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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
June 26, 2005
Letter to Quebec
I wonder if anyone is home in Quebec? For a long time, if any were, I have wanted to write them a letter. Today, I've decided to just write it, and see if I get a response. It will be in English. Letters from English Canada are often in that language. Let me begin by telling you what I don't want to say. I don't want to say, "I wuv you." Especially, visitors from Ontario have been telling you this, whenever they've felt you were getting uppity. They are like the unfortunate husband, who does not realize that his wife hates him. Imagine his surprise when she suddenly moves out. (Except, in Canada, wives don't move out. They have their husbands moved.) I am speaking to you from a province that truly doesn't get it. We don't get that you've had enough. We don't get the degree to which you are tired, not only of the corruption, but of the sheer malice of the Liberal Party. They are getting about equally tired in the West. And according to the polls, we, in Ontario, have decided the Liberal Party must stay, for reasons of "national unity". In other words, the Liberals have become the separatist party of Ontario. In other words, the Liberals have set things up with Ontario, so the only way to shake them off is by leaving the country. Canada's most talented people do that every day; now it becomes the turn of the provinces. As you perhaps noticed, my analogy was incomplete. Ontario is in some sort of weird old Mormon or Arabian marriage, in which there are several wives. Were it not for the oil dowry that came with Alberta, we would have trouble paying for them all. That Alberta also, increasingly, wants out of the marriage should be no surprise to either of us: there is nothing in it for them, whatever. We just take their money, they get nothing in return, unless you count spousal abuse. The Liberals and our "national" (i.e. the Toronto) media dump all over Alberta. They use the word "Canadian" specifically to exclude them. We give some of their money to you; and some of ours, too. A little less, perhaps, than the average Ontarian imagines, but anyone who thinks Quebec is a net contributor to Team Canada is out of his little mind. This is not a reason for you to delay separation, however. Look at the Slovaks, who hesitated to divorce the Czechs for that very reason: the Czechs were paying their bills. But they did finally leave, and are now well ahead. All they had to lose was the chip on their shoulder. Shed that, and you, too, might learn to earn your way. Your problem will be the people who are leading you out of Confederation -- the Parti and Bloc Québécois. They are skunks. The Slovaks had the same problem, being led into the wilderness by Vladimir Meciar. He made them, briefly, the black hole of Europe. But then the Slovaks got their act together, and got rid of him. You may do likewise after five years or so of being governed by these aspirants to a one-party state. Other Anglos will tell you that the PQ/BQ are racist. This is the opposite of the truth. They are leftwing welfare-statists, they have mouths full of multiculturalism, they have no religion, no chests. The identity of Quebec -- which was French, and Catholic, and admitted into Confederation as such -- is something that passes right through their heads. The "identity" they have is a language without a culture; just like the identity we have. And like the Liberals, they seek power as an end in itself. This is politics today, or what it is reduced to in Canada and Europe: it has nothing to do with nation. "Democracy" has come to mean people voting to appropriate other people's money. But you are nevertheless right to leave. A Quebec which is only a second national language, is a Quebec that is an administrative inconvenience. It is the same post-modern pap, translated from English into French. An independent Quebec will sooner realize that French inhibits exports, and be using English-only to trade with the States. But at least you will be making your own decisions. I lied, I do love you. Not for what you are, but for what you were. Which is to say, in just the way I have come to love Canada. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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