Quebec’s elections

I must apologize to the readers of this blog for the quietness imposed in the past months. It is certainly not because we had nothing to say, but rather the opposite. Camarada Justin is probably going to be away for a while and I was myself running in provincial elections under the banner of Quebec solidaire, the left-wing party of Quebec.

The experience was amazing. Even though I had no team to work with, solidarity and help could be found everywhere I looked. Newspaper interviews and invitations were flooding in. Considering the young age of our party, we weren’t invited to the chief debate but we imposed ourselves on the net, which was a incredible success.

The results of the elections ended as follow:

Liberals (right wing): 42%

PQ (right wing): 35%

ADQ (right-right wing): 16%

QS: (left wing party): 4%

PV (right wing pro-environment): 2%

The Election night was also filled with emotion as Quebec solidaire elected its first depute, Amir Khadir in Mercier’s County. The ADQ lost a bit more than half of their seats which couldn’t be handled by their chief, who stepped down immediately. The results weren’t even completely out. When we look at national assembly’s website, it appears that he would have also stepped down of his position of depute, to which he had just been re-elected. Immature decision which was covered up as something he had been thinking about for a long time.

This experience has thought me a lot about how to deal with medias and gave me my first experience with a lot of situations that we don’t come accross every days. I have realized that it is impossible to read an article in the newspaper and think that it is exactly what someone said, even if it is between quotes. Of all the interviews I have given, all of the articles that came out had quotes I had never said, implying things I had never said or let anyone conclude either.

Regarding Amir Khadir, he was sworn in yesterday and it was an historical event, no less. He is the first left-wing party depute to enter the assembly and even if he had to swore to the Queen, and THEN to Quebec’s citizens, he made himself clear that Quebec needed to get rid of that archaic monarchy that didn’t mean anything to us other than the conquest. I have wandered the net a bit for comments and it was hilarious to see a right-wing blog, jump on the fact that he took the defense of a refuge, who has been hiding in a church for over 1000 days, because the government isn’t helping.

He requested that Quebec’s government looks into this situation within its legislative powers, while the right-wing blog reports that Mr Khadir has done a mistake during his ceremony, asking for something only Canada could intervene in…may I remind them that he said -within Quebec’s legislative powers-?!

If there’s only one thing to conclude of this whole experience, it is to always, always seek deeper understanding than what is presented to you. The truth can’t be found anywhere, within a single document and in a simple form.

- Sabbi

Canada and GMO… a love match

On May 7^th 2008, the Harper government denied once again a bill (C-517) that would support mandatory labelling of genetically engineered food. Defeated 156 against 101 in the House of Commons, the conservatives are once again blamed for protecting Monsanto (leader in the GMO industry) instead of the well-being of Canadians.

For those of you who don’t know, Monsanto used to give in the pesticides and other chemicals before moving onto GMOs. That multi-national is now the leader of the industry with 90% of all the GMOs being produced there. Obviously, the company is protected by  the conservatives and liberals, to no surprise.

As defined in the bill: “ “genetically modified”, with respect to a food or one of its components, means that the genetic make-up of the food or component has been modified by a technique that combines DNA fragments of the food or component with DNA fragments from another source in a way that could not occur without the use of modern technology. “

It is to be noted that ONLY between 80% and 90% of Canadians in recent studies, have voiced concerns about GE food and wanted to see clear identification of the GMO products. Proof once again that representative democracy doesn’t work well in order to defend even the interests of the population’s majority.

Most people don’t trust GE food, and if they knew how many products are being manipulated partly or in their totality, it’s obvious that it would hurt the GMO industries along with the farmer who decided to go for those seeds. Yet they prefer to let the population unaware of what they are eating, rather than let us choose.

What I find funny here is that we still follow the United States in their process. While there’s about 40 countries that have forced the labelling of GMO products, Canada and the U.S. remain the only ones in the Western culture to still sit behind on that. Also interesting to note that in other countries such as France, Hungary, Germany, etc… the debate is either done or going, about the use of GMO in crop within the countries and importation of products GE banned.

The debate is now lying in the hands of provincial governments. They are the only ones able to respect the will of the citizens and force the labelling. The government of Quebec under Prim Minister Charest has been promising that since 2003 and obviously, nothing has been done still. We are the retarded children of the industrial world when it comes to this, when will we wake up?

- Sabbi