BOISCLAIR: READ THE MANUEL

The Boisclair Blowup has once again reduced the PQ leadership race to
a hazy game of coke and mirrors. In case you've been living under a
rock - maybe a big, white, crunchy, crystalline rock, hmmn? - former
Quebec cabinet minister and now beleaguered young Parti Quebecois
leadership hopeful Andre Boisclair got outed as a cokehead several
weeks ago just as the leadership race left the starting line. For his
part, a reluctantly regretful Boisclair, no stranger to outing, says
he never did it on the job, was never an addict and has refrained
from powdering his nose for somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven
or eight years. And then Boisclair's popularity shot up double digits.

Smear campaign thus backfired, it was time for Boisclair's detractors
to regroup, rethink and realize they had... nothing. Except maybe a
grumpy, growly sleeping dog of a campaign issue lying at their feet.
So last week, at the general behest of fellow contender, former PQ
multi-minister and Deputy Premier Pauline Marois, Boisclair's
adversaries up and punted the pooch. Hostilities thus renewed, Marois
and gang made it clear that atonement would not be enough (especially
if they were to gain any kind of political mileage) and nothing short
of humiliation would suffice.

On Nov. 3, the Journal de Montreal reported that several opposition
candidates were saying, "Without clarification of the current
situation," i.e., his drug use, "the election of Andre Boisclair is
equivalent to nothing less than political suicide." Moreover,

that "their adversary [Boisclair] could become a very great risk for
the future of their party and the sovereigntist option. If Andre
Boisclair does not break his current silence on the circumstances
which surrounded his consumption of cocaine, he should desist from
the race to the leadership."

In other words, they want to know where he got it, for how much, was
it Peruvian Flake, was the count any good, could you sleep on it, and
did they deliver?

Personally, I don't think Boisclair needs to clarify a damn thing. In
fact, I'll even save him the trouble - I'll clarify it for him.

He bought a bunch of yayo. Or rather, he had his driver, his valet,
his bodyguard, his boyfriend or some other less recognizable lackey
get it for him. Or maybe just a well-stocked facilitator in his
immediate circle, since he denies ever purchasing it, which for the
most part I believe because he'd have to be far stupider than he
seems to have been out trolling for monkey dust in his ministerial
robes. Either way, he gets off on a technicality here.

He chopped it up with his American Express or Visa Aerogold or Diners
Club card. Making meticulous and utterly equal lines, I'd wager.

He rolled up a bill. Kate Moss got caught using a five-pound note,
but the safe money here says Boisclair used something with the Queen
on it, so we'll say your standard cokehead-issue $20 bill. And...

Ding dong! Pablo's your uncle!

(Repeat as required.) Interestingly, the other PQ leadership
aspirants claim that Boisclair's druggin', despite evidently not
being a liability now, will suddenly become so should he be at the
wheel when the PQ squares off against the Jean Charest Liberals -
that Boisclair himself, at a time when some polls have the yes vote
running at above 50 per cent, may be the gravest threat facing
sovereignty at this time.

Fair enough. We can all take a moment to savour that. Decide if we care.

While we're considering that, I'd like to point out an interesting
thing about our enormous neighbour to the south: They don't
appreciate the polvo.

Truth be told, they actually loooove the cocaine, consuming up to 350
metric tons per year, accounting for more than a third of the world's
total consumption with an estimated 4 to 4.5 million hardcore users.
But, in public at least, the U.S. government, she no love the
cocaine, and that could be a problem. Or maybe not...

Follow me here, because I have a plan: If and when Quebec finally
gains its independence, we're going to be dealing with a United
States that, as things stand now, is 39.3 times bigger than we are in
terms of population (with Quebec's comparatively non-existent birth
rate, and extremely low immigration rate, it has been recently
estimated that the population of Quebec will remain roughly the same
as it is now for decades), never mind economic output and various
other well-known forms of muscle.

We will be kings, of course, but only in Pipsqueakdom. In the grand
scheme of things, we will be roughly equivalent to, say, Panama.
Okay, granted, Panama doesn't have our natural resources, technology
base or hydroelectric incentives, but they do have this little
canal-type thing through which passes 14.3 per cent of American
trade, and which is also critical to the United States' ever
expanding concept of national security. Americans pay attention to
Panama. To Quebec, not so much.

President Bush's brief tour of Panama last Monday, at the tail end of
his failed attempt to re-interest Latin America in his Free Trade
Area of the Americas pipe dream, was notable for his entreaties -
however disingenuous and desperate - to the government for
discussions related to trade, power sharing and the drug trade, as
well as a proposed $10-billion investment in the upgrading and
widening of the Panama Canal, which has become too skinny for some of
their more bloated boats.

Right now Canada can't interest the U.S. in our concerns about
softwood lumber, cross border beef trade, drilling in the Alaska
reserve, new passport requirements, basically anything, and they're
supposed to be our best friends. Here's where Boisclair comes in and
puts an independent Quebec on the map.

You may remember the case of one Manuel Noriega, Panamanian general,
despot, puppet, fickle CIA operative, and wholesale cocaine dealer
and user in his spare time. None of which was a problem for the U.S.
government until innumerable other problems got in the way, and then
they seized upon his connection to Colombian marching powder and
voila! Instant scapegoat. And the U.S. hasn't turned its back on Panama since.

The cocaine-associated Boisclair may be just the kind of scapegoat -
or perhaps more appropriately, sacrificial lamb - an independent
Quebec needs. (And with Noriega, imprisoned since his ouster in 1990,
coming up for parole next year, the Americans too.) And should he
decide to hole up in St-Joseph's Oratory the way Noriega did in the
Panama City Vatican nunciature, it won't take the Marines blasting
Metallica to shake him loose. A little Cher, Patti LaBelle, or
something he finds equally distasteful should do.

Hell, Boisclair may prove to be the best long-term strategy for
Quebec independence yet. Because if we can't goad the U.S. into
having a reason to notice us, we will risk being squashed in our
sleep every time this enormous economic elephant rolls over.