Couillard's Spring Cabinet: Start with one Gutsy Lady de Santis and then another, and ..

Between Caffe Italia on Blvd St. Laurent and Caffe San Simeon on Dante mid way between St. Laurent and St. Dominique, there are about sixty footsteps. Most habitues of the one occasionally wander over for a chiacchierata with a buddy that's waiting for another buddy but likes the charm of one Caffe more than the other. These days however, the coffe-shops are filled with raucous and discussions of which Liberal MNA will get which cabinet post and, if you listen very attentively without closing in-some people may get the wrong vib, whether the Italian MNA-Rita de Santis will get anything.

In my opinion, de Santis is a gutsy lady. She showed up to the Party when most members were licking their wounds, tying new knots or fading into prehistory. As a junior MNA she assumed the role of Health critic and for most of the time was soft-spoken with little media visibility. According to many, that was the best thing she did. Glitter and glamour don't befit her. The lady has a Biochemistry background before taking her McGill Law degree and moving up the difficult trek at Davies Ward Phillips Vineberg to become a Partner. The rest is part of the profession's gilted secrets.

Do you give her a gender ministerial role? come on ragazzi, this is Little Italy, those days are gone.
Do we keep her away from Business? I liked that approach from a nonno, waiting for the nod, but the nod never came? My first reaction was -apart from Finance most roles in the area are junior. No Besinessss! said his cumpar  
Plug-ins as recognition of loyalty and deserving of merit: immigration, culture, and other elements in that subset. No!No! E piu ingamba! saith the Caffe owner.
Education? says the Mercedes owner. Some kid from Casgrain near St. Zotique who attended Concordia University a few years ago remembers her as a bit too intransigent: Fammi 'sto piacere..qualch'altro posto per l'Avvocatessa. 

Well, she's smart lawyer, intransigent (have a problem believing that), loyal, gutsy, ambitious,  perfectly bilingual, also speaks "I-talian" according to a Boston tourist that visits his mom every six months. From the corner table Virgilio throws out- e perche non Justice, Sante, Energie. She was after all, it seems, mentored by Me. Ciaccia- a former Bourassa cabinet minister for Energies et Ressources (1985-89). Virgilio has been around for a lifetime-according to some.  They brag that all he eats is rapini.  Now Energy covers big files and big issues and big business,and she's acquainted very well with the operations of Hydro Quebec.

Positions formed and conversations, sometimes monologues dragged on, tugging one way and the other. It had been a while that Little Italy had been so a-buzz with bickering. The last noise was, I think, Sunday morning after the Soccer matches. This time the buzz was pleasantly enjoyable. Uno !! NO, UNA dei nostri, piuttosto delle NOSTRE was breaking through, and from their perspective she was better than tutte le altre with the exception of one, according to un commendatore, (figuratively), a darling of Quebec and Canada-Marie-Josee Drouin, now Marie-Josee Kravis, from Ottawa, who unfortunately never ran for public office, and has since, like many others, left La Belle Province and le Pays du Nord for the world.

As for de Santis. I like Tullio's outburst. Justice! Ci vogliono cogl.... e lei ne ha! Some expressions get Lost in Translation.

Ministre de la Justice: sounds fine. Balance out the snickers- most modern jurisprudence has origins in Roman Law, and this should weigh in against the -phobes. But then she likes to travel the trade routes, the human right routes...her parliamentary Committee work is also the world at large to the US, Europe, the rest of Canada. Yet, I still think Justice is a good fit.

So is Ministre de la Sante et des Services sociaux: Big in the US, Big in Canada and BIG in Quebec. BIG Challenge for a Gutsy Lady. La Sante a good fit.

Bets? ummm...too early in spring.

PS. If you're lucky while strolling through Little Italy, towards Caffe Via Dante (another well kept secret for a good restaurant) and Patisserie Alati-Caserta (best Zeppole di San Giuseppe in the world) you may catch a glimpse of another of La Petite Italie's best kept secrets-Angelo Mingarelli -probably the world's best mathematician in his field, walking his infamous dog.

Philippe Couillard's Printemps Quebecois and the Great Rout of 2014

Not to mime Chaucer's own Canterbury Tales in his praise of April 

         Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

                  When April with its sweet-smelling showers

         The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

                 Has pierced the drought of March to the root,

         And bathed every veyne in swich licour

                 And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid

        Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

                 By which power the flower is created;

but we all churn the images of the poet during our daily walks to office, plant, school, play and home. We revisit the same images metaphorically in conversation about the politics of the day, of the weeks and months, and of coming years. The imagery is universally present. Yet, notwithstanding how admirable the bard's prowess in designing one of Quebec's spoken languages, and unraveling the season's mystery-Quebec politics, and the recent Quebec electoral results makes for equally majestic reading during this 'Cruellest of Months'. Even stern Tom Eliot would agree that Marois' short-lived minority government ended with a 'bang' and not a 'whimper' for most Quebecers.  In this sense, we relive the ambivalent April of Eliot and Chaucer in the oxymoron character of political life, its " bitter sweet" season:  but never more poetically than in the Fall of one Government and Rise of a new National Assembly controlled by a Liberal majority. 

In tune with Chaucer's best and brightest, This Liberal Majority should promise Quebec

growth and health as Nature renews its own commitments during this Spring. 

In marked contrast to Nature's glory, a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln serves best as to the reasons for the Parti Quebecois' Great Rout of 2014 

"You can fool all the people some of the time, 

and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."  

Quebecers have had enough of vacuous and pompous rhetoric. Contrary to some media coverage-most Quebecers rejoiced in dismissing the gratuitous  platform of a waning and unenlightened political Party minority while Quebec citizenry endured the dismal woes and dire pangs of economic misfortunes. 

Quebec leads the country in public debt notwithstanding the highest tax imposition rates in the country. It tops the migration list with most departures, staggers in growth and straddles with respect to trade.

Earth's young history has had a Prague spring, a Chinese Spring and an Arab Spring, and who knows how many more unsung springs. For some of us less ambitious in scope, but more resilient to the caveats of Quebec Politics-we can finally acclaim a blooming Quebec Spring greeted by Nature and Nurture's  'sweet showers'. Similarly, as far as Quebec Politics goes, when it rains it pours and yesterday's Parti Quebecois debacle was a predictable downpour given the unfounded policy options and sham debates of the party's platform. 

Unfortunately, it left the 2014 National Assembly with two incumbent members of and a newly elected MNA from the riding of St Jerome, m. PELADEAU, whom some would caricature as the Teflon Kid. With the presence of the  Messrs. Drainville, Lisee, (exit Bureau-Blouin branded as Kid Kodak) and Peladeau, the opposition in the National Assembly has reduced its status from tolerable to mediocre. Its brightest members, with the exception of Mme Marois, all defeated. Honest Parti Quebecois women and men, again with the same exception, suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that ensued from ill-founded social and economic platforms framed by a vacuous group of aspirants and opportunists who placed personal vanity before Quebec's future. 

Attributed to Mark Twain, the following offers the appropriate wit in their regards: 

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool 

than to open it and remove all doubt."

One presumes History confirmed the wit.

As a result the defeated PQ women and men, again excluding the same Marois, deserved no better than a rout, and with the Party's remaining four above-mentioned should expect nothing better in the future...

The fate of the Parti Quebecois lies in the hands of ex-MNA Kid Kodak and the Teflon Kid, and the two feuding amigos. 

For this majority Liberal Assembly, led by a talented Philippe Couillard,  to sustain momentum, it must rally around economic issues, and put aside social and political irritants.  It must stop the emigration wave and momentum that is plaguing Quebec demographics. It must abandon the idea that balanced budgets are solutions to financial stability; it should assume with resolve the need to create deficits if necessary- dislodging the unsupported myth that deficits harm an economy and a society. US economic policy for over half-century has instances showing the contrary. US economic policy since 2008 shows quite the contrary. Look South, not only for wisdom but for vision after failure.  

Premier Couillard must establish coherent regional initiatives that put people to work. Invest heavily into education, biomedical research and development and infrastructure to support and promote preventive medicine, and eliminate the bottlenecks and impasses that contaminate the health system and undermine the social and economic fabric of Quebec society.   This new Government should propose improved benchmarks that contain a measure of competitive resolve and realistic visions, calibrated by Quebec's resources and expectations, and desire for innovation.  

There is no expectation to be the best  first time around; there is a need to show that we are on the way to becoming the best!. That will attract immigration and retain citizens; Fiscal and industrial initiatives must be supported by expansionary fiscal policy at the individual and corporate level.  Quebecers are an innovative people; our society and our government must provide the appropriate ecology for innovation. 

It was and is now time for economic innovation and action, and the mandate of this Liberal Victory should focus on the economic future of Quebec society. Philippe Couillard's Liberal Majority cannot repeat the omissions of its predecessor.