Politicians live in a world of logic and passion trying to mate.

"Political sophistication" these days says that doing nothing is better than doing something.

Grassroots movements spring very quickly and die very quickly. Professional politicians have to be there all the time.

Time and time again, the average voter feels he's voted for something and later feels he's been sold down the river.

The problem for government is to decide what we do not need to do.

Is it government's job to take over white elephants?

All this business of governments "creating" jobs is a distortion of the democratic process.

Governments just can't move fast enough to get things done. The private sector can.

Governments that are elected on a specific platform always seem to do the opposite.

There can be no democracy if society is not destroying politicians who lie a lot.

The way to win in politics today is to be content-free.

There hasn't been a single example in the world of a separatist movement being stopped by threats.

All politics is village politics.

It took 75 years to prove that communism was a crazy idea. It took less than 20 years to prove that Thatcherism was a crazy idea.

Politics (Canadian)

Canadians are very ill-equipped to face political passions.

Canadians don't feel uncomfortable with big government.

In the U.S., they have a long tradition of hating government. Canadians don't feel that way.

If Canada is to survive, there must be a reasonable expectation of equal treatment nationwide.

My point of view has not been represented -- I'm a French-Canadian who wants to stay a Canadian. Don't underestimate Canadian patriotism in Quebec.

It is not a fact of life that a nationalist movement will end in separation.

Preston Manning is more of a separatist than Lucien Bouchard.

There are more Galganovs and Villeneuves living in Medicine Hat than in Montreal.

Politics (Quebec)

The separatist movement is based on the narcissism of minor differences.

... A good example of passion without reason.

We're faced with two conceptions of what is a nation. [The nationalist conception] is one territory, one people, one religion. The opposite is the idea that you choose to live in a nation and accept its diversity.

The big yes vote in the referendum was a cry from French-Canadians saying, "We want to be ourselves!" They were saying, "Stick your chequebook!" For the young Quebecois, Canada is a chimera. It doesn't exist.

Bouchard got them voting not for separation, but for partnership with Canada. They thought he could pull it off.

There was a lot or Orwellian doublespeak on the yes side.

[Yes voters] swallowed the argument because they were emotionally prepared to swallow it.

What the rest of Canada needs to say to the Quebec is, "We're with you. We understand that you've made it on your own, and we're happy with that."

You'll never satisfy the 30 per cent who are separatists. You have to go after the other 70 per cent.

[Re Parizeau's remark that sovereignty was defeated by money and the ethnic vote]: Racism in Quebec is a fact, but you don't say it in public.

Nationalism is by definition exclusive, not inclusive -- in Quebec or anywhere else.

Quebec has always acted as more of a collectivity than the rest of Canada. Look at pensions and medical care, and how Quebec has handled them differently.

Ethnic nationalism is clearly driving the separatist movement. It's not Saskatchewan or PEI that wants to separate.

They nearly broke up the country in an exercise that was like electing a dog catcher. All it needed was one vote over 50 per cent, and a stolen vote at that!

In the aftermath of the referendum, we have to realize that we've been poorly served by muzzling ourselves.

I was away during the referendum. I came back, and it was like people were brain-damaged.

Partition is a prophylactic. Consider it a poison pill.

The idea that boundaries are sacrosanct has got to be questioned. Territorial integrity is not and never has been sancrosanct.

The idea of Montreal as a city state is a powder keg.

Remember, the yes vote in East End Montreal was relatively bigger than in several other regions.

Partition seems to me like the bombing of Germany in World War II. The more you threaten the [sovereignist] movement, the more you push people the other way.

It's threatening people with a gun loaded with blanks.

If Quebec goes, it's a given that Western Quebec will separate from Quebec. Same thing with the native territories.

Galganov may be causing a lot of harm, but it feels so damn good.

Sometimes you get the impression that Bouchard is the P. R. man for Bernard Landry. Because Landry has incredible power.

But I'm telling you, this [PQ] government is destroying itself! Quebec could end up like Portugal, with an economy made up of civil servants.

Politics (Montreal)

Therein lies the agony of Montreal. Years and years of farting around, farting around...

The ignorance of Quebec civil servants of Montreal is one of the first things we have to try and solve.

Quebec City doesn't want to see us. To them, we're just another region with no special needs.

We're faced with the tyranny of rurality. They got fixation on the goddamn regions, and we're just another region to them.

They should tidy up Ste. Catherine Street. Dress a man like a bum, he'll feel like a bum.

Language restrictions could change this city into a ghetto. How do you defuse those crazy nationalists?

You can't find a city with more joie de vivre. We should be playing that card to our advantage.

We've lost the people off the island. Let's not lose the jobs.

Economics (General)

Everything in economics is trends and tendencies. The trick is to get started in the right direction.

Governments can't create jobs, only conditions.

We [wrongly] believe that the unemployed are useless. The question is, how do we put them to work in unconventional ways.

As long as unemployment is over nine per cent, don't worry about inflation.

There's a not insignificant body of opinion that's praying like crazy that inflation will come back.

We're seeing whole districts of cities that are becoming depopulated, and that's affecting the whole tax structure.

We've been brought up on the assumption that property will always appreciate in value. People will have to accept the reality that that ain't necessarily so.

There's a lot of what I'd call dead capital lying around in housing investment.

The chief investment we've been allowing to deteriorate is between the ears of university students.

Everything's interconnected. A five-cent rise in bus fares can cause a decline in attendance at clinics.

We're living with the sins of our fathers -- junk bonds, that sort of thing.

We're in the situation of robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

Downsizing has had a tremendous effect on demand. We're replacing jobs at $25 an hour for jobs at $7 an hour. Imagine what that does to purchasing power! And there's been no trade-off, no real improvement in productivity.

It's good for people to hate taxes. It's great.

More and more multinationals don't care what's going on national soil. Who cares, as long as you're going to make money?

The idea of profit is to make more profit.

I suspect [economic] forecasting is not really a science.

Economics (Canada)

Every other country has one national airline. We've got two. It's the usual Canadian fudge and compromise.

[The Canadian banking system] is an incredible oligopy. They scared away the foreign banks by getting the government to establish two sets of banks -- those that can expand and those that cannot.

We should not use the tax structure to run the economy.

I think we're pushing against the upper limits of taxation.

Investment

The financial markets do not move on the economy, as you know.

The time to buy real estate is when nobody else wants it.

You can talk the market up or down. The market is people and money.

Law

Simplicity in law is fairness, Complexity is not fairness.

Management

These huge salaries that are being paid to executives are an injustice. The fact that a few thousand are going to make it big means there are hundreds of thousands making low pay, out of jobs, homeless, etc. It's not worth in, socially.

I can't see that the main problem is that a very, very small percentage are getting overpaid for what they do.

The only way you get an entrepeneur to start something new and exciting is to say the sky's the limit.

It's not entrepeneurs who are running banks, it's bureaucrats. There's no downside for them.

There's a myth that companies belong to shareholders. They "belong" to the people who run them -- the executives.

Media

An international story lasts until CNN gets bored.

The Internet is a true new media, make no mistake about that.

If television networks and electronic communication networks can work together, they can cut the problem of haves and have-nots in the world.

As far as violence on TV is concerned, it's up to parents to tell children, this is fiction. It's to be laughed at. It's not correct to go bang-bang.

Public Finance

Canada is only two years into serious debt reduction, and that's two years of a ten-year process. It's an agonizing process, like a withdrawal from drugs.

In cutting, politicians have to move at a speed that's politically feasible.

The only way to reduce debt is to cut at middle class entitlements.

Our [Canada's] debt is only bad to the extent that somebody else's is better.

The risk is that consitutional issues will sidetrack the fiscal agenda.

Governments have spent tens of billions of dollars just shifting things around, and leaving an antiquated infrastructure intact.

There are good public enterprises and bad ones. There are good private enterprises and bad ones. You can't draw the conclusion that private ownership is always better than public.

Health care should not be seen as a service, but as insurance.

Public service workers have priced themselves out of the market.

Taxpayers get a very poor return on investment.

Got a lot of garbage? Then pay for it. Directly. Out of your own pocket.

Where we've gone wrong is allowing ourselves to get into a situation where taxes no longer pay for services, but are used as a means to redistribute wealth.

Technology

We'll have real-time TV delivery, video on demand very shortly. The "telecomputer" will replace TV.

You can't read a computer in bed.