I live in Quebec, a French-speaking province in a sea of Anglos. Our culture is largely American, with a French twist -- foreign movies are all dubbed -- which makes some movies rather strange, especially comedies. The question is why have politics and the opposition become so f-ing boring?
Still, here in Quebec, we are 85% North American and 15% French Canadian (with a bit of French culture too -- although we often don't know what they are talking about...). In the 1960 Quebec was an important part of the "French" culture. Nowadays not so much.
So like France's Macron, a "newish" party was called the CAQ gained powerr; his was a nationalist/ sovereignist/corporatist, its leader was a successful business leader and when he won the election (about 8 years ago now). To add insult to injury he and his team have been remarkably effective in most aspects of governing. The CAQ's popularity during the Covid shutdown, despite the inconvenience, rose. The leader of the party led from the very front from the very beginning. In the first few months he would be on TV, EVERY DAY, and be the voice and the leader. He didn't ask what the people wanted he said, this is the way.
Since Covid we've had a few substantive debates; the most important one was language. The government introduced stricter rules on the use of English in schools and in the workplace, some of these rules and very intrusive.
What did the opposition party do nada, zilch absolutely nothing. There are three opposition parties; the Liberals --- one of Canada's oldest party and the one party that is now the party of anglophones and allophones (anyone whose first language is not French). The Parti Quebecois -- the second oldest party, founded by Rene Lesversque in the early 1960 and who was for years at the forefront of the independence movement, and Quebec Solidaire, the Green/communist/socialist/anarchist whatever young people love a party. Each of these parties got the same 15% of the vote but translated into more seats for the Liberals because their vote was concentrated. They added nothing to the law or comments or even suggested changes (that were real and substantive -- Liberal had a lame-ass amendment to cover its voters, but it was a joke).
No one said anything serious about the "new and improved" language law, some parts in education are already unenforceable. The intrusion into companies by the "language police" is without boundaries, and virtually unacceptable in a civil society. An employee can "denounce" a company for any reason that will cause a massive audit. How many companies will want to set up here in Quebec? Which creates massive problems for the CAQ's industrial policy.
On the bright side technology has solutions and many have implemented the changes by using server-based software -- the government can take the computer but there is no software on the computer -- it's a dumb terminal.
Now generally you never hear from the opposition parties outside the election cycles -- that is of course the life of the old press, when it has been clearly seen that the new media could easily replace that failing institution (I swear the Quebec press is now on par with the village newspaper...that's how bad). Our elected leaders have generally been terrible are using the new media, but again the problem is that they have nothing to say, They have no ideas.
Why is the CAQ popular...its has a few ideas, not many, after all with limited budgets (once you paid for health care and education) there's not much left for the rest. Governing is hard in these instances.
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