“I don’t think there is any place in the world panicking as much on the question of debt as Quebec,” said economist Louis Gill. The reason for this, as Quebec prepares to unveil another deficit budget March 30, is simple: it is Canada’s most indebted province.
Its debt is at 94 per cent of its gross domestic product, just ahead of Japan, Italy and Greece, whose debts exceed their GDP, according to numbers calculated by the provincial finance ministry.
Via Mish, who has more.
h/t Rod
What is Quebec?
Defining Quebec (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/what-is-cancer)
The parallels are self evident…
Quebec is a term used for diseases in which abnormal behaviour divide without control and are able to invade other provinces. Quebecism can spread to other parts of the country through the equalization and sponsorship systems.
You can finish it!
“…the Maritimes can sink into the Atlantic and no one will notice it.”
Mr Brooks, as a Canuck who has been all over I think you are being a bit nearsighted on the benefits of the Maritimes. Until Alberta can grow lobsters or supply all the labour for the oil patch, Maritimers still has a place in Canada. Yeah, I know they are a little miffed that with the new seats proposed for the house they will have less of an influence but they are still a long way from the Quebecois arrogance and attitude of entitlement.
Quebeckers have garnered a similar status to Blacks in the USA. We know that they are incapable of looking after themselves, they expect others to do everything for them, they are privileged for no particular reason …. and you may not under any circumstances criticize them for their short comings since all their problems are our fault.
It’s the meek inheriting the earth through whining and political correctness.
However, we are the true idiots for putting up with it.
ET Said: “They have no interest in a military or in foreign aid …”
Actually, I think you should’ve phrased it differently. They have no interest in the military and are pacifists, however, they have an addiction to military contracts and scream like the parasites they are when contracts don’t go to Quebec industry. It’s part of the repugnance of Quebec, where the population is by far the most pacifist in Canada; yet demands it be awarded military contracts.
Vote BQ!
Isn’t it nice knowing you pay half your money you work for to sustain a Province that has no end to its greed.
Plus we give them permanent seats on the supreme court. The billions paid for a bi-lingual country in which only 16% are French. Not only that, but 75 permanent seats in Parliament even if only 2 Frenchmen survive.
My Only hope is they continue not to have children. Than we can abolish this insult to the rest of us.
Separation is coming slowly but surly. Its happening naturally.
Trudeau did this to us in perpetual for his chosen people.
We where stupid to allow this.
Time to get rid of Equalization. Its neither equal or Productive . In fact it makes the do nothing Provinces worse.
JMO
Funny, They Don’t Look Very Panicked To Me….
and why should they? I can see their line of ‘bargaining’ with the feds already – “Give us more cash now, or we’ll separate!” It’s worked before wonderfully.
Abe: “It’s the meek inheriting the earth through whining and political correctness.”
No way in hell are parasites meek, except on the surface.
Let ROC eat cake.
Over-spenders in the EU are ‘PIGS’.
Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain.
In Canada its.. ‘PonnQ’.
PEI, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec.
Here they come.
More Quebecers pouring across the Ottawa River, into Ontario, in search of a doctor to escape the 25$ user fee for a medical visit in their own province. Like the border towns aren’t crawling with them already sucking up the health care. I’m not sure of the exact dollar amounts involved, just that the Quebec government re-imburses the Ontario government, for LESS money than the actual cost, for their citizens using doctors and hospitals in Ontario. Plays hell with the hospital budgets…and makes already strained resources have to go even further for Ontario residents.
My question is this: If we pay off their debt – do they promise to leave – forever?
To me that would be a good deal.
Kate, why haven’t you removed Abe’s racist post yet?
Yes. Brilliant. Break up Canada. It’s such a hellhole. Frickin no minds.
“The reason nothing is done about it is it is political suicide. If the government gets tough then the Liberal Party wins.”
================================
Who cares? All the more reason to separate and form our own country. Atlantic Canada should do alright. They have oil, plus there’s no reason why they couldn’t emigrate to the new country on the Western side of the continent. There’s lots of them here already.
Kate, why haven’t you removed Abe’s racist post yet?
Posted by: Trent
==============================
I vote we remove Trent’s remark. Stupidity is a leftist disease. It might be infectious.
This is neither the place nor time to say much about what a commenter on April 3, 2010 12:42 PM said.
His crowd is known in Europe as most likely to bullshit.
I do apologize for commenting on that part of conversation, I do understand that it has nothing to do with the subject at hand, sometimes though there is a need to say something.
I’m Slovak.
Abe said,
… … …
…Quebeckers have garnered a similar status to Blacks in the USA. We know that they are incapable of looking after themselves, they expect others to do everything for them, they are privileged for no particular reason …. and you may not under any circumstances criticize them for their short comings since all their problems are our fault.
It’s the meek inheriting the earth through whining and political correctness.
However, we are the true idiots for putting up with it…
… … …
Being myself a French speaking quebecer (but obviously NOT an anti-anglo separatist ), born in quebec, still living in quebec, I must say Abe nailed it.
Quebecers have managed to make themselves the eternal victims, just as the blacks have in the USA.
I know : I have been soaking in french quebecois culture all my life ( I,m 50 years old now ).
As a french quebecer here at Small Dead Animal I am sort of a black sheep,
and as a pro-Canada, pro-USA, conservative french quebecer who prefers the English language and the Anglo-Saxon Culture to my own I am a black sheep in quebec.
But enough about me, Abe is 100% right.
The comparison to Blacks in the USA is spot on.
He could have said feminists and it would still be a very good comparison; eternal victims who are untouchable and have special needs.
Eternal victimhood is the best business to be in these days in any western nation.
Yup, the comparison to blacks in the USA is the best I have read so far.
one more thing; if quebec separates, I,ll be the first french quebecer to leave.
Almost every comment here is about Quebec, but if you read the linked material at Mish’s site, he notes that Ontario is running a larger deficit than California in spite of having both a population and an economy of much smaller size. Yes, Quebec has a larger accumulated deficit in spite of long subsidization by the ROC, but Ontario is actually bleeding a lot more money right now. I don’t much care for John James “Jean” Charest, but Dolton is actually doing considerably worse.
Need another referendum.
This time vote!
We can send them back to the stone age, well at least the 16th century.
Quebec and Ontario:
Eat, drink and be merry – for tomorrow we… drink and be merry – for tomorrow we… be merry and…
“Dolt-on”. Good one, CJ.
sasquatch @ April 3, 2010 10:37 AM
“Please do not confuse the GTA with Ontario. Ontario is part of ROC.”
I thought I qualified my statement by making it clear it is the “dissolute socialist governments” who rail against the Alberta and Atlantic oil sectors who top off their equalization payments.
Another problem is the money for minority language education from the federal government. This helps pay for French language education in places like Manitoba. But in Quebec the money which should go to the English school boards goes directly to the Quebec government which puts it into its general budget.
I agree that under Duplessis the government was anti-conscription and anti-war. But this is many years later and the anti-war stance is coming from the media and college professors who are mostly leftist and Quebec nationalist.
Referendum for the Rest of Canada. “Should WE (Real Canadians) allow quebec to remain in confederation?” (Yes or No). quebec takes their share of the National Debt with them and that is all the take.
Other than the rampant anti-semitism on the NDP blogs Abe’s comment is the most vile racist garbage I have read on a blog.
I pity anyone who doesn’t recognize that.
And BTW, i’m the most hardcore Conservative you will ever meet.
And this is WITH gouging the most funds (over 8 BILLION a year) from Canada’s milk cow(s), until lately Ontario, now impoverished, and Alberta under the farcical “Equalization” program. This is the federal Rube Goldberg formula of idiocies that ends up with Ontario and Alberta paying for better social services in Quebec than they allow for or can afford themselves!
If you subtracted the truckloads of money sent from Alberta, Ontario and sometimes BC via Ottawa to Quebec, the latter would be in an even deeper debt hole. And still they went out and borrowed money to give themselves more candy. Well let least productive Quebec where government workers routinely sleep and shop on the job have its big economic stomach ache for which it’s long overdue all by itself. Ontario at least is tapped out.
Trent, you do a poor imitation of a hardcore conservative when you cannot look facts in the face re dependent constituencies wherever they’ve been engendered and pull out the hack racist card to put discussion off limits.
You’ve internalized PC and are trying to spread the infection.
“Quebec will secede when Canada’s bankrupt, not before.”
“or after they’ve bankrupted Canada”
and they’ll refuse to assume even the share of the federal deficit proportional to their population which in itself is a discount because they’ve received far more than their share of every federal program. You name it, immigration settlement, all arts initiatives, Francophonie funding etc., greedy guts Quebec gets more than its share according to its steadily dropping percentage of the Canadian population.
If a full accounting of Quebec’s ongoing costs to Canadians had ever been made public including the whopping bilingualism bill and the constant drag on the economy by threats to separate, the ROC would have been BEGGING them to leave instead of arriving by the busload all teary eyed to ask the moochers to bless us with their continued presence.
Quebeckers themselves with few exceptions are particularly poorly informed of the FACT that Quebec is a net financial taker instead of contributor in Canada not to mention sucking up all the oxygen of public discourse with a me me me attitude. When has Quebec shown any interest in or appreciation of another province or Canada as a whole except as an open wallet?
I agree with Trent and think Abe should be absolutely ashamed of himself for his vile and contemptable comments. And Louise is just as repuganant for sticking up for a grubby little racist. Hey Abe, why didn’t you just use the damn n word, it wouldn’t have made what you said any less sickening.
I’m as conservative as they come, and it absolutely infuriates me to see conservatives look the other way or even defend blatant racism. It’s probably politically the biggest weapon liberals have, to paint conservatives as angry bigots. Their arguments work alot better when they can point at honest racism, rather than grasping at straws or trying to manufacture controversy.
My grandfather was blown halfway to hell by a rocket in Normandy because a certain country elected a racist leader. I’m a large man, with the clichéd Irish temper, and Abe, if you’d said your stupid remarks in front of me, in person, I would make you both sorry and sore.
Liam.. I don’t understand. What the heck is the n word? Help me out here buddy.
Ooooh. I’m raaaaaaaacist.
You know, Liam, people have been playing fast and loose with that word for the past 40 years it has been rendered useless at best and a joke at worst.
In case you haven’t noticed (due possibly by self-imposed blindness common among the self-righteous), there’s a big industry out there that exploits people like African Americans (and the Quebecois,and Native Indians) who have a vested interest in keeping them enslaved in the self-pitying victimhood mode. Hurling the phony incensed accusation of racism has become pathetically boring.
Oh. And you’re not the only one with an ancestor who fought to liberate Europe. I’m pretty sure my father did not go through hell so that whiny people could cultivate and then exploit the evil “whiteman’s” guilt.
So take take your sanctimony shove it where the sun don’t shine.
Both Trent and Liam should answer the question, what would happen to the American black population if every penny of government funding they receive were stopped tomorrow?
Here’s a hint. 70% of black children are now born to single mothers most of whom are not in Murphy Brown’s enviable situation.
An honest answer would demonstrate the heavy dependency of blacks on Welfare and other support programs that boils down to other people’s earned income.
There is no discrimination in this except in your own minds and that of liberals. It is as undesirable a situation for people of any color including whites but no other color is as dependent percentage wise in the US. Last time I looked, the other constituency criticized for dependency on this side of the border, Quebeckers, were overwhelmingly white. Kind of makes your racist charge look particularly foolish. But substituting “Welfarist” just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?
The reasons for the dependency and solutions (aren’t we all interested in solutions?) cannot be found if we are not even allowed to discuss the true situation, with nothing off the table. As long as you enable liberals in pretending that they’re going to find the key by the lamp post instead of in the dark where it was actually lost, you enable a worsening situation for the people you are supposedly defending.
As far as I’m concerned you are just posturing blowhards with your threats to school supposed “racists” and the immediate resort to Germany’s best known racist is a sure fire sign of no argument, just knee jerk emotion. The Left is much more vulnerable on the genocide comparison when you consider that the abortion they promote is disproportionately affecting black babies. When was the last time you confronted them on that?
If we’re talking sick and tired, I’m sick and tired of “conservatives” like you aiding and abetting the leftist meme that they are morally superior and conservatives are racist. The conservative solution for raising blacks’ standard of living was working well from the end of slavery to passing of the Civil Rights Act (passed by Republican votes over Democrat opposition). It was a steady upward line that started a permanent downward trend with Lyndon Johnson and the Dems’ “War on Poverty” that has had as its victims the very people it was supposedly going to help, just as a farseeing Democrat Senator Daniel Moynihan predicted. Left wing policies blew the black family up in a way slavery did not.
So get off your high horse or stop calling yourself a conservative instead of a CINO. If you can’t think outside the leftist box imposed on public discourse and won’t face facts that don’t fit the box, you’re no conservative.
Bring facts to the table that show that the majority of American blacks are not dependent on taxpayer funding or that dependency is healthy for any cultural or racial group or accept that you are preening enablers of destructive leftist social policy instead of the knights in shining armor you imagine yourselves to be.
@Louise
Just because the term ‘racism’ is abused does not mean it no longer exists, and does not forgive real racists. If you really need it spelled out, here it is: The industry you mentioned is real and I hate them to. Their biggest (but not sole) sin in my book is that they treat people like children (who cannot look after themselves). Abe directly said the same thing about blacks and Quebeckers. You defended him, and you’re still doing it!
Too many fine people sacrifed too much to rid Europe of the taint of Nazism, and I try to repay the favour by not emulating the mental defiences of their hated enemies.
Consider this my final reply to a pathetic waste of perfectly good carbon.
Liam, thanks for the support but it’s hopeless, if people can’t see the racism in how Abe refered to black people you can’t reason with them, they’re beyond hope.
I just hope that my fellow conservatives will also condemn Abe’s views.
Bye, bye boys. Have fun in the sandbox.
trent and liam – you are both quite wrong;it isn’t racism.
After all, if it were racism, then the sections in the Charter of Rights that refer to special actions fcoused to the benefit of distinct groups, identifiable as such, eg, ‘race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability’ would be a racist Section and its support for programs to ‘ameliorate’ their lives would be racist programs.
What Abe and others are talking about is the serious economic and social problems that result when a population is viewed as an identifiable and distinct group and treated as such.
This is the case in the US regarding blacks (treated as distinct via affirmative action, housing, special economic programs, etc); and natives in Canada (treated as distinct via all kinds of special programs)..and also, Quebec.
As you know, Quebec is treated as distinct; this is legally and politically acknowledged with the ‘Quebecois’ considered a distinct people. As such, Quebec IS treated differently than the other populations of Canada. These include economic privileges, eg, the Dairy quota that gives Quebec over 40% of the dairy industry in Canada, the lower cost of universities that are funded federally, their control over immigration and the immigration subsidies that are double that of the ROC. The focus on subsidizing industries in Quebec, the massive support for industries there, the federal offices in Hull and Montreal, the unique constitutional minimum number of seats in the House. And so on.
This treats the province as distinct and gives it benefits unavailable to other provinces. Is this racism? Of course not. But it most certainly is an act of privileging an identifiable group and deserves criticism.
ET – I have enjoyed reading your posts immensely. I don’t know whether you live in Quebec, but you certainly have more insight into the situation here than most Québécois, who believe their political leaders when they say that Quebec’s financial contribution to ROC exceeds what they receive in return.
Barbara – I lived in Quebec for 15 years – and not, I repeat, not, in Montreal, which is quite different from the rest of Quebec.
When I first moved to Quebec, I was stunned; I felt as if I’d stepped backwards in time one full century.
The rejection of ‘others’, whether anglophone, or the ROC, or anyone who was not francophone was stunning.
The feeling that Quebec was essentially an island, complete to itself, and yet trapped in the huge Evil English Surroundings – was pervasive.
This included utter indifference to the ROC and anyone not ‘pur laine’ – i.e., with even a name that wasn’t French.
This isolation continued into a rejection of any participation in the non-francophone world, which included a rejection of any requirement for military duty (let others do that); a rejection of international aid to any but a francophone people; and an insistence that they, as ‘trapped’ within the N. American anglophone continent, be treated as a perpetual victim and given special privileges as a ‘protected people’.
Then there was the opposition to entrepreneurship; the expectation that Big Companies, e.g., Wal-Mart, ought to set up shop so that the locals could have jobs. These locals would never set up a store on their own; someone else has to take the risk – for Quebecers take no financial or political or social risks.
The ‘group-think’ mentality, which required everyone to think the same way on pro-abortion, pro-feminism, anti-Canadian…stunning. The pervasive anti-Americanism, yet, they all flock down to Florida for their vacations, where again, they isolate themselves from the local people, have their own French newspaper and refuse to interact with the local Americans.
The insistence on unions which have a stranglehold on the province and prevent small businesses from starting up..but unions make for safe no-risk jobs.
And the black market economy, to ensure that The Evil Canadians don’t get their money; the black market is huge in the Quebec area outside of Montreal.
I recall one image which to me symbolizes Quebec. It is a road about 2 hours out of Montreal. There are four ‘domains’ almost side by side on this road. One is a Franciscan retreat; the other is a nun’s convent; the other is a Hell’s Angels domain. On the other side is a milk producing factory (Quebec is privileged and is allowed over 45% of milk production quota in Canada, meaning that the ROC, all of the ROC, only gets about 40%). That’s Quebec.