Quebec election 2014

I watched the second Quebec election debate last night. What a spectacle. How tiresome to listen to Pauline Marois and François Legault going at each other as they did, speaking over each other’s voices, or the corruption clusterfuck in which Marois and Legault piled on Couillard for his association with Arthur Porter (making this Liberal supporter queasy, I confess, because really, what was Couillard doing setting up a company, however unrealized, with Porter).
Françoise David was serene and for the most part remained above the fray, like an enlightened schoolteacher letting her students “express” themselves while occasionally rebuking them for some of their lapses in judgement, like Couillard’s for keeping his earnings from Saudi Arabia in an offshore account lo those many years ago. OMG, ssooooo embarrassing.
Pauline Marois seemed a bit like a cornered animal, a weasel maybe or a well-groomed wolverine, lashing out, especially at Couillard, her main rival now, but also at her former comrade in arms, François Legault, when the spirit moved her, unable to point her finger (there appears to be a law against that, so politicians have to crook their index finger in and gesture emphatically with a knuckle, which I’ve always found amusing and a little absurd).
But let’s talk about the issues, for a minute here: Corruption and cronyism? For any leader of a political party to accuse another of appointing friends or supporters to key positions is laughable. They all do it, it’s human nature, and more to the point, it’s the way the party system works. Which isn’t to say it is 100% inevitable, or that the system can’t be reformed. But to hear Marois accuse Couillard of complicity in this kind of behaviour when she herself has proven herself not to be immune is gag-inducing.
Their discussion regarding Quebec’s health care system came relatively early in the debate and preceded the worst of the mud-slinging, and actually showed their respective intelligence and competency, not to mention their ideology. Bracing and almost surreal to consider the different worlds that even our right-wing political figures inhabit versus that of lawmakers and libertarian dreamers to the south…
And speaking of surreal, the argument about whether bilingualism is an asset: Couillard defended bilingualism, but failed to mention the importance of protecting the French language. A huge gaffe, apparently, despite his exceptional command of French. Prepare for some back pedalling today…
Anyway, friends. The election is on April 7. What do you want, really, really? What do you hope for? I’ll share what I’m hoping for, and then I invite you to comment. I think Phillippe Couillard is the smartest of the bunch, and I hope the Liberals win this election. Pauline Marois is a terrible hypocrite as evidenced by her hollow promises to the leaders of last year’s student uprising, and she’s the leader of a party whose raison d’être is to make Quebec independent, but will never achieve that goal and thus will simply carry on creating drama with Canada in order to continue to nourish its dream on resentment and manufactured conflict. Why will they never achieve their dream? Because there simply isn’t any good reason to break up a successful, stable country in order to create a small, unstable nation run by “idealists” brought together by the desire for power.
If you want to save Canada, and if you want to live in a province that lives up to its potential, supported by a strong and loving “family”, you must vote for the party that has a chance of winning, of bringing stability back to Quebec, so we can all flourish, so immigrants will continue to dream of bringing their talent and energy to this place, so that Muslim women can walk down the street without feeling like targets of scorn, or worse, so that the Jewish community can carry on helping to build this province without fearing they’ll have to hide the symbols of their faith.
So that our children can continue playing with each other at school, speaking their hybrid kid-language, growing up to be interesting, Anglo, allophone, or francophone, cultural anomalies in North America, harbingers of a way cooler world than the one the PQ dreams of.
Let me know what you think.