Maybe keep the sheet music in the drawer for a while longer
Gen du pays, c’est votre cœur may be neighing through the National Post’s editorial boardroom this week, but distributing the song‑sheets months before Quebecers vote feels like the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for karaoke night at the Legion. Spirited, nostalgic, and wildly out of sync with reality.
Outside the National Post’s 'Liberal Subsidized' English-Speaking-Only newsroom . . .
. . . Quebec has not been informed (in French) that its election is over. They are deluded into believing it starts in about 8 months.
This is the peculiar magic of English‑language commentary on Quebec: the further one gets from the St. Lawrence, the more certain the square-head predictions. A poll appears, a nationalist party rises, and suddenly the National Post is warming up the choir for a sovereignty sing along revival tour. Did someone in Toronto find a CD labelled Quebec Referendum ’95: Greatest Hits and decide an encore is underway?
Calling a Quebec election eight months early is not analysis. It’s wish-casting with a federal‑funded echo. The National Post’s clairvoyance improves with distance (from any topic related to Quebec, and disowned by reality).
There is a long, proud tradition in English‑language media of diagnosing Quebec politics with the confidence of someone reading a TransCanada Highway map upside‑down. The National Post adds its own flourish: a handful of polls, a nationalist party on the rise, and suddenly the Parti Québécois win is not merely competitive but inevitable.
Not leading. Not viable. Inevitable victory.
It’s a bold claim from a newspaper that treats Quebec politics the way most Canadians treat the metric system, as vaguely familiar. They confidently misunderstand the place and always see it as good for an editorial smash. Quebecers — a people who can reverse political direction twice before breakfast — might be surprised to learn they’ve become predictable. Sacre bleu.
This is a province that can turn on a dime, then demand the dime back with interest. Calling inevitability in Quebec is like calling a Montreal Canadiens game before the puck drops. Admirable confidence. Questionable method. Quebec politics is not a subplot in the National Post’s Western alienation opera. It's always front and centre when opportunity knocks.
The recent editorial on Quebec's future-now, or now-future Separatist Party electoral triumph, reads less like analysis and more like a National Post fit of anxiety. PQ moves in the polls, and we have Confederation a' trembling, forget The West packing its bags, the constitutional ghosts of 1995 are rattling their chains. Break out the song-sheets! (No. Don't do that. I was there in 1980. It got ugly on the Molsons.)
The recent editorial on Quebec's future-now, or now-future Separatist Party electoral triumph, reads less like analysis and more like a National Post fit of anxiety. PQ moves in the polls, and we have Confederation a' trembling, forget The West packing its bags, the constitutional ghosts of 1995 are rattling their chains. Break out the song-sheets! (No. Don't do that. I was there in 1980. It got ugly on the Molsons.)
It’s the National Post’s premium story line: Canada-Quebec as a fragile, duct‑taped canard federation, always one Quebec poll away from collapse. The editorial board paid to believe the country is held together by no more than nostalgia, baling wire, and a few federal‑department grants, not to mention $13 billion extra a year from 'You Know Who Out Dere In La Wes' — similar to the grants which, coincidentally, keep certain newspapers in business. Who knew? Federal grants are the glue that binds the Liberals to a National Governing Party mythology (dying on the vine).
Quebec politics are not a perpetual morality play about national unity. Quebec has its own ecosystem, with its own emotive power, and patterns, its own gravitational pulls, and its own internal logic, inside, their national tongue, Joual. The rise of one party is not a prophecy. It is a moment. And moments in Quebec have the shelf life of a snowbank in April, or, May. Fuck WEF.
What’s actually happening: volatility, not destiny
Strip away the editorial theatrics and the picture is straightforward:
- One party is rising because another imploded, CDQ is collapsing, Legault is gone.
- Voters are restless.
- The political centre is wobbling.
- The campaign hasn’t begun.
There is not a destiny in this moment. There is a volatility. In their National Politics in Quebec City, Quebec specializes in volatility the way Saskatchewan grows wheat.
The National Post’s editorial maxim insists on inevitability and says more about its editorial board than the topic. It’s easier to declare a province halfway out the door than admit the situation is fluid, complex, and not especially convenient for a tidy bi- or even tri-national narrative.
The editorial isn't a Nudge. It's not Situational Design in a governance cosplay. They have no say in the situation whatsoever. They're so far on the sidelines they might as well be in Siberia.
The Post’s premature celebration is the real punchline
There is something endearing and earnest about an English‑language newspaper warming up a sovereignty choir before Quebecers have tuned their guitars and pianos. Maybe the National Post editorial board found an archive of Rene Levesque's Greatest Interviews? They smoked a fatty and decided to get this encore underway already.
But Quebec does not move on the whim of a Toronto waste of paper. If the province ever makes a historic decision, it will not be because an English‑language editor declared the outcome eight months early. It will be because Quebecers — after the usual round of debate, drama, and last‑minute reversals — decide it is time to leave this Canada imbroglio in the dust. Nudge that, (excuse my English, Je suis
maudit Anglais)
Until then, the sheet music can stay in the drawer with Rene Leveque's Memoir. Yes I've read it. That man knew how to spin a yarn.
Written by Mack McColl Assisted by Co-Pilot, produced for McColl Magazine Daily
Written by Mack McColl Assisted by Co-Pilot, produced for McColl Magazine Daily
