Election Notebook

>> Money, Cabane-gate, Greens,
pot and YouTube

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

After a few days of post-debate titillation and excitement, things seemed to slow down big time over the weekend. Maybe the big guns were getting their rest before last Sunday, when Election Notebook spotted Jean Charest and André Boisclair at the St. Patrick’s Day parade, playing nice with each other and looking suitably jaunty (and distressingly sober). But then came Monday, and with it the federal budget, and you could almost see the dollar signs spinning in Charest’s eyeballs.

The Premier made immediate political hay of the big bucks—some $2.3-billion for the province—saying he knew how to play ball with Ottawa, something he’ll be plugging in the days leading up to Monday’s election. It also goes some way to neuter the opposition. The Bloc is supporting the budget, which is proof in the pudding of Quebec’s substantial gains. Boisclair poo-pooed that budget, saying it doesn’t go far enough to address the fiscal imbalance (yawn), but he’s been placed in a tough spot. He’ll take the money, he says, but he’s being churlish about it. And as for Dumont, he liked the budget but slammed the PQ for continuing to play up Quebec-Ottawa friction, despite the new money. He illustrated his contempt by drawing a rather disturbing allusion about how the PQ “has its pants around its knees.”

• On a personal level, Election Notebook is thankful that the Bloc is supporting the budget, having dreaded the possibility of double-duty and another campaign to “cover.”

• How in the world did a fine Quebec institution like the cabane à sucre get drawn into the political machinations of the day? Ask the Journal de Montréal. On Monday, the Montreal tabloid ran a front-page photo of a group of Muslims, dressed in parkas and tuques, kneeling at prayer on the linoleum floor of a cavernous sugar shack dining room. The headline: “Cabanes à sucre accomodantes.” The two-page spread focused on Sylvain Boily, aka country singer Danny Boy, who became enraged on March 11 when his party was interrupted to allow about 50 Muslims, of a group of around 260, take over the floor for prayer. The prayer lasted about 20 minutes, but Boily was so angry with his aunt being forced to stop playing her accordion that he stormed out. The story also made reference to some cabanes removing pork from their pea soup and beans. The Big Three leaders weren’t quoted in the story (although Boisclair has since said that anyone who runs a ham-free cabane is “going to have a real tough time in life”), but with reasonable accommodation coming under increasing scrutiny, and Mario Dumont surging in regions like the Eastern Townships, everything these days is political.

• The next day, the Journal’s Richard Martineau penned a column about Cabane-gate. Headline: “Allah au temple du jambon.” Orthodox Muslims visiting the cabane à sucre, he writes, is like ADQ activists dropping in on a Québec solidaire meeting. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he complains. “They’ve got no business there. Unless all they want to do is provoke…”

• Ryan Young, the 35-year-old host of CKUT’s Tuesday morning Ecolibrium show, is running for the Green Party in the West Island riding of Jacques-Cartier, and he’s been slamming both the Quebec Liberals and the PQ over their neglect in protecting the island of Montreal’s green space. Montreal, Young says, lags way behind other big Canadian cities in keeping developers at bay. “We’re at number 12” on the list of green cities, he says. “Toronto is number four.” Young’s big cause is protecting the remaining forests that he says make up a unique set of interconnected ecosystems, something that’s imperiled if developers get their way. He’s particularly worried about the Angell Woods, in western Beaconsfield south of Highway 40, and l’Anse à l’Orme, on the island’s western tip. The city on its own can’t afford to buy the 250 acres that make up Angell Woods, says Young, which is worth between $80-million and $200-million—nor would it necessarily want to, given the taxes it would recoup.

• Hey, that Bloc Pot YouTube clip is pretty weird. Featuring party chief Hugo St-Onge and Marie-Victorin candidate Richard Lemagnifique, it begins with St-Onge enumerating some of the 56,000 hemp-derived products (“Paint, paper, food etc.”) then bizarrely cuts to Lemagnifique as a wrestler-type character who keeps calling the viewer “le gros” (10 times, by EN’s actual count) and eats, dresses, gels and wipes with hemp products. It’s hilarious, even if it won’t necessarily convince you to vote Bloc Pot.