see, quebec is the one place where i'm going to actually blame the people, not the government. or, at least, not the provincial government. and, some people...

again: this is a right-wing government, but it is also a secular government. that is a weird mix in the existing era, where right-wing governments have generally used religion as a tool of control. the thing is that the silent revolution cut across party lines, creating a situation where almost all religiosity in quebec is immigrating into it from outside of the province. so, there isn't a nativist right to whip up. what there is is a cultural consensus on secularism, which has ideological roots in the french revolution. that's leaving the fake left to represent immigrant communities, which make up almost all religiosity in the province. as a secular leftist, that puts me in a weird position. but, quebec might be a bit of a taste of the future in places like california, as well - it may represent a taste of the reversal of the spectrum on specific issues that is on it's way towards normalcy, continent wide.

so, what do i do when faced with secular fiscal conservatives and economic keynesians that align with the religious right? i don't know...

i know that the specific issues in front of us have led to me being a lot more lenient on them than i'd like to be, because they align on the secular v religious axis rather than the fiscally conservative v. economic keynesian one.

and, i think i'm going to be badly disenfranchised for quite a while, leading me to do this kind of thing more often. i've remained broadly critical of trump; even if i think he's frequently been less bad than what could have been, or might still be, i still think he's been pretty shitty. the caq, though, seems to at least actually be legitimately on the right side on a lot of these issues of secularism, empiricism, data - anything that reduces to that shift away from catholicism that defined revolutionary france. which isn't to compare legault to robespierre, either - even if i'm actually a little less critical of the reign of terror than the culturally english burkean conservative narrative around the events usually is. anarchism actually has it's ideological roots in defending the revolution against the burkean critique.

the provincial government made the right decisions around senior facilities, and they made those decisions early. i applauded them for it; almost on cue, they were criticized for being draconian, and insensitive to the social requirements of the elderly. but, i doubt those that made those arguments then would make them now. they also specifically cracked down on religious gatherings, and deserve a lot of credit for sticking to it.

the reason they have more cases is that they've done more testing, which is also commendable. they're testing at a far higher rate than anywhere else. that's the right approach; the low numbers in other provinces are reflective of incomplete data, and governments that are taking the wrong approach.

quebeckers also have the highest level of self-compliance with distancing rules, according to a number of metrics.

so, it looks like they're doing everything right....

but, people in certain communities seem to have not listened, and it's created a lot of hardship - within their own communities.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/covid-19-quebec-april-17-1.5535556