Provinces tackle health care issues
Premiers are banding together to tackle certain health care issues now that the federal government clearly intends massive cuts in transfer payments for health purposes. Inevitably, Quebec has decided to go it alone. I don’t know whether it ever crosses a Quebec politician’s mind that maybe sometimes other parts of Canada need its support, rather than only working out what they can get from Canada.
Ian 16:20 on 2012/07/27 Permalink
No, I’m pretty sure that never crosses their minds at all. Our government will cut off its nose to spite its face when it comes to interprovincial cooperation. Like how as Quebec citizens our health care cards aren’t valid outside Quebec but everyone else in Canada can travel interprovincially knowing their healthcare is fully covered through interprovincial agreements. We actually have to pay for health care outside Quebec out of pocket and remit the bill to the Quebec government, who pays what they think is fair – almost always less than the full amount.
qatzelok 20:06 on 2012/07/27 Permalink
English Canada doesn’t take care of Mississippi’s health care and has nothing to do with America. Why is this? It’s not like there’s any cultural difference between Anglo Canada and the USA. And yet, English Canadians dare question why Quebec would prefer to do things on its own…. Irony or denial, I can’t tell which it is that inspires English Canadians to pretend like they’re more part of Quebec than they are of Illinois.
Chris 20:43 on 2012/07/27 Permalink
qatzelok, pretending is not necessary. English Canadians are more part of Quebec than Illinois. At least, after traveling in many provinces and US states, that’s been my experience.
Kate 10:57 on 2012/07/28 Permalink
qatzelok, I too suspect you may never have travelled much in the rest of Canada or the U.S.
It might open your eyes to some of the cultural misapprehensions you’ve got.
qatzelok 09:35 on 2012/07/29 Permalink
Other than different accents, I really can’t tell the difference. Landscapes and social conditions change from region to region, but Anglo-North America is really one big parking lot of commercial values and social phobias.
Kate 12:29 on 2012/07/29 Permalink
Well, you mustn’t have gone very far or taken note of much. I’ve done a couple of road trips through the U.S., spent a little time in Ontario after friends moved there, and they’re really very different societies. The priorities are visibly different. I remember getting out at a gas station somewhere in the Midwest and going in to use a bathroom (there’s one difference right away – in the U.S., anyone can use your bathroom if you have it – once we came back and were over the border into Ontario, everyone was very pinch-nosed “Customers only – ask for the key – no, you can’t use the bathroom here”) and stopping in amazement at the site of one wall full of guns and another full of bottles of bourbon, at a gas station shop!
Ian 20:00 on 2012/07/29 Permalink
Only an idiot would say that all of North America besides Quebec is the same culture based on the officially dominant language. That is patently absurd to anyone that has been to pretty much anywhere outside QC and got anything at all from the experience. I’ve been all over Canada and the US but really didn’t have to go far to realize how different each region of the continent is.
qatzelok 20:42 on 2012/07/29 Permalink
Kate, public washroom etiquette changes from region to region. Even within a single province or state. This is just the denial talking. There has been no English-Canadian culture since the 1930s, and it wasn’t very significantly different than the rest of the USA back then. Only French Canada has a culture unfortunately. Anglo Canada is just donuts and malls, just like New Jersey or Northern California. Yawn.
Marc 21:34 on 2012/07/29 Permalink
@ qatzelok: You’re no different than Diane Lemieux, the former PQ minister who had a foot-in-mouth moment about 10 years ago when she exclaimed that Quebec had real culture and Ontario had no culture.
Ian 22:02 on 2012/07/29 Permalink
I guess not having doughnuts or malls is what made Quebec culturally superior. What a relief! It’s also good to know that next time I miss NYC or Vancouver I can just go to Ottawa to get my fix. Qatzelok – I know you’re just trolling but it’s hard to take anything you ever say seriously when you so frequently indulge in small-minded bigotry.
Kate 22:03 on 2012/07/29 Permalink
qatzelok, you also make me think of a guy I worked with years ago, who sneered at me for reading Italo Calvino translated into English. English had no feeling, he said, you should really read him translated into French.
Leaving aside that if you really want to read Calvino you should read him in Italian, all the guy was revealing was that he understood French, his native language, better than he did English. But he hadn’t realized that this didn’t make French superior, it just meant he was more comfortable with it, whereas in English he was “bleeping” over too many words or expressions he didn’t understand.
qatzelok, you’re wilfully bleeping over all of English-speaking culture.
qatzelok 00:47 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
English Canadians are the remnants of various peoples who were sent here to destroy the actual cultures that were here – native, French and metis. So like the USA, it is a nation created by anticulture and commercial excess. The lack of culture in English Canada is what makes cities like Toronto and Halifax (and Philadelphia and San Jose) feel so empty and boring – despite their populations and wealth.
It’s sad but what’s even more sad is how receptive these anti-culture warriors are to propaganda. This includes the “English Canada totally has culture” propaganda that wears thin after a few seconds if you are unreceptive to propaganda memes. The maple leaf and Expo 67 were just responses to REAL Quebec culture and nationalism. English Canada only has oil companies and meekness. The meekness is there to help entice multinational branch plants…. is all.
Ian 06:04 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
I find it deeply comical that you refuse to accept or acknowledge that the French arrived in what is now Canada as a colonial force themselves. The hypocrisy and revisionism are so profound that I’m beginning to suspect that you’re actually joking. I know you like to blame all the ills of Quebec (the only real culture in the world) on Jews and anglos, but if you’re serious you really should get out of the province some time – your weltanschauung is essentially xenophobic. Nobody can be that narrow-minded and bigoted for real … can they?
Marc 10:26 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
I’m currently in Niagara region and was in Toronto not long ago. In the last two years I’ve also been to Halifax and Philly. It’s clear as glass to me, qatzelok, that you haven’t been to any of these places and are just talking out of your ass saying whatever.
qatzelok 10:36 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
In fact, I have been to the exotic culturally unique places you mention: Philadelphia, Halifax and yes, Toronto. And more.
And English Canada has no culture no matter how few air miles you accuse me of having.
Ian 10:50 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
Well that settles it then, it’s not that you’re a stay-at-home know-nothing, you’re a well-travelled bigot. May we assume that your posts on all other matters are equally distorted through the lens of your contempt for all things that are not “de souche”?
Marc 12:31 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
Yeah, forget it. Like talking to a wall.
Kate 13:25 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
He’s never been to Newfoundland, guaranteed.
Marc 15:16 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
No idea why it slipped my mind but I was in St. John’s a few months ago. They may fly Canadian flags but apart from that they have nothing in common with the rest of “English” Canada.
qatzelok 17:11 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
“He’s never been to Newfoundland, guaranteed.”
Yes, I have. It’s a lot like the maritimes or New England. And it has a touch of Mississippi redneckiness (but then so does the rest of Atlantic Canada). Remember: Canada has traditionally rewarded people who destroyed the local culture. The Maritimes – which used to be Acadian – are a bland variation of American white trash today. Success?
People there talk lovingly of privatization and the free market – just like the propagandized, cultureless voids of the Deep South of the US. Or the rednecks of rural Ontario.
Culturelessness breeds corporatism.
Kate 17:52 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
I think I’ll have to leave this here. There was nothing sacrosanct about the Acadiens. In their turn they had taken land from various native tribes, but evidently you don’t see that as a problem.
White people came here and took over, and you’re whining about which white people were more deserving of the spoils. Never mind replying to this, I’ve run into this attitude before and it’s intractable.
Mark 18:29 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
Bruce MacDonald, Atom Egoyan, Don McKellar, and a host of other great Canadian directors and writers have helped define a nice chunk of contemporary Anglo Canadian culture. There’s a certain style to some Canadian film and television that is unmistakable.
jeather 21:06 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
You don’t have to leave it, Kate; it’s your blog, where you keep letting comments about how the anglos and the Jews ruin everything and have no culture let stand. Do you really think that his very occasional interesting post (generally about how the suburbs or anglos suck, occasionally an interesting remark about urban culture that doesn’t involve a dig at the suburbs — where I don’t live, fwiw) is enough to excuse his regular attacks on people here?
jeather 21:15 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
I wasn’t clear: just because qatzelok makes some good points on occasion doesn’t mean that you are required to let all his comments through. (I am assuming that you can delete comments. I wasn’t intending to suggest you ought to ban him.)
Kate 23:03 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
jeather, I understand what you’re saying, but doing that would lead in the direction of cherrypicking comments that agree with me, you know? I’ve banned two guys, but I tolerate qatzelok for, as you say, his occasional moments of insight, despite the noise.
But what you say makes me wonder whether my toleration of him drags down the whole tone. I will ponder that.
Chris 23:27 on 2012/07/30 Permalink
qatzelok, with anglo North America so bereft of culture, I’m curious why you have traveled to so many places there and use their language so much?