Polls

In a recent interview I gave to the Montréal Gazette, I said that the real scandal of the Sponsorship Program was not the misuse of funds, but the very idea that the country of Canada is so lame that it has to sponsor itself. Do Canadians not know that they are already in Canada? For the same reason that the Corn Flakes people do not put advertisements for Corn Flakes inside a box of Corn Flakes, the Canadian government should not put up advertisements for Canada in Canada.

Now we hear that the RCMP is looking into the spending of a shadowy group called "Option Canada" prior to the 1995 référendum. What we have learned from our own sources was that almost none of the money spent by Option Canada during the référendum was spent in Ontario. This is just another example of the fiscal imbalance. By amalgamating Ontario with Québec, Ontario will finally get to share in all of the shadowy funding spent by the federal government to fight Québec sovereignty. And then, when Québec (including Ontario) becomes sovereign, the Sponsorship Program will make more sense, because Québec will no longer be in Canada.

Year in review

Let us review a few of the year's political highlights, and how the Bloc québécois de l'Ontario would have avoided them:

January: Aftermath of tsunami reveals hundreds of thousands of deaths: By declaring sovereignty, Québec will no longer have any responsibility for thousands of square kilometres of ocean coastline in Canada, thus protecting Québec from the effects of any future tsunami.

April: Selection of a new pope: We note how Vatican City is a sovereign nation with a full economic partnership with Italy. This model could be used for a sovereign Québec. We also applaud the tentative first steps of the sovereign nation of Vatican City toward democracy with its first election in 26 years. However, we encourage them to pursue electoral reform, to extend the vote to all citizens and to end discrimination based on religion.

May: Survival of non-confidence motion by the Liberal government in Ottawa: This is a perfect example of inefficient gridlock in the federal House of Commons. By abolishing the federal House of Commons, we could eliminate much of this gridlock.

December: Winter federal election: Most Québécois and Ontariois are against having a winter election. So are we. We propose to abolish all federal elections.

Reconnection

In an effort that recalls the construction of the great buildings of the ancient world, the volunteers at the Bloc québécois de l'Ontario have managed to put the website of the party back online. This took them less than two weeks, even working over Christmas holidays. I thank them for their tireless efforts. Now, back with the campaign!

New E-mail

In an effort to keep serving you, our loyal supporters, we have created a new e-mail for you to reach us: blocquebecois @ mailpuppy.com (without the spaces, obviously: we encourage pourriel, as long as it is thoughtful and not simply sent by machine.)

Technical Difficulties

To all of our supporters:

As you can see, we have been having some technical difficulties lately with the party's website. To be more specific, we did not pay our bills. However, we shall soon have our site back up with a provider that does not cost anything soon.

Meanwhile, you can still read our campaign blogue. Of course, nearly nothing has happened in this campaign, so our campaign blogue has not been updated. However, you may have noticed the very good article in Montréal Gazette on our party last week. While not quite an endorsement, it was the most significant press coverage we have had during the campaign.

E-mail

Today, I would like to respond to some e-mail that we have received over the course of the campaign:

Monsieur Tripper

Que pensez-vous qu’il adviendra du Parlement de la fédération canadienne à Ottawa advenant que le Québec et l’Ontario s’unissent pour faire un pays. Question encore plus cruciale : où sera située la capitale de ce Québec nouveau ? Enfin, ne croyez-vous pas qu’il serait important d’améliorer la qualité des vins produits en Ontario avant d’abaisser l’âge légal pour la consommation d’alcool ?

Merci de répondre à ces interrogations qui me chicotent depuis la découverte de l’existence de votre parti.

Sylvie G*******

Thank you all for taking the time to write to us. Democracy is all about voters asking questions of their leaders.

First, we have noticed a striking resemblance between the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Therefore, once Ontario joins Québec in sovereignty, an appropriate use of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa would be as a new home for the Université d'Ottawa. The current University of Ottawa buildings could then be used for scrap materials and the land used for parking lots or waste disposal. Second, the capital of Québec is, not surprisingly, Québec, and will remain so after sovereingty.

Third, you raise a very good point: the quality of wines from Ontario should definitely be a component of Ontario's necessary cultural improvement in order to transition itself into Québec. The party wine critic has been developing our platform for development of the Ontario wine industry, including by importing wines from other countries until global warming makes grape-growing more conducive. Of couse, we welcome your input into our policy process.

Ad Nauseum

The Conservatives and the Liberals are competing to make the chinsiest advertisements possible in this campaign. Stephen Harper's are based on the "infomercial" look, to court the voter who likes to watch informercials. The Liberals are using funny-looking young Liberals, dressed up like normal people, to give five second-segments of their opinion, spliced together like a CEGEP student's video project.

The Bloc québécois de l'Ontario does not use television advertisements. Our website is the result of hundreds of hours of highly-trained internet specialists who designed it for your information and edification. But after that, we depend on the good sense of voters like you to choose us, or alternatively, to tell your acquaintances to vote for us.

Income Don't Trusts

"Federal" finance minister Ralph Goodale has been criticized by the opposition for allowing news on his announcements about income trusts to leak before the announcement was made. People are calling this a scandal.

Unfortunately, people have forgotten the much larger scandal: that the announcement was that income trusts may still exist.

For those of you unclear on what an income trust is, let me describe it: it is a Pyramid Scheme. No, not the written-on-papyrus blueprints used by the Ancient Egyptians. Rather, it is the type of pyramid scheme where you sell something through an ever-widening web of salespeople on the promise that the next seller will be able to resell it at an increased price. Another good example would be those ladies who sold plastic containers to their friends in the 1980s, containers which, now warped and lidless, fill the cupboards of our nation's college students.

However, instead of plastic bowls, which at least have the utility of holding cereal, income trusts pass on the promise of tax avoidance. Instead of building a company, which pays tax, create a trust, which pays no tax. Then the trust pays all its revenue to another trust, which pays no tax, which pays all its revenue to a pension fund, which pays no tax...

If the Bloc québécois de l'Ontario was in power, it would have banned these Ponzi schemes, and this whole scandal would never have arisen. We promise clean government.

G.S.T.
Stephen Harper has promised to reduce the G.S.T. to 5% over 4 years.

A Bloc québécois de l'Ontario government would abolish the G.S.T. entirely. We do not need a federal sales tax once we eliminate the federation. We would need only one taxe de vente du Québec.

In fact, we would also abolish Ontario provincial sales tax, eliminating TWO taxes altogther! No other party can promise such a sweeping tax cuts.