By PETER WORTHINGTON - Belleville Intelligencer - What on earth is the fuss about? Surely, Maclean's magazine's cover story "Quebec: The most corrupt Province," is ho-hum stuff, and hardly warrants the outrage being expressed at the magazine's temerity?
It is political correctness run amok. One of those things we all know about, all occasionally discuss and deplore, but feel resigned and helpless to do anything about.
Yet the House of Commons voted unanimously last week to denounce the article and profess its "profound sadness at the prejudice displayed and the stereotypes employed" to denigrate Quebec and its history and institutions.
What hypocrisy!
Unanimity in the Commons vote was achieved when one independent MP objected -- Andre Arthur, an Independent from Quebec City -- and left the House so the motion could be reintroduced and win unanimous approval.
Arthur felt "Parliament has no business to criticize the work of reporters."
I dunno about that, but Arthur was likely the only MP who wasn't being hypocritical and playing to the gallery.
It's pretty hard to find any Canadian who doesn't have anecdotes about funny business in Quebec. The Maclean's article provides abundant evidence that most dispassionate observers would classify as "corruption."
None of this is to imply -- and certainly Maclean's didn't -- that all Quebecers are corrupt. But its politics and businesses linked with politics or political approval, cannot avoid the reality of payoffs being necessary to function.
As Maclean's noted, in the past two years the current provincial government of Jean Charest (once a federal Conservative leader and now a converted Liberal premier) "has lurched from one scandal to the next." That isn't "prejudice," it's fact.
In the 1970s, the Cliche Commission (on which Brian Mulroney was a lawyer) found that much of the Quebec construction industry was "composed of tricksters, crooks and scum" with links to the Montreal mafia with a predilection to violence.
Maclean's points out when Mulroney was PM, of 11 Tory cabinet ministers who had to resign "under a cloud," six were from Quebec.
The "corruption" that interests Maclean's hinges on politics over the last 40 years, during which the rest of Canada has been threatened with the possibility of Quebec separating.
A disproportionate amount of money has been funnelled into the province, not all of it wisely spent.
Where there's lots of money and few restraints, corruption is inevitable.
No province is simon pure. Nor does Maclean's make such a claim. There have been corruption scandals in every province.
What the magazine is doing is defining which Canadian province is most prone to corruption.
It's a relative comparison, not an absolute one. Compared to most of the world, all Canadian provinces are above reproach when it comes to various forms of corruption.
But we are so super-sensitive when it comes to criticism, that even when justified, we avoid acknowledging it, and close ranks against it.
If one can't diagnose a problem, how can one correct it?