By David Lisbona
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

And don’t criticize what you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters

are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin’.

Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin’.

Bob Dylan
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So Maclean’s magazine declares Quebec the most corrupt province in Canada and to add insult to injury, or to spread salt on the winter wound if you will, they cast the province’s favorite citizen east of Youppi, Bonhomme Carnaval, as a money-filled suitcase toting ne’er-do-well.
Heck, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about, it’s not as if the Star of David was drawn on the Peace Tower for heaven’s sake. While the article was certainly intentionally provocative, it failed to recount several additional home-grown scandals like the almost stolen 1995 referendum through the commission of fraud (note the absence of the word “alleged”) by those commissioned to uphold basic electoral rights. Nonetheless, the author of the piece reasons that perhaps Quebec has lost sight of what constitutes good government because it has been obsessed with its national question for so long. Interesting theory. One is left to conclude that perhaps an introspection of the Quebec political culture would be a healthy, no doubt revealing exercise. But instead, as a reaction to the story, we were treated to the regular voices of condemnation, the dinosaurs who refuse to believe that there could be any truth to the story, concluding that this was just another case of “Quebec-bashing”, notwithstanding the fact that it was written by a French Canadian, who clearly has spent too much time outside La Belle Province to have any credibility. Any time the accusations of “Quebec-bashing” get trumpeted, any chance for reasonable debate is suspended. Is Quebec more corrupt than the rest of Canada? Who knows, but has anyone ever examined the reasons why there is enough fodder here to make the accusation in the first place? Not with the old guard in charge of Quebec’s political and business institutions, that’s for sure.
There has been plenty of reaction to the Maclean’s story. If one reads the comments on their website, they would see that there have been a few brave French-Canadian souls (or so they say) who have stood up and said, yes, this is going on in the province, it should be exposed, the story must be told and we have work to do to clean it up.
Are these the same voices that are recognizing that the future of the advertising industry in Quebec will depend on hiring English speakers, as the Gazoo reported last weekend, given that the focus of advertisers is not bound by Quebec’s borders? This conclusion was drawn since the nature of social media, the next advertising frontier, goes well beyond provincial boundaries. While this should come as an affront to the dinosaurs that monopolize the media, it will be embraced by the younger set as a necessary reality of the new world.
The myopic “visionaries” of Quebec are the same ones who are proposing the Trans-Quebec railroad, $30 billion spent on a train to be built around the geographic boundary of the province through some of the harshest terrain on Earth to serve a population less than that of the West Island. Speaking of which, let’s build a metro line to Fairview and then we can discuss this train to nowhere. More importantly, where are the proponents of a fast train to Toronto? New York? Boston? Or even — yes, wait for it — Quebec City?
Is there a change afoot? Could be. Is the old guard moving out only to be replaced by a more tolerant, more global, less insular mindset? Only time will tell. Will the Quebec Tea Party assume the mantle of this less “provincial” Quebec? There is a whole world out there with huge opportunities to behold, now if only the old-school talking heads took their eyes off their navels, not to mention hands out of each other’s pockets, long enough, perhaps they’d see that too.
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David Lisbona is the Chief Investment and Taxation Officer at Nellie Capital Corp., a Montreal private equity firm and can be reached at investing 7yx thesuburban.com.