Quebec as a Bachelor’s Pad

Father de Souza has an insightful article on why Andre Bosclair is a good representative of contemporary Quebec in today’s National Post (sub. req.):

For some 200 years after the French defeat at the Plains of Abraham, a distinct culture survived, and even flourished, under the protection of the Church. Post-1960, that task would be given to the state. Repudiating their religious heritage, Quebec’s quiet revolutionaries channelled their energy into building a social democratic state.
…
Having sold their cultural birthright for a mess of politics, Quebecers handed over the future of their nation to the state. With the national project now entrusted to the government, Quebecers simply stopped producing Quebecers. It was no longer necessary to hang on to the cultural patrimony of Quebec generation to generation, father to son, mother to daughter. The state would do that now, passing laws against English signs and providing cheap electricity and cheap education and generous social assistance and favourable labour laws. What need was there for children?

Quebecers were apparently unfazed by Boisclair’s admission that he used cocaine while serving in Bouchard’s Cabinet. It was shrugged off as the kind of thing that marked Boisclair’s raucous past. But it speaks to a hedonism and frivolity characteristic of someone unburdened by responsibility. That has been the Quebec story since 1960 — the organs of culture have gone on holiday.

Though the Bouchard manifesto returns over and over to the issue of Quebec’s “demographic decline,” a more accurate phrase would be the death of a nation. Quebecers may be masters in their own house, but rather than the head of a bustling household, the future looks more like a party boy living it up in his cool party pad. That is Andre Boisclair’s Quebec.