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http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/Number+Quebecers+leaving+province+rise/9360879/story.html BY MARIAN SCOTT, THE GAZETTE JANUARY 7, 2014 8:05 PM A total of 28,439 people moved from Quebec to another province from January to September 2013. In most cases, Quebec’s loss was Ontario’s gain, with two out of three ex-Quebecers moving to Ontario. Photograph by: Peter Redman , National Post MONTREAL - The number of Quebecers heading down the 401 is on the rise, partial statistics for 2013 suggest. Departures from Quebec to other provinces rose to their highest level this century in the first nine months of 2013, according to the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration. Statistics are not available yet for the final three months of the year. A total of 28,439 people moved from Quebec to another province from January to September 2013 — the highest number of departures for that period in any year since 2000. In most cases, Quebec’s loss was Ontario’s gain, with two out of three ex-Quebecers moving to Ontario, one in four to Alberta and just under one in ten to British Columbia, according to quarterly demographic estimates released by Statistics Canada in December. Quebec had a net loss of 11,887 residents due to interprovincial migration (departures minus arrivals) in the 12 months from October 2012 to September 2013, compared to a loss of 7,700 people in the corresponding period of 2011-12 and a loss of 4,394 in 2010-11. The rise in departures corresponds with the election of the Parti Québécois in September 2012 — but there is no evidence the political situation is a contributing factor, said Jack Jedwab, the institute’s executive vice-president.“It’s too early to say,” he said. “I would argue it’s more about our economy,” Jedwab said. “These numbers have a very recessionary look to them, at a time when we’re not in a recession.” Jedwab said the loss of residents sounds a warning signal. “Significant population losses have a negative effect on our economy,” he said. The rise in out-migration is not related to the divisive debate over the PQ government’s proposed charter of values, Jedwab said, since the departures occurred before the charter was unveiled. A National Assembly committee will commence hearings on the charter Jan. 14. But Jedwab said if the trend continues, the hypothesis that political angst is spurring departures would deserve a second look. “If it persists into the next quarter, we’ve got to start thinking non-economic considerations are at work here,” he said. The PQ government’s focus on identity issues has decreased the comfort level of some members of cultural minorities, particularly the values charter, which proposes to bar all public sector workers from wearing religious garb like the Muslim head scarf, Jewish skullcap or Sikh turban. In September, an Ontario hospital published recruitment ads aimed to capitalize on the controversy. A photo of a female health worker wearing a hijab (head scarf) bore the caption: “We don’t care what’s on your head. We care what’s in it.” Aaron Lazarus, director of communications at Lakeridge Health in Bowmanville, Ont., east of Toronto, said the hospital received several job applications from doctors, nurses and other health professionals from Quebec in response to the ads. But Michel Leblanc, president and CEO of the Montreal Board of Trade, warned against jumping to the conclusion that the current political climate could be causing people to leave Quebec. “What is worrisome is that we have a net loss of residents every year,” Leblanc said. “People have a tendency to migrate not only to places with better weather, but also to places where the economy is performing better,” he said. Leblanc said that while the recent increase in departures is cause for concern, it is much smaller than the massive exodus of anglophones from Quebec in the 1970s and ’80s. He called on the government to improve the integration of immigrants into the workforce and to lower taxation to retain residents. Statistics Canada’s quarterly demographic estimates showed Alberta — with a population of 4,060,700 in October 2013 — continues to lead the provinces in population growth, adding 137,703 new residents from October 2012 to September 2013, of whom 49,031 moved there from elsewhere in Canada. Ontario (population 13,585,900) had slower population growth, gaining 128,442 new residents from October 2012 to September 2013. Quebec, numbering 8,174,500 residents, added 67,385 new residents from October 2012 to September 2013, with immigration and the natural increase of the population compensating for out-migration. Previous studies have shown that about two-thirds of Quebec residents who move to other provinces are allophones — people whose first language is neither French nor English. mascot@montrealgazette.com

Excellent texte de François Cardinal (de La Presse) sur pourquoi Montréal devrait avoir un statut spécial : Manifesto for a city-state Montreal has paid the price for being treated like just another region. Quebec’s economic hub deserves better. François Cardinal Policy Options, November 2013 Far from being a land of forests, plains and prairies, Canada is an urban country. Nearly 70 percent of the population lives in urban centres and more than 90 percent of demographic growth is concentrated in those metropolitan areas. These proportions put Canada at the top of the world’s most urbanized nations. And yet all of Canada’s cities, from Montreal to Toronto, Calgary and even Ottawa, are neglected by federal and provincial political parties. They are short-changed by electoral maps. All are forced by the provinces to labour under a tax system that dates from the horse-and-buggy age. All are relegated to the status of lowly “creatures” subject to the whims and dictates of higher levels of government. It’s as if the country has not yet come to terms with the changes it has undergone since its founding. “Cities do not exist under the Constitution, since it was drawn up in 1867 when we were a rural, agricultural country,” Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi pointed out when I interviewed him at City Hall. “But today the country is highly urbanized, a fact that, unfortunately, is not reflected in the relations higher levels of government maintain with the cities.” The 2011 federal election offered a good example of this oversight. Every party targeted the “regions,” those wide-open spaces of rural and small-town Canada. The Conservatives’ slogan in French was “Notre région au pouvoir” [Our region in power]. The Liberals cited “rural Canada” as a priority but barely mentioned urban Canada. The Bloc used the slogan “Parlons régions” [Let’s talk about regions] but had no urban equivalent for the metropolis. More critically, the parties felt compelled to appeal to voters in the regions by positioning themselves in opposition to the cities. The most glaring instance came during the French leaders’ debate, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper castigated Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff over his promise to build a new Champlain Bridge. “I would not take Mr. Ignatieff’s approach and divert money from the regions to finance infrastructure for Montreal,” Harper said. The Liberals were not much better. They pledged to develop a plan for public transportation but never specified what it would look like. They promised support for social housing but said they would take the money out of funds for urban infrastructure. The reason for this is not rocket science. With the big-city vote so thoroughly predictable, the parties focus on rural areas or the suburbs where they believe their policies might swing votes. They rarely target the city centres. At the provincial level, the situation is pretty much the same. In fact, the Quebec government was able to relieve Montreal of its “metropolis” title and its dedicated ministry nearly 10 years ago without raising eyebrows. Thus Montreal became just one “region” among all the rest: Administrative Region 06. In the 2012 election in Quebec, Montreal did move up a notch. There was more discussion about the city. But since then, unfortunately, good intentions have been replaced by a charter of Quebec values, which has been broadly criticized in Montreal. Imposing it confirms the implicit trusteeship under which the government rules the metropolis. But even more than urban centres elsewhere in the country, Quebec’s parties have limited reason to take an interest in the city. Montreal is either politically safe (for the provincial Liberals) or a lost cause (for the Parti Québécois). In short, Quebec is no different from other Canadian provinces in treating its major city like a big village that must be attended to, certainly, but not more than any other municipality. The cost of showing the city favour is to risk losing precious votes in rural areas. But major cities are no longer the same municipalities they were in the past. Today, Montreal and Toronto are expected to compete with Paris and New York. They are expected to attract and hold onto businesses, court foreign creative talent, draw more private investment and deliver more and more services to residents, from social housing to public transportation. Providing support services for recent immigrants, developing the knowledge-based economy, building social housing, dealing with antigovernment demonstrations and adapting to climate change are all responsibilities that now fall to cities. They are nothing like the urban “creatures” of the 19th century. Lucien Bouchard could not have been more clear when he said in his 1996 inauguration speech after being elected premier: “There can be no economic recovery in Quebec without a recovery in Quebec’s metropolis.” For once, it appeared the government of Quebec was going to recognize Montreal’s special character and grant it preferential treatment. “The complexity of the city’s problems calls for special treatment and even, I would say, for the creation of a specific metropolitan authority,” Bouchard continued. It seemed as if he was about to usher in an exciting new era. There was now a minister responsible for “the metropolis.” A development commission was set up for the Montreal metropolitan area and it was to be invested with significant powers. A true decentralization of power was in the offing. An economic development agency, Montréal International, was created at this time, as was the Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT). But just when it appeared Montreal was going to receive special attention and treatment, the government’s old habits returned with a vengeance. Like a parent who has given too much to one child, the Quebec government decided to restore the balance by giving to the regions with its left hand what it had given Montreal with its right. A local and regional development support policy was introduced in 1997. Then the Ministry of Regions was created and local development centres set up. A few months later, they added government measures for the province’s three metropolitan areas and then, finally, measures for all urban areas. “The reforms demonstrate, once again, the government’s efforts to address Montreal’s specificity without neglecting the needs of the rest of Quebec,” political scientist Mariona Tomàs explained in her fine book Penser métropolitain? But the result was a government policy similar to the previous ones, an across-the-board approach based on a view of Quebec as a collection of communities, rather than a province organized around its main economic hub. “The government’s desire to maintain a territorial balance can be seen in the powers of metropolitan structures,” Tomàs observed. “The law provided the same types of powers for all the urban communities created in 1969, and then for all the metropolitan communities in 2000.” Giving the rural Outaouais region the same powers as Greater Montreal reduces the latter to just one region among many. To this way of political thinking, the metropolis must not be allowed to overshadow any other town, must not be given too much. It cannot receive more attention than others, and cannot be elevated above any other. Canada’s “hub cities,” those few major urban centres like Montreal, are the drivers of economic activity in the country. That was the conclusion of a recent Conference Board study, which pointed to the collateral benefits of a thriving metropolis. It found that strong growth in metropolitan areas spurs growth in neighbouring communities and then in the whole province. But how can Montreal play its role as an economic driver if it is not treated as such? We need only look outside the country to be convinced that we need to roll out the red carpet for the metropolis: to the United States, where big cities have the attention of the country’s leaders; to Asia, where the treatment of major centres sometimes borders on obsessiveness; or even to France, a country that, like Quebec, is marked by a deep divide between “the metropolis” and “the provinces.” France provided a telling illustration of this awareness in early 2013, a few months after François Hollande’s Socialist government took office. Although France was in dire straits, burdened by crushing public debt and being forced to reconsider the fate of its precious social programs, Hollande did not think twice about launching a project of heroic proportions to relieve congestion in Paris. The price tag: the equivalent of $35 billion for a brand new “super metro,” plus $10 billion to extend and upgrade the existing system. Was this completely crazy? On the contrary. Hollande was being logical and visionary. France understands the importance of investing in its metropolis. This is a country that is ready to look after its towns and villages, while not being afraid to give Paris preferential treatment. “A strong Paris is in the interest of the provinces,” commented L’Express magazine in March 2013. Quite so. The article notes, for example, that much of the income generated in Paris is actually spent in the rest of the country. All financial roads — tourism, commuting for work, national redistribution, whatever — all lead to Paris, with benefits to the provinces. L’Express cites the case of Eurodisney to illustrate. Disney had hesitated before settling on building its amusement park in Paris — not between contending French cities, but between Paris and Barcelona. Herein lie the value and importance for the entire country of having a strong metropolis. “Weakening Paris would slow France’s locomotive,” argued L’Express. “And in a train, the cars seldom move faster than the locomotive.” Clearly, what Montreal needs is special treatment, more autonomy and more diverse sources of revenue. In short, it needs a premier who will stand on the balcony of City Hall and proclaim: “Vive Montréal! Vive Montréal libre!” Worryingly, the current state of affairs in Montreal — the revelations and insinuations of political corruption and collusion — is prompting many observers to call for the Quebec government to take the opposite tack and tighten the city’s reins. According to this view, more provincial government involvement is needed to check the city’s propensity for vice. But in fact the only way to make the city more responsible and more accountable is to give it greater power, wider latitude and more money. Montreal’s problem is that it has all the attributes of a metropolis but is treated as an ordinary municipality, subservient to the big boss, the provincial government. Its masters are the minister of municipal affairs, the minister’s colleagues at other departments involved in the city’s affairs and, of course, the premier. Montreal is under implicit trusteeship. This encourages, even promotes a lack of accountability on the part of the municipal administration, which is only half in charge. “It’s not complicated: Montreal is currently a no man’s land of accountability,” says Denis Saint-Martin, political science professor at the Université de Montréal. “There is a political and organizational immaturity problem, which explains the political irresponsibility we have seen in recent years. Montreal needs more power, not less. Montreal needs to be more accountable, more answerable.” Essentially, the metropolis needs to be treated like one, with the powers and revenues that go along with city status. Montreal is a beggar riding in a limousine. Invariably, after a municipal election, the incoming mayor announces a wish list and then gets the chauffeur to drive him up provincial Highway 20 to Quebec City to knock on the provincial government’s door with outstretched hands, hoping for a little largesse. Montreal’s mayor has to beg because the past offloading of responsibilities for delivering services to citizens onto the municipality has not been accompanied by new money. “In Quebec, the province is responsible for much of the regulatory apparatus under which cities operate, which the cities feel restricts their autonomy,” said political scientist Laurence Bherer in 2004, speaking at the 50th anniversary of the Université Laval political science department. “And far from decreasing in recent years, provincial intervention has spread to a variety of areas such as the environment and public security, further relegating the cities to the role of operative rather than architect.” It is unacceptable for the provincial government to be the “operator” of a metropolis. That is why municipalities are rightfully seeking greater autonomy and greater freedom of action from their provincial masters. This is what is starting to happen in other provinces: in Alberta, with its Municipal Government Act, with British Columbia’s Community Charter and especially in Ontario, with the City of Toronto Act, which reads in part: “The [Ontario Legislative] Assembly recognizes that the City of Toronto, as Ontario’s capital city, is an economic engine of Ontario and of Canada.” The Ontario government appears to understand the special role Toronto plays in the wider economy. The City of Toronto Act goes on to say, “The Assembly recognizes that the City plays an important role in creating and supporting economic prosperity and a high quality of life for the people of Ontario [and] that the City is a government that is capable of exercising its powers in a responsible and accountable fashion.” Quebec’s largest city deserves similar treatment: strict accountability in exchange for recognition of its status as an autonomous government and the ability to tap more diverse sources of revenue. Indeed the main reason Montreal is regularly forced to pass the hat in Quebec City is its heavy dependence on property taxes for its income. As a creature of the province, it still operates under the good-old British tax model that sees it derive the bulk of its revenues — 67 percent — from property taxes. This was not a problem a hundred years ago, when Montreal provided only property services to its residents. But its responsibilities have expanded. The standards imposed by Quebec City have proliferated, and the portion of the budget allocated for services to individuals has grown considerably. Yet its tax base remains just as dependent on a single sector: real estate. This situation has a huge drawback. The City does not share the economic benefits that it generates. It might well pour money into the Formula One Grand Prix and summer festivals, invest in attracting conventions and tourists, renovate public spaces to make the urban environment more attractive and friendly. But it will get not a penny back. On the contrary: these investments only increase the city’s expenses in maintenance, security and infrastructure, while the federal and provincial governments reap the sales taxes. Take the city’s jazz festival. Montreal has to pay for security, site maintenance, public transportation to bring visitors to the site, and must deal with the event’s impact on traffic. In return, it gets happy festival-goers and tourists who spend money, stay at hotels, eat at restaurants — and fill provincial and federal coffers with sales tax revenues. They enrich the governments in Quebec City and in Ottawa, but not Montreal, which picks up the tab for the costs. The result is that the hole into which large cities are quietly sinking gets deeper. Big-city economies are dematerializing. The knowledge-based economy, in which Montreal shines, is based on innovation, research and brains, not factories. But for now, grey matter is not subject to property tax. Add to the mix an aging population with more modest housing needs, the increase in teleworking, self-employment and e-commerce, and you have a Montreal that is not only under implicit administrative trusteeship but also in an increasingly precarious financial position. And then people wonder why our metropolis is not playing the role it should be playing. another region. Quebec’s economic hub deserves better.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Language+debates+holding+corporate+plans+developer+says/8451858/story.html MONTREAL — Major corporations are putting expansion, relocations and long-term commitments on hold, because of the “unstable business environment” caused by the Parti Québécois hotly debated Bill 14, Jonathan Wener said Wednesday. “The market has definitely gotten softer and a lot of people are putting major decisions on hold. It’s basically a wait-and-see attitude,” the head of Canderel Group of Companies, a national real estate development and management company, said. Wener is the chairman and CEO of Montreal-based Canderel, which manages 9 million square feet of commercial space and has an additional 2 million square feet of residential development under construction nationally. “I think it is extremely unfortunate that we live in a society that has reduced itself to thinking it needs language police to preserve its culture — point final,” Wener told The Gazette, in a reference to the Office québécois de la langue française. “I’ve travelled a good chunk of the world and when I talk about the fact that we have language police in Quebec they laugh at me.” His comments come as the PQ is expected to put the bill to a second reading vote Thursday morning, despite widespread opposition from different groups and a Liberal filibuster. “It’s reawakened old memories which are just unfortunate because I really felt the most important thing to do was to get on with governing and improving the state of our economy, which needs a lot of work,” he said. A seventh-generation Montrealer, whose family first arrived in the 1860s, Wener is being honoured Thursday night for his support of the non-profit Segal Centre, North America’s second-largest bilingual multidisciplinary performing arts centre. The Segal Centre has a cultural — and not political — vocation. Despite Canderel’s offices in Canadian cities like Toronto, where it is building Aura, the country’s tallest residential skyscraper, the 38-year-old company still has its headquarters on Peel St. in downtown Montreal. While Wener’s personal views supporting English rights are well known, Canderel has worked on business ventures with partners of all political affiliations, including the Fonds immobilier de solidarité, which is controlled by the sovereignist-leaning Quebec Federation of Labour. Canderel and the Fonds are still looking for tenants to launch a two-tower office complex with 1.2 million square feet at the corner of Ste. Catherine and Bleury St. in Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles. Wener said political uncertainty generated by proposals like Bill 14, may have softened, but not “depressed” a Greater Montreal real estate market. Until recently, the industry was breaking records for prices and new condo construction, at a time when former industrial areas like Griffintown and former downtown parking lots transformed with new developments. Indeed, the Bell Centre-adjacent Tour des Canadiens housing project that Canderel is developing with Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd. and other partners actually added two floors in January, after the original 48 storeys sold out at a pace that surprised Wener himself. “What I was surprised about is that we could do it as quickly as we did in Montreal. We had allowed for a year, we had allowed for millions of dollars in advertising that we never spent,” Wener said. “We were finished in virtually six to eight weeks.” alampert@montrealgazette.com Twitter: RealDealMtl

Hmmm interesting

(Courtesy of CNW Telbec)

Do we dare think big again? After three decades of decline, stagnation and costly federalist-separatist battles, Montreal politicians have taken to looking in rear-view mirrors to the Drapeau era megaprojects, when the term 'Big O' could have stood for 'optimism' JAMES MENNIE, The Gazette Published: 10 hours ago "Of all the achievements of the Drapeau administration," says Paul-André Linteau, a professor of history at the Université du Québec à Montréal, "Expo 67 occupies a special place in our collective imagination. "When we marked the 40th anniversary of Expo last year, it was heavily covered by the media, and full of teary-eyed, nostalgic baby boomers recalling the extraordinary summer they spent at Expo 67. "But often we experience a kind of deformation of memory that sees an individual's recollection transformed into something the entire community believes it experienced. Not everybody had a great summer in 1967, but the boomers expressing themselves on TV or radio (create) a strong, positive perception of Expo 67." Nostalgia is a valuable commodity in politics. Candidates who campaign on a platform of change usually depict their promises through the prism of the past. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama hearkens to a day when the United States was economically strong and enjoyed the world's respect and opponent John McCain speaks of a simpler age when ordinary people had a role in determining what direction their country took. How much truth exists in either version of the past is debatable, but it makes for good oratory. Locally, where the political stakes may be less, the good old days aren't hard to locate. After 30 years of economic decline, an exodus of taxpayers to the suburbs and political trench warfare that pitted separatists against federalists, Montreal politicians in the here and now are hard pressed to rally the electorate to the promise of a better tomorrow. They've decided, instead, to stake their political futures on the memory of a better yesterday - in fact, a very specific collection of yesterdays from April 27 to Oct. 29, 1967, the golden days of Expo and a mayor named Jean Drapeau. The latest example occurred last week, when municipal opposition leader Benoit Labonté announced that he wanted Montrealers to work together to submit their city as a candidate to host the Universal Exposition for 2020. Brandishing a pair of passports from Expo 67, Labonté said the fair evokes memories of "the greatness of Montreal ... of a time when everything seemed possible. "The future seemed to belong to us, and it was probably the biggest moment of collective pride felt by Montrealers in the 20th century." Arguing that a second exposition could jump-start Montreal as a world class metropolis, Labonté invited all Montrealers - including Mayor Gérald Tremblay- to join in an effort to bring the show here. While some news organizations reported that Labonté's plan seemed to come out of the blue, the opposition leader had hinted broadly at it during an interview with The Gazette in May, saying that Montrealers needed a common cause they could focus their energies on and noting that the last time such a sentiment existed here was between Expo 67 and the 1976 summer Olympics. Whatever the genesis of Labonté's invitation, it was dismissed by city hall three hours after being made. "We like to dream with our eyes open," said Montreal executive committee member Alan De Sousa, describing Labonté's plan as "an electoral balloon." De Sousa's response wasn't totally unexpected, but it ignored the fact that pointing to the Drapeau-era as an inspiration for the future isn't a ploy invented by the municipal opposition. Tremblay has never spoken publicly about staging another world's fair here, but three years ago he did float the idea of luring another major event from the Drapeau-era back to Montreal. In August 2005 and flushed by the apparent success of the World Aquatics Championships, Tremblay mused that "Montreal will not wait another 30 years to renew acquaintances with the world," and that the city would "think" about bidding for the 2016 Olympic Games. Even though the idea went over like a lead balloon, the mayor's reverence for the Montreal of a generation ago came to the fore in speeches given during the 40th anniversary of Expo 67. "We owe to Jean Drapeau a great part of Montreal's recognition and international growth," Tremblay told a Board of Trade lunch as a slide show of Expo 67 pavilions flickered behind him. "Expo was a great project that marked our history and our imagination - an audacious project, the expression of an immense confidence in ourselves, in our capacity to create and invent." Even Projet Montréal, an opposition party holding one seat on city council and an equal amount of contempt for Tremblay and Labonté's policies, isn't immune from the lure of Expo. Party leader Richard Bergeron once observing that if Drapeau had dithered as much as the present administration, "the métro would never have been built." But while Linteau acknowledges that changes were afoot in Montreal and Quebec in 1967, it would be a mistake to think it was a magical time for Montreal. "The '60s were exceptional years," he says. "It was the Kennedy years in the United States. "We often look only at what Quebec was going through, but we were in the middle of a universe in transition." In fact, while the year may be remembered through rose-coloured mists, the reality was that the bloom was already leaving this city. Linteau acknowledges the optimism of the time - "when you consider all the projects that were being proposed, we thought there'd be 7 million people living in Montreal by 1980, that there would be 15 million visitors at Montreal airport by the end of the 1970s." But, he adds, "that optimism was quickly deflated because Expo occurred about the same time the decline of Montreal began. "Drapeau didn't care. Economic development and things of that nature were too trivial for him. He didn't notice our being overtaken by Toronto which, even by 1960, had passed Montreal as a major metropolis." Linteau notes that people usually like to be a part of something bigger than themselves. "A lot of humanity's monuments are the result of policies of grandeur and waste," he says. "Big projects are a bit megalomanical, but they get things moving, create change. "What's certain is that it's been a long while since we had that kind of project in Montreal. Just look at the bickering over the superhospitals." jmennie@thegazette.canwest.com

Tories looking for ways to cut gas price DANIEL LEBLANC Globe and Mail Update July 30, 2008 at 2:01 PM EDT LÉVIS, Que. — The Conservative Party will look over the next two days for ways to bring down the price of gas even though there is no room for major tax cuts, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said. Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning, Mr. Flaherty said his constituents have clearly told him about the impact of high gas prices on their household budgets in recent weeks. However, Mr. Flaherty cautioned that “this is a time of economic slowdown” and that his government has no plans to drastically change its course in coming months. “This is not a year for big new spending projects or big new tax reductions,” he said. Still, Mr. Flaherty said that the Conservative caucus will be exploring solutions to high gas prices at its current two-day meeting, including looking at a variety of tax measures that will be proposed by MPs. However, Mr. Flaherty shot down the notion that he could use $4-billion in revenue from a recent auction of wireless spectrum to send cheques directly to taxpayers to offset their heating bills. Mr. Flaherty said it is likely that a portion of the auction funds will be used to pay down the debt. “Our preference is to have structural change,” he said. “You can't spend your way out of a situation like this.” On law and order, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day showed that the Conservatives will continue to press for tough measures against criminals as a way to differentiate themselves from its political opponents. “We are alone on this,” Mr. Nicholson said, promising to toughen the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Mr. Day said his government is also looking to improve security in prisons, including getting rid of rules that prevent the government from forcing inmates to work or that hinder proper searches for drugs in prisons. On federal-provincial relations, Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon said his government will continue to foster the autonomy of the provincial governments in their areas of jurisdiction. Mr. Cannon, who is the Quebec lieutenant in the Harper government, said his party's position is clearly different from the Bloc Québécois's focus on sovereignty and the Liberal Party's centralizing view. “Our autonomy position as a political party is to respect the Constitution as it was written,” he said. Conservative MP Maxime Bernier also addressed reporters, saying he has nothing more to say about the controversy over his relationship with Julie Couillard, a woman who had relationships with a number of people tied to criminal biker gangs.

Cuban art makes a grand showing in Montreal By Diane E. Foulds, Globe Correspondent | February 3, 2008 MONTREAL - Canada is a great enabler. For years it has served as a virtual way station for travelers, allowing them passage to Havana without running afoul of US travel restrictions. Now it is making possible a journey through Cuban art. The prestigious Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is hosting the most comprehensive retrospective of Cuban art ever held outside Cuba's borders. More than three years in the making, the show surveys some 400 works by more than 100 Cuban artists. More than half of the works were brought from Cuba; the rest are on loan, largely from private collections in New York and Miami and museums, particularly Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art and the Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe, whose holdings of Cuban art are the world's largest outside Cuba. Paintings and photography dominate, but sculpture, poster art, music, video, magazine covers, installations, films, even cigar wrappers make an appearance, all with the objective of capturing Cuba's elusive national identity, or "cubanida." It is an ambitious task. For historical perspective, the museum has subdivided the show into five categories: colonial art of the 19th century, interwar avant garde, the post-World War II renaissance, revolutionary art after Fidel Castro's rise in 1959, and the caustic conceptualist art that has emerged since 1980. Each section begins with photographic close-ups of the people, conditions, and mood of the era, which is an education in itself. Murder victims slumped on the street, an unsmiling Ernest Hemingway in a bar, prostitutes waiting for customers. Girded with these impressions, you then see the period through an artistic lens. There are dark-haired beauties and strong colors, which you would expect in Caribbean art. Less predictable is the originality of the work, the result, in part, of the island's geographic isolation. The big surprise is how good it is. For Nathalie Bondil, director of the Montreal museum, it was a revelation. Having accepted an invitation to visit Havana's newly renovated Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the French-born art historian was astounded "by the scale and quality of the art," she said. On a whim, she proposed an exhibit. In the three years that followed, Bondil traveled to Havana eight times. Bureaucracy was minimal, she said, as unlike the United States, Canada enjoys good relations with Cuba. But the magnitude of the undertaking raises questions. Why, with Castro ailing, would Cuba roll out such a candid look at domestic achievements, hopes, and disappointments? Could the regime be loosening its grip? The timing was "nothing political," Bondil said. She acknowledged Cuba's current drive to spur tourism, saying more Canadians visit its ocean-swept beaches than any other nationality. Bondil's motive was simple: to take the lid off Cuban culture. To make it happen, Montreal has picked up the tab. The museum has added several pieces to its collection and is keeping the door open for future collaboration. Meanwhile, it is turning the show into a veritable Cuban celebration. Ongoing events include lectures, tours, and a Cuban film festival, including "Strawberry and Chocolate," an Academy-Award-nominated 1995 comedy about homosexuality. A 424-page catalog is being published in English, French, and Spanish. In its five chapters, some artists are given long-deserved recognition, like Marcelo Pogolotti, who produced hauntingly colorful avant-garde work in the interwar years. Authored largely by Cuban scholars, the essays don't mince words. Discussing a contemporary artist's habit of ridiculing political propaganda, for example, Panama-based art critic Gerardo Mosquera laments that political slogans "have reached heights of absurdity comparable to North Korean standards." The subtext is hard to miss. One is the message that there's a lot more to Cuban culture than crumbling facades and 1950s-era American cars. The fact that Canada is hosting the exhibit and not the United States, even though US institutions have larger collections of Cuban art, is a subtle reminder of the price the US public is paying for the embargo. Havana boasts a world-class art academy, an esteemed photography school, and an impressive, if little known, art scene. Little known, that is, except for Wifredo Lam (1902-82), who ranks among the 20th century's leading painters. A whole gallery of the show is dedicated to Lam, a surrealist and Picasso protégé who died in Paris and whose paintings are stylistic hybrids reminiscent of Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, and Wassily Kandinsky. Born to a Chinese father and an African-Cuban mother, Lam spent most of his life deconstructing the Afro-Cuban aesthetic. He lived many years in Europe, but returned to Havana in the 1960s. In 1967 he orchestrated one of Cuba's greatest artistic moments, the collective painting of a massive pro-revolutionary mural. The canvas, a patchwork of images radiating outward in a great spiral, was the handiwork of some 100 Cuban and foreign writers, painters, and intellectuals. Each was assigned a square; number 26 was reserved for Castro, but he never showed up, so the square was left blank. This is the mural's first appearance outside Cuba. One of the show's biggest revelations is how tolerant Castro has been of provocative art. Though dependent on Soviet subsidies, the Cuban leader eschewed Socialist Realism. And though artists were censored and even jailed in the 1980s and beyond, their defiance was not quelled. "Castro was always open to abstract and Pop Art," Bondil said. "It was completely different from the situation in Russia." When the Soviet subsidies vanished, living standards dropped, and works of art became even more politically abrasive, taking aim not only at Castro, but at the United States, too. A display called "Cuba, Island of Fiesta and Siesta," parodies the Cuban stereotypes pervasive in US society. But with Florida only 90 miles away, the US presence remains a constant in Cuban thought. All the more reason to hope that a similar show opens in the States. "I must say that the lenders have been especially touched and happy to collaborate with us on this show," said Bondil in an interview published in the January issue of the museum's magazine. "The passion for Cuban art transcends all borders." Diane E. Foulds, a freelance writer in Burlington, Vt., can be reached at dianefoulds@burlingtontelecom.net. http://www.boston.com/travel/getaways/canada/articles/2008/02/03/cuban_art_makes_a_grand_showing_in_montreal?mode=PF