Fuzzy left

1. The Québec election: in the french version of this blog, I intervened a couple of times during the last election, to call for voting against the PQ in particular. In the end, I’m not sure I could have hoped for a better outcome. For sure, I’d have preferred a Liberal majority, but I’d rather have the current situation than to keep the PQ time-warped ultra-interventionist policies in second place. In particular, and this is actually what could bring a new election sooner than we thought, the rise of the ADQ has had the fascinating indirect effect of giving the PQ a new leader who has more leverage than ever to modernize her party - she actually came out for lifting the university tuition freeze, and nobody died - but I doubt she’ll have any more real success at it than Ségolène with the French Socialists. The downside I guess, apart from the prospect of another election, is the rise in simplistic populism: when a Liberal minister plays victim to the ever powerful big bad oil companies, I start wondering how far we’ll go to survive in the short term. At one point or another, we’ll have to recognize that market forces in this case are actually a good thing for the environment. But right now, apparently, everybody (well, not the conservatives, true enough) wants to go Kyoto, but nobody wants to pay his gas a buck and a half a litre.

2. Also apparently, the PLQ is having trouble these days. One francophone in five supports the provincial Liberals. Yet I happily renewed my card for two years: I still see modern north-american liberalism, including economic liberalism by the way, as the only consistent center-left way for the long term future. For now, hats off to Mario Dumont’s ADQ, and thanks for downplaying, in the end, the intolerance card that got you the pre-campaign attention. Cudos to Jean Charest as well for his gender-equal cabinet. Let’s see more of Line Beauchamp, by the way. She could be a strong contender against Mr Couillard soon enough. She’s got just the right brand of respectful pragmatism that go a long way with sophisticated voters. Because there are some, even in Québec. Not that I don’t like Dr Couillard, but there is a sort of technocratic aura around him that is starting to bug me a wee bit. Could change, for sure, and at any rate Mr Charest is certainly not dead in the water yet.

3. Tolls on Montreal bridges? Yes sir!

4. But I say no to proportional representation and other “constructivist” attempts to substitute institutional devices for real political participation. You don’t cure disillusionment with even more mirages. Sounded more poetic in french, but it’s just as true in english. Mario Dumont should also remember that his constitutional and other restructuring projects may be just fuelling more of the techno-legalistic brand of our unrepentent social engineering industry. Whatever criticism we may have against neoliberalism - and I do have a few - we should respect its strongest intuition, which is that society is not sold in kits to be assembled according to some ready-made plan. It is a tad more complex than IKEA furniture. The modern state is certainly a useful tool for collective action, but it is way closer to a sledgehammer than to a precision saw. Handle with care, please.

5. Ségolène Royal failed to renew the french left, and so did Mr Boisclair in Québec by the way. I had great hopes for her when she got high in the polls while quoting JFK’s ask not, but I fell off my tree when she promised a 20% hike in the minimum wage in february. And to think she was supposed to care about the public debt. How was she going to deal with it? With even more unemployment? Or worse yet, as unemployment is already so high over there, by starting an inflationary spiral and holding her fingers crossed so that the central bank would look away? Even then, how much would bakers ask for, after that? I heard the price of bread had some heads rolling in the past. Weren’t there enough unrest in that country? It’s true that I have never been big on macro. Still, if I was French, I would now be working for Mr Bayrou. The Socialist Party is probably a lost cause by now. I don’t see how it can reach the political center without abandoning its anti-liberal partisan core.

6. No clue what my federal Liberal leader is really saying on Afghanistan, with all due respect. Might be good short-term politics to commit ourselves out of there in advance, but how it can be valuable long-term policy, that is what escapes me completely. I mean, considering our lost credibility over years of military free-riding, aren’t we for once showing the world that we can play our part in this, that we can keep our eye on the ball in a multilateral effort, at once respectful of international law and committed to global security? I heard Mr Coderre remind Stephen Harper that in a UN-NATO mission, we couldn’t decide unilaterally to stay there. To think I thought this also meant we couldn’t decide unilaterally to pull out. My brains are probably just too damn tired to see the light, that’s all. Sorry guys.

7. Actually, if there was one thing I’d like to ask Mr Dion, it would be about what reasons there are to prefer to compete with the NDP for the left-wing rather than with the conservatives for the center. Because that’s how I feel we’re going right now, and I don’t understand why. Economic liberalism is also liberalism, as far as I know, and beyond equalization payments, coast-to-coast social justice should be first and foremost a matter of inter-provincial mobility. Then, just let the provinces do their thing, no? Next, could we tone down the disgracefully complacent Bush-bashing that accompanies our criticism of the conservatives just like clockwork? Makes me quite uncomfortable to accuse our neigbours to be a bunch of zombies electing an idiot for their president. We can disagree with White House policy, that’s fair enough, but we can do better for our own sake than discredit other people’s legitimate democratic choices, can’t we? In another matter though, cheers for putting Mr Trudeau junior back in his place. There’s something deeply troubling about having to remind prominent Liberals, rather than just the conservatives, that giving the french language some special political legitimacy in this country is supposed to have real political consequences. “Centralists and separatists”, Stephen Harper said. Is he the only one seeing the analogy? Ah the many faces of dogmatism…

7a. Which reminds me, if the fiscal imbalance is such a confused notion, is this supposed to be an argument to deny its existence, or an argument to clarify the concept? Mr Dion? I mean, granted it is not really fiscal in nature - after all Québec can tax itself to no end, if this is what it wants - but isn’t there a real imbalance here, a political one, that just happens to play out on fiscal territory? Why should the federal level enjoy all the political benefits of playing Santa and no cost for playing Scrooge? And isn’t it just as obvious that if it has such special resonance in Québec, it has a lot less to do with separatism than with the very simple fact that, more than anywhere else in this country, the provincial legislature is a more natural focus here for the french-speaking majority? Why in the world should we want the Québec political class constantly playing the “I do what I can with what is left” game? How is it that people out of Québec don’t seem to get that painting Quebeckers in the losers’ corner can only convince them that it must be exactly where they are wanted? No clue. Now, I can understand the fears of weakening the federation by decentralizing too much, but banging one’s head on the wall repetitively is not so great either. The PQ may be a little groggy, but the quarelling ain’t over for that, believe you me. Let’s just hope it fosters more productive debate than discourage yet again the less cynical among us.

8. Subcontracting. Mixed systems, public and private, in healthcare and now in the transit system. Here again, we see Mr Dumont at the forefront of audacity. Now if Pauline Marois can force the PQ into opening its mind to lifting our ridiculous university tuition freeze, couldn’t liberal parties open their mind to the concept of free enterprise? How weird can this get? Isn’t in our liberal principles already? And did the PLQ throw out article 45 for nothing? For those not familiar with Québec politics, this used to be the part of our labour laws that required transfering to a subcontractor both the labour union and the labour contract binding the business which is alienating in this way a part of its previous activities. Since this article was dropped, a private company could now offer to take care of a part of the Montreal public transit fleet, without fearing to be required to import part of its labour union as well. Now I’m all for the right to strike, and I have nothing against labour unions, but they must have something to lose too in this game, and now they just don’t. Buses, trams and subways in large cities are a cornerstone of the fight against global warming. Well, let’s put our money where our mouth is and think of the customer first. Competition is what does this best. Not monopolies.

9. And please don’t start me on Olymel or Alcan. Globalization is a pretty amazing thing, granted with some disadvantages. Caring for the latter is certainly imperative, but it must be done right, and throwing the baby with the bathwater won’t cut it.

10. Sorry for the telegraphic style, but I have no time to do better right now. I haven’t thrown the towel either and I will be back.

11. Almost forgot. We are currently having what might be remembered, if it is, as the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accomodations, and some Gazette person was all up in arms because of Mr Bouchard (Gérard that is, Lucien’s brother) being open about his sovereigntist beliefs. This is a non-issue to me, but it helps see the real calculation behind appointing a well-known nationalist sociologist and a communitarian philosopher to this task. These guys have an intellectual reputation to preserve, so you can expect they will find a way to remind everyone that immigration and what we call “interculturalism” here - we do need to feel different, what can I say - are very important and progressive things. Seems to me they are a lot more likely to drive that point home than if liberals, universalists or worse, mean-spirited economists like me, moralize from above about how useful it is to have cultural diversity in order to learn from others and do business with them.

12. Last but not least, the most recent act in our trepidating political theater: an excellent budget yesterday by Mme Jérôme-Forget (I agree with every sentence that Alain Dubuc wrote this morning), a questionable testosterone party (André Pratte is on fire also, and although his outrage is a bit overdone, it is hardly groundless), but there is a door Mario should probably think of using out of this mess. As I see it, he is actually the one who could gain most out of stepping back strategically. The humility that he would show by losing face, just a tad actually, but for the greater good of political stability, could provide him with the very ingredient that his profile as a true statesman is still lacking. Patience breeds respect, and this would first go a long way to minimize Mrs Marois’ comparative advantages, experience that is, maturity, but also relative absence from the public scene in the last year which leaves much to creative sympathy. And as to yielding to Mr Charest’s tax breaks, it would also help the ADQ keep in touch with the part of his electorate that is more liberally inclined, economics-wise, and again, be in a position to claim that he was the most responsible of all political leaders. But hey, I’m not an ADQ advisor, after all. What do I know.

Auf wiedersehen for now.