Posted on 11/05/2005 3:15:17 AM PST by Clive
Gomery comes and Gomery goes and nothing particularly changes. Unless, of course, we are courageous enough to think outside the box and make tough choices.
There are three distinct aspects to all this. First, from the very beginning, Prime Minister Paul Martin was eager to tell us that, "This is not how Quebec politics are conducted." But quite clearly this is precisely how Quebec politics are conducted. If they weren't, he would not be making such a comment and we would not have had an inquiry.
What the PM was actually trying to make us believe is that Quebec politics are not "usually" conducted this way. But he's wrong, and he surely knows it. Almost all political systems contain an element of corruption and Canada is no exception.
Yet if we analyze the political history of Quebec, whether it is the scandals of the last century involving premier Maurice Duplessis or the voting irregularities so well chronicled by playwright Ted Allan, dirty politics stand out.
I realize this is almost unpardonable in a Canada that is prepared to twist and turn in any direction to appease its French-speaking citizens, but it doesn't make it any less true.
Second, the issue is not really whether Martin was involved but whether he was aware. And aware he seems to have been. My friend Akaash Maharaj, as national policy chair of the Liberal Party, wrote to Martin long before the scandal was public knowledge.
Maharaj told the then-finance minister, the most senior Liberal MP in Quebec, that many party members were deeply concerned about what they thought might be internal corruption. The letter was received but nothing was done.
Moreover, are we really to believe a man as powerful and intelligent as Martin knew so little about Quebec and Ottawa politics that no whiff of the scandal even floated past his nose? If, by a miracle, this is true, the man doesn't have the wit or perceptive abilities to be prime minister.
I don't believe Martin was personally involved in the corruption, but he was so obsessed with succeeding Jean Chretien that he was unwilling to do anything that might lose him any support from some high-ranking Liberals.
Remember, to remain silent when one knows of a crime is little better than being part of the crime itself.
Third, the sponsorship scandal is not as much about scandal as it is about sponsorship. We've been so busy dealing with the cosmetics that we've forgotten the cause. And the cause was the obsessive desire of the ruling class of Canada to keep Quebec within Confederation.
So we spent millions on an ad campaign and on silly little flags to convince people they should remain part of what is perhaps the finest nation in the world. Good God, if they so desire independence, then let them go.
It's time English Canada stopped begging and started demanding. Demanding gratitude instead of moans from Quebec for being part of a country that is tolerant, brave, prosperous, respected, forgiving and magnificent.
Gratitude for the fact that so many prime ministers are from Quebec, that we encourage French as an official language and we give much of our natural and national resources to a province that regularly flirts with separation.
The country is weakened and emasculated by having to view its future through the distorted prism of French-Canadian neurosis. Every decade we experience another spasm of self-doubt and mass digression as the privileged separatists of Quebec parade their empty bombast.
Stop the pleading and allow our democracy to evolve and our people to emerge. By all means stay if you can be loyal and content and Canadian. But otherwise, goodbye.
Let them go, let them go, let them go.
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Magnificent essay. Is trhis an op/ed piece? Can you provide any info/background on the author?
Fantastic op-ed piece.
His column regularly appears weekly in the Toronto Sun, more often on religious and moral issues but also, as this one, on political and geopolitical issues.
Thank you, and a belated good morning...sounds like some semblance of sanity is beginning to penetrate the debate..
I started paying attention to him when he stopped shaving his head. Now I see the bugger is bald.
Who knew? :)
Have a look,
http://www.michaelcoren.com/
Thanks..
Au revoir, mes amis Quebecois - and write if you get work!
Sure they'll get work - working for the new Republic of Quebec government...
Good post, Clive!
I read Coren's article in yesterday's Toronto Sun and was SO PROUD of the way he put those Quebec-ers in their place! :-) It's about time SOMEONE did! :-)
FReegards from (Liberal) Toronto
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