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Ils nous détestente
Will the BQ further inflame Quebecois belligerence?
And how far could that take the Bloc party?
Greg Klein | September 24, 2024
Quebec uber alles, certainly in Canada.
Bloc Quebecois support for Trudeau’s minority Liberal government probably surprised no one but some Anglo-Canadian journalists. Yet in “analyzing” the Conservatives’ doomed-to-fail non-confidence motion, typically uninsightful media reports at least alluded to Bloquiste boss Yves-Francois Blanchet’s typical screw-Canada demands.
Besides enhancing his hero status in Quebec, his anti-Anglo animosity also encourages a wider culture of antipathy. It’s often expressed in Quebecois’ personal behaviour towards Anglos and other impure laine.
That didn’t always prevail. Up to the early 1970s, my experience with our Franco friends differed. A fair amount of Quebecois, I found, could be prickly and difficult but they were offset by easy-going people, back then a recognizable Quebecois trait. Of course the middle ground consisted of fairly neutral examples.
Circumstances gave me little to no contact with Quebecois for over 15 years, when I again started encountering them. At first their gratuitous rudeness surprised me but I considered these incidents to be unusual events, and inexplicable at that. One asshole after another after another, however, finally convinced me of a pattern. The Quebecois, with too few exceptions, had become a society of assholes.
That became ever more clear while working in a backpackers’ hostel. A blight on such places in B.C. and Alberta, Quebecois stand out among the many other nationalities staying there. As shared accommodation, hostels require a fair degree of co-operation among strangers, a practice not common to the Quebecois. They’d get into conflicts with others and expect staff to resolve them. Yet Quebecois behaviour to staff was even worse.
Maybe they just consider Anglos in customer service jobs to be easy targets, but there did seem to be an even stronger animus beneath the scowling nastiness and all that shouting, usually on really petty matters. They’d pull this shit in little groups too, mouthing off together at a sole desk clerk like a mob of cowardly teens.
These incidents brought consensus among my co-workers too, much younger people whose experience with Quebecois apparently overcame their social conditioning of deference to other cultures including Canada’s “better people.”
So what happened during my 15 or more Quebecois-free years? Surely it’s relevant that their politicians became increasingly aggressive and narcissistically unreasonable—and successfully so—when 1960s Bilingualism and Biculturalism got pushed aside by separatism and by pampered state-within-a-state federal favouritism. That must have affected the entire culture as Quebec strengthened its nationhood while a Quebec-dominated Ottawa dismantled Anglo Canada’s. As Quebecois politicians boosted their careers through truculence, Anglo politicians squirmed in deference. That contrast may well have engendered victorious contempt. No doubt the culture at large reflected the politicians’ arrogance. Individual Quebecois expressed it most commonly through personal belligerence to non-Quebecois.
Rhetoric like theirs would be political suicide for Anglos.
But demagogues like Blanchet can express—and provoke—
animosity for career success.
Apart from intensifying asshole behaviour, the Bloc’s new balance-of-power prominence could have election ramifications.
Sure, forecasts notwithstanding, Trudeau might still flutter her eyelashes and photo-op her way to victory, especially if, to the media’s delight, she fires full-scale Trump derangement at her sole rival (among all those “opposing” parties). Should she win another minority, one or more other parties would likely prop her up.
But Canada has other minority possibilities too. One would be a BQ government.
Let’s say the Cons just miss a majority, sending 171 clowns to the 343-ring circus. A not-impossible scenario gives the BQ a 78-riding Quebec sweep. The Liberals shrink to 47, the NDP gets 46 and the Greens one. The latter three we’re-all-the-same parties then back the Bloc in an anything-but-the-slightly-different-party alliance.
For what it’s worth, the BQ did place second nationally in one September poll, as well as win a Montreal byelection in a formerly safe Liberal riding.
Then again, another of the four parties could come second to the Conservatives and get the other three’s support. There’s lots of room to revise those figures. But you could do so and still come up with a BQ government. A separatist victory might not be the most likely outcome but it is indeed a possibility.
Imagine that, Canada ruled by people who hate us.
Then again, what do we have now?