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Quebec is going down, and nobody gives a damn. As long as convenience stores can sell beer 24 hours a day.

Look around the place.

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Their old people steep in their own shit, people die asphyxiated in their cars, they can’t even manage a snowstorm, and civil servants are paid to do nothing.

They give fines to motorists stuck in the snow, but they release bandits on obscure points of law.

And what do they do when they’re faced with this kind of absurdity? They shrug their shoulders and laugh.

It’s non-stop giggles. Quebec is the paradise of comics and caricaturists. The place is a bloody mess, but boy, do they ever laugh.

Their province is officially the country’s poorest, and their debt is $280 billion.

But so what? As long as the Canadiens make the playoffs, everything’s okay.

Actually, I didn’t write any of that. And it’s not from the opinion piece in Maclean’s magazine that on Thursday cost the writer, Andrew Potter, his position as director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.