Roy Green: Separatists’ winning conditions recede with Bloc tide | Full Comment | National Post

How about a word for Quebecers who utterly destroyed the party, the man and perhaps the myth.

Sovereigntists scoffed when their former leader Lucien Bouchard declared last year there would be no “yes” vote for Quebec separation from Canada in his lifetime. Bouchard immediately was declared irrelevant by PQ and BQ supporters. 40%+ in Quebec could invariably be counted on to declare for the “Quebec nation”. Reaching that one vote beyond the necessary 50% “le prochain fois” and lowering the Canadian flag for the last time was really merely a matter of proper timing and “winning conditions”.

By Roy Green - from the National Post

On Monday Quebecers endorsed Lucien Bouchard’s viewpoint more than the Jack Layton road map. Certainly the NDP’s socialist approach resonates in a province predisposed to left-leaning philosophy, but Quebecers didn’t need to elect Jack Layton and a slate of caucus members he can’t yet identify without name tags for that. Quebecers had their 20-year champions of “l’affairs Quebecois” — the BQ and its taciturn and seemingly undefeatable boss Gilles Duceppe in place and prepared to return to Ottawa. Read more...

Roy Green: Separatists’ winning conditions recede with Bloc tide | Full Comment | National Post

Roy Green: Sympathy for murderers, but not the murdered | Full Comment | National Post

by Roy Green - from the National Post

One year ago Karen Fraser was national news. Not because she wanted to be, but because Craig Munroe, who callously murdered her husband, Toronto police Constable Michael Sweet, had been approved for unescorted absences from minimum security incarceration.

On March 14, 1980, Munroe, on mandatory supervision for a previous offence, shot the young police officer in the chest and with his brother Jamie callously watched Sweet bleed to death while they drank, did drugs and negotiated their terms of surrender.

Karen Fraser opposed her husband’s killer strolling unchallenged and unsupervised onto Canada’s streets. That was of no concern to the system or its apologists.

This nation’s police community challenged the release of Munroe. No concern.

Nicole, one year old when Munroe murdered her father, said “he murdered and tortured him. That’s not a memory a daughter should have of her dad.” No concern.

That Munroe claimed some kind of redemptive psycho-development, though, was of great importance and was of keen interest to two members of the National Parole Board. They tossed Munroe the keys to the gate. Read more

Roy Green: Sympathy for murderers, but not the murdered | Full Comment | National Post