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Anyone wanting to run for public office in a Quebec led by Pauline Marois will have to prove they can speak French first, the Parti Quebecois leader said as she announced her latest language-related campaign promise Tuesday. The PQ leader said anglophones, allophones and aboriginal people will be forbidden from seeking municipal or provincial office unless they have an appropriate knowledge of French. Marois said the idea is reasonable, given that French is the official language of Quebec. "We will present this bill but it is not just for new Quebecers — it is for everyone," Marois said during a...

The 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia has emerged as the world's most powerful crime group due to its obscene profits from the cocaine trade in Europe, and it further has become entrenched in Australia, Canada and the United States with surprisingly little push back from law enforcement in those countries. Indeed, Nicola Gratteri, a top anti-Mafia prosecutor in Italy warns that "this mafia is quickly spreading in the United States, particularly in Florida and New York" as reported by Beatrice Borromeo for The Daily Beast: Gratteri's latest operations have led to the sentencing of 34 'Ndrangheta members and have uncovered a...

How a bizarre legal case involving a mysterious billionaire could force 1.2 million Canadians to be married, against their will. Somewhere in North America, there is a place where little girls don’t give the slightest thought to what kind of wedding dress they’ll wear one day. A place where young men have never heard the expression: “why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free?”—because the milk is always free. A place where no one asks an unmarried couple expecting a baby if they’re getting hitched. This place is the province of Quebec. The French language spoken...

In Quebec, the students are revolting. This is both surprising and utterly predictable: surprising because college students in French Canada have by far the best financial deal in the country and should thus be the last people to complain, predictable because the Québécois have a long history of being difficult and demonstrate adroitly that, even when surrounded, the French will be the French. The student protests in the province are now into their third month and, last week in Victoriaville, flared once again into spasmodic violence. Of the 2,000 protesters, 106 were arrested after eleven people — four of them...

QUEBEC—With the clock ticking down on the federal long-gun registry, the Quebec government has taken legal action to save its data. The province announced Tuesday that it has filed a motion in Quebec Superior Court to block the federal government from destroying the registry information. The Quebec government says it wants to maintain its own registry with its share of the records — but can’t do it if the feds destroy the data, as promised, once its anti-registry bill becomes law. Time is running out. The legislation is on the verge of being adopted in the Senate. So Quebec, as...

Unlike the rest of Canada, Quebec must think there are dangerous criminals, and even another Marc Lepine, lurking among law-abiding farmers and hunters whose names are in the doomed long-gun registry. If that is the case, those farmers and hunters should be outraged with the Liberal government of Jean Charest. They're being played as pawns. Why, for example, would Quebec Public Safety Minister Robert Dutil announce his government will go to court if the Conservatives use their majority in Parliament to pass legislation abolishing the 16-year-old registry for rifles, shotguns and varmint-hunting pot-shooters? Does he have an empty chamber in...

Quebec is set to take legal action against the federal government to save data from the soon-to-be-abolished long-gun registry, according to reports. The Canadian Press first reported the Quebec government planned to announce the move Tuesday. Radio-Canada's Quebec City bureau has confirmed the report. Robert Dutil, the province's public security minister, will reveal details of the legal suit while accompanied by police brass, police unions, victims' groups and crime experts. The Conservatives have been working for years to end a registry they call wasteful, ineffective, and which they oppose on principle. The legislation to abolish the registry is expected to...

In an unusual move an Italian magistrate has publicly announced a wide-ranging investigation to target public officials who have become dirty tools for the country's Mafia groups as reported by Michael Day for The Independent: "organised crime was continuing to spread through Italy 'like a cancer' thanks to the 'white-collar mafia' of acquiescent public officials and politicians." Magistrate Ilda Boccassini's bold announcement follows the arrests earlier this week of a cop, a judge and a politician for allegedly servicing the 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia. * * * The 'Ndrangheta has become Italy's most powerful Mafia group due to its obscene...

I wrote about the murders of Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia and their father's first wife Rona over two years ago, when their bodies were found in the Rideau Canal in Kingson, Ontario: Three or so weeks back, a submerged car was found in the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ont., containing the bodies of three teenage girls and their aunt — a story initially reported as Mysterious Death Of 4 Quebecers Baffles Kingston Police. When it emerged that the four female Quebecers were, in fact, Muslim, the tearful parents offered up a strange tale of an impromptu midnight driving lesson...

There are the countless stories of conversions from one religion to another, from atheism to belief and from belief to atheism. All of these leaps of faith are interesting, because the same uniquely human faculty - the ability to critically examine the received wisdom of one's youth, and to reject it in favour of other more compelling resolutions to one's spiritual discomfort - can lead to so many disparate and often contradictory solutions. Whatever the intellectual process that leads to such a dramatic change in a life, the final step is always a leap of faith. On Oct. 1, La...

MONTREAL — Paula Celani will be in a Montreal courtroom Nov. 1 fighting a fine for attending an illegal Roman Catholic Mass.Canadians of all religious faiths – and even those who care only about protecting Charter freedoms – should cross their fingers that she wins.Celani actually showed up to fight the case this week. Alas, three public sector “witnesses” expected to testify against her were no shows so the matter was delayed until the day after Halloween.“I’m not sure why I’m the one who has to make the effort to come back when they’re the ones who didn’t show up,”...

Canada's new favorite couple, Prince William and his new bride Catherine, are in the midst of enjoying their honeymoon tour of our nation. While some of us are following their travels with great enthusiasm and others with indifference, leave it up to the folks in the perpetually-complaining province of Quebec to cause a ruckus. Normally I would ignore the droning of the French - we've all become so accustomed to it. However, one of the 'hard-done-by' protesters had a home made sign that cause great laughter in the Sullivan home:

Four children ages 9, 7, 5 and 3 from a homeschooling Catholic family in Notre-Dame-des-Bois in Québec, Canada have been ordered into public school for socialization and non-phonics reading instruction. As Lydia McGrew explains: This case from Canada, which one would like to think couldn’t happen in the U.S., is a fairly egregious example of judicial micromanagement: Judge Nicole Bernier (it would be a female judge!) ordered four children from a home schooling family into school and, in the case of children too young for school (down to age 3), into daycare so as to get what Judge Bernier calls...

Four children ages 9, 7, 5 and 3 from a homeschooling family in Notre-Dame-des-Bois in Québec, Canada have been ordered into public school for socialization. The Roman Catholic family, who have been homeschooling their children for four years, were reported to the youth protection services (YPS) for neglect and had a four-day trial in November 2010. The judge in the case, Judge Nicole Bernier, ordered that the children remain in school or in day care until YPS officials approved a plan for socialization. However, because of apparent bias against homeschooling and these parents, this is unlikely to ever happen. HSLDA...

If there were to be a strike, wouldn't it make sense that it happen when the targets least expect? That would seem logical. Also logical would be to assume that al Qaeda has continued to evolve and use 'outside the box' thinking. They know that while all of the changes in security policies and procedures implemented since 9/11 haven't been perfect (TSA), it has become increasingly difficult to execute a large-scale attack. With the price of oil certain to rise and the global economic situation as volatile as ever, one could expect our energy infrastructure to be a prime target....

This is an attempt to force the french language down the throats of non-french Canadians. Geographically and culturally, Alberta is about as far removed from Quebec as you can get. Caron's intentions - like many of the minority french Canadians - is to use all means possible to entrench their language, and by default their culture - into the lives of the Canadian English. The tactic is suspiciously similar to that used by other groups such as the followers of Islam and their attempts to install Sharia law on the majority. Great company to keep, Gilles.

The Quebec government had the opportunity to be the first province to enact meaningful reform in health care, but instead it got cold feet. By cancelling its planned $25 user fee for seeing a doctor, Quebec caved in to special interest groups that refuse to acknowledge the necessity of changing how we pay for health care in this country. Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, acknowledging in his budget speech earlier this year that Quebec's health care system is in serious financial trouble, proposed two new measures: the $25 user fee for seeing a doctor, and a new health tax applied...

Maclean's magazine has unleashed a firestorm with a controversial cover story -accompanied by the iconic figure of Bonhomme Carnaval carrying a suitcase stuffed with cash -that depicts Quebec as "the most corrupt province" in Canada. Politicians of all stripes lashed out at what they called a new episode of Quebecbashing yesterday, while phone-in radio shows were flooded with angry callers. The provocative article, which delved into a series of recent scandals and suggested the province is "perpetually rife with scandal," prompted Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe to send an open letter to the media, asking: "Are Canadians xenophobic?" "Unfortunately, this...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WKTV) - Four people are dead after a crash involving the low cost bus carrier Megabus in the Syracuse suburb of Salina. Authorities say the double decker bus carrying at least 20 people hit the bottom of a railroad bridge around 2:30 Saturday morning. Investigators say the bus was too tall to make it under the low-clearance bridge on the Onondaga Lake Parkway. The bus left Philadelphia at 10:00 Friday night and was headed for Toronto with stops in Syracuse and Buffalo. Besides the four people killed, numerous others were taken to hospitals with injuries ranging from critical...

World court rules for Kosovo. Adviser to Parti Quebecois likens decision on unilateral declaration to 'right to strike' By KEVIN DOUGHERTY, The Gazette July 28, 2010 7:36 AM QUEBEC - A World Court ruling that Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia did not violate international law means Quebec also has the right to declare its independence unilaterally, a senior Parti Quebecois strategist said Tuesday. Louis Bernard -noting the 1998 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that if there is a clear vote for secession in a clear referendum, the federal government must negotiate with Quebec -said the World Court decision...