The Quebec government is destroying our universities

 

The campus at McGill University, Montreal, 1906

One day last fall, in 2023, Premier Legault of Quebec walked out of his Montreal office, which is across the street from the Roddick Gates entrance to McGill University, and decided, as he described it at the time, that he could hear too much English being spoken and, he claimed, this was to the detriment of the French language, and therefore it had to end. And who did he blame for this linguistic pollution? He blamed out-of-province and foreign students although he probably would have liked to have included all English-speaking Quebecers. This was the beginning of the Quebec government's attempt to destroy English language university education in Montreal and Quebec. 

Here is the scenario we were presented with by Premier Legault justifying cutting provincial funding and doubling tuition for out-of-province students at the three English-language universities in Quebec, Bishops University, Concordia University, and McGill University. The money from this drop in funding would go to French-language universities; the three English-language universities would now subsidize the French universities; however, Bishops was later exempted from this attack on English universities. Legault made the situation even worse; out-of-province students would now have to pay a higher tuition fee than they were currently paying (it was doubled but a few months later McGill and Concordia announced they would will subsidize students affected by this) and these students would also have to take French language courses that would add a semester to their studies, courses that are possibly beyond the ability of most Francophone students. Almost immediately applications to study at McGill and Concordia began to fall, the three English-language universities are now subsidizing French-language universities. As well, Moody's downgraded the credit rating of both universities based on Legault's pronouncement.

The gates to McGill University, McGill College Ave, August 25, 1869.

Of course, many of us in the English-language community are in shock over this, it feels like being stabbed in the heart; it is the wilful destruction of what has taken over two hundred years of work, dedication, and commitment to build. It is the legislated cancelling of McGill University and Concordia University, two of our most important institutions. These universities define our community but they have also been a welcoming place of learning for the majority French language community and they have helped generations of immigrants get ahead in Quebec. And it doesn't matter to Legault that McGill is one of three internationally recognized Canadian universities of excellence, the two others are the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto, or that McGill is a 203 year old institution with a reputation for excellence in learning, teaching, and research. Or that McGill is the equivalent of a head office of a prestigious company and brings more revenue to Quebec than it costs to have it here. As for the threat to the French language, based on demography, this is bogus and it's an excuse to attack the English-speaking community; compare the linguistic make up of Montreal or the Province of Quebec in 1976, when the Parti Quebecois was first elected to office with today, and it is obvious that the French language in Quebec is flourishing, and in all respects English is declining. All of Quebec, French and English speaking people, should be proud of McGill for its long history and international reputation; instead, Premier Legault and his cohort see McGill as a bastion of the English community even though about 25% of McGill students are Francophone. There is no reasoning with irrationality, ethnocentricity, and bigotry; no matter what concessions and compromises we make, Legault and his cohort are intransigent about their disdain for anyone who is not Francophone, white, and culturally Roman Catholic.

While Premier Legault blamed foreign students for the dystopian crime of speaking English in public, what he was also attacking was the very existence of McGill University and Concordia University and English-language higher education in Quebec. Here is a hypothetical (but equivalent) situation to what is happening to McGill University, it would be if the premier of British Columbia visited the Vancouver UBC campus and, apparently, just on a whim, announced that he was cutting funding for the University of British Columbia because the student body is more than half Canadian born Asians and 25% of the student body are foreign students; all of Canada would be appalled by this, the situation would be denounced, Federal politicians would be shocked and demand redress; Justin Trudeau would be apoplectic. What we have in Quebec is a racist attack on the English language community, an attack on both McGill and Concordia; it is an attack on our community's history and presence in Quebec. It is an attack on higher education. What Legault wants is a white French speaking province of Quebec that is ethnocentric and isolated from the outside world; if you aren't white and pure laine, then you are not a part of the Quebec nation, they want you gone. But since this atrocity is happening in Quebec, and it is against our English-language community, it is greeted with silence and even applause by our Federal politicians. From them we hear absolutely nothing, it is total silence, they want the French vote in Quebec no matter that it is destroying our community.

Redpath Museum on the McGill Campus, Montréal, QC, circa 1893

And so, we see that the government of Quebec has targeted our institutions, our language, and our history;  Premier Legault's plan is the elimination of the English language in Quebec, whether it is English language signage, all evidence of our extensive historical role in Quebec, or our hospitals and institutions that the English-speaking community founded, or speaking English on the street or, inevitably, speaking English or any language other than French in the privacy of one's home. This is a very dark, dystopian, and shameful period in Quebec and Canadian history.

The wilful destruction of an institution of excellence, based on hate and hubris, is evil. 

Addenda: enrollment is declining at Concordia University due to Legault's defunding English-language universities in Montreal. 29 August 2024.

Read this re McGill's "sustained excellence", https://reporter.mcgill.ca/sustained-excellence-mcgill-tops-macleans-rankings-again/

Monsters of power and bureaucracy

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

I think it was back in the fall of 1983 when I arrived at Newfoundland's St. John's International Airport to give a reading from my new book, Divisions (Coach House Press, 1983) at Memorial University. I remember that when I arrived there was a group of people greeting what appeared to be a man of some importance from Ottawa; the following year, 1984, was the terminal year for Pierre Elliot Trudeau's government. I wondered about how solicitous they were and my intuition told me this was no ordinary bureaucrat, this was a man with power, someone who had to be dealt with with kid leather gloves.  And that's what happens to a government when it's at the end of its life, privilege and entitlement have settled in and become obvious, the self-importance of people is obvious, and monsters of power and bureaucracy are obvious. There are some of us with hypocrisy radar, we see it, we hate it, we condemn it. 

    The times they are a changing, or so they say, and you can't stop time, change, or  whatever the future holds; as Heraclitus wrote, "You can't step into the same river twice", if the river is the water in the river then it is always changing, even the river banks are subject to erosion and change. Justin Trudeau was never Pierre Elliot Trudeau, he doesn't have his father's intelligence or his education; Trudeaumania doesn't apply to Justin however much Justin craves popularity. I keep hearing people saying, usually about climate change, that we are in an "existential" crisis; but we are also in another existential crisis, that the existence of our values, our traditions, our way of life, is threatened by progressives and the woke. These people, including Justin and his gang of politicians and the people who run the CBC, don't think we even have any Canadian values, traditions, or a way of life, and that is a big part of the problem in this country. As always, you have two types of people: those who want change even though they either have no idea where it will take us, or it will take us somewhere the population doesn't want to go, and you have other people who want to conserve the best of the past and they see the Liberal government destroying what made Canada a great country in which to live. 

    In the first half of the 20th Century Argentina was one of the most prosperous countries in the world with one of the highest GDPs. What happened? A military coup  d'état happened, political instability happened, and Argentina has never recovered her former affluence. Is it possible that  Canada is the next Argentina? We are already not as well off as we were before Justin was elected: our standard of living is declining; home ownership is impossible for the average person; Montreal used to be a renters market, rents here and across Canada are now prohibitively high; food is very expensive; homelessness has increased; drug addiction has never been worse than now; the medical system and health care is collapsing; medical assistance in dying, doctor assisted euthanasia, is now a part of our health and social care, and death is sometimes offered to people who, with a little help, could return to living useful lives; the population has swelled to over 40 million in the name of increasing the number of workers in the country; Justin has denigrated the military and Hockey Canada, it is obvious that traditional male dominated activities are suspect and foreign to him; he has normalized and imposed political correctness on the country; he has worked to destroy freedom of speech in Canada, he promotes cancel culture; he has promoted woke and progressive causes that are essentially opposed to traditional Canadian values; he has betrayed English speaking Quebecers and our constitutional right to use our language; he does not adhere to the truth, so he's a liar; he is a narcissist; in sum, he is not a serious person and he has made us look like we, as a country, are not serious. 

    Why would anyone think that the Justin Trudeau years have been anything but a disaster? So, if Pierre Poilievre is abrasive it is not only that his personality is abrasive or that he is politically ambitious, it is because he can clearly see the damage Justin has inflicted on the country. How did Justin do it? He spent us into debt that we, as a nation, will never see paid off; he is a poor manager of both the economy and the government; his causes are gender fluidity, diversity, and climate change, he is truly woke and progressive; and he comes from a class of people who are rich and careless and spend their way out of every mess they create, but he's spending his way out the mess he's created with our money. And the country is a broken mess because of the disaster of Justin Trudeau.

Living in the fallen state of Canada

Diogenes searching for an honest person in Athens

 

One day in the early 1980s I was watching soccer on television with my old friend Reg Skinner, this was at his home in Blackwater, Camberley, UK; when the occasional goal was scored the crowd roared its approval and the players jumped into each others' arms, they were jubilant. Reg, who was in his early 70s, was critical of the effusive emotion. "They never did any of this emotional celebrating over a goal in the past," he said, "they scored and that was it." But this is the way of today's world; we have moved from an introverted world to one that is extroverted and emotionally demonstrative. Now, it's the optics that counts, how it looks, and how it looks is meant for the media, the media wants bigger than life people because exaggerated acts, or acting, comes across better in the media; so we have people jumping up and down when called to be on The Price is Right, high fives and fist bumps, even rolling on the ground as though about to break dance; is this for real? Are they really this happy?  We also have the political class, they will do anything for a vote, including glad handing, huge smiles, laughing and back slapping, lying, prevaricating, making outlandish promises, doublespeak, and kissing babies; now we see Justin running along the side of the street during a Pride parade taking selfies with whoever is sitting there, what a surprise that must have been for these people, he was even wishing a toddler "Happy Pride Day!" Substance doesn't matter, appearance means everything. 

    Image over reality is what is important in politics; Pierre Poilievre removes his glasses and puts on a black T-shirt and we have a new younger contemporary Pierre Poilievre and the stodgy, cranky, critical, and abrasive Pierre is forgotten. I wonder, when did the extroverted prime minister first appear on the scene? Does the public really love a fat man with blonde hair who will build 1950s suburbia on the greenbelt outside of Toronto in 2023? These politicians are men and women for whom caricature is easy; once we had comics, like Rich Little, who could do impressions of these people and their unctuous personas; but impersonation is a dying art, the public have short memories and no longer know who the comic is satirizing.

    Perhaps the oversize politician as celebrity began in Canada with Pierre Elliot Trudeau; we used to be a fairly introverted country, we used to have respect for each other and most of the time this is still true. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was hated in the west, celebrated in the east, and then after years of a rose in his lapel, jet setting with the the stars, a wayward wife, sex with the stars, we were all happy to see him go. We said about him what divorced men say about their ex-wives, "Thank God they're gone!" We also had Brian Mulroney, easily caricatured because of the Jay Leno jutting chin, baritone voice, and singing Danny Boy onstage with Ronald Reagan, the press lapped it up; and we had Stephen Harper, he had negative charisma which might be a kind of charisma, shaking hands with his children as they left for school, a wooden Charlie McCarthy man with no sense of humour. And now we have the son of the Trudeau dynasty, Justin Trudeau, fallen in the polls but not gone.  It's the age of the prime minister as president, or as dictator, the age of polls determining policy, the age of ego, the age of emotion before substance, the age of inevitable failure, the age of integrity fallen to the age of greed and ambition. I think of Joyce Weiland`s quilt in the National Gallery of Canada, quoting Pierre Elliot Trudeau, "Reason over passion", but that was then and this is now. 

    The media and social media emphasize image over substance, and image always includes promoting one's self. An honest person will be like Diogenes who walked the streets of Athens looking for an honest man. But other people are not our problem, most people are still normal people, they may not be as honest as Diogenes would have liked but they're still our people; it is politicians who have power over us who are the problem, and to find an honest politician is bordering on impossible. Diogenes would weep.

Morrissy Bridge in better days

    And so I turn to former Prime Minister MacKenzie King and his diary that is available online; diarists are by nature introverted and thoughtful people, politicians are by nature ambitious and extroverted. There are even several entries regarding us Morrisseys in MacKenzies' diary, two entries refer to John Veriker Morrissy and his son Charles Morrissy, both Members of Parliament for Northumberland riding in New Brunswick, and there is an entry for Dr. Herb Morrissy. Dr. Morrissey is a family hero, a medical doctor who studied at both McGill University and Cornell University in the 1920s; my grandmother had a postcard in her sideboard showing the Morrissy Bridge in Newcastle, NB, the now rusting and closed down Morrissy Bidge named after John Veriker Morrissy. In the late 1990s I was contacted by Dr. Morrissy's daughter, Jane Morrissy Allan, and I met her when she visited here a few years later. I learned a lot about our family's history from Jane.

    Here is what Prime Minister MacKenzie King writes about the Morrisseys (spelled Morrissy by family in New Brunswick). A final entry in King’s diary regarding the Morrissys occurs on Tuesday, 29 July 1930, just days before the generalelection of 7 August 1930. King is in his office talking with “Bennett”, probably R.B. Bennett, his opponent in the Federal election and the Conservative prime minister from 1930 to 1935. It is impossible to conceive this kind of informal meeting happening today. King begins by making some comments about Bennett’s appearance, “he looked pretty well but is heavier and flabbier I thought.” King continues, “he then said something our having preserved the amenities & not attacked each other… I told [him] I thought I had been most careful, but that I thought he should not have brought in references to myself & the war in which rearoused & perpetuated prejudices that were most unfair…” Then, they discussed specifics of the campaign, King writes: “That New Bruns. he had counted on giving us 2 seats, that in Northumberland he thought his home appeal to sentiment etc. counted very much. I said Morrissey being drunk during prov’l fight & not getting nomination made him disaffected. He said when he was there Morrissey was working for us, & Burchill was the best possible candidate, he put that constituency [?] down to his own appeal…”

    Then, King quotes Bennett as discussing “the hideousness of drink, the curse it was, how it ruined men’s moral sense & judgment, I told him Cahill’s loss of Pontiac was I thought due to this, & we had lost several seats by personal rows, etc.” This explains something of the negative side of Charles Joseph Morrissy who, like his father, seems to have been a heavy drinker. On the positive side, for King, both John Veriker Morrissy and Charles Joseph Morrissy were influential at the provincial level and in their particular ridings; they not only had numerous political contacts but they were intelligent and hard-working men, dedicated to the Liberal Party.

    Other politicians descended from or who had familial ties with the descendants of Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan are Edward Matthew Farrell, a half first cousin of John Veriker Morrissy. Senator Farrell served over twenty-one years in the Canadian Senate, from 12 January 1910 to 6 June 1931 when he died. He was born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, on 31 March 1854 and died on 6 August 1931; he worked as a publisher and printer before his appointment to the Senate on the advice of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, later Sir Wifrid Laurier. George Roy McWilliam, a great nephew of John Veriker Morrissy, was born in 1905; he won seven federal elections and served almost nineteen years in the House of Commons for Northumberland-Mirimichi riding. He died on 15 May 1977. 

    Well, that was then and this is now, living in the fallen state of Canada. 

The carelessness of the rich

 

Some of the many disguises worn by Justin Trudeau

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is not the "great American novel" but it is a great short novel, and Fitzgerald's writing is flawless. His insights into human nature are brilliant; he knows of what he writes, he knows the class of wealthy, careless, selfish people. One of the themes of The Great Gatsby is the carelessness of the rich, they are depicted as being entitled and privileged people who really don't care about anyone but themselves, they leave behind them a trail of broken promises, disappointment, and death. These are people who inherited their wealth, they didn't work for it. 

    Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative opposition in parliament, was not born to wealth like Justin Trudeau; Pierre Poilievre can be abrasive, he is too abrasive for the liberal white middle class of the GTA, Ottawa bureaucrats, CBC administrators and announcers, and other city folk who are progressive; they don't like abrasive people who disagree with them. Justin is suave and handsome and comes from a dynastic family, the son of a former prime minister and on his mother's side other prominent politicians; he was identified as a future prime minister by the Liberal Party of Canada from when he eulogized his father. I watched Pierre Elliott Trudeau's funeral on television, it was in 2000, and when Justin stood beside his father's casket and was introduced to the public I knew this was a future prime minister, he was to the manor born. But I also knew that Justin hadn't written his own speech and I doubt he knows the Robert Frost poem from which he quoted, "The woodshed are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, /And miles to go before I sleep, /And miles to go before I sleep." Even then you could see that he is a man without depth, a man who lives on the surface of life; and he still lives on the surface of life, recently at the Pride parade in Charlottetown, there he was, running along the sidewalk and shaking people's hands, taking selfies; there is no gravitas about him, there is only the occasional appearance of faux gravitas.

    Despite the negative way Poilievre is depicted on the CBC he is a man of possible depth and thoughtfulness, but maybe this is wishful thinking on my part; there was no silver spoon in his mouth when he was born; good people nurtured him and he seems to have good values. But he is not totally to be believed or followed, he is still a politician and full of ambition; neither Justin Trudeau nor Pierre Poilievre are particularly popular among average Canadians. Poilievre has already sold out the English-speaking people in Quebec as he lusts after the French Quebec vote, and the Liberals did the same. The progressive CBC and the liberal media condemn Poilievre and everything he stands for. Meanwhile, Justin maintains his progressive message despite the country being in the mess that he created; he doesn't care about the middle class who are experiencing what he has done to Canada, a country that is now woke and progressive and poor. "Go woke, go broke", as they say . . .

    Today, many Canadians can't find affordable housing; their children will never own their own homes; more people than ever are homeless; food banks are being used by people who used to donate to food banks, not use them; food has never been more expensive than it is now; our medical system is collapsing; crime rates are increasing; in sum, the country is on a downward slide. The rich are getting richer and the rest of us are getting poorer, and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Canada has never been in as bad shape as it is now, and Justin took us here in only eight years. I believe that Justin's emphasis on progressive woke ideology is inconsistent with Canadian values; woke values displaced a more practical management of the economy. But Justin is solidly committed to woke ideology and only tenuously committed to balancing the books, good administration, and serving the Canadian people, and he has failed the country because of this.

    Justin has also alienated the few cabinet ministers who were serious and decent people, not just ambitious politicians; I refer to Judy Wilson-Raybould and Marc Garneau, they cringe when they hear his voice, they regret ever having known him, and the politicians that remain, for instance Freeland, Mendocino, Joly, and Lametti, will do anything to remain in power. As well, Justin has been kept in power by the leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, who doesn't see the contempt in which Justin holds him, or the contempt many voters now feel for Jagmeet because of this. 

    Despite the costumes he wears, the rich boy antics, the inconsistencies, the profligate spending, Justin does have a core personality, it is made up of two things: the promotion of woke and progressive values and a narcissistic hunger for power. To this end he has spent us into hundreds of billions of dollars of debt. He is used to a life of wealth and comfort, never any worries about money, and a subsequent carelessness in his behaviour. I don't know if the country can survive Justin's years as prime minister, years of carelessness, years of waste, years of progressive ideology; Canadians know that the values that will sustain a person--and a nation--are conservative values, these include decency, respect, and trust; meanwhile, Justin promotes diversity, equity, and gender fluidity, values that are not primary to Canadian values and history.