From Cork to Toronto

St. Mary's Academy, a Catholic school in Champlain, NY, is currently teaching 33 Quebec schoolchildren out of 102 total enrolment because their parents, many of them francophones, are unhappy with the amount of English taught in Quebec schools. The US school, with fees one-third of Quebec private schools, is even cheaper these days with the strong dollar. Much like the Mennonites recently forced to leave Quebec or have their schools closed, these parents might have legal action taken against them by the Quebec authorities who regulate education for more strictly than the Ontario system which permits private schools and home schooling to operate with less regulation. The upside for the American school? the cross-border students from Quebec have also brought advantages to St. Mary's, the principal said. With so many young francophones, some of the American schoolchildren are learning French.

I had heard that some Quebec activists opposed to the Canadian Forces deployment in Afghanistan had been writing letters to soldiers near CFB Valcartier to dissuade them from following their orders to deploy.   What I didn't know until today was that to do this is a breach of Section 62 of the Criminal Code  which is an offense with a tariff of up to five years imprisonment on indictment (or 14 years if charged as Sedition under section 61 or Incitement to Mutiny under section 53) - although I doubt any convictions here would attract more than trivial punishment since combat is not occurring on Canadian soil, in the unlikely event that prosecutions were even brought.

Having been outmanoevered by the Péquistes on the budget, Mario Dumont wants Shrek III dubbed into québécois because he can't understand French .  Attempt to get Québec vocal artists onside notwithstanding, somehow I don't think that was the kind of thing for a Québec leader to say when Harper has just met with Sarkozy.   That said I imagine Sarkozy was easier to understand when he hadn't seemed like he was on the lash with Vladimir Putin . It's ironic that while Sarkozy is apparently a non-drinker, it used to be the Russians who had to apologise to the eccentricities of their President . I wonder will Parisians be demanding similar dubbing of the Sopranos' excursion into Joual ?

While the federal NDP, Liberals and Bloc have wrung their hands but stood by while Harper rams item after item on his agenda, the ADQ with Pequiste backup look likely to stop Charest in his Harper-aping tracks at the first time of asking. Update: Mon Dieu! Have I forgotten that "PQ backup" is a contradiction in terms ?

The Harper government has announced that 4,450 hectares of land expropriated to create Mirabel Airport will be sold with priority given to existing renters of the land, most of whom owned it prior to the forced sale in 1969. The mayor of Mirabel is unhappy as he was looking to expand the industrial sites at the airport but that is something he can take up with the new owners. The Kanesetake Mohawks have filed a land claim on the land - I'm going to pass over that one because I don't understand how indigenous land claims work in Canada, and the bigger problem is that it seems to me nobody else does either. Mirabel itself still exists as a cargo airport and occasionally a film set . Apparently Montreal Airport Authority covets it for flights between Dorval-Trudeau and Mirabel (a distance of 32km as a noisy old cargo plane flies) which seems environmentally dubious to put it mildly - is this the hand of Bombardier who still maintain a factory at Mirabel? The next question i...

An interesting comment made on Andrew Coyne's blog in reference to the proposal for a Team Quebec in the World Ice Hockey Championships - "Godot10" wrote Somebody should tell Guy Bertrand that (like Team Slovakia did when it became a country), Team Quebec would have to start out in Group C in the World Championships, to get to Group B, to get to Group A. i.e. There isn't enough seasons for Quebec to get through from Group C to Group A to make the 2008 World Championships. I don't think the rest of the world is going to give up a spot just so Quebec can satisfy its hockey ego. The comparison to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in soccer which others have made is not quite appropriate, since Britain does not field an aggregate team which one or more of its constituents opposed, and in any case those teams actually predated rather than postdated the European and World competitions. With the exception of curling provincial teams are not very usual in pop...

What I found interesting about Michael Chong's resignation was not that he did so - it was clear he had been marginalised in this matter in a way Stephane Dion would never have been in a matter so clearly in his jurisdiction - but why he did it just before the vote, had his press conference and then didn't even record a nay vote as Garth Turner and the fifteen others did but absented himself as several other Tories did. If Michael Chong had a principled objection to this vote his resignation should have come immediately after Harper's announcement of the government's motion on nationhood for Quebec - what made him pause a while? Perhaps he was urged to wait and see what happened on the Liberal benches and if they were in disarray some alternative strategy was planned. Michael Chong may have shown principle in refusing to go along with Cabinet collective responsibility but he has shown more proof that we currently have a one man with one vote Cabinet and also that he ...

Paul Wells reacts to the Commons motion recognising Quebec's nationhood within Canada: It is telling that only one nation was discussed in the House of Commons today, and it was the nation most Canadians don't live in. Apparently most of us don't deserve a nation. Certainly we don't seem to deserve a prime minister who names our nation for us. And if you don't like today's events in the Commons, you pretty much have to lump it, don't you: Vote Tory, NDP or Liberal, it's all pretty much of a muchness, because none of them can name a nation worth defending except Quebec.

This is a serious question - why should Justin Trudeau 's opinion on the Liberal leadership be important to me, or at least any more than any citizen in the street? Given recent media coverage this guy seems to be very important despite never being elected to a single public office or even have a leadership role in the Liberal party, and whose push for Canada's participation in a putative Darfur mission seems to have distinctly fallen off the radar. His "royal" wedding did give the gossip sections good copy though . It does all seem very Stephen LeDrew -ish (Mr. 1.38%) though, an importance limited to the Hill and various editorial boards. Inquiring mind wants to know. Update: Robert Fulford from November 18th's National Post Justin Trudeau has an oddly perverse way of looking at Pierre Trudeau's life story. "When my father was my age he was still backpacking around the world and beginning to write ..." Well, no, actually. Justin is now 34. Pierr...

Being left with the National Post as the only national paper that hasn't sold out or already been read earlier in the day when a 2 hour bus journey awaits is like getting the last chocolate in the box. Most of the time a sickly sweet strawberry stares up at you but once in a while a gorgeous caramel or hazelnut is to be found .

Jean Charest visited France today and received an offer of assistance in the evacuation of Lebanese-Canadians from President Chirac. Since Stephen Harper's last stop before Larnaca was Paris, how did this offer not take place then? While the offer is of course most welcome, how can this be diplomatically proper on the part of the French? The BQ must be doing handstands. Meanwhile Dalton McGuinty was talking equalisation with Pat Binns. I wonder was it Ontario equalisation money that funded the new Quebec office in Munich ...

Jeffrey Simpson has an interesting article in the Globe and Mail on Quebec's relative economic laggardness and their addiction to living beyond their means (thus requiring equalisation to fulfill it). The link goes to Google, click on their link to evade the Globe's paywall. Here's a taste: Quebec, for example, has made social choices to keep university fees the lowest in North America, give families $7-a-day child-care spaces, provide a provincial drug plan, subsidize many industries, keep hydro rates well below North American market costs, and have a large public service. No other equalization-receiving province can afford these kinds of choices, but they are part of the "Quebec model" and, therefore, are apparently difficult to change. The "Quebec model" contributes to the gap between spending and taxes that the Quebec political class believes is due to the "fiscal imbalance" rather than the province's own choices.

Phew! For a while the separatists had me worried that they might have a clue. For the most part, Duceppe's federal campaign was worryingly professional. The hairnet consigned to history, ethnic candidates attempting to reverse the image of the nationalists as " pur laine ", sensible on religion . Fortunately, we can rely on some within the separatist cohort to rage against Canada in a way that reminds Quebecers and other canadians of what life would be like "en Québec libre". The Quebec Sovereignty Council, a tax exempt organisation funded by the Parti and the Bloc, has published a teachers manual for sovereigntist educational activities . The provincial Liberal government has declared that it will not be taught - as indeed do the opposition Péquistes and the teachers unions - but it is clear based on the reaction of current and former Quebecers that both the main school system and the services for new immigrants contain people who deliver education not merely...

Vues d'ici has an interesting post on the EU conditions for Montenegro's secession referendum from Serbia, and whether the 55% in favour the EU are demanding would have consequences for a future Quebec secession referendum. Not sure I agree with the conclusions, but thought-provoking all the same.

Emma posted recently on the fight between two Montreal families over an empty Tim Hortons cup. The cup was thrown away and a girl picked it out of the rubbish in her primary school and couldn't roll the rim up. She asked her older friend to help and lo and behold the prize hidden under the rim was not the usual free doughnut or free coffee but a Toyota RAV4. According to Mitsou Gelinas who interviewed them (Windows Media) the families were happy to divide the prize and go to Disneyland but when the claim form only had space for one prizewinner they decided to think about it overnight. The father of one then decided he didn't want to share and the mother of the other emailed Mitsou, since obviously the best way to resolve these types of disputes is to involve a talk show host, right? She did have one insightful point - it will end up in court and the lawyers will get the car! Now apparently a guy who claims he threw it away has retained a lawyer (Real Player) - surprisi...