Skip to main content

Canada Voted

Turning on the TV last night at 10 PM (when the first results began to emerge), one inescapable fact had to be contended with:  The Quebec political landscape has changed dramatically.  From 48 members of parliament the Bloc Quebec is down to 3 (maybe 4).  Not only did they lose the election, the also lost the popular vote – at 23% its lowest showing in nearly 17 years of existence.  The lowest figure that anyone anticipated for the BQ was to retain 20/25 seats (that would have been considered a terrible loss) – 3 or 4 seats is a disaster, especially since the BQ will no longer be considered a party in parliament and therefore will loose financing and speaking opportunities.

The Conservatives won a majority (deservedly so) [167 seats], and the Liberals were decimated [30 seats] with their worse showing ever (I mean since 1867 when Canada came into being…).  For the first time ever, the Liberal Party is neither the opposition nor the government.  

Over the past 10 days the mood of the Quebec electorate had begun to change with the NDP support rising quickly [103 seats].  The Bloc Quebecois noticed, and changed its strategy, from one of “Quebec First” to this election is not about left/right, but about Quebec independence.  They brought out the big guns of the independence movement (Parizeau, Larose, Marois) and they hammered that message.  It was pointed out (everywhere in the press) that this was a very risky strategy, and their worse possible outcome emerge with a total rejection of the Bloc Quebecois by the electorate (what impact this will have on the provincial political landscape is unclear).  Voters rejected the “sovereignty” message, in fact it probably made things worse, turning off many BQ supporters with the radical dialogue, proving (if proof was required) that the BQ movement (since it only fielded 75 deputy it stood no chance of ever winning a Federal election) was a fight of our past.

I mentioned before that political parties are driven by the youth (although they don’t usually vote much), they provide the energy and the new blood required for a party to remain relevant (and cool), but with a majority of Quebec graduating students being from newer emigrant stock that have no interest in Quebec’s 50 year old fight for independence.

Where the BQ goes from here is unclear.  Oblivion is an obvious outcome, but the BQ could still survive.  One important factor is the Conservative’s agenda to cut the public funding of federal parties – introduced in the last parliament it was withdrawn, but now that the Conservatives have a majority… The only real problem for the Conservative is that they money game is currently very unbalanced, apparently in Ontario the spending was 15:1 in favor of the Conservative who had a massive war chest.  For the BQ the lost of Federal funding may be the last nail in the coffin.

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more