How many people in Quebec are like Viper and Grallon?

[crazy canuck]

I don't love everything French. I am a supersonic ball of hate.

[garbon]

You are the one who said you must act now before it gets worse.

I have trouble enough concentrating and organizing my thoughts, is that too much to ask that you read what I post?  I guess it's the Languish way.

I did read what you posted. I also think you might want to try harder on organization as that post was a mish mash of various odd elements.

[Zoupa]

For the record I find this project from the PQ pretty ridiculous and clearly electoralist. Ugly politics. The laws, regulations and directives we already have in place are plenty, they're just not enforced properly.

[dps]

Define Canadian culture. Tim Hortons and hockey don't count.

Curling, politeness, and a massive inferiority complex.

[Eddie Teach]

Define Canadian culture. Tim Hortons and hockey don't count.

Curling, politeness, and a massive inferiority complex.

Smugness about guns, religion and health care. And hockey definitely counts. The few Americans who watch it do it for the fights.

[Berkut]

Wow, this thread certainly has delivered, as all these threads do.

Blatant racism, bigotry, and xenophobia not so cleverly disguised as some perverse form of national/racial/linguistic "pride". It is positively Orwellian.

[Barrister]

For the record I find this project from the PQ pretty ridiculous and clearly electoralist. Ugly politics. The laws, regulations and directives we already have in place are plenty, they're just not enforced properly.

[Malthus]

Define Canadian culture. Tim Hortons and hockey don't count.

I suppose you demand a simplistic answer knowing one does not exist.  The great thing about Canadian culture is its diversity.  We are not like other nations who strive for a unifying national identity because we recognize we have many.  From BB's love of everything northern to Grey Fox's love of everything french and my love of all the racial and cultural diversity of Vancouver and everything in between.

Valmy is quite right that part of our identity is to strongly identify with not being American because, on the one hand they are quite similar to us, sharing the same continent, many of the same languages, many of the same laws and most importantly almost all of the same news, sports and entertainment media.  But for all our similarities there are significant differences and it is in part those differences that run deep within our cultural impulses.  For example, on the whole we are much more community minded.  Almost all Canadians are willing to pay for universal single payor health care system.  Not just because it is a superiour model of health delivery (that only became apparent after the fact). It was because we found the notion of a Canadian not having access to health care to be abhorent.  That is something which is deeply rooted in our culture.  There are of course many other such examples.

"Peace, order, and good government".

Despite its technical purpose, the phrase "peace, order and good government" has also become meaningful to Canadians. This tripartite motto is sometimes said to define Canadian values in a way comparable to "liberté, égalité, fraternité" (liberty, equality, fraternity) in France or "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the United States. Indeed, peace, order and good government has been used by some scholars to make broad characterisations of Canada's political culture. US sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, for example, contrasted POGG with the American tripartite motto to conclude Canadians generally believe in a higher degree of deference to the law.[5] As Canadian historian Donald Creighton argued in his report to the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations,[6] the expression was used interchangeably in the 19th century by Canadian and Imperial officials with the expression Peace, Welfare and Good Government. The term Welfare referred not to its more narrow modern echoes, but to the protection of the common weal, the general public good. Good government referred to good public administration, on the one hand, but also had echoes of what we now talk of as good governance, which incorporates the notion of appropriate self-governance by civil society actors, since one element of good government was thought to be its limitation to its appropriate sphere of responsibility.

This is exactly why those in English Canada find the current Quebec government initiative disturbing - it is contrary to the cultural predeliction for "good government", meaning appropriate governance. It is seen as an excess, an unwarranted intrusion by the government in matters better left ungoverned by the authorities.

[Admiral Yi]

"Peace, order, and good government".

This is the kind of slogan you get when you tell a committee to come up with one.

No offense but Canada does seem to be lacking the distinctiveness other Dominions have.  The Kiwis are more English than the English, Australians still think like ex-cons and bandits, South Africans have the whole Boer thing going on.

Well I suppose what really makes Canada unique is the French minority.  And hordes of shiftless Indians.

[Valmy]

I dare say old man that 'peace, order, and good government' do sound like distinctly English obsessions. 

[Malthus]

"Peace, order, and good government".

This is the kind of slogan you get when you tell a committee to come up with one.

No offense but Canada does seem to be lacking the distinctiveness other Dominions have.  The Kiwis are more English than the English, Australians still think like ex-cons and bandits, South Africans have the whole Boer thing going on.

Well I suppose what really makes Canada unique is the French minority.  And hordes of shiftless Indians.

No offence, but the intention wasn't to amuse you Yanks, but to create a society we would want to live in. 

[derspiess]

Wow, this thread certainly has delivered, as all these threads do.

Blatant racism, bigotry, and xenophobia not so cleverly disguised as some perverse form of national/racial/linguistic "pride". It is positively Orwellian.

I think I missed the racism

[Eddie Teach]

The Kiwis are more English than the English,

In my limited experience(watching Flight of the Conchords), they're more like Australians. Or perhaps more like Canadians, in that their identity is mostly involved in being not Australian. 

[Admiral Yi]

No offence, but the intention wasn't to amuse you Yanks, but to create a society we would want to live in. 

As cultures are not created by intention, I assume you're talking about the slogan.

The slogan was clearly formulated with the intention of offending no one.  Who can possibly be against good government?

[Barrister]

Peace, order and good government is actually a line from our 1867 constitution:

It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada, in relation to all Matters not coming within the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces; and for greater Certainty, but not so as to restrict the Generality of the foregoing Terms of this Section, it is hereby declared that (notwithstanding anything in this Act) the exclusive Legislative Authority of the Parliament of Canada extends to all Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say,