On today’s 100th day of protests by Quebec students, Journal de Montreal columnist Richard Martineau offers a scabrous depiction of his province.
Citing former Laval University professor and labour relations specialist Rejean Breton, Martineau renders Quebecers as infantile, self-obsessed fantasists suckling upon the Nanny State.
“The two (sides) of Quebec are corruption and revolution,” he quotes Breton. “On one side, we have those who exchange brown envelopes. On the other, we have those who dream of revolution. These are the principal characteristics of a banana republic.”
Martineau himself uses equally harsh vocabulary. He notes students will be massing to again disrupt Montreal’s city centre this afternoon just as the Charbonneau commission begins hearings on construction industry corruption.
“Today, Quebec will tear off its shirt and expose with pride its two ideological teats,” Martineau writes. “On one side, a clique of politicians, Mafioso and business people plotting to butter their bread on both sides at the expense of taxpayers. On the other, a clique of trade unionists who are using anarchists and anti-capitalists to destabilize the government in order to protect their own privileges.”
It is, he writes, a depressing dichotomy in which ordinary Quebecers are caught between gangsters who rob them of their tax dollars, and powerful unions that block all efforts at reform.
“Corruption, revolution, alienation. Desolation,” he concludes.
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