The Children Are Our Future

I've lived in Canada for almost 14 years and I still do not understand the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada. In every situation, the rules for Quebec are almost completely different. Did it start with Trudeau or has Quebec always enjoyed favorite child status?

These students are some of the worst examples of the entitlement culture and the universities are all pandering to them. "Oh no! The students aren't attending class! What ever are we going to do about this term?" Flunk every single student who has skipped class, failed to turn in assignments and not written exams. Put a big 0% on their transcripts and refuse to offer any tuition refunds.

"It" started after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, when the Brits,in moment of foolishness, didn't send all the Quebecers back to France.

Trudeau merely exacerbated an already existing "special" status.

Now,Quebec feels culturally and morally superior to us Anglos,"Maudite Anglais",while happily taking our tax money to fund their social programs.

I was told by a usually reliable source that Quebecers can also collect their Quebec Pension Plan earlier than the Rest of Canada can collect their CPP,although I haven't been able to confirm it.

Canada should hold a referendum on whether WE want Quebec to separate,but no politician would allow that as they know that they can win government by taking the majority of the votes in two Provinces,Quebec and Ontario.

Quebec is the spoiled teenager that has lived in the basement for 145 years always threatening to leave but wont go. free food and accommodation and a lifestyle they could never afford . and insulted by anything Mum Ontario says and Dad Western Canada cant toss them because Mom Ontario stands in the way. meanwhile , Jr Maritimes stands listens and learns the method and a few other brat children are kept . sister BC wants to find herself

Michele: I suspect it's all been part of the ongoing worldwide Anglo guilt complex; it'd be interesting to visit a parallel world and see what things would have been like if, say, the Russians or Chinese had've beaten Montcalm.

(As if we don't know.)

Here's a thought experiment you can try with your MP if he our she is part of the NDP caucus.
Suppose, for argument, that Mucliar is PM, and Quebec votes to separate....finally. Would he make an offer to Quebec to keep them in the federation, or recognize their independence....even as a resident of Quebec?
Then ask, what would he possibly offer in such negotiation, as a resident of Quebec.

The problem is that this diseased mindset is not limited to Quebec, they are just further along. When you have people like Chompsky indoctrinate the youth, with zero rebuttal due to political correctness and thuggish bullying, this is the direct result. It is truly inane and disgusting.

dmorris,

I was raised in Ontario (Windsor) and have lived in every part of Canada the West (AB), the Maritimes (NS), the North (NWT) and Que. The Maritimes (minus Nfld) were the actual "have" provinces at Confederation since they had a thriving trade with the large, East Coast US cities like Boston, NY, etc...the Federal Gov't forced them (the Maritime Prov) to send their goods and services to Quebec and Ontario in order for these latter provinces to grow. Those "brat" Maritime provinces are just waking up from the 145 yr enforced east-west trade deal they got suckered into at Confederation (especially since they've got an actual "good" ON and Que need--oil).

Just calculated what annual tuition I paid to attend Lakehead U in Thunder Bay back in the late 70's,converted to today's dollars - $2,178

What Quebec students pay today - $2,168

What they will pay in 2016 - $3,793

What I'd actually pay at Lakehead today - $5,602

A new heading?...

"Hashtag du Droit Génération"

Johnny - I wonder why tuition was lower in the old days. Is the amount (proportion) of subsidization less today? Maybe, but I doubt that covers it all. Methinks profs are even more overpaid and underworked than when I went school in the 80's.

Michele- I've lived in Canada for 66 years and I still don't understand the relationship either.

Is there anybody who actually wants Quebec to be part of Canada? As far as this American can tell, the residents of Quebec (I can never remember what they're called. Quebeckers? Quebecois? Walloons? Trilobites?) don't want to be Canadian. Canadians in other provinces don't want Quebec to be part of Canada. Can somebody explain to me why Quebec is still part of Canada?

Well...on a tactical level...I am impressed by the Montreal Police reaction....mounties, riot troops pepper spray and stun grenades and a whack of prisoners....

A demonstration superior to that of Vancouver.

Look at this entry, and the one below (Hashtag Of The Entitlement Generation) and tell me with a straight face that there isn't a puppeteer pulling the strings.

@Iowa Jim - Economic reality. Quebec, without Ontario and Alberta to support it, would be an economic basketcase. Quebeckers know this, which is why they aren't going anywhere.

I think Canadians in the rest of the country are completely ambivalent to and disinterested in all things Quebec, which is reflected in our current Tory government.

Yup, the Brits’ magnanimity after The Plains of Abraham AND the failure of British Christian legislators to enshrine their own rights in the BNA Act—they never envisaged mass immigration from the Rest of the World—French Canadians have enjoyed (or extorted) many more rights than British heritage Canadians. While immature, socialist Quebec has been allowed—by law—to keep its culture (largely paid for by the ROC), the ROC (British, Christian), whose culture was not protected in the BNA Act, has been forced to become the multicultural melting pot that Trudeau’s subversive Charter further strengthened.

By enshrining “rights” (prejudicially recognized) and giving birth to our execrable Human Rights (sic) Commissions and their kangaroo courts, the Charter also undercut legitimate authority in this country and both the responsibilities expected of and the protections expected to be accorded to its citizens. Kids, from the earliest age, are now fully convinced of their own superiority and their rights—to heck with responsibilities. The bully state has destroyed the legitimate authority of responsible adults: parents, teachers, and the police, who are severely limited in what they’re allowed to do to both establish boundaries and to discipline miscreants when those boundaries are breached.

The keepers of legitimate authority, also totally undermined by a decrepit culture, at every level, are now expected to be soft, and not hurt anyone, any which way—even if that “anyone” is causing serious, even possibly lethal, damage to others. Many parents, teachers, and police officers deplore what’s happening, but our deluded and spineless “superiors” (one has to be a yes-person to the Zeitgeist to get ahead), lawmakers and judges condemn us to the sidelines: try doing one’s job properly when one’s actually being shut out by one’s gutless, but very powerful, “superiors”.

The kids—particularly, the particularly depraved and badly behaved ones—know, pretty well by the end of kindergarten, that their feelings are much more important than the actions of any adult, which might offend those feelings, no matter how heinous the kids' behaviour. The idea that very young children and others up to the age of 18 cannot be truly malevolent and extremely violent and dangerous is a fantasy of our overlords, who live in gated, alarm-systemed homes, and vacation far away from the mean streets. These people—the increasing number of irresponsible, entitled, sociopathic kids AND the out of touch, stupid, “touchy-feely” authorities—are altogether deluded and mega-dangerous to society at large.

This is all going to end VERY badly. Kyrie eleison.

Johnny, looks like you got a bargain with your LU degree but I'd wager it wasn't in language. Droit means right while gauche is left. I learned that on the taxpayer's dime marching back and forth for Lord knows what purpose. Gauche, droit, gauche, droit, left, right, company halt. I can also order beer in the other language too. ;-)

btw, what is preventing these snowflakes from going to another university (and pay the real cost)? Last time I checked they are not being forced to attend any post-secondary institution.

Add the costs of the policing and damages to the tuition increase.
Take the extra costs right out of the education budget.
The more tax dollars spent policing these riots mean the less money for other things like tuition.
Simple arithmetic.
Wouldn't a good little socialist want to reduce the costs to the nanny state so there would me more cash available for social programs and tuition and such?

And since they are living on our handouts to begin with, isn't it a bit forward of them to demand more from us?
Beggars can't be chooser and all that?

Oh wait, that would be reality, not quebec lala land....

I love the fact that our equalization payments help buy those police batons. I’d agree to more if I knew for certain they’d spend it on bigger armed vehicles and not give it to these little snots.

Almost makes you wish you were a cop for a day. But I do like watching the Utube vids afterwards.

We need a big Israeli style border fence around Quebec with machine gun nests and plenty of predator drones circling them.

Again, Ignatieff is right; the disconnect between Quebec and 'Canada' has increased over the last generation. Blame the Charter.

Think about it. Chantal Hebert has a column in today's Toronto Star, rebutting Ignatieff, claiming that Quebecers really, really want to be part of the Canadian federation and that's why they voted NDP rather than Bloc in the last election. Heh. Who's she trying to kid? The Quebecois rejected the socialist Bloc in favour of the socialist NDP - not for federalism - but for socialism. The Bloc wasn't delivering enough and more and more money from the federal govt, so the Quebecois rejected them.

Quebec's filiation and loyalties are to LANGUAGE. Not geography, not economic infrastructure, not even fiscal handouts. It's all about and only about: Language. Well, that and socialism, with money from from the ROC (the Rest of Canada).

Quebec, alone of all provinces, oversees its own immigration. And it focuses on francophones - heck, no Chinese, Japanese, Tamil, Germans and etc. Indeed, Quebec has the lowest 'visible minority' populations in all of Canada and 99% of them live only in Monteal.

Then there's Quebec's infamous Language Law, which prevents its population from readily learning English and becoming bilingual. French is the only official language and fines are fast and furious if you dare to put up a sign in English.

As an example of this language commitment, Quebec universities, with their ridiculous, low tuition, offers this same in-Quebec low rate to International Students. That's right. BUT, only if they come from French-speaking countries. So, if you come from, for example, France or Belgium, you pay the same 2,000 odd tuition for the year as do the Quebec students.

BUT if you come from Ontario or New Brunswick or Manitoba and anywhere in the ROC - you pay double the Quebec rate.

It's all about language. Quebec is loyal to, is committed to, bonds with and only bonds with - francophones. Anyone else is Other. And good only to be fleeced, used and discarded.

The relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada is purely historic. The people of Quebec are overwhelmingly (and in most places exclusively) descendants of the people who lived there before the British took over. They have no attachment to any other place, and no reason for one. They are a distinct nationality with no reason to identify with anyone else, and they are an integral part of the French-speaking world with no desire to leave it.

When Quebec fell into the hands of the British (who didn't particularly want it), it proved to be useful. Montreal was the western limit of ocean navigation and the most effective means of getting things between the mother country and the territories west of Montreal involved transhipment there. Montreal thus developed as an integral part of Canada and indeed as its dominant city and metropolis right up until the 1920's. It was majority English through the 19th century and remained English-speaking until after the Second World War, even as it also became the metropolis of the French-speaking hinterland. ("Two Solitudes", the book that gave us the cliche, is about Montreal in that curious period when it was two completely different and unconnected cities occupying the same space.)

There had been been other areas of English settlement in Quebec - conspicuously the Eastern Townships, and also Quebec City and parts of the Gaspe, the Laurentians and the Ottawa Valley. But they were always relatively minor and never kept pace with the growth of the French population. After the war, the English areas outside Montreal dwindled away as the population concentrated in the city. (In much the same way at the same time, rural Saskatchewan and Manitoba depopulated as the people moved into the cities.)

With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, Montreal ceased to be necessary to the Canadian economy and Toronto became the undisputed metropolis. Within a generation, English Quebec, the part of the province that had actual ties with the rest of the country, had effectively disappeared.

Quebec for two generations now has been in every practical way the national state of the French Canadian nation, and common sense says it ought to be independent. But because it was part of Canada yesterday, the inclination of Canadians is to insist that it must therefore be part of Canada today and tomorrow too. And since this is so, not for any real or practical reason but purely as a matter of prestige, it made sense to make Quebec's presence in Canada meaningless in any practical or real sense, in order that it might continue. And so we have the ridiculous situation that we have today.

Quebec will soon cease to be national in character; the French Canadians are in demographic collapse, and as the nation disappears it loses both the need and the capacity for self-determination. This is why serious observers consider the separatist movement effectively dead. Whether Quebec develops a new distinct and purely regional identity or merges into Canada culturally and socially is an open question, but it's hard to see any basis for a future Quebec to want or claim sovereignty. States are meant to be homes for living nations, not mausoleums for dead ones.

Michele >

In a nutshell - It’s been around since the first Quebecer raped the first Indian squaw, claimed some land, and made the first Métis.

From there on forward, no one really gets along with each other, especially since they still want something for nothing from English speaking Canada. Except the Métis it seems strangly enough.

ebt - I think a serious problem within Quebec is not that it has no relevance to the ROC, but that it, in itself, has no economic infrastructure.

Lucien Bouchard, who was himself a sovereignist, declared in 2010 that it was no longer possible. Furthermore, in his 2009 Manifesto, he and eleven other prominent Quebecers chastized the self-absorbed, dependent, entitlement addicted Quebecois and urged them to move instead into entrepreneurship, to deal with their debt, to focus on generating a dynamic economy. This clear realism went nowhere; Quebec continued its insistence that the ROC support it; we can see this mindset in the rioting of the Quebec students.

We can see this insistence on Others providing the money and jobs, and Others providing the infrastructure, in the infamous case where a town sued Wal-Mart for closing a store. Why couldn't the town set up its own business? Instead, it expects Others to come in, set up the economy, provide the jobs - and the Quebecers will unionize those jobs - which will destroy the company!

Quebec's unrealistic situation of being cocooned within the security of the Canadian economy, the Canadian defense system, the Canadian market - which privileges Quebec dairy products for example - means that Quebec is unable to be sovereign, for its entire economic and social infrastructure is external to itself. The Quebec economic and social infrastructure is in Canada. All that Quebec has is: its language.

It's painfully obvious by the way they act and think this generation of college goers will never be fully self reliant independent adults.

A college degree and a life in Mom and Dad's basement or the equivelent - life long reliance on government subsidy/intervention of thier lives.

It is also a generation to which college education has degenerated so far in teaching useable slills that a diploma in general arts is not much more desirable than a GHD. Unlike holders of trade certifications, holders of BSc documents are really under-educated for the private sector work force and a dime a dozen - further promoting long stays on Mom and dad's couch or the equivalent in government aid/subsidy.

Under-educated or poorly researched certainly describes their understanding of government subsidy and tuition fees. In the US the government covers only any excess fees deemed to be |excessive – this has had greedy college admins and profs pumping up tuition fees because they know the increase is covered. One of the reasons Canada has among the lowest Tuition fees on earth is we don’t have the subsidy system the US has.

I think it was Rothbard that painted the metaphorical image of generations raised under nanny state socialism as “people kept in eternal childhood" where “the state becomes the surrogate parents - providing security, income, ideals and eternal succor”. These Quebec brats seem to fit that image.

lookout: " ... the increasing number of irresponsible, entitled, sociopathic kids AND the out of touch, stupid, 'touchy-feely' authorities — [who]are altogether deluded and mega-dangerous to society at large" is a frighteningly toxic mix of mega-proportions.

We're beginning to reap the maelstrom -- and the Quebec students are just one of the many manifestations of our diseased civil life.

batb, I think you are right and it is only beginning.

Should we all vote for the NDP in the hope they'll actually cut Quebec loose? What's a few years of socialism if we can send Quebec into the Atlantic?

In talking about his new book, “Coming Apart”, Charles Murray said, about the out of touch elites, who are running our society into the ground—the very ones I described above: “If you’ve grown up in this upper class bubble, you have no clue about what’s going on.” Yup.

Murray hits the nail on the head, when he says that the old American value, of all classes, “the equality of DIGNITY”, is losing purchase.

That’s what I was talking about in my post of 2:08 p.m. When both the soft, decrepit elites and the hard-scrabble, decrepit non-elites lose sight of this, the consequences are pretty dire. Kyrie eleison.

What Michele said.

Let them reap what they sow.

Teach them a lesson their parents obviously forgot to.

The protesting students are infantile, and flaunting it in the streets.

Someone said that Quebecers were simply further down the path of what modern man is becoming. The education of our youth has eliminated 'critical' thinking and replaced individual liberty for government sponsered group think. If expectation is always what the government can give me rather than what do I owe society to build a community then we are hooped.

To many conservatives assume that economic reality will 'educate' those that come out of the education system. It does for the majority but a growing minority are joining the 'what have you done for me lately' gang. The world economy will be dissapointing more and more people which will accelerate the growth of the later group. The only thing that will cahnge this direction would be a conservative revolution that would assume the education of youth and re-establish fiscal discipline as a means of limiting the influence of the 'takers'.