Montreal A City-State?

Absolutely.

Montreal's sad decline can be traced back to the arcane policies of Quebec City and its obscene fear of 'les autres.'

It is indeed time for Montreal to break off. If Quebec can go, so can Montreal secede from Quebec. "Parce ce que nos valeur, on y crois' doesn't stop at the PQ values.

And Montreal clearly has a different take on things than the sowers of discord in the PQ.

Sure, there will be all sorts of legal wranglings and debates but the same arguments nationalists use against Canada (flimsy as they are at times) Montreal - perhaps with even more justification -  can employ against Quebec. Quebec seems to be under the impression (and they assume a lot of things they take for granted will pass on without a fight - like the Canada passport. If I'm the ROC I seek to revoke it)  that lands given to them by Canada and lands claimed by Natives won't be challenged.

Quebec has no future as long as the mentality of the PQ is allowed to prevail. Simple as that.

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I had yet another enlightening conversation with a transplanted Parisian today. He marvels at the antiquated, nonsensical insularity of Quebec. He too feels it's about time to move on. The thing the French have noticed is that for all the squawking about "protecting their identity" they don't speak the language properly in their view. You want to create a unique Quebecois lexicon, by all means go ahead he argued. Just don't tell us or the Belgians or the North Africans or the Swiss it's "French" because it isn't. He explained to me Quebec is the only region in the Francophonie with an atrocious dialect and grammar. Instead of suppressing people's rights he further argued, how about Quebec gets serious about actually teaching proper French?

'What are they protecting exactly?' he asked.

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An American friend of mine offered another anecdote. His daughter represents Quebec in basketball. She's likely to move on to a U.S. school and it may as well be since the family has little interest staying here. Quebec, when coached by a Francophone, was pretty much a non-entity. The two best players - both Americans of varied ethnic backgrounds - got little playing time as the "pure laines" were inserted in the lineup despite being obviously inferior players. An Argentinian took over and it took him all of one lousy practice to set the team straight. He started the two Yankee girls and Quebec started winning.

Moral of the story is people outside the tribe is good for a society. Or else how can you improve? This idiotic "c'est le Quebec icite va tent" has to be challenged and thrown on its sorry ass. It doesn't belong to them. It belongs to everyone.

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What makes me laugh the most is the PQ actually, with a straight face, says they're inclusive and this piece of shit Charter is meant to unite us. It's having the exact opposite effect.

Maybe this is all by design. Who knows?