Ranting about quebec: newspark edition!

wonko the sane?

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Citizen
Good news folks! I got a letter from the quebec goverment today! I've been selected for re-education!

...

Oops, wrong letter.

I was assigned a medical clinic. No, I still don't have a family doctor, but I have a permanent location in which I can seek non-emergency medical care. I still need to use the GAP to access services as opposed to contacting the clinic itself: but hey, it's something.
 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
I need a Canadian perspective on this...

I agree with a lot of what he says, although I want to preface what follows with the statement that Canada was never some kind of "paradise", and even in our better days the health care system had flaws, our politics has always been slow to get results, and we tend to really overdo things when it comes to throwing bureaucracy at a problem like spaghetti at a wall, hoping it'll stick (it never does; it just piles up on the floor in a nasty mess, getting in the way). That's gotten much worse under the current government, which has ballooned the public service by 40% compared to just 8 years ago.

Canada's still a nice enough place to live if you're lucky enough to have a comfortable job, but in the past it was much more a genuine "land of opportunity". Were you likely to "get rich" here? Probably not, but you had a really good shot at having a nice, middle-class life that I think is the objective of most people. Immigrants who were willing to put in the work were generally able to find a decent job and within 4 or 5 years of arriving, buy a house. Similarly, jobs were there for Canadians of all education levels and the benefits and pay went far enough that the working/middle-class was pretty healthy.

It's worth mentioning that the so-called "average" Canadian home price Maher mentioned is the national average, which is greatly skewed by rural areas. The average price of a home in any urban or surrounding suburban areas (where the actual jobs are) closes in on much closer to a cool million. In the suburbs surrounding Toronto, a completely turnkey, move-in ready detached family home is about $1.6 million (or 1.16 million USD).

I'd say a lot more telling than our debt-to-GDP would be GDP per capita, though. Due to a few factors, Canada is currently in what's called a "population trap", where population growth outstrips economic growth and the result is declining share of wealth of citizens across the board. It's exacerbated the affordability crisis in Canada, particularly, even though inflation has been a worldwide phenomenon since COVID measures ended. In contrast, the US GDP per capita has continued growing over the same period, so even though you're getting hit by inflation you don't feel it as bad down there.

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As far as the politics of what he's saying goes, I think there has been some movement among centrist Canadians who are now gravitating to the Conservatives that would have previously supported the Liberals. And it's because the perception is that while both parties have moved "further" in their chosen directions along the spectrum, the Conservatives haven't shifted nearly as far as the Liberals. And those Conservative MPs who hold truly unappealing views on matters such as abortion or same-sex marriage are, thankfully, nameless nobody back benchers and nobody listens to and that the leader of the party rightly reins in.
 
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wonko the sane?

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The PQ have been experiencing a boom in popularity lately. They have also noticed this, and are taking advantage of it to make some fairly grand statements. One of those statements is "quebecers will be voting a referendum before 2030".

Okay chucklefucks, let's explain something since you're all obviously products of the french school system: You are not popular because people like the idea of seperation again. You are popular because people HATE the caq and the liberals. There is very little stomach for seperation these days, and we already know everything you say about the country of quebec is a ******* lie. Why don't you actually try building the province UP instead of wasting time and money ******* with the already precarious canadian dollar.
 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
Calling him an idiot doesn't make him wrong, and it also kind of proves his point. But who cares about that; I guess time will tell.

As for Quebec, I say let them have their referendum. Separate, if they want. Eventually, when a child doesn't stop whining, you need to let them do something stupid and suffer with the consequences for a while. They complain and complain and complain, and yet the government hands them everything they ask for on a silver platter. They craft bigoted, racist, unconstitutional and unjust laws that would never pass muster anywhere else in the country, and the Federal Government remains silent and hopes nobody else notices. It's been going on for decades, and the fools still think they're hard done by. They get equalization payments they don't deserve, they're supported by the supreme court in their efforts to screw over other provinces (the Churchill Falls deal with Newfoundland & Labrador), and they enjoy the lowest tuition rates in the country by quite a wide margin

Well hey guys, what in the **** is so bad about your deal? It's about time they got slapped around a bit and found out if the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence. My guess? It's pretty cold and shitty and lonely over there. But go for it, you glorious bastards.

It'd be funny to watch them try to make a go of it once every corporate entity and a ton of the population abandons the province before the separation. And unlike the current contention with Alberta, we wouldn't even need to worry about them robbing the CPP on their way out, because in their stubborn insistence on always doing their own thing, they've had a separate provincial pension plan since day 1.

But if the Bloc are really lucky and stick around, they may end up as official opposition after the next election. That'd be pretty interesting for a party that doesn't even run candidates in ridings outside of a single province.
 
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wonko the sane?

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If he had a point: it was lost in the fact that his very first sentence he was mocking the opposition. If you want to make a valid argument; separate your biases from the discussion and act civilly. So I honestly don't care what he thinks because he didn't approach with any intent to inform or educate, he was there to mock. **** Bill Maher.

Alright, so you have no problem with quebec just up and leaving? Are you aware of the conditions under which they want to leave, hmmm? Be a separate nation... still using canadian money, passports, trade agreements and infrastructure? That's fine with you? How about the sheer volume of canadian history that's physically here and would be used as blackmail against a post separation federal government? Or the commercial artery that is the st-laurence river? OR how much damage it would do to the canadian dollar? Think you can't own property now? Just wait.

They had two chances for referenda. They outright cheated the second time and still lost. There is no desire to go through that nationalistic hell again. I was there the second time, it was not fun: getting screamed at for having private conversations in english on the streets, or on my own property, while shopping in the most cosmopolitan city this god damned shit hole of a province has. Ever been told to "go back ******* home" in the place you were born? I have. I've been the scapegoat for quebecs failures since before I was even born, and they ******* let me know it. I'm aware of the laws they're passing: which have been systematically used to deny me everything from employment to access to social and cultural services. They don't need a ******* beating, they need to ******* DIE with this bullshit already.

And watching the federal government, EVERY SINGLE ONE, pat quebec on the ******* head and then throw money at them?
 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
Alright, so you have no problem with quebec just up and leaving?

No, I would have problems, but you can only indulge tantrums for so long. Eventually they need to be allowed to find out a bad idea is a bad idea.

They can want things 'til the cows come home, but if they ever actually separated the odds are they wouldn't be permitted to use our currency, passports, or anything else. I mean, how is that even a separate country? That's not going it alone. That's just being even more of a parasite than they currently are... which would be a huge accomplishment, 'cuz they're a massive parasite now.

Everything the government does for them, as you've said, and we still have these Quebec politicians (and a fair number of citizens) espousing these separatist views. At least Alberta has at least some genuine reason to be upset with Ottawa. Quebec really doesn't.

What more could anyone do to placate them?
 

wonko the sane?

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So a new opinion poll dropped, and it shows the caq in third place, below even the liberals: whom are leaderless, ineffective trash. Suddenly, I can envision the possibility of a leaderless liberal party winning in 26 simply because the CAQ are despised and the PQ aren't capable of shutting their god damn mouths about seperation.
 
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wonko the sane?

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Citizen
Quebec plans on introducing legislation forcing streamers (netflix, disney+ et al.) to show more made in quebec content!

Not host, not have access. Show.

Guess I should get used to a VPN, cause my bet is the big streamers will lock out quebec rather than comply with stupid laws that will hurt the bottom line.
 

wonko the sane?

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Citizen
It can't, but they honestly don't mind taking steps to FURTHER ISOLATE quebec from culture and communication.

Edit: by "they" I mean the CAQ and seperatists in general.
 

wonko the sane?

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Citizen
I know you're being sarcastic, but the EU came into existence in 1993, and the first pictures of modern quebec seperatists are in black and white.
 

Anonymous X

Well-known member
Citizen
I know you're being sarcastic, but the EU came into existence in 1993, and the first pictures of modern quebec seperatists are in black and white.
That’s a whole can of worms in itself! The EU sees itself formed in 1951 (European Steel and Coal Federation) or 1958 (when the Treaty of Rome formed the European Community), depending on who you ask. The EU as it is now is considered more a rebranding and reorganisation, IIRC.

(Yes, I’ve gone off topic completely.)
 

wonko the sane?

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Citizen
Alrighty, time for a personal update.

The cardio stress test that was requested for me finally happened. I did it fine, there's nothing wrong with my heart, my pressure MAYBE is too high, but it's not so high that it can't be attributed to using the wrong ******* blood pressure cuff, or anxiety. I need to lose weight, I need to get back into better shape. But otherwise, I'm fine.
 


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