forms a government, the other waits for the inevitable moment when the ruling party falls from grace and the Quebec electorate chooses the other to become the new ruling party.

The cycle repeats over and over again.

Like the ants that serve the well being of the Lancet liver flukes by climbing up the blades of grass, Quebecers dutifully go to the polls when called upon to elect one of the two parasitic political parties.

That both parties are alleged to be fundamentally corrupt as documented by the revelations of the Charbonneau Commission doesn't really matter.  Both parties have gotten into the heads of Quebecers and compel them to behave in a presricibed manner, leaving little choice but to decide between sovereignty or unbridled greed.

Once the election is over, the cycle begins anew. 

I guess that the majority of Quebecers are not even aware that they are sacrificing the well-being of their collective future for the benefit of a few parasites.