The fact that Aislin is saying it is the exact argument why it isn't.
Gilles Duceppe .... he's baaaaaack! (Really?)
Sat, 2015-06-13 16:39
#102
montrealer58
Sat, 2015-06-13 17:38
#103
alan smithee
Yeah...I viewed it as a backhanded compliment to the NDP.
Sun, 2015-06-14 08:19
#104
It may be an ugly campaign in Quebec. Twitter is newly awash with denunciations of Mulcair for having been legal counsel for Alliance Quebec, supposedly an anti-French organization, as if this were a new revelation.
This one is typical:
Alain Querry @AQuerry N'oublier pas @ThomasMulcair chef du #NPD est l'ancien directeur affaires juridiques d'Alliance Québec et anti-francophone #TLMEP #polcan
Others denounce the NDP for being pro-Niqab, etc.
It is unclear whether the Bloc is behind this. I always liked Duceppe and would be disappointed if he condoned such a zenophobic campaign.
It is also unclear what effect Duceppe's resurrection may have. the Leger poll gave the Bloc a nice bounce but it was taken immediately after Duceppe's re-entry so support may fade with the afterglow.
Even so, 26% is only slightly more than the Bloc got in 2011. NDP support actually rose slightly in the poll.
The map remains unfavourable for the Bloc as I pointed out in post #92 above, largely because the Bloc vote is relatively even with no geographical concentration.
As Sean has pointed out, the TCTC simulator gives the Bloc only 11 seats on the Leger numbers. A look at the actual riding projections shows that none of these 11 seats are safe for the Bloc. They would still lose in Duceppe's old seat of Laurier. Of the 11, 5 would be won by 2% or less and two more by 4%.
The Bloc has a difficult road ahead in securing more than a handful of seats. Perhaps this explains the frantic feel to the new attacks on Mulcair and the NDP.
Sun, 2015-06-14 10:35
#105
I just watched the Sunday Scrum on CBC Newsworld, and they were pretty dismissive of the Bloc. They felt it may have made a difference two years ago, but that the NDP are too entrenched now. And they feel the NDP occupy the position of protest vote that the Bloc used to have, but with the advantage of actually being able to achieve power.
Sun, 2015-06-14 18:27
#106
I have to say that the early indications about Duceppe are pretty grim (for him).
1. His re-entry into federal politics has been almost uniformly ridiculed in social media and by commentators - both in English and in French.
2. Duceppe did a bunch of interviews today and i have to say that he looked old, haggard and mean...he also made very little sense and could not really explain why he was running and why anyone should vote BQ. I think his political skills have gotten very rusty and he doesn't seem to recognize that this is a whole new ball game
3. He may have made a few bizarre bloopers - such as saying that he would prop up a Harper minority government as long as Harper hands over enough cash to Quebec...and accusing the NDP of standing up for all of Canada too much!
Sun, 2015-06-14 23:06
#107
Duceppe -- at least in the pictures from this last week -- looks pretty good for 67. Few wrinkles etc.
Wait a few weeks before writing him off. He is a wiley fox.
Mon, 2015-06-15 00:13
#108
Duceppe -- at least in the pictures from this last week -- looks pretty good for 67. Few wrinkles etc.
Wait a few weeks before writing him off. He is a wiley fox.
I don't write him off at all...I'm just saying that in his appearances today he was incoherent and looked like a mortician
Mon, 2015-06-15 00:16
#109
Of course Aislin's cartoon is in English. He is the cartoonist for an English language newspaper. And I happen to know aa bit about Terry Mosher personally. He speaks French very well and I'd describe him as a left wing aging hippy. Like most cartoonists he is irreverent and makes fun of everyone in power but most of his most famous cartoons make fun of right wing politicians and republican US politicians.
Mon, 2015-06-15 02:42
#110
The fact that Aislin is saying it is the exact argument why it isn't.
He also kind of sabotaged his point by writing that in English-but then, from what I've heard, Aislin has NEVER "gotten it" about the language issue(wouldn't surprise me if he's refused to learn a single word of French just to make some sort of arrogant, dismissive point).
Of course Aislin is also basically a center-right Anglo-supremacist cartoonist, so he might not be above trying to covertly boost the Bloc through inflammatory and pig-ignorant cartoons like that just to help the Conservatives and the "Liberals", the parties of the dead Anglo ascendancy in Quebec.
Aislin's whole attitude towards francophones has always been "get over it and know your place. frogs".
Mon, 2015-06-15 05:12
#111
I think he's made a mistake - I think new blood, probably JM Aussant, would be needed to bring back the Bloc, but I've seen him recently and he looks very hale and fit. He keeps very physically fit. But despite Aussant's declaration about "la fin de tous les exils", I don't really think he is ready to give up his plum financial post in London just now.
As for Aislin, in some regards he can be alternative and even "lefty", but certainly not on the national question. Even William Johnson speaks French fluently (don't know about Galganoff, who is now harassing franco-Ontarians of all people) but thinks the entire Québec national movement is founded on fairy stories.
I'm not sure how big "Orange is the new black" is in Québec anyway. I think it may be running dubbed somewhere, but the big women in prison series here is Unité 9, which has really become a cultural meme.
Now the Bloc is positioning itself as defender of Québec's rivers: http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/442785/petrole-de-l-ouest-le-bl...
Mon, 2015-06-15 05:56
#112
Will Mulcair tell them to "aller sauter dans le lac"?
Mon, 2015-06-15 06:59
#113
alan smithee
Howard Galganov is a unilingual anglo anti-French blowhard. I'm delighted that he moved.My apologies to Franco-Ontarians
Mon, 2015-06-15 08:34
#114
He claimed to be standing up for minority rights and defending Canadian unity, so why the hell has he been going after Franco-Ontarians in Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry United Counties? I agree, good riddance, but that is the last thing Franco-Ontarians need.
Mon, 2015-06-15 09:20
#115
Ironic that he would end up in a place called Stormont-named for the home of the old Parliament of Northern Ireland, an institution that kept Northern Irish Catholics totally powerless and repressed(and almost totally unrepresented-Catholics/nationalists were always about 33-35% of the N.I. populationin during the Old Stormont era, but usually only managed to elect one or two MPs out of 52) for over fifty years, and was probably the greatest recruiting department the Irish Republican Army could have asked for. It is remebered by Northern Catholics today as the old South African government is remembered by members of the Black, Mixed-Race and Indian(to use the apartheid-era group names)communities.
Mon, 2015-06-15 10:26
#116
Stormont is still the name of the current Northern Ireland parliament where there are cabinet ministers from Sinn Fein and the SDLP sitting alongside Protestant unionists - so what's your point?...and what does any of this have to do with Gilles Duceppe?
Mon, 2015-06-15 14:22
#117
Yes, Johnson is very erudite, but a zealot.
Mon, 2015-06-15 15:32
#118
As for Aislin, in some regards he can be alternative and even "lefty", but certainly not on the national question. Even William Johnson speaks French fluently [... ] but thinks the entire Québec national movement is founded on fairy stories.
yes, Aislin blows hot and cold, as integrated a '70s Anglo lefty as they come, then alternately repeating some talk-radio banality about horrible oppression by QC, bla bla
and often not that funny
as for Bill Johnson, a zealot, to be sure, but very very well informed.
Want an exegesis of the novel Menaud, Maitre Draveur, from, what, 1930? he knows it! want a detailed description of 1940s Quebec municipal administrations under Duplessis? he knows it. Want someone who actually read the pages of Claude Ryan's ponderous Livre beige from 1979? Bill's your man.
The problem is he grew up, like Pierre Trudeau, in a culturally "tween" family -- French-Irish -- and cannot accept that modern francophone nationalism insisted on the use first of the majority language as the lingua franca. Hence all his intellectual gymnastics to prove the situation of French never that bad, everyone got along and was happily bilingual, speaking two languages an unalloyed good, etc.
A fantasy world.
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