I guess you want me to let the poor French-Canadians off the hook.
Sure, why not, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last 100 years.
Quebec gets:
1. a disproportionately large share of transfers from the Federal gov’t in relation to its size/population. The Maritimes, Territories, some Western Provinces suffer as a result.
2. Quebec is the only Province allowed to have their own, independent Embassies in places like Hong Kong, to run immigration, cultural affairs, etc
3. French has to be taught at schools across Canada despite many provinces having a French-speaking population <1%. In Vancouver, for example, teaching Chinese would be more useful.
4. French has to be printed on all consumer goods even if their final destination is a province with <1% French, as great cost to manufacturers which is passed on to all consumers.
5. Quebec gets huge ‘cultural support grants’ such as the recent hundreds of millions lost to consultants and subcontractors who have now disappeared. No paper trail. In the US this would lead to congressional hearings and jail time.
6. Subsidized education: McGill University, in Montreal, is significantly cheaper than most other Canadian Universities of its caliber (i.e. a medical University) due to these grants
7. They have their own nationwide, publicly funded programming-CBC French
And yet they still bellyache. When the gov’t should be spending its time on serious national issues like education (some schools in BC have gone to a 4-day week) health care (9 week wait for an MRI you can get the same day in the US, recently there were no hospital beds in BC for a woman to deliver twins so they had to wait 7hrs for the paperwork to be airlifted to…Edmonton, AB, a 2hr flight) and defense (Canadian troops drive around Afghanistan and Iraq in unarmored Bombardier-more pork barreling for a Quebec company-made vehicles that cause disproportionate loss of Canadian life, they should have Humvees) they have to take care of the French and the Native Indians. The US has dealt with this ages ago (Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Indians) but in Canada these self-centered, egotistical, ancient relics of France have to tie up gov’t time for their own…what? (it is funny, in France they find the French Canadian tourists speak a ‘quaint’ form of old French that they never hear anymore). So, these Quebecois are pining for an old France that doesn’t even exist anymore-except maybe among some old, retired farmers in the Pyrenees.
I do like most of the French Canadians, especially the 50.5% that voted to stay in the last referendum.
A sidebar:
We had to go to Montreal two years ago to pick up my Green Card at the US embassy there. I had to have an examination by a Doctor in Montreal for the US Department of State. So, as he had me bend over the examination table and pull down my pants I saw him inserting his index and middle finger into a latex glove. Just as he was plunging his digits into my depths, he asked “So you live in the States. Would you like to return to Canada?” My reply: “Y-Y-YES SIR!!”
Nice man, I think he was in the 49.5% though. |
