Canada, a nation among the wealthiest in the world, cannot meet its daycare needs. The problem has grown to crisis proportions in the country’s largest cities. In Toronto there are only enough daycare spaces for about one in five of the city’s children.[1] In downtown
Continue readingTag: quebec
Politics, Re-Spun: Fried Squirrels
It’s a crisp, foggy November Saturday morning in the south side of the city. Seventeen people sit in the large open area at the back end of an organic fair trade coffee shop run by a workers’ co-op inspired by the Mondragon movement in Spain. Meet-ups like this are quite
Continue readingwRanter.com: The PQ is embarrassing itself
Share this: It’s been an inauspicious month for Premier Pauline Marois’ minority government. First it tabled its so-called charter of Quebec values. Bill 60 – whose full, Orwellian name is the “Charter affirming the values of state secularism and religious neutrality and of equality between women and men, and providing a
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Debating Values in Québec
The proposed Charter of Québec Values is the response of the Parti Québécois to the decline of the party’s popularity to its lowest level since the minority government was elected one year ago. In the space of that year, disillusionment has set in among a swath of PQ supporters confronted
Continue readingTrashy's World: E Day à Montréal!
Thinking of my bro-in-law this afternoon as the polls close in about 5 hours across Quebec. It’s municipal election time and Steve Shanahan will make a GREAT city Councillor! As well, Mélanie Joly will make an awesome Mayor! What a nice change from old white guys that will be. My
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Duffy drama obscures a concerning rift on sovereignty in Harper cabinet
While yesterday’s press conference by Mike Duffy’s lawyer further ensnaring the Prime Minister’s Office (beyond the departed Nigel Wright) into the Senate expense drama and Stephen Harper’s transparent evasions in question period will dominate today’s clips and political chatter, it’s obscuring a more serious and concerning issue: an apparent rift
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Stephen Harper and the Quebec Card
There are many things to worry about what Stephen Harper might do to Canada, especially now that he is desperate. From forcing through his pipelines at gunpoint, to threatening the future of our medicare system.But what I fear the most is that he might, for cheap political reasons, harness anti-Quebec sentiment in
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Will NAFTA Rescue the Corporations Facing Anti Fracking Opponents?
This was originally posted on the Common Sense Canadian in Energy and Resources Obey law, minister tells New Brunswick fracking protesters Fracking protest in New Brunswick (photo: Colin McPhail) by Emma Lui Communities everywhere are calling for a stop to fracking – from Elsipogtog First Nation’s highway blockade in New
Continue readingTerahertz: Revised Charter: Less Hypocrisy, More Intolerance
A new report suggests the separatist Government of Quebec is listening to some of the criticisms of its proposed Charter of Values. Supposedly the Parti Quebecois will now include a provision to remove the crucifix that has been hanging in the National Assembly since 1936 and “a previous exemption for
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: “We Don’t Care What’s On Your Head. We Care What’s In It.”
So there’s this thing in Quebec which I’m sure my Canadian readers have heard of and maybe also a few of my American readers, which involves the Quebec government devising some legislation called the Charter of Quebec Values. I have to say “charters” and “values” are nice happy positive words,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Canada’s Glass House and Quebec’s Charter Debate
The worst aspect of the Quebec’s Charter debate is the smug, self-righteous, paternalist, finger wagging of English Canada and the English media in Quebec. Canadians don’t realize that they live in a glass house and throwing stones can be dangerous. Self-examination and self-criticism might show that English Canada is a
Continue readingLeDaro: Pauline Marois: Her proposed Charter of Hate-Values
It is already having an impact as a Muslim woman was harassed on a city bus by a bigoted moron. Also a mosque in Saguenay was attacked and disfigured. “A substance that appears to be pig’s blood was sprayed on the front of the mosque Saturday, and a letter containing hate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Dean Baker discusses the strong relationship between union organization and the elimination of poverty: A simple regression shows that a 10 percentage point increase in the percentage of workers covered by a union contract is associated with a 0.7 percentage point drop in
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: The Bottom Line on the Parti Québécois Proposed Values Charter
I was going to write a long blog post on this but since so much has been written about it I think this captures the spirit and intent of the proposal succinctly. The bottom line on Quebec’s proposed values charter is that you can visit a hospital named after a
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: The Bottom Line on the Parti Québécois Proposed Values Charter
I was going to write a long blog post on this but since so much has been written about it I think this captures the spirit and intent of the proposal succinctly. The bottom line on Quebec’s proposed values charter is that you can visit a hospital named after a
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: The Bottom Line on the Parti Québécois Proposed Values Charter
I was going to write a long blog post on this but since so much has been written about it I think this captures the spirit and intent of the proposal succinctly.
The bottom line on Quebec’s proposed values charter is that you can visit a hospital name…
Continue readingQuebec Charter of Values not all bad
Every cloud has a silver lining, according to John Milton. That may be a bit too optimistic for most of us but it is, believe it or not, true of the Quebec Charter of Values proposed by the governing Parti Québécois. Most of the proposed charter is offensive or just
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Quebec’s ‘values’ charter – nothing but an attempted sovereignty gimmick
If you follow politics, you may have heard about Quebec’s “values” charter, which seeks to ban “religious” symbols or clothing from Quebec government workplaces (with the exception apparently of Quebec crucifixes or crosses in the National Assembly – that’s apparently an “important symbol to Quebec history”, not a religious symbol.
Continue readingcmkl: Dear awesome people of Québec, please scrap your secular charter
Or at least the parts of it that tell people what they can and cannot wear to work. And any other bits of blatant nativism/racism that may have escaped the media firestorm around this staggering piece of bigotry-made-policy. I’m no expert in this but it seems to me the whole
Continue readingTrashy's World: I hadn’t yet weighed in on Marois’ Charter of Quebec “Values”…
… because I was waiting to see exactly what it was going to look like… And, well, I’m disgusted. I’m sickened that any government in this country would go far as to prohibit the wearing or display of anything that does not in any way harm another person nor take
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