A historic Quebec election that returned the Parti Québécois to power ended in tragedy Tuesday when a gunman killed one person and wounded another, then tried to start a fire at the Montreal venue where PQ Leader Pauline Marois was celebrating her minority mandate.
Police said a suspect entered a vestibule at the back of the Metropolis nightclub and fired shots, wounding two people critically. The suspect then started a fire and ran away on foot.
One shooting victim, a 45-year-old man, later died. At a 6 a.m. press conference Wednesday, Montreal police said the second shooting victim was no longer in danger. Ambulance services reported another person is in hospital suffering from shock.
Montreal police spokesmen said they have arrested a 62-year-old man who spoke French with an accent. The suspect has not been identified. Police have opened a homicide investigation and have seized two firearms.
“The English are waking up, the English are waking up … It’s payback … Yeah, yeah, that’s enough,” the man muttered as police officers led him away in handcuffs. The suspect, a heavyset, bespectacled man, wore a balaclava, shorts and what appeared to be a bathrobe.
Ms. Marois was in the middle of her victory speech, after narrowly defeating Jean Charest’s Liberals by a handful of seats and about one percentage point in the popular vote,when several plainclothes police officers from her security detail suddenly burst on stage and pulled her away, shouting “Go with us, madam!” She later returned and spoke to the crowd.
Earlier, Ms. Marois had acknowledged the ambivalence of Quebec voters in giving her a narrow minority mandate.
“We will respect that choice by governing with all the other elected lawmakers. We’ll make the necessary compromises to make the state work … We’ll govern in a responsible way.”
Let’s Talk About Bill 78
Emergency legislation was enacted in Québec before the weekend in response to continued protests by Québec students and their supporters. The protests have been continuing for months in response to planned tuition hikes over the next three years.
The bill has three prongs. It levies (exorbitant, especially for students) fines against those who attempt to block access to schools, restricts public protest and suspends winter semesters where students have boycotted classes.
Hours after the legislation was passed, Friday, thousands took to the streets.
Last night, there were over three hundred arrests and 10 “minor injuries.”
Civil liberties groups, students and union groups, of course, deplore the legislation.
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When governments make something into a crime, they, in essence, create criminals. This is basic. And! this has it’s place! This can be a tool for social change, it creates a penalty for crimes against fellow members of the community or the society as a whole.
The use of law, in this case, however, seems more of an effort by the government to cut short a conversation it does not want to have at best, and at worst, seem like it is being productive while, instead, escalating relations between the government (police, officials) and the protesters. An effort to silence protesters without actually capitulating or appearing to (gasp) compromise or negotiate to peacefully resolve the situation.
After voting, most people have only limited options to speak our minds, and almost none to speak as a group.
We can write our representatives, we can sign petitions. We can protest. And as annoying as it may be to police and the government, they need to let this happen, and hear what is being said.
Quebec’s justice minister called the federal government’s omnibus crime bill a “Band-Aid solution” Tuesday and said his province will refuse to absorb the added costs associated with it.
Jean-Marc Fournier, testifying at the House of Commons justice and human rights committee, said Bill C-10 will wind up causing more crime, not less, because it is an unbalanced piece of legislation that doesn’t focus enough on the rehabilitation of criminals, particularly young offenders.
He said the legislation is meant to put more people in jail and that will result in higher recidivism rates unless more is done to get at the root causes of criminality and to successfully reintegrate offenders into society so they can go on to lead productive lives.
“What we want is a sustainable protection of the public,” he said. “We wish to see a reinsertion of the youth in society so that society can benefit from it.”
Fournier said Quebec takes a different approach to dealing with young offenders that is more focused on rehabilitation than incarceration and that it is working. He encouraged MPs to take their time and to examine the evidence from his province and to reject the Safe Streets and Communities Act in its current form.
He said young offenders often come out of prison worse than how they went in and attention needs to be paid to the root causes of their criminality in order to prevent them from re-offending.
Fournier said the Conservatives’ bill is more of a short-term solution to fighting crime and he repeatedly warned it will mean more repeat offenders in the court and corrections systems.
“C-10 does not take into account the return of the young offender, of the individual into society,” he said.
“What you’ve got is a Band-Aid solution here, you’re not curing anything,” Fournier told the committee.
The federal government intends to add 30 seats to the House of Commons, a change it says is necessary to account for growth in Canada’s most populous provinces.
Half of the new seats will go to Ontario, while Alberta and British Columbia will each receive six seats each.
Quebec will be allocated three more seats, to prevent the province from being underrepresented in a newly swollen Parliament.
The government believes the “Fair Representation Act” will help ensure that Canadians in provinces with fast-growing populations get better representation.
Tim Uppal, the minister of state for democratic reform, said the government wanted to maintain the existing seats in Parliament, while addressing the seat imbalances that have resulted from population growth.
[…]
Liberal critic Stephane Dion suggested Thursday that while the government believes it has found “a balance” on how to distribute the forthcoming seats, its caucus should be prepared to have parliamentarians take a hard look at the details of the plan.
“Democratic reform is not a game and must be done in co-ordination with the provinces,” Dion said in a statement.
“Now that a proposal is before Parliament, the Conservatives must commit to allowing Members of Parliament and Senators the time to fully study the impacts of the bill.”
The increased representation for Quebec has ruffled some feathers within the Conservative caucus, CTV’s Power Play host Don Martin said Thursday.
“There’s some pushback in the caucus from this,” Martin told CTV News Channel from Ottawa.
“Some Conservative MPs say: ‘We shouldn’t be capitulating necessarily to Quebec on this.’”
Oliver said that from the point of view of some Quebecers, there may be a feeling that their influence is waning in Ottawa.
MONTREAL - After numerous frustrating phone calls with bureaucrats, Sunshine Rose will exist in the eyes of the Quebec government and her mother will not have to show her vagina to anyone to prove the 5-month-old infant is hers.
Heather Mattingsly, who gave birth in March, has spent her time since trying to convince the Directeur de l’état civil that even though she engaged the help of an unlicensed midwife to give birth at home, the baby is indeed hers.
Days after the birth and as required, she provided the government agency in charge of issuing birth certificates with an ultrasound, a doctor’s letter and an attestation of birth, but none of that was good enough. This week, the agency said she’d have to get a vaginal examination – a procedure that doctors and midwives alike agreed would prove absolutely nothing.
“They’re saying ‘we’re not doubting the pregnancy, we’re doubting that you birthed a live child’,” said Mattingsly, who is collecting maternity benefits and breastfeeding. “How is a vaginal exam going to prove that?”
But late Friday, after many calls from the media, the agency’s director called Mattingsly and said after reviewing her file personally, he decided she didn’t need to go for the examination. But, he said, she still had to provide an ultrasound, but unlike the first one she submitted, this one had to be signed by a doctor.
Marie Godbout, a spokesperson for the agency, said she couldn’t discuss Mattingsly’s case, but said anyone who gives birth without a doctor or licensed midwife present has to prove the biological link between mother and child.
“It’s done in the public interest and to protect the child,” Godbout said. “And it’s to prevent things like trafficking in children.”
I am pretty sure that vaginal examinations will do absolutely nothing to help children trafficking, though it may make a few people feel ever so much better about all the awesome things they do to prevent drug trafficking.
This is a case of Bad Decisions Made By People So Far Removed From The Results That They Do Not Care About The Consequences™ (the title needs work).
Quebec’s effort to oust God from daycare is facing a court challenge from a group of parents, who say the plan is forcing educators to do everything from rewrite nursery tunes to ban angels from Christmas trees.
A coalition of mostly Catholic and Jewish parents has filed an injunction to suspend the no-religion rules, which are to come into effect in the province’s 1,400 publicly financed daycares starting Wednesday.
The new policy brings the province’s push toward secularism to the tot-and-toddler set by prohibiting the teaching of a particular faith – and Family Minister Yolande James says the regime will launch Wednesday as scheduled.
“This was something that was well thought-out,” Ms. James said in an interview. Quebec’s daycares cost parents $7 a day and are heavily subsidized by the state, she said. “In that context, contrary to private daycare, the teaching of religion is not appropriate.”
But a newly formed group, Quebeckers for Equal Rights to Subsidized Day Cares, argues the government directives are vague, a bureaucratic headache to apply, and discriminate against parents who believe daycares should be an extension of the family home. The group is challenging the rules under the Quebec and Canadian charters.
“This is a fundamental question,” said Marie-Josée Hogue, lawyer for the coalition, which includes more than 200 parents and associations from the Catholic, Jewish and Egyptian Copt communities. “The benefits of the law should be the same without distinctions like religion and belief.” Daycare, she said, “is a substitute to the home environment.”
The government’s directives lay out a complex set of dos-and-don’ts: It’s okay if a three-year-old initiates a religious act individually, but an educator can’t do the same if it’s aimed at children. A priest or imam can visit a daycare but not offer religious instruction.
In practice, at least one daycare director has already told an educator to drop a reference to God in the popular song Au Clair de la Lune, according to members of the coalition. Books with Bible stories are being pulled off shelves, and children can henceforth be told about the building of Noah’s Ark but not that God commanded it.
“This will be paralyzing for our educators. They are emotionally broken. For them it’s like punishing the children,” said Danielle Sabbah, president of an association of 17 Jewish daycares. “In Jewish culture it’s very difficult to separate religion, tradition and culture.”
I have to wonder if this change was the result of an actual problem in the daycare system (Jewish parents complaining that their child was taught that Jesus was the messiah, for example) or just the result of someone considering it a problem and rectifying it.
I’m an Atheist. This probably makes me predisposed to want no religion in anything. That said - are we talking about a genuine social problem or just an imagined one? Are the Québécois daycares either infringing on parental or children rights by flagrant religulosity? (it is too a word)
Should the government REALLY step in to this point and not allow parents to make the decision in regard to daycare? I would like to have seen some opinions from parents who were for the government’s decision.
I don’t know - it doesn’t sit well with me. I’m still percolating my thoughts and can see both sides.
What do you think?
QUEBEC CITY — After a short, low-key visit to Quebec’s capital region, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Tuesday he wasn’t throwing in the towel.
“What are you saying?” he asked a reporter. “We never give up. We are here to win and we will return to the region.”
Ignatieff made the comments after visiting a community centre and speaking with volunteers and associations for the hearing impaired, cancer patients and their families, single parents and youth at risk, among others.
He said the Liberal platform addresses issues that would help people at the centre.
“After May 2, it will either be Mr. Harper as prime minister or me,” Ignatieff said. “This is the power that Quebecers have. They have the power to change things. If they elect Liberal MPs, they will have a Liberal government close to values of solidarity as we saw in this centre.”
The Quebec City region has become a bastion of Conservative support since the 2006 election, but some waffling by the Tories over the issue of funding a professional sports arena has plagued them of late in media reports.
