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Quebecers, bless our hearts, have the enduring gift of self-righteousness. There is hardly a vexing social issue in the rest of the country — nationalism, women’s rights, immigration, to name a few — that hasn’t first roiled our 1.37 million square kilometres, and we are more egalitarian, more enlightened and certainly more cultured than our brethren beyond our borders as a result.

This haughty sense of self-purpose extends well into the realm of the environment. Simply put, we think we are greener than the rest of the continent. The most recent incarnation of this came with the “pact,” a resolution written by Quebec-based scientists, economists and noted vedettes urging a collective reduction of Quebec’s carbon footprint.

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More than 250,000 Quebecers, including dozens of those vedettes, have conspicuously signed since its launch in early November. Premier François Legault outdid this cloying bit of do-goodery with some particularly gobsmacking quotes. “There is no social acceptability for oil in Quebec,” Legault told reporters recently. Oil is “dirty energy,” he said, touting the province’s prowess at developing its vast hydro-electric resources.