Inmate 18330-424

He is expected to be released from FCI Miami on Friday or Saturday, after which he will be deported from the United States. Actually, as a non-resident alien and convicted criminal who has completed his sentence, he will never be allowed to return there. He can then establish himself as a temporary resident in Toronto after a long hiatus (he maintains a $20-million home there, although he has not been allowed to visit it since 2008) and in London (where as a British citizen and life peer, he can take up his seat as a member of the House of Lords).

As his unauthorized biographer, I interviewed him in London, New York and Toronto, starting in 2002, during the unraveling and ultimate destruction of his career as a press baron. I also got to know hundreds of other people involved in the story, from members of his family and close friends to business associates, political allies and critics. When I say “unauthorized”, I mean that I obtained interviews with him, but in no way ever surrendered editorial control of my book to him. The 2007 work is called Robber Baron in English and Le baron Black in French.

This story has left me wondering.

While attending his 2007 trial in Chicago for criminal fraud and obstruction of justice, I wondered how a man who had it all could have placed himself in such a situation. According to Rupert Murdoch, Mr. Black was a billionaire in dollar terms, around 1989.

Once Mr. Black was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice, I wondered how he would survive several years in American prisons, alongside Cosa Nostra dons like Danny Leo, head of the Genovese crime family, as well as drug traffickers, extortionists, embezzlers and bank robbers. I wondered whether inmates paid protection money to criminal gangs behind bars. Prison is a dreadful place to be.

Although I did not expect his appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States to succeed in keeping him out of prison, I thought it was an interesting exercise.

In reading his 2011 book A Matter of Principle, in which he slammed hundreds of critics, including me, I wondered how he could so stubbornly have remained the prisoner of his own delusions, as if all that had happened to him was to be unfairly targeted by jealous, overzealous, incompetent, intellectual midgets.

In seeing how many people he has sued, and continues to sue, I wonder what he means by “justice.” Is it a costly way of getting attention, of dramatizing his personal situation, of settling accounts, even though he has already lost the battle?

Even behind bars, Conrad Black has never been out of the public eye for long

I have been very shocked to see the National Post continue defending him in print, and giving him a platform, from behind bars, to continue writing columns justifying himself. This has left me wondering whether the National Post is a neoconservative version of Pravda or Izvestia, i.e. more of a public relations sheet defending the powerful than a real newspaper.

Even so, after over three years in prison, and whether or nor he has really paid his debt back to society, Conrad Black can now finally return to his family. He is still a wealthy man, and I have no doubt he will “come back” in some capacity in world business circles. I am dismayed to see, however, that he has lost none of the aggressive, vindictive, shrill, self-justifying side of his personality. He has still not accepted public responsibility for his own actions, which led to criminal convictions in the United States.

A few days ago, I wrote him an email wishing him and his family all the best on his impending release. I am not expecting to hear back!

Milla Jovovich

I confess I enjoy watching Milla Jovovich in those crazy Resident Evil movies – you know the ones with all the zombies coming out of the woodwork. Perhaps it is because she looks like one of my daughters… The films have always struck me as completely implausible – after all, how many 20-something young women with deep blue eyes are actually genetically modified heroines? And how many genetically modified young heroines actually go out and blast zombies returning from the dead?

“Resident Evil” zombies

But I realized suddenly the other day that my own city – Montreal – has been overrun with zombies. I am referring to the cyclists of this city. Environmentally-friendly and supposedly progressive politicians are intent on making Montreal the world capital of bicycles. Think of the much-vaunted Bixi programme, for example, the light-weight, attractively-designed aluminum bicycles you can rent from stations all over town. The Bixi concept is now spreading like a zombie invasion from Montreal to Vancouver, New York, Melbourne, London and I don’t know where else.

The Bixi concept is spreading like a zombie invasion

How cool, you may be saying.

The problem is, while so-called progressive politicians are promoting bicycles, nobody is willing to acknowledge publicly that Montreal has the world’s most reckless drivers on two wheels. In fact, as a pedestrian, I regularly place my life at risk: in the eyes of our cyclists, I am merely an obstacle to avoid, an abstraction, a nuisance – even when I am crossing the street on a green light, cyclists don’t understand how I could possibly have the right of way. It’s as if they are simply colour-blind, and I am the colour they are incapable of seeing.

Cyclists regularly speed through red lights, because they are too lazy to stop, wait for a green light, then start up again. They regularly abandon designated bike paths to ride up on sidewalks, knocking pedestrians down like so many bowling pins. And if they slow down for a pedestrian at all, it is to shout abuse at people like me, making our way on foot.

And yet, what could be as environmentally friendly as a pedestrian?

In its race to provide infrastructure for cyclists, City Hall has provided nothing for pedestrians. In fact, no “progressive” person in Montreal is willing to admit that cyclists are putting pedestrians at risk in our own city. I say we need Milla Jovovich to clean the zombies out of town. In the meantime, I am glad winter is coming, since it will bring a few metres of snow. With no bicycles around, the streets will finally be safer…

Finally ... some snow!

The Pilgrim fluyt ship Mayflower in the mid-Atlantic

“In sundrie of these stormes the winds were so feirce, and the seas so high, as they could not beare a knote of saile, but were forced to hull, for diverce days togither. And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty storme, a lustie yonge man (called John Howland) coming upon some occasion aboye the grattings, was, with a seele [surge] of the shipe throwne into [the] sea; but it pleased God that he caught hould of the top-saile halliards, which hunge over board, and rane out at length; yet he held his hould (though he was sundrie fadomes under water) till he was hald up by the same rope to the brime of the water, and then with a boat hooke and other means got into the shipe againe, and his life saved; and though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both in church and commone wealthe.”

That life experience certainly puts a lot of things in perspective!

John Howland met his future wife Elizabeth Tilley during the same voyage.

The Mayflower reaching Cape Cod

What if doctors lose it, altogether?

I have been to see the doctor a few times over the last few years, and believe me, it has been an eye-opening experience. I only go to see a doctor when I really need to, and I expect, or at least hope for, a decent physical exam, insight and experience based on years of practice and keeping up to date on new research, and appropriate advice.

But doctors sometimes give lousy advice, in a dismissive tone of voice, as if they really had better things to do.

Consider one doctor I consulted, ten years ago, an Eastern European: he told me the best cure for lower back pain was to spend two weeks in a spa-brothel in the Tatra mountains of Slovakia, having sex on all fours each day with a series of attractive young prostitutes. He also told me to drink a lot of wine… This was medical advice, from a member of the Quebec College of Physicians…

I do not think the problem of doctors “losing it” is peculiar to Montreal, or Quebec, or Canada. I think the problem is we put too much faith in the medical profession. Doctors often get rid of patients by giving them pills…

Just take a few pills...

But some doctors transmit their own stress to their patients. One dermatologist looked at me in a frazzled sort of way, and asked whether I still had cancer, even before looking at my file. “But I have never had cancer,” I said: “what are you talking about?” She was obviously close to burnout, or something. She frenetically told me she would only examine me in a closet, since all the patients in the waiting room were spying on her - she then spent 25 minutes telling me how horrible her father and older brother were. Fortunately, a light bulb was hanging from the ceiling - otherwise how could she examine me? - but I found it uncomfortable squeezing into the closet with all that bulky medical equipment in storage. The dermatologist’s parting words to me? “You don’t have cancer - don’t ever come back to see me!”

On the other hand, it is true that I have run into some fine doctors from time to time. But considering how crazy some doctors are, I have come to the conclusion that for general (not fatal) complaints, the patient knows best.

God save us from doctors

In last evening’s federal election, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives not only obtained a majority government – they will likely occupy that position for another two mandates (eight to ten years) – but also Jack Layton’s New Democrats made stunning gains, particularly in Quebec, and will form the Official Opposition.

This leaves Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals in purgatory. Does the former “natural governing party of Canada” have a future? Should the Liberals now try to merge with the New Democrats? Because if they had done so prior to the election, the merged party would be forming a majority government today. After all, the two parties are not as different as all that. Ignatieff ran a dignified campaign, but was simply swept aside by the NDP tidal wave.

Is the Liberal Party of Canada now dead?

An even more interesting question is what caused Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Québécois to wipe out totally. Quebec nationalist mythology has often  explained defeats in terms of dark conspiracies, back-stabbing by anglophones, rejection by the rest of Canada, blackmail, fear campaigns etc.

But the one appealing to fear and blackmail this time was actually Duceppe himself. His defeat is far more the result of his own hubris.

Gilles Duceppe – a victim of his own hubris

Just two weeks ago, Duceppe gave an impassioned speech at the Parti Québécois congress in Montreal, electrifying his audience as he said how much he hoped the two pro-sovereignty parties would win 101 seats in the House of Commons and National Assembly – a majority of all Quebec seats. He claimed that the “next phase” was in sight, when everything would become possible, and with the Parti Québécois poised to win the next election within Quebec, a strong contingent of Bloc Québécois MPs would open the way to sovereignty.

“Canada has nothing more to offer Quebec,” Duceppe added.

Evidently the people of Quebec do not agree, because last evening, Duceppe went down to a resounding personal defeat, and resigned from leadership of the Bloc in a rambling and altogether pathetic speech. The Bloc itself now has just four seats in Quebec, compared to the New Democrats’ 58.

In the aftermath of last evening’s federal election, I am struck by how out of touch political élites and opinion spinners proved to be … with the people.

Élites are out of touch with the people

Alexis de Tocqueville: democracies can be tyrannical

The foundation of parliamentary democracy is the consent of the people. We are in the habit of dividing the people into majorities and minorities, and while Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the tyranny of the majority, it is generally accepted in democracies that more people consenting to, than dissenting from, proposed government actions means that the people tend to support rather than to reject those actions.

But looking at the current Canadian election campaign, this country is now faced with several competing minorities, as if the country were broken down into blocks. There is no clear majority. What would Tocqueville have thought about this? Would he have considered the tyranny of the minority possible? Certainly he would have – after all, he had studied the benefits and ill effects of the French Revolution.

I notice how many times Canadian politicians have actually by-passed the consent of the people, by:

• imposing their will;
• excluding categories of individuals from “the people,” or seeking to disqualify them;
• manufacturing consent pure and simple;
• and manipulating the public (often by presenting the people with false alternatives) to the point that the public gives consent grudgingly, unwillingly or even unwittingly.

Canadian politicians are not alone in doing this.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau looking on as the Queen gives royal assent, 1982

When Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government repatriated the British North America Act from Westminster, in 1981, a key aspect of the reform they were proposing was that it should reside in the consent of the people (although predictably the National Assembly of Quebec did not consent to it) – but then in 1982 the Liberals incorporated an amending formula into the Constitution, making it practically impossible for the people (acting through the federal Parliament and all provincial Legislatures) to give their consent to future amendments.

Yet, one advantage of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms is that it guarantees all adult Canadians the right to vote – one of the main ways in which the people exercise their right to consent. This right took a long time to be recognized. In the 18th and 19th centuries, voting was a privilege, not a right, and depended on property qualifications, which meant most women could not vote. Women only gained full voting rights in federal elections in 1918. My great-grandmother Ellen Walker Tombs had to wait till 1940 – by which time she was 95 – to register for the Quebec provincial vote – the first year women were allowed to vote in the Province of Quebec – although she died before election day. Racial exclusions on ethnic Chinese and Japanese were only lifted in the late 1940s. First Nations people only acquired the unconditional right to vote federally in 1960.

My 95-year-old great-grandmother Ellen Walker Tombs registered to vote in the first provincial election Quebec women were allowed to, but died before election day

But there are ever so many ways for politicians to exclude parts of the electorate, or to disqualify them. I am not suggesting the Parti Québécois is about to promote abolishing universal suffrage in this province, but I do note how often the PQ implies, by its very name, that it is the party of “real Québécois.” Is there a Canadian Party, or American Party, or Parti Français or Deutsche Partei? Of course not. In addition, the PQ pits “real Québécois” against “anglophones, allophones, francisables, francotropes, immigrants, communautés culturelles, autochtones etc.” While creating all sorts of categories of other people, whose attachment to Quebec is somehow made to seem conditional, the Parti Québécois meanders between civic nationalism, based on the idea that anyone living in Quebec is Québécois, and ethnic nationalism, based on the idea that only French Canadians of old (pre-Conquest) stock really belong.

Of course, it will be interesting to see what a future Parti Québécois government eventually proposes in the way of a Quebec Constitution. One obvious dilemma is that the Parti Québécois Constitution would be a minority document imposed on the majority, within Quebec, and as a provincial bill going well beyond current realities, would likely be invalidated by the Supreme Court of Canada, since it would be unconstitutional in federal terms.

The White House released Barack Obama’s birth certificate today

The White House released Barack Obama’s birth certificate today, showing clearly that he was born in Hawaii on August 4th 1961 – in answer to the absurd claims of many Republicans, including billionaire presidential hopeful Donald Trump, that Obama may have been born outside the United States, and may therefore be violating the Constitution by sitting as president of a country where U.S. birth is a requirement. The Republicans are obviously trying to disqualify Obama from office. I suspect race is the real issue. This is a more extreme case of attempted exclusion.

As for manufacturing consent and manipulating the people, I recently read an interesting book by the psychologist Isabelle Nazare-Aga – Les manipulateurs sont parmi nous. Here is a list of 30 tactics used by manipulators. I leave to your imagination how many are used by politicians in Canada, including Quebec!

1. The manipulator blames others in the name of family ties, friendship, love, professional dedication
2. He transfers his own responsibility onto others, or shirks his own duties
3. He does not clearly communicate his demands, needs, feelings and opinions
4. He often responds in a fuzzy way
5. He changes his opinions, attitudes and feelings depending on which people he is speaking to, and which situations he finds himself in
6. He uses logical demonstrations in order to disguise what he is really seeking to obtain
7. He makes others believe they must be perfect, they should never change their minds, they must know everything and they must respond immediately to his requests and questions
8. He questions the qualifications, skills and personality of others: he criticizes without really seeming to, in order to devalue and judge others
9. He gets other people to transmit his messages
10. He creates a state of uproar and suspicion, with a view to first dividing people, then conquering them
11. He knows how to play the complaining victim
12. He ignores other people’s requests, while claiming he is addressing them
13. He uses other people’s moral principles in order to satisfy his own needs
14. He threatens overt or covert blackmail
15. He completely changes the subject during a conversation
16. He avoids or ducks out of conversations, meetings
17. He relies on the ignorance of others and gets people to believe in his superiority
18. He lies
19. He says things that are untrue in order to tease out what is really happening
20. He is egocentric
21. He may be jealous
22. He cannot stand criticism and denies the obvious
23. He does not take into account the rights, needs and desires of others
24. He often waits till the last moment to order something or incite others to act
25. What he says seems logical or coherent, whereas his actions seem illogical and incoherent
26. He flatters to please people, making them gifts, suddenly pampering them
27. He produces a feeling of discomfort or lack of freedom
28. He is very good at achieving his own goals – but at the expense of others
29. He makes people do things they probably would not have done of their own free will
30. People are constantly talking about him – even when he is absent

This list of manipulative tactics is why I put more trust in the people than in politicians… And why I prefer the protection of individual rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to being part of an amorphous mass of undifferentiated people, subject to the whims of the party in power.

I’m all right Jack

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton proposed an interesting idea today in Montreal – amending the Constitution so Quebec finally signs on, if there is a reasonable expectation of success. “I mean, we have this historic problem that we have a quarter of our population — the people of Quebec — who have never signed on to the Constitution,” Layton said. “That can’t go on forever.”

He qualified his comments, however, saying constitutional reform was not a priority for many Canadians.

The NDP seems to be on a roll in Quebec. Opinion polls suggest they are ahead of the Bloc Québécois, and the reason probably lies in Layton’s essentially positive campaign, his recent brush with cancer, his social-democratic message and Quebeckers’ combat fatigue with the Bloc. So was Layton seeking to widen his support among soft-federalist Quebec voters, by appealing to their desire to have Quebec’s status resolved in the Constitution? What does his statement actually mean?

Gilles Duceppe & Jacques Parizeau this week

Jack Layton’s  rising popularity in Quebec is a threat for the Bloc Québécois. One has only to consider the provocative tone of Gilles Duceppe’s recent fiery speech at the Parti Québécois congress, his claims that the election is about federalism versus sovereignty, and Jacques Parizeau’s subsequent last-minute campaigning on behalf of the Bloc.

But no matter what Layton says, there is not really much prospect of re-opening constitutional negotiations in Canada. Why? Because the Parti Québécois is likely to win the next provincial election, and the Quebec government would need to be deeply involved for any constitutional reform to succeed.

The Parti Québécois has opposed every attempt to amend the Constitution for decades – in 1971, 1981, 1987-1990 and 1992 – claiming each time that proposed amendments fell short of Quebec’s historic demands. Then the PQ gloated when constitutional reform failed, because they could blame English Canada for the failure. This helped the PQ create powerful national symbols that reinforced the deep-rooted feeling that the two nations could not  possibly adjust to each other, and that English Canada was forever stabbing French Canada in the back.

I remember things differently. On January 18th 1985, I covered the special congress of the Parti Québécois for the BBC World Service. PQ founder René Lévesque said the “beau risque” of federalism was worth taking up, and a “new Canadian community” worth aspiring to. Actually, 921 PQ delegates (65%) supported Lévesque’s stance. But then, Camille Laurin came to the microphone:  “We cannot accept the decision (…) since it means the party is refusing whether wholly or in part to make sovereignty the issue of the next election, and for the next four years.” After which 495 PQ delegates (35%) voted to hold the next election on sovereignty, and marched out of the hall with Laurin, chanting “Parizeau, Parizeau” and “Le Québec aux Québécois.” This directly undermined Lévesque’s position as leader. He resigned five months later.

Despite this back-stabbing episode, and Lévesque’s subsequent depression and attempted suicide, he was later “recuperated” as a mythical hero by the Parti Québécois, as the very incarnation of the struggle of a whole people.

René Lévesque

I really respected René Lévesque, and as a first-hand witness of the Parti Québécois congress in January 1985, I was horrified not only to see a powerful group of members abandon him, but also to see their uncompromising ideological harshness. And yet the Parti Québécois rhetoric of French versus English seems to be intensifying nowadays, as if, once they get back into power, they plan to (1) manufacture a new crisis, (2) create a backlash in the rest of Canada that will (3) justify Quebec’s feeling of isolation and (4) somehow snatch a referendum victory – practically against the will of the people. Current Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois never even bothered to learn English – in North America, for goodness sake. This means she has never had a real conversation in English with her anglophone fellow citizens of Quebec: she cannot make out what people are saying in Ontario, Vermont, Maine and New Brunswick, either, and wherever else in the world English is spoken. Not much chance of a compromise there…

So while I realize Jack Layton’s offer of constitutional reform may have some appeal, I doubt there is a reasonable expectation of success.

Men in grey suits: the leaders of Canada’s main federal parties, during the recent televised debate

I sometimes wonder whether politicians in democracies have the good of the people at heart. Are they actually happy when the economy is buzzing, jobs are being created, inflation is down, and there are good prospects of growth?

For example, the OECD recently predicted that Canada will lead industrialized countries in economic growth during the first half of 2011 – the OECD expects to see growth in Canada of 5.2 per cent in the first three months of 2011, with 3.8 per cent in the second quarter.

Is this really good news? It might be good news for Stephen Harper, since he can point to his government’ stewardship of the economy, during a period when just about everyone called on the government to take decisive steps to get Canada out of the sudden catastrophic worldwide recession of 2008-2009. (Of course, the economy is not the only issue in the upcoming federal election.)

Karl Marx was only too happy when conditions deteriorated, since it would confirm him as a prophet of doom, and help the Communists seize power

Or do some politicians, like Karl Marx, long for a severe deterioration in economic conditions, since such a deterioration would help their chance of providing an alternative in the next election, justify their own prophecies of doom, and legitimize their own quest for power?

Since so much of the political game consists of creating perceptions, the Liberals and Neo-Democrats need to magnify the Canadian economy’s problems, while positioning themselves as the best parties to solve those problems. The Bloc Québécois, meanwhile, is an opportunistic party strictly promoting Quebec interests: it has only to point to economic problems in Quebec regions, even when many of these economic problems are not the federal government’s fault, in order to score points on election day.

A scene from Le confort et l’indifférence, showing René Lévesque on the right

This question comes to mind because of my interest in Quebec politics. In 1981, Denys Arcand directed Le confort et l’indifférence (Comfort and Indifference), a film demonstrating that a majority of Quebeckers voted against sovereignty-association in the referendum that year because they were comfortable economically and within the federal system, and ultimately indifferent to the cause of Quebec independence.

The message of comfort and indifference is very threatening for the Parti Québécois, since it wants to promote a rupture with the rest of Canada, and needs to portray conditions as massively deteriorating, or threatening, or intolerable. One of the leading Parti Québécois strategies since then has been to do everything possible to exacerbate the discomfort of French-speaking Quebeckers, while cultivating the value that they are fundamentally different from the rest of the country – so the strategy is the exact opposite of Denys Arcand’s film title: it is a strategy of discomfort and difference.

I remember meeting the editor of Le Devoir, Montreal’s nationalist, pro-sovereignty newspaper, in 2008 (I was writing a series of features for them at the time): I was astonished to hear him predict – with optimism – that the coming recession would lead to a boost in support for Quebec sovereignty, since the economic situation favoured that. The thought occurred to me at the time that a severe recession could actually wipe out Le Devoir! I don’t know many newspaper editors who are hoping for the economy (and their own markets) to go down the toilet!

Former Parti Québécois leader Jacques Parizeau mused at the time that a national psycho-drama would surely help the sovereignty cause. I detected a touch of frustration or nostalgia in this comment, since he surely would have preferred support for sovereignty to be far higher, even if only on the short term. Which explains why many Parti Québécois propagandists work so hard at trying to create a smouldering psycho-drama, pitting French against English. L’inconfort et la difference.

We don’t really have governments in our own image

Compared to many other countries in the world, Canada has stable democratic institutions, which through the Constitution both written and unwritten actually guarantee the basic civility of Canadian life; these institutions also allow Canadians to survive even the most manipulative of politicians; if it is true that we are often poorly governed, it is also true that through the efforts of enterprising, hard-working Canadians the economy is strong enough to enable us to withstand the impact of governmental waste; ultimately, we Canadians do not have governments in the image of the people – by and large, we manage in spite of, not because of, politicians and bureaucrats, who sometimes are so keen on gaining power that they actually hope we suffer.

The Constitution has often been assumed, particularly in Quebec, to consist of nothing but Pierre Trudeau’s Constitution Act of 1982. But actually the Constitution includes the laws, precedents, traditions and customs that bind us, some of which have never been written down; it includes the way we do things in this country, perpetually adjusting to one another: in my view, this political culture emanates from the citizens, not from politicians or bureaucrats.

Having said that, we are due for a change of government in Ottawa.

Actions speak louder than words

I have more faith in the people of Canada (which includes Quebec) than I do in our politicians and bureaucrats. Canadians are generally conscientious, disciplined, vigilant and fair-minded, and the future of democracy is in our hands. This is perhaps because of my professional training as a journalist: I am more interested by what people do than what they say.

“Politics,” said Bismarck, “is the art of the possible.” Once a country bases its political structures on the consent of the people, allowing for the peaceful transfer of power from one group to the next through regular democratic elections, politics is all about creating and maintaining the perceptions that will manufacture this consent, so the parties can claim to represent the people.

With the result that the Conservative and Liberal parties, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois present things in the best light possible, from their own perspective, in order to get elected. In fact, the first job of an elected official is to get re-elected, just as the first job of a bureaucrat is to perpetuate that job.

Even though we have a robust democratic system in Canada, which has weathered many a storm, the citizens are nonetheless at the mercy of elected officials and bureaucrats, who have a sense of self-entitlement to the point that they graft themselves onto society, without undertaking any of the productive labour that citizens do, meanwhile draining off the resources of the state. In fact, we are poorly governed by ineffective, wasteful,  unproductive, self-entitled bureaucracies. As a friend told me recently, “government is set up to fail.”

Stephen Harper

During the current election campaign, I am less struck by the corruption of the Conservative government than by a combination of self-righteous Puritanism, nastiness, populism, secrecy, contempt for women and contempt for Parliament. It’s as if the Conservatives felt entitled to make secretive decisions in our name, to lie in the most overt manner to the public, and to make the most horrendous mistakes, simply because they are closer to God than the rest of us. At least, in a democracy, the citizens can turf political parties out of power, from time to time. The Liberals may do better this time round than people expect.

Violent protest in Egypt

How different our experience in Canada is from the many countries in North Africa and the Middle East: in many cases, political structures there are based on the rule of one tyrant over many, or the rule of one clan over all others – and these tyrants and clans make no bones about massacring the people in order to maintain power. Think how many people have died in demonstrations over the last few months, between Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Syria. What the people really want, more than anything else, more even than Islamic law, are political structures that work, allowing for the peaceful transfer of power from one group to the next. In other words, the people of North Africa and the Middle East want real Constitutions, which are binding not only on the citizens but also on those who govern.

I disagreed strongly with Pierre Trudeau, but introduced him nonethlesss the evening of his October 1992 speech on Charlottetown

I see a Constitution not just as a codified body of law, as in France, but as a body of laws, customs and traditions that are not all necessarily written down. In 1982, Pierre Trudeau brought about a major revamping of the Canadian Constitution, and although I disagree strongly with some aspects of Trudeau’s reform, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does a good job of articulating the basic values that motivate the social and political behaviour of my fellow citizens.

Canadian democracy emanates from the people, rather than from politicians and bureaucrats.

The rubble of bombed-out Beirut

I am reminded of this fact because we are in the midst of a federal election campaign in Canada, and if the world hasn’t exactly noticed the election yet, that can hardly be surprising, because in Canada itself the election is hardly foremost on everyone’s mind. The date of a televised debate among the main party leaders this week had to be delayed in order to respect the Stanley Cup hockey schedule. Evidently the citizens of Quebec prefer watching their beloved Montreal hockey team to enduring yet more political rhetoric  and angst.

Today, Gilles Duceppe, leader of the federal yet avowedly pro-separation party the Bloc Québécois, said it was important that amending the Constitution be brought to the forefront, although the Bloc has no interest in any constitutional amendment whatever.

Quebeckers prefer hockey to politics...

A lot things have happened in Canada in recent years, or perhaps I should say have not happened. In my humble opinion, there has been since the early 1960s, a gradual petering-out of the meaning of Quebec independence: it started with some people advocating an independent Quebec under the banner of the RIN, then continued with de Gaulle’s famous 1967 cry “Vive le Québec libre,” at which time some people saw Quebec in terms of decolonization - and at the time, the conflict between French and English within Quebec was much more important than it is now; then came Parti Québécois founder René Lévesque’s sovereignty-association project, with the nuance added by that intriguing Quebec government minister and undercover RCMP agent, Claude Morin, that things should move along by étapes or gradual steps; following that came a succession of Parti Québécois leaders, whether fiery or excruciatingly boring, such as Pierre-Marc Johnson, Lucien Bouchard, Bernard Landry and today’s Pauline Marois, who have been promoting a project of national affirmation without content (a little like a political weather vane since it depends mainly on opinion polls), all under the guise of the messianic ideal of a sovereign country.

De Gaulle: Vive le Québec libre!

Parti Québécois leader Jacques Parizeau spoke of catching Quebeckers in a lobster trap, and although I appreciate his candour – which is so rare among politicians – it is offensive to see a political leader so cynical about trapping people in something they don’t understand and above all, don’t want. Discussion of sovereignty today takes the form of a new non-ideology - which I would call “tourne-en-rondisme” in French, or “going-nowhere-ism” in English.

Quebec’s non-ideology: “going-nowhere-ism”

Let’s talk reality. If we look at what has happened elsewhere in the world, Norway seceded from Sweden in 1905 without too many problems, both countries remaining perfectly viable. During the 1989 Velvet Revolution (Sametová Revoluce) in Czechoslovakia, two entities splintered off from each other, and both continued to be viable. In Quebec, the question is not so much whether an independent Quebec would be viable as it is that deep down Quebeckers themselves are overwhelmingly in favour of maintaining Canada, even though this is Canada “by default” – despite inevitable frictions, disappointments, sorrows, ennui etc.

So for me, the latest statement by Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe is a reminder that a Constitution assures the perennity of a country, of its state, of the community we form together. A Constitution is more than a simple notarized contract, which is made or modified depending on the vicissitudes of the moment. No matter how imperfect it is, as the supreme law in a democracy, the Constitution both written and unwritten articulates that conscientious, disciplined, vigilant and generally fair-minded attitude I find among my fellow Canadians, which includes Quebeckers of course. This is something going well beyond political rhetoric or angst.