…unfortunately most of you can’t read it though because you aren’t subscribers of the National Post. But here’s a copyright-limits-pushing extended excerpt from columnist Andrew Coyne’s column today, called Making a mockery of the GG’s office, which is well worth reading even if it means getting a trial subscription or something. Those of you who are already subscribers, don’t miss it.
Let’s start by attempting a few analogies. Suppose Prince Charles had chosen for a wife a woman whose idea of a good time was to go down the pub with a few mates from the IRA. Now suppose Charles himself, at one of these gatherings, raised a glass to the cause.
Imagine the President of the United States hoisting the Confederate flag. Suppose the fire chief had a kind word for arson.
Or, closer to home, suppose the men with whom our Governor General-designate was filmed endorsing, over a glass of some exquisite vintage or other, the necessity of revolution and the liberation of oppressed peoples, were not a clutch of felquistes and their fellow travellers, but al Qaedistes. Suppose instead of merely strangling Pierre Laporte, the terrorists with whom her filmmaker husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, was later to pass so many pleasant hours had cut his head off. Would the Prime Minister’s mouthpieces still be dismissing the whole affair as a smear campaign?
Actually, I’ve no idea. With each passing week under this train wreck of a government, one grows more acutely aware that they are capable of anything. Or, perhaps, that they are incapable of everything. At any rate, with the release of footage from M. Lafond’s 1991 classic, La maniere negre, we can at least be certain of one point: The position of Governor General of Canada, in whom all formal constitutional power is vested, is now officially ridiculous. If it were not the Martinites’ intent to make an utter mockery of it, they have done so all the same.
Until now it was possible for the PMO to argue there was some ambiguity about the vice-regal couple’s position on whether Canada should be dismembered, as if that were a defence. But how do you spin away theses exchanges?
Pierre Vallieres (a founding member of the FLQ): “Not only should Martinique proceed to independence, but to revolution—as Quebec should as well! “
Michaelle Jean: “Yes, independence isn’t given, it’s taken.”
Thus speaks the future representative of constitutional government in Canada. Later, when a couple of her hardline separatist chums offer a toast to “independence,” she replies with a hearty: “No more dominated peoples!” Oh, well. Perhaps she meant Martinique.
But then, as her husband points out in a making-of book about the film: Martinique, Quebec, same struggle. After a lengthy comparison of Quebec’s plight with those of various Caribbean nations, all victims of “the transnational techno-capitalist Mafia,” he concludes:
“So, a sovereign Quebec? An independent Quebec? Yes, I applaud with both hands and I promise to attend all the St-Jean Baptiste Day parades.”
Not that this is likely to change the government’s mind. If there is one thing that experience teaches, it is that after each new outrage, the yardsticks are simply moved further down the field.
I’m officially nominating that last sentence as a contender for our the Quote Of The Week Award, and it will be tough to beat.
UPDATE 9:25 AM PDT:
Obviously feeling the heat, the royal state-run CBC reporter and life-long state-employee and wife of nearly life-long state-funded 
liberal-left filmaker finally went on the record a short time ago:
“I want to tell you unequivocally that both he (husband Jean-Daniel Lafond) and I are proud to be Canadians and that we have the greatest respect for the institutions of our country. We are fully committed to Canada. I would not have accepted this position otherwise.”
No. I’m just so sure.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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