You really have to wonder at people in Quebec thinking of Pierre-Karl Pèladeau as being the person to lead the Parti Quèbècois. That is like the prospect of Barrie MP Patrick Brown becoming leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. It is a very bad choice but for entirely different reasons.
The main difference between the two men is that at least Pèladeau is smart enough to know—or at least find out—that he is a square peg in a round hole. Brown might not be that smart. And that is despite Brown’s more extensive knowledge of politics. In fact, you sometimes get the impression that compared to Brown, Pèladeau might have the political instincts of a gerbil.
The latest gaffe by Pèladeau was something of a replay of the famous quote by an angry Jacques Parizeau at the end of the 1995 Quebec Referendum when he said that money and ethnics had cost the separatists their victory. Pèladeau put it even simpler that because immigration is controlled by the federal government that the Quebec separatists are losing ground. He explained that it was the immigration demographics that were causing the separatists to lose ground at the rate of a riding every year. He gave that as his reason for rushing the next referendum.
Besides being a square peg politically, Pèladeau also faces the problem of his attitude towards unions. He does not like them. This is a bit of a problem for him if he wants to lead the left of centre Parti Quèbècois. The party needs that union support.
Luckily for Brown, his party is ambivalent towards unions. With his enthusiastic endorsement of Timmy Hudak’s suggestion of firing 100,000 Ontario civil servants last year, Brown has obviously never been on the side of people who work for a living. In fact, that might be the main difference between Brown and Pèladeau. Brown has a very limited amount of experience with working at anything. Pèladeau started at the top and he won some and lost some—it was his late daddy’s company.
The basic problem is that Pierre-Karl has far too much to learn about politics and Patrick has too much to learn about real life. Nobody is particularly concerned about their prospect of winning their respective party leaderships. Either will be a disaster. They would do irreparable harm.
It is not that we care very much about what happens to the separatist Parti Quèbècois but in Ontario, the Wynne Whigs need some intelligent opposition.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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