Dave Tucker’s Fed Up Supporting Quebec

Dave Tucker; a former Montrealer who now lives in Kingston Ontario sent two letters to me concerning the demise of Quebec.

His first letter which I did not publish, dealt with his former Montreal High School planning their reunion in Toronto.

His other letter which summed up the Quebec Sponsorship Scandal is published at: Letters To The Publisher March 15, 2005.

MY RESPONSE TO DAVE TUCKER:

Dave: My wife went to Wagar High School from 1964 to 1968. She was amongst the first students to have stepped foot in that school.

Wagar served the communities of Cote St Luc and Hampstead. It was economically rich, and was populated mostly with Jewish students. During the Jewish holidays, Wagar was shut down for a lack of students and teachers.

Wagar produced many outstanding graduates who went onto great things, unfortunately though, most of the great things they went onto were away from Quebec.

All of that said: the English Montreal School Board has announced that it will shut Wagar down after this year (June 30, 2005). This screams volumes about the demise of Montreal’s Jewish community specifically, and the English language community in general.

Your letter detailing your class reunion in Toronto (class of 67) reminded me that Wagar’s first class reunion (Labor Day 2001) was the first Montreal High School reunion, and perhaps the first North American High School reunion ever held in a city other than where the students went to their High School.

Dyane Adam, Canada’s Commissioner for Official Languages (read anti-English) would not like the country to remember that the English EXODUS from Quebec (from the late 1960’s to the mid 1990’s) was the single largest peaceful Exodus in history.

More than 300,000 English speakers from Quebec (mostly from Montreal) left the province that made them feel like second class citizens.

Graduating high school and university students saw no future for themselves; while a good many parents saw the same for their children in a Province that was working in overtime to make the French majority predominate amongst all others.

No one can ever point a finger at me and suggest that I didn’t do my part to fight for EQUAL RIGHTS for all people living in Quebec. And no one fought harder or sacrificed more to stay in Quebec as an EQUAL CANADIAN CITIZEN than I did.

All to no avail.

Between the federal government, governed almost exclusively by Quebecers, the Supreme Court of Canada, where virtually half of the Court Justices have always been French Canadians, and all Quebec provincial political parties which used the threat of Separation to get whatever they wanted from Ottawa, minorities in Quebec never had a chance.

As a former Quebecer (Montrealer) living in Ontario, the only federal policy I will support for Quebec is to see them out of Confederation.

Canadians are paying HIGH federal taxes because someone’s got to pay for the economically failed ethnocentric province of Quebec.

Canada has abysmal relations with the USA because it is very popular in Quebec to bash Americans.

Ottawa forced a failed multi-billion dollar gun registry across Canada simply because Quebec wants it, even though most of the country does not. Ask the families of the 4 recently slain Alberta Mounties what this Quebec promoted farce did for them.

Ottawa supports (what should be) bankrupt companies in Quebec with BILLIONS of tax dollars; the likes of Bombardier.

Ottawa has stolen industries and contracts from other Canadian provinces to have them relocated in Quebec. Two of the industries that pop to mind are the Aerospace Industry taken from Ottawa, located on the South Shore of Montreal. And the contract to service Canada’s F18 Fighter-Jets stolen from Winnipeg, brought to Montreal.

Air Canada was privatized with the CONDITION that its head office remains in Quebec, and that it operates in English and French under the rules that apply to a federal agency.

No other airline or private enterprise other than Air Canada is required to meet those conditions.

Another sensational benefit Quebec receives from Ottawa is direct federal government employment. And now Ottawa (courtesy of Dyane Adam) is forcing English speakers out of federal management jobs to be replaced by French speakers.

Outside of Ottawa, the federal government employs 10’s of thousands of French Quebecers in Gatineau and Montreal, paying out BILLIONS of dollars in salaries which goes into Quebec’s tax base.

Not a bad bonus for a province that wants to be separate from Canada.

Then there’s the $250 MILLION dollar Quebec Sponsorship Scandal that is sort of rocking the country.

We are told that $100 MILLION dollars was inappropriately spent (stolen) by Quebec ad agencies courtesy of federal Ministers and Deputy Ministers.

The real debate should be: why was $250 MILLION dollars spent on showing the Canadian flag in Quebec in the first place?

The FACT that $250 MILLION dollars was blown in Quebec on the alter of ethnocentric Quebec nationalism, to remind French Quebecers that Canada is their country too, was only a pittance compared to what Canada has actually spent in combating ethnocentric Québécois nationalism.

In actual dollars; the cost of keeping Quebec in Confederation has been in the many $100’s of BILLIONS of dollars in “stolen” contracts, grants, transfer payments, equalization payments and interest free loans. And on and on.

The fact that Dave Tucker’s graduating class of 1967 is having its reunion in Toronto says all that has to be said concerning the cost of keeping Quebec in Canada.

I don’t wish Quebec harm. I have many friends in Quebec (English and French) who I care about; including family. But I no longer want Quebec to be an anchor pulling the rest of Canada down.

It’s not right and it’s not fair.