Like the spoiled child, Quebec is forever wanting.
"Want" and "need" are interchangable.
When it comes to Quebec politics, there is no difference.
Sacrifice? Make do? Go without?
Not in its programming.
As Sun Media's Eric Duhaime so ably pointed out, Quebec is the most indebted, taxed and unionized province yet, instead of delivering a budget that reflects the reality of its fiscal poverty, the Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest again beefed up taxes and porked up the debt by recklessly putting dozens of new programs and organizations on the credit card.
And, like the spoiled child, Quebec expect us -- the cash-strapped Rest of Canada -- to once again pay for yet another one of its wild spending sprees.
The child is incorrigible.
Frauchement!!(sic) we cry. Enough!
Fortunately, there is no "government" in Ottawa right now for Quebec to immediately run to with its "don't you love me anymore" plea for another bailout.
With an election on, it's gone into "caretaker" mode.
This obviously caught the child's financial guardian off guard because, in tune with the Charest government going fiscally berserk last week, its finance ministry prepared a 52-page budget appendix on ways to extort more money from Ottawa.
While it is undoubtedly now in the hands of Ottawa's bureaucrats, these mandarins can thankfully do nothing without an official government's signature.
So Quebec's snookered.
Look for Visiting Professor„¢ Michael Ignatieff to fly into Quebec City when he sees the time as ripe, however, to desperately promise the Charest Liberals he will cut whatever cheque is necessary -- as in the Harper-rejected megabucks for Quebec's sales-tax harmonization -- to get Quebecers to vote for his party.
Bad enough that we have the Bloc Quebecois to contend with, let alone Ignatieff prepared to play benevolent stepdad to this spoiled provincial child so he can take up residence at 24 Sussex, even though he now insists a coalition with the separatists and the NDP is not in the cards.
Don't be fooled. It took him forever to answer direct questions regarding a coalition and so it will take us forever to believe him.
Ignatieff will cave in to the spoiled child.
Harper has already shown he won't.