"Sovereignists want Quebec to defy Supreme Court ruling on Bill 104"

http://tinyurl.com/ydbomgl

MONTREAL – A downtown rally Monday evening will kick off “a vast campaign of public mobilization” designed to pressure the Quebec National Assembly to declare it will defy an Oct. 22 decision on English-language schooling in Quebec handed down by Canada’s highest court, prominent Quebec nationalist Mario Beaulieu said ... The court declared Bill 104 unconstitutional. The Quebec law had tightened access to English schooling in the province

...So much for sovereigntists respecting democracy, a large element of which is the rule of law, with all its checks and balances..

[Bill 104] had been adopted in 2002 by the Quebec National Assembly – unanimously, Beaulieu and others noted repeatedly during an afternoon news conference at the SSJB headquarters ...

The National(ist) Assembly does a lot of things unanimously; that doesn't make them sound. Take the long-gun registry ... please.

“This judicial decision threatens the survival of the French language in Quebec,” Beaulieu declared, stating that Quebec never agreed to Canada’s 1982 constitution.

Thus judicial decision affects about 1000 students per year; statistically insignificant in the French school system, but lifeblood for the anglos.

Besides, Quebec may not have signed the constitution, but it is bound by it. That's also in the constitution.

The first of what Beaulieu said will be a series of events around the province is to be held at 7 p.m. Monday near the SSJB offices, at the Just for Laughs museum, 2102 St. Laurent Blvd. just south of Sherbrooke St ...

Just for laughs? That's for sure.

"Two-tier health, two-tier education"

"PQ is pressuring Liberals to close Bill 101 loophole"

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/tier+health+tier+education/2239066/story.html

.

.. Should it be a tuition fee that can exceed $15,000 for every child for every year of her education? Or should it be the low, low bargain price of the same fee but for only one child for only one year, after which not only he but also his brothers and sisters and his children could attend English public schools for free? The answer was the lower price, until the one-year loophole was closed in 2002 by the adoption of Bill 104 by the Parti Québécois government of the day, with the support of the Liberal opposition

...And it can't simply re-introduce Bill 104 with a so-called "notwithstanding" clause, since the latter can't be invoked for a violation of minority language rights ...

The PQ thinks it has the answer. Last week it proposed to extend Bill 101's restrictions on admission to fully private English schools. It cited experts in constitutional law saying such a measure could be challenged only as a violation of freedom rather than minority language rights, and could therefore be shielded by a notwithstanding clause ...

"The Pied Piper of Quebec"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-pied-piper-of-quebec/article1366946/

... [Jacques Parizeau] lures Quebeckers with a Pied Piper's melody. But his spin on reality shows when he quotes selectively the report of five eminent experts in international law consulted in 1991 by the Quebec government. “The unanimous conclusion of their legal opinion is quite clear: The frontiers of a sovereign Quebec would be those of current Quebec.”

But Mr. Parizeau seems to forget that he published a letter in which he accused the Supreme Court of favouring the partition of a seceding Quebec. And he omits more pertinent quotations from the five experts: “The right to secession does not exist in international law.” And this: “The Quebec people exercises effectively its right to self-determination within the framework of the Canadian whole and is not legally authorized to invoke it to justify its future accession to independence.”

On May 19, 1994, Mr. Parizeau told the National Assembly: “There is the law. We are a law-abiding state. Canada and Quebec are not banana republics. There is the Constitution. There is international law. And we have been elected to defend the law.” After that beginning, he argued that Canada was divisible but Quebec was not. The law be damned.

Mr. Parizeau's flights of mythology would be amusing but for the ascendancy he holds as Quebec's most influential separatist. The crowds at his book launch Monday proved that. As such, he is more dangerous than ridiculous.