"Please proceed"

So the Parti Québécois is very, very busy right now trying to analyze what the hell went so wrong with their last election.  It's part entertaining, part pathetic.

And now they're mud-slinging and ripping their shirts open.  They're blaming poor-quality polls, and being forced to go off-message by other parties, and, especially, they are in agony over their own raison d'être - an independent Quebec.  Here are my favorite ideas coming out of the post-partum analysis by party.

1. "We lost because of PKP and his fist in the air".  Well, yes.  Yes, you did - in part.  But...  wait a minute.  Isn't Article 1 of your party's charter to become an independent state?  So, what you're saying is that you lost because the population was reminded of what you really stand for?  Ouch.
2. "We lost because we didn't talk enough about separation."  So you lost because the population was reminded that your entire reason for being is to eventually hold a referendum to become independent - but you also lost because you didn't talk about this issue enough?  My brain is starting to hurt...
3. "The Liberals used the Referendum Scarecrow to 'scare' people."  So are you saying that you don't want a referendum, and that the Libs are scaring people over something that will never happen?  Or are you saying that a referendum is, in fact, totally within your intentions, but that the Liberals are somehow cheating when they remind everyone that a referendum is your ultimate goal?  Because here's the thing: when you, yourselves, claim that any mention of a referendum is 'frightening' for voters, you are admitting that your reason for being is something to be nervous about.
4. "Marois put herself on the poster and didn't give the local candidates enough publicity".  So here's a newsflash: if you're in an electoral district that has a recognizable candidate like the party leader or someone well-known like, say, Agnes Maltais or Gaetan Barrette, then you recognize the name and face on the local poster. But at the end of the day, whether or not you actually know the person on the poster doesn't count for squat because a large number of people aren't really voting for a candidate: most of us are voting against the thing we don't want.  If you represent a separatist party, I ain't voting for you.  Period.  It's not about the platform, not about the local issues, not about whether or not I like the face on the poster or not.  Do you think another referendum is a good idea?  Do you really think that this issue is worth the m/billions of dollars it will take to achieve and that the money is not better spent on hospitals, schools and and pensions?  I'd rather vote for a crook who will give his buddy a contract to build a new hospital, thank you very much.
5. "Quebecers are cowards, unable to stand up and put on their pants." and/or "We lack vision as a nation".  Oh, yes, calling me a coward for standing up and saying no to something I do not want and that I know will most likely mortgage my child's future in the land of his birth will definitely convince to to adopt your point-of-view.  Calling me a cowardly unintelligent non-real-Quebecer will surely get my vote.  Riiiiiight.
6. "We tried good governance and it didn't get us re-elected, so we should drop the idea of building a good government and place our focus/energy/message back on the sovereignty issue." So you tried good governance and...  Wait - you actually think you tried good governance??  In the 18 moths you were in power you presented us with a governmental gong show with your divisive Charter for which you lied unabashedly about legal opinions, you tried to introduce nationalistic history classes for CEGEP students and toyed with the idea of revoking the right to attend English-language institutions at the collegiate level.  You reneged on balancing the budget deficit and ignored your own law on holding elections on fixed dates.  You called your own damn election at the time of your choosing instead of being toppled from your position as a minority government and got your asses handed to you by a party which remains on TV every day at the never-ending public inquiry on corruption.  You were like a government of circus clowns - and that is an insult to circus clowns, quite frankly.  If that was your attempt at "good government" I can't wait to see what you look/sound like when you drop "good governance" from your priorities.
7. "Our polls were wrong."  ORLY?  You're that bad at gaging public opinion?  You're that bad at picking your professional services?

And so I'm reminded of this : there was a turning point in the second Presidential debate between Obama and Romney, during which Romney sort of tries to trap Obama about Bengahzi, and Obama invites Romney to "please, proceed" with his line of thought.  Romney does, indeed, proceed, and proceeds to confirm that he is totally wrong. 

And so I sit at home reading about the PQ's plans to go back to their roots and re-take possession of the sovereignty issue - you know, the issue that over 60% of the population not only rejects but is so damn tired of having over their heads like a sword of Damocles that they would rather vote in a corrupt government for a four-year term over a separatist one?  The same issue that is losing ground with an increasingly open and worldly population, especially the young 'uns?  The issue that automatically shuts people down and turns them off at the very mention of it?  That issue?

Please, proceed.

Mirabel - Buh-bye and good riddance!

They're finally going to tear down the Mirabel Airport passenger terminal.

The terminal is built in the middle of farm-land and has sat unused for 10 years.  There's asbestos in the walls, the sprinkler system must be replaced and the roof is finished.  In its current state, it would be impossible to use it as a passenger terminal, and all efforts to rehabilitate the facility into something else (indoor outlet mall, office space, an entertainment complex, etc) have failed.  The airport authority spends at least $3 million a year just to heat it and keep the vandals and looters away.

It needs to go.

But there are plenty of otherwise intelligent people are shocked - SHOCKED I tell you - by the idea of demolishing this unused and useless drain of money.  And I just don't understand their resistance.  I can sympathize with their disappointment, certainly, but not with their insistence to keep it standing.

Since the issue is all over the news, I have learned more of the history behind this fiasco.  Despite being old enough to have traveled through the airport, its inauguration in 1975 makes it so that I have no living memory of the events that saw this airport come to life.  Other than knowing it was in a stupid location and that it was hard to get to, the only other thing I knew about it was that many, many families and farmers were expropriated from their lands and homes in order to build the airport.

And so now I learn more about the incredible hubris and short-sighted nature of the entire project, where Montreal would be welcoming 50 million passengers by 2000 (we welcomed about 12 million in 2013) and at least 4 more terminals, three more landing strips and a train running between Mirabel and Montreal would be added.  The land was taken from the locals and only 1 terminal and 1 strip were built.  The terminal building was described as an example of the modern architecture Quebec was capable of building.  Oh, glorious day.

Except it wasn't.  The air industry adopted Toronto as a hub, and times, they were a-changin.  Without a good way to get people to and from Montreal efficiently, eventually all air traffic was moved back to Dorval and Mirabel was cooked.  And then the terminal stayed unused for ten years while we paid millions and millions every year just to leave it standing.

And now that somebody has finally put their grown-up pants on and decided that this ridiculous, unjustified spending of money had to stop, we have mayors and residents getting their dreamy underpants in a bunch.  Oh, noes, we can't tear it down!!  Because, you know, that would be admitting defeat and what about the people who were expropriated??  There was a LTE in La Presse over the weekend that even lamented that the tearing down of this money pit meant that we we no longer allowed to dream, or some other philosophical nonsense that didn't deserve to be printed.  Even Montreal's new uber-Mayor says that he will ask for a injunction to keep the demo from happening and to buy time in order to 'rehabilitate' the building.

Do I feel for the people who lost their homes for this out-of-all-proportion pipe dream?  Of course I do.  But nobody has explained how the wrong of keeping the building standing 'rights' the wrong of those useless expropriations.  How, exactly, would this monument to governmental error and misjudgement soothe the hurt caused by the expropriations?  I would think that nothing could right that wrong.  And if it were me, I would curse the presence of that reminder everyday that it remained standing.

How can we even afford to leave it up as a silent, empty museum?  We can't.  Not in a province that has a huge deficit and is wondering how they will provide its citizens with adequate health care and pay their retirement pensions.

And call me unsophisticated, but a squat rectangle covered in curtain-wall glass in the middle of a field is not the type of architecture that I feel needs to be preserved through a $3 million maintenance bill.  This ain't Mount Rushmore or even The Big Owe.  It's a building nobody goes to and nobody ever sees.  I would bet a dollar that if you showed a picture of the terminal to most people on the street that they would not be able to identify it.

Those who are opposed to the demolition accuse the pro-demo people of lacking vision.  Hey...  wasn't Mirabel built because people had a little too much "vision" in the first place?  Maybe it's time we had a little less vision and more open-eyed reality.
 Is this airport and its terminal a giant flop?  A mistake?  You betcha.  But a mature and intelligent society does not fear its mistakes.  It admits them, learns from them, and moves on.  It does not keep making a yearly $3 million mistake to bury its head in the sand over the initial error.