Québec Liberal Party adopts idea of Québec as a "nation"

So recently the Québec Liberal Party had a general meeting, and one of the policies voted on during the meeting was if the Liberal Party of Québec should support the term "Québec as a nation".

The party agreed to the idea, but this will only cause separation within the party. There's the Québec "Liberals" who are federalists and believe in Canada an entirety, while there's others who want Québec to have more power than the rest of the provinces, or in some cases, even separation.

I believe the francophones in Québec deserve to have the socio-cultural anthropology definition of nation as a group of people who live in an area who have different characteristics than another culture, but not in the political sense. At the same time, the francomanitobains in Saint Boniface could also be concidered a "nation", same with hutterite/mennonite people on the prairies.. etc.

If these people want a degree of separation in Québec, why aren't they in either the Parti Québecois or the Québec Solidaire Party? They're both sovereignist parties.

The whole idea of "Québec as a nation" will cause some tension at the upcoming Federal Liberal Party leadership convention.

If this continues, the ADQ has a chance of picking up a large chunk of seats in the National Assembly since there will be many people who will want an alternative to Charest's Liberals and the Parti Québecois, and they seem to be more of a nationalist party than Parti Québecois will ever be. Quebec is a changing province, it's becoming more and more accepting towards Canada over time, although in some communities the French language is starting to die.

Link: Parti Liberal du Québec

Saskatchewan to lower PST to 5%

Saskatchewan, the land of Tommy Douglas, Great Western Brewery, and being famous for being that "rectangle" province is planning on lowering the PST rate to 5%.

This is pretty big news, in my opinion, since Saskatchewan will now have the second lowest PST rate in Canada, after Alberta with 0%.

The PST cut is planned to take effect tonight at midnight, usually there would be a specific time frame for this sort of tax cut, but it seems like the NDP party in Saskatchewan may be doing this for an attempt to attract voters to the party when Saskatchewan has an election next year.

However, here in Manitoba, there are no plans for a tax decrease, for the whole fact that the NDP government here caused a big deficit in the last few years, cutting hospitals, yadda yadda yadda..

There may be an election in Manitoba by next summer, so we will see what the Liberals or the Progressive Conservatives have planned for the future of Manitoba's economy, I'm not too pleased myself with the Manitoban economy.

Links: Sask cuts PST
Manitoba will not

Garth Turner Kicked out of Conservative Caucus

So it looks like Garth Turner, MP for the Conservative party was kicked out of the Conservative party for his blog that he maintains, on his blog he openly criticizes his own party when he disagrees with policies of the party.

Turner made a recent return to politics, since he was an MP for the Progressive Conservatives in the early 90s, he was also the Minister of National Revenue for Kim Campbell.

I personally feel that it took quite a bit of guts to do what he did, but the problem was that he was elected as a Conservative and people expect him to win as a Conservative, but he believes to represent his constituents first, his party second, which is what each MP should do. Rumour has it he will make the move to the Green Party, be the first MP they've ever had.. who knows? We'll see.

Linky: Here
His Blog: Here