Pierre-Karl Péladeau announced his candidacy for the Parti Québécois. The offspring of a newspaper magnate, the successful developer of federal cable television licences, Pierre-Karl Péladeau brings a certain economic realism to the leftist Parti Québécois.
He also brings a habit of shouting at subordinates, tirades, and entitlement to rage, according to many sources not directly employed by him, or those formerly employed by him. In short, should Péladeau eventually make it to the premiership of Quebec, in whatever form that state eventually takes, he will make the much maligned Maurice Duplessis look positively amiable.
My guess is that nothing will contribute to Quebec’s evolution faster or better than to pay its own freight, by separating in such a way that we in English Canada are no longer subsidizing its anti-English, anti-capitalist, and anti-liberal policies, to the tune of $16 billion a year.
Make it on your own, mes amis. We will talk when you are ready for some reasonable discussion. If the Quebecois elites want to drive the car into a wall at high speed, as they seem to, I do not see why we should prevent them. Yes it will be tragic: in the sense of an inevitable, necessary conclusion. But if they become independent (with all suitable free trade agreements and rights of passage and so forth), they will have to learn to get real quickly. The affronts to the English language and English speakers in the form of Bill 101 and its repressive bureaucrats will be dismantled, and quickly, by the new State of Quebec. English Canada can get on with its own cultural-political-economic experiment, and French-Canada will continue with its ancient tendency to statism, a controlled economy, and a uniform society, under a new name, until such time as it will go bankrupt.
We only care to get them out of our institutions until they show some evidence of good faith towards us as people, and not just as a despised and maligned source of subsidies for the statist, collectivist and group-think behaviour they seem to believe in.
In the meantime, Pierre-Karl will shortly be exposed to a much broader audience of voters to be the unpleasant person he is, except by the papers he owns.