Michael Ross - VICTORIA -The other day, I happened to be reading about Canada in a National Geographic magazine from the 1960s. A prairie farmer therein complained that "Canada is cow-fed out west and milked back east." His words seem strangely prophetic. Apparently that old cliche, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, still has some relevance in today’s Canada.

While various pundits and political science professors argue that the current crisis in our Parliament was precipitated by the Prime Minister waging a "take-no-prisoners" approach to dealing with the opposition, it’s already a moot point out here in the West. The televised images of Stephane Dion and Jack Layton glad-handing with the Ottawa-based leader of Quebec’s secessionist movement, Gilles Duceppe, has our collective blood boiling. This may finally constitute the "enough is enough" moment in this part of the country.

Time and again, we have grudgingly had to swallow the official notion that Quebec is a special, distinct, unique, separate, special (did I say mention "special" already ?) cultural entity and nation, and who knows what else besides. But the sight of a coalition of opposition parties cynically joining together with the official signed-and-sealed collaboration of the Bloc Quebecois to form a government is taking things into the realm of the absurd.

We in the West truly do not understand what the Bloc Quebecois — essentially nothing more than a glorified special-interest group — is doing in our federal Parliament in the first place. What’s more, we have to ask why we must be compelled to subsidize this seditious band of political opportunists every time someone in Quebec gets the separation jitters. We can’t vote for the Bloc, so why must we pay for them ?

For too long, eastern Liberals, in their rush to keep Quebec solvent and happy, have seen the West as nothing more than a giant ATM machine ready to be plundered when Quebec feels that independence might just be the better option that morning.

The concept that all Canadians are considered equal seems to come to a screeching halt at the Ottawa River : One need only examine the disproportionate percentage of Quebecois in the highest levels of our federal civil service, or factor in the annual cost of bilingualism to Canadian taxpayers (over $1.5-billion, as estimated by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation), to understand our sense of outrage.

A quick scan of the federal public service’s employment postings is especially revealing—especially when you wonder why the federal government needs a "bilingual upholsterer" or "bilingual tree and shrub maintainer lead hand."

If I move to Quebec, I promise to brush up on my rusty French, but don’t for a minute think that I need someone at the passport office here in the bucolic former British colony of Victoria explaining to me in Dionesque syntax and inflection how to fill out my renewal form in English. The whole scheme constitutes wastage of Pythonesque proportions.

It’s not just the cost of our irksome enforced official bilingualism that bothers me, it’s the cost of continuing the "business as usual" approach to our shaky Confederation. When the coalition promises a $30-billion stimulus package to various sectors of our economy (read : the flagging industries of vote-rich Ontario and Quebec), it will be the West that bankrolls their ambitious schemes.

But of even more concern to us out here is what it will cost to keep Gilles Duceppe and his cronies happy for another 18 months as they try to turn us into North America’s version of Belgium ? How much wallet-emptying will we have to do when the agreement between the Liberals, NDP and BQ comes up for review ? It won’t be Quebec or the now have-not province of Ontario which end up paying for it, but us still-wealthy unsophisticates west of Kenora.

I should point out now, before the storm-troopers of political correctness land on my doorstep branding me a unilingual bigot, that I’m not anti-francophone and speak a couple of languages. I actually lived in France off and on for seven years, and my wife was not only a product of French immersion schooling (in Alberta no less !), she attended a French university and has a degree in French literature.

So it’s not about language ; it’s about coming to the realization that Quebec should no longer receive special deference because it may or may not secede depending on how accommodating we anglais are.

Our message to Ottawa is that Quebec is either a province like any other or it’s farewell, au revoir and good luck with that. Good luck when the money runs out and you’re a former OECD country with a pile of debt. You’ll find that while you may be a sovereign nation, you’re no longer so distinct or special anymore.

In Western Canada, we overwhelmingly voted Conservative in the previous federal election. A scant few of us even voted Liberal and NDP. But we sure as hell didn’t vote for the Bloc, and it’s high time we voiced our protest loud and clear (in whatever language gets the message across) to Duceppe, Dion and Layton as they try to drag us once again to the Quebec trough asking for yet another refill.

Personally, I liked my late grandfather’s reaction to Quebec’s arrogant whining classes (which oddly resembled Basil Fawlty’s response in the episode, The Germans) that went something like, "Who won the bloody war anyway !?"

So far Papa, it looks like Quebec.

mrossletters@gmail.com

— Envoi via le site Vigile.net (http://www.vigile.net/) —