I understand the exercise that PSPP has done with this Budget for year 1.
He wanted to respond to those who, like François Legault, argue that Quebec risks catastrophe if it ever breaks off relations with Canada and stops pumping a regular dose of balance into its veins.
He wanted to show that we were capable of leaving mom and dad’s house and living in a nice 4 1/2 apartment.
With central heating and a washer-dryer.
THE STOMACH, NOT THE BRAIN
That said…
It’s all well and good calculating whether you have enough money to eat three times a day and pay for an internet connection.
But that is not why the thermometer of sovereignty will rise.
What is needed is emotions.
Grab people by the gut.
This is what Quebecers are missing. The “victim”.
We all know the arguments for sovereignty. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that Canada has changed since the 1960s and that the myth of the “two founding peoples” won’t last two minutes in the face of the wave of migration – what can I say! the tsunami – that Trudeau Jr. is preparing for us.
Staying in Canada means becoming a minority like any other.
Without any protection, no security measures.
We will dissolve into the greater Canadian whole, like a capsule of Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water.
It will bubble for 20 seconds and then disappear.
Everyone knows that.
Finally, everyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear the “Hello Hello” from the dealers.
The challenge of PSPP is not to “make us understand” that sovereignty is good for us.
It should give us the taste.
And he won’t achieve this by arranging numbers on a piece of paper.
JUMP UP!
Quebec is like a guy who took a skydiving course and is about to make his first jump.
He stands at the edge of the door, looks down and takes a deep breath.
Even if you remind him for the thousandth time how parachutes work, it won’t make him jump.
What the guy needs at this moment is not additional information (he had plenty of that in his theory classes), but boldness.
He has to dig deep within himself to find the courage necessary to let go of the bar and jump into the void.
In the 70s it was the artists who played this role.
The one that made our souls vibrate and grabbed us to the core.
Remember Ginette Reno singing “Un peu plus haute, un peu plus loin” by Jean-Pierre Ferland on the mountain.
If there had been a referendum that night, bingo, it would have been done!
Unfortunately the artists are no longer there. They jumped ship and replaced the word “sovereignty” with “diversity.”
PSPP must replace them.
That is his challenge.
Be less of a professor and more of a motivator.
