[quote]Grork wrote:
a.) pookie, I’m on your side. If I was Quebecois I’d vote yes. I generally think that good fences make good neighbours. Plus we could be rid of the ridiculous money pit that is official bilingualism.[/quote]
Exactly.
A clear question and a double majority vote. That’d be great. Unfortunately, it seems we don’t have separatist leaders who can explain themselves cleary enough to convince even 50% of the people. 50%+1 vote always seemed a bit too close for my tastes; 66% is much harder to dispute as being the will of an overwhelming majority.
There’s a lot of baloney thrown around by both sides. Obviously, they’d be some negociations on how the debt and programs would be split. These are pretty complex issues; and people get worried when it Ottawa claims it’d keep a “hardline” stance and keep the money from all our social programs.
In that case, they could also keep all our debt too.
But obviously, all that bravado is simply empty talk. Negociations would take place and issues would get resolved.
I think you’re exagerating a bit. And they’re set to hold a referendum on whether they wish to adopt a European constitution, not adopt it on that day.
BB, you might be interested in this; it’s an excerpt from a parliamentary committee report concerning the possibility that the recently introduced budget may not pass; and it was prepared prior to the motion of non confidence:
from: constitutional expert Prof. Andrew Heard of Simon Fraser University (author of Canadian Constitutional Conventions: The Marriage of Law and Politics)
It should not matter what procedural context a vote of confidence occurs in. The fundamental basis of a confidence vote is that the elected members of the legislature express their collective view of the government. If that view conveys a loss of confidence or states that the government should resign, then the government must either resign or call an election.
In light of the past precedents, and especially the relevance of the 1926 motions on the Customs Affair, the current motion appears to be clearly a vote of confidence which would require the government to resign or call an election in the event it loses the vote.
As a separatist, would you expect Quebec to take its share of the national debt if it were to leave? [/quote]
Well, yes. But we also get our fair share of whatever money is held in Ottawa for social programs.
Some of them, probably. There is already a lot of duplication between Quebec institutions and Canadian ones. We already have our courts and we collect our own income tax. Ah, the sheer fun of filling out TWO income tax forms every year…
Many countries use other countries’ currency. Canada can’t prevent us from keeping their dollar for as long as we want; we could also adopt the US dollar or the Euro as currency. There’s no need to establish a new monetary system quickly.
Don’t worry, we pay into everything. Again, status quo until separation of powers is properly negotiated.
Yes, negotiations would be required. And it would be in the interest of both countries do negotiate in good faith. Dragging their feet would be bad for business on both sides and international pressure to resolve the issues quickly would also contribute to hurry the process along.
There are many, many international bodies that could be invoked as arbitrator in case of thorny issues where both parties can’t come to an agreement.
All those complex issues have been analyzed and detailed many times over by economist, lawyers, etc. in the last 40 years. Federalists claims those plans are all crap and wouldn’t work; but that’s just part of the FUD. I’m sure some of the plans are overly optimistics (that’s the bullshit from the separatist side) but basically, it all comes down to who runs the paperwork for this or that program. It’s not rocket science.
[quote]Logistically, I just can’t picture how it would take place, as simple as “separate and form our own country” may sound. Do Quebecers have idea as to how this would work?
[/quote]
There are many scenarios already detailed; various commissions have produced voluminous reports on how sovereignty could work, with many different scenarios and just about every PQ government that has held power since 1976 has at some point published their plan for a sovereign Quebec. You can find a lot of it with Google, unfortunately, in english you mostly get the doom-and-gloom scenarios from the federalist side. In french, you’ll find the pink butterflies and soft music scenarios… I guess the truth is somewhere along the middle.
From what I can tell, there is an implicit agreement going on – the Liberal Party bribes the Quebecois with money from the western provinces, which are conservative anyway. In return, the Quebecois don’t raise too much ruckus about leaving, and keep the Liberals in power.
If my understanding is correct, if you removed Quebec, the Liberals would lose, because the politics of the remaining citizenry would be balanced much further to the right.[/quote]
Your understanding is not correct. Quebec has a total of 75 seats in the house, of which 54 were won by the Block Quebecois.This leaves 21 seats. The Liberals have 135 seats and the Conservatives 99. Do the math.
Ya but part of the reason that the Liberals do well in Ontario is that people trust the Liberals with the separatism issue more then the Tories. (And perhaps justly, Mulroney made a cock-up out of the situation. Though I think Harper would do a great job on it) After Quebec hypothetically seperated, people wouldn’t have to worry about unilingual red-neck Tories breaking the country apart anymore.
If you are an American, don’t believe everything you are reading in here. There is no massive crisis that has everyone up in arms.
Half of us don’t give a shit if Quebec stays or goes, just fucking make up your minds and stop trying to tell us you are going to eventually do it if you don’t get what you want.
Wait, auuuugh, the sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Vroom’s right, not too many people here give a shit. I think the voter turnout at the last election was approximately 60%, an all time low. The election also costed in the neighbourhood of $350 mil. to run, and the next will obviously cost just as much or more.
I’m pretty exasperated with our government, as I’m sure most people are. If you actually go to the house of commons and listen to them argue they sound like a bunch of children reiterating the same accusations and interrupting each other, hamming it up for the camera. Pretty soon I’m just gonna take the fifteen minute drive down there and throw a couple pipe bombs in there…that or high-tail it to Mexico.
Orbital “All government are corrupt and must be overthrown” boner
What the hell does Je Me Souviens mean? What is Quebec remembering? It’s a huge mystery here in Ontario. Whenever we see a Quebec licence plate there’s always a lot of head-scratching/chin-rubbing going on.
It would be greatly appreciated if you could solve this enigma for us poor uni-lingual Ontarions.
“Je me souviens” means that we remember what invaders that are seen as the imperalists back then and the federalists nowadays did to us, french canadians.
In my mind, it’s a chant of a future revolution. It means that even if we are oppressed in any way, we will rise because we are not alone in this situation (reference to the poem Speak White).
We are not alone because the same thing happened to many english colonies (and french colonies as well) who found a way to freedom even if it means that we have to break some eggs on the way to that “freedom”.
I would like to see how my province would work as a country but at the same time, i think that if we would all speak both languages (if not 3 or more languages) nothing of this would happen. We would just benefit from a total partnership.
The drama surrounding attempts by Canadian PM Paul Martin to hang on to power by ignoring a no confidence vote and then offering a Conservative oppositionist a Cabinet post to switch sides has taken an dramatic turn. Conservative Canadian MP Gurmant Grewal tape recorded an attempt by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Tim Murphy to bribe him to change his vote. Andrew Coyne highlights some snippets of the recorded conversation which are best heard against the background of squeezebox music playing ‘Speak softly, love, so no one hears us but the sky. …’
Murphy: “if anybody is asked the question, ‘Well is there a deal?’ and you say, ‘No.’ Well you want that to be the truth. … So you didn’t approach. We didn’t approach.”
A recent Belmont Club post noted that ‘victories’ won by the Left with these tactics were more properly understood as acts of desperation by those who feared their long term decline, as if in slipping from the pinnacle, they despaired of ever regaining it again.
The survival of Paul Martin’s government, shaken by scandal after scandal, has been bought at the price of violating the spirit of the Westminister system by ignoring what was effectively a vote of no-confidence until they could bribe someone to cross the aisle to square the count. Martin survived but only by bending the rulebook. A Canadian conservative victory without Martin’s shennanigans would have been an unremarkable and narrow electoral triumph. But the Liberal Party of Canada’s actions now mean that the issues dividing political factions in the Great White North are fundamental. By demonstrating a determination to hold on to power at all costs Martin is increasing the likelihood of a radical, rather than an incremental solution to the Canadian crisis.
Mark Steyn has more in his article A Constitutional Coup
In the forthcoming Western Standard , I make the point that ?the big flaw at the heart of the Westminster system is that in order to function as intended ? by codes and conventions ? it depends on a certain modesty and circumspection from the political class.? Perhaps it was always a long shot to expect a man as hollow as Paul Martin to understand that. … But the fact remains: by any understanding of our system of government, if the effect of ?an extra week?s delay? is to maintain themselves in power by one vote they otherwise would not have had, it?s hard to see this as anything other than a constitutional coup. Like Robert Mugabe, Paul Martin has simply declared that the constitution is whatever he says it is.
What characterizes much of the Left today as exemplified by behavior from George Galloway to Paul Martin is the increasing necessity to maintain their position By Any Means Necessary. While that is dangerous and infuriating, it is a reliable indicator that they have lost control of the system. Things just aren’t working the way they used to. And that, despite everything, is cause for hope.
