What's In It For Quebec?

The French Language Election Debate was depressing.  Actually it wasn't about French Canadians - nothing there for Acadians let alone Franco-Albertans.  It wasn't even about Quebec - no Anglos or immigrants considered.  No it was all about Nationalist demands and complaints voiced by Duceppe, while the other three "leaders"? jockeyed to pander to these demands, like so many store-front whores in the red-light district of Amsterdam.
We AltaSask folks have seen this movie before.  Indeed, Canadian politics has this continual theme of bribing Quebec voters with our money so that this party or that party could seize the reins of power.  We keep electing MPs to clean up the corruption, whether they be UFA, Social Credit, CCF, Reform, or more lately the "new" Conservatives.  At least PM Harper is almost honest with his "the best way for you to get the goods is to elect insiders" approach. 


Arch Dale's famous cartoon from the
Grain Grower's Guide Dec. 15, 1915


So, fool us once, shame on you, fool us twice, shame on us; as the saying goes.  How about fool us 100 billion times?  That's about the net amount AltaSask residents have sent to Ottawa just since the Trudeau days.  Our naive hope to clean up the corruption is about as realistic as the farm boy staring at the prostitutes and imagining he can entice one of them to become his wholesome, hardworking, faithful wife as they live out their years on the half-section back home.