Sunday, March 16, 2014

Is Péladeau Harper’s man in the PQ?



So, is there a wolf among the sheep in Quebec?

A little over a week ago, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois was please to introduce her new star candidate Pierre Karl Péladeau to the people of Quebec.  This was quite a coup for the Parti Quebecois, bringing in a millionaire businessman as a candidate in the upcoming provincial election.

My question to Pauline is do you really want this guy around?

I really don’t know much about provincial politics in Quebec or any of the other provinces save Ontario where I live.  Let’s face it, Queen’s Park in Toronto provides enough lunacy to keep most of us entertained here and the Ontario media pretty much ignores the elections elsewhere unless something really exciting happens.  

The media decided that Pierre Karl Péladeau (PKP) was news and I guess he is.  As I noted earlier, he’s a millionaire with a media empire that spans the country and suddenly he’s a separatist.

When the Quebec election was called, Pauline Marois was careful not to bring up the R word or the S word.  Her focus, like every other politician in Canada it seems was on jobs and the economy.

Enter star candidate PKP.  Suddenly he’s a Separatist and ready for a Referendum, the two bugaboos that Pauline had been keeping away from.  Well PKP shoved them front and center, and Pauline shoved PKP away from the mics.

In short order PKP has hijacked the campaign, in a direction that Pauline was loathe to go… the question is why?

Well, PKP is was the President and CEO of Quebecor Inc, Quebecor Media, and the Sun Media Corporation, all three rather conservative organizations.  Among his holdings are the National Post and the Sun News Network which are pretty much the official organs of the Harper Party.

So why would a guy whose media empire thinks that the sun rises and sets on Stephen Harper suddenly jump to a separatist party?  To help Steve out maybe?

Huh?

OK, let’s step back a bit and look at the bigger picture.   

Steve’s been having a pretty rough go of it.  Even the things that he’s done right have turned to poop in his hands, that being the new ships for the Navy that we’ve paid $$$ for and haven’t seen a piece of steel welded yet.  His F-35 fiasco where we look to be buying fighter jets that may never get delivered for a price we may never be able to afford, and lest we forget, the PMO/Senate scandal starring Duffy and Wright, two of his own appointments.  And then there are the other issues in the Senate (Wallin and Brazeau) that he installed and is trying to run from.  I almost forgot the election stuff too… the reform bill, election fraud, campaign financing issues, robocalls…

Steve needs a distraction.  A big one.

So one of his lackeys says, "We need a new distraction? How about a Constitutional Crisis and threatened Referendum on Separatism?  Yep, that fits the bill."  This would give Steve the chance to wrap himself in the flag and go on about saving Canada from the PQ.  He’s the only one that really has something to gain from this.

Pauline Marois certainly didn’t seem interested in the R word and the S word.  I’m guessing she doesn’t think the time is right.  PKP, well his media empire could come under the microscope under the foreign ownership rules we have for media and communications, I doubt he’d like that.

No, I’m more inclined to believe that this could be a political power play to take the focus off of Harper’s missteps and buy him a chance of winning in 2015. 
What do you think?  Am I chasing ghosts or is there something that I don’t see here?

TTFN, BC

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