Nous n'avons rien su

Paul Wells makes fun of Quebec columnists who are already taking offense (That's the third time this week! - ed.) at the Martin "tribal politics" spin -- then joins them.

Quebecers know the Chr�tien-Gagliano strategy was to buy their allegiance to Canada with flags and festivals. They are as insulted as the rest of us would be. And now here's some anonymous genius trying to pin the week's mess, not only on Chr�tien, but on Quebec.

So Quebecers knew nothing, too! Sorry -- somebody had to keep electing these folks. If Quebecers were so offended at politics, Chretien-style (or Mulroney-style, or Trudeau-style, or ...) they had a funny way of showing it. That's not blaming Quebec. (Well it is, but only in part.) The political culture we are talking about exists, in different forms and to different degrees, across Eastern Canada, even across the country. We have all been only too willing to look the other way. As Pete McMartin concludes a trenchant Vancouver Sun column:

Eastern voters winked at a billion wasted dollars in Public Works, a billion wasted dollars on a gun registry, and Jean Chretien's shenanigans in Shawinigan, and still voted Liberal. They abided waste and trough-feeding that would make a Baath party operative blush, but they cringed at the prospect of, horrors, a leader of the Opposition who was so cornball as to be pro-life. This is not a scandal: This is the payoff. This is what Canadians have tacitly condoned. This is what they have brought on themselves, knowing intuitively and sometimes consciously that corruption and cronyism is rampant, but shrugging it off because the problem of looting disguised as legitimate politics is not just systemic, it is The System.

Quebecers need to face up to this. So do we all. UPDATE: They're almost about to come to blows over who's to blame on the Comments page: Quebec, the Liberals, the Opposition, or the public at large. Sorry, did I say blows? How about "armed insurrection"?