22 Comments
May 26, 2022Liked by Paul Wells

Merci. That's about the limit of my French but I truly appreciate you publishing in both languages. Great analysis as well

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Oh, la belle surprise! Lorsque je me suis abonnée à cette infolettre, j'espérais un peu vous lire en français, et je suis servie aujourd'hui... Je suis ravie, car le Québec et le Canada ont besoin de ce genre de point de vue (pertinent et incisif) dans les deux langues officielles.

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Merci! J'essaie de juger jusqu'à quel point je devrais garder un côté français ici. Heureusement, la plateforme Substack permet de créer des sections sous l'égide d'un titre, alors je viens de lancer la section "En français, svp" qui servira à regrouper tout ce que je pourrai créer en français. Ça m'aidera éventuellement à couvrir les élections au Québec ou à afficher du contenu vidéo en français, si par exemple François Legault décidait enfin de m'accorder une entrevue...

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Bien d’accord sur toute la ligne…belle surprise ce matin de lire votre chronique en français! Vos opinions et critiques, écrites et orales, sont grandement pertinentes et rafraîchissantes. It was annoying that the internet signal was deficient at the most crucial moment. Moreover, even more annoying was the read replies of some candidates, making me wonder if they understood at all what they were saying…an eye-opener for me!

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J'ai complimenté votre français parlé suite à une chronique à Radio-Canada dont vous avez participé il y a quelque années, et maintenenant je complimente votre français écrit!

Do you think the candidates are mute on Brown's past with misconduct because it's unpopular with the conservative base, or because it's unpopular with the conservative caucus?

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Merci! I think Brown has shown he can be litigious, and the others are hoping there will be simpler ways to limit his influence in this race. I'm quite certain that, if it ever came to a next step, the Liberals wouldn't be so genteel.

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I think there's a feeling in the party that Brown's scandal was a bit of a stitch-up / cancel culture thing, and it would be strange for anti-cancel-culture Poilievre at least to go down that road given other obvious angles of attack and how anti-woke the party is. Agree that it's the kind of thing Liberals would love.

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To Roger Clarke - I am trilingual so was able to read Paul's thoughts. Our's is a large and multilingual country. I'm with the program. To Paul keep on chugging for us

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Great to see bilingual Canadian politics journalism in one place. Substack defeats CRTC rules to bring people together. (Despite seeing the surprising 1970s "why is there French on my cereal box" comment)

Pierre Poilievre, Prairie francophone, is an under-covered topic in Canadian politics since PP rose to prominence. Perhaps because PP never wanted to talk about it as the cereal-box tendency was a not inconsiderable element of the Reform Party's deep roots. For a long time I even wondered if he spoke French. I'd be curious to know more about his relationship to the language, his family's heritage, how it informed his experience of Southern Alberta and Eastern Ontario. To my anglo-Montrealer / Winnipeg French immersion ear, his accent is one of a native speaker (though interestingly, he rrrrrolls his r's, something Quebecers have dropped in recent decades). But speaking off the cuff, he can run out of words, something I relate to.

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I liked P-Pol (is that a cool handle the young folks can call him?) because he was scrappy and abrasive to the right people. Now though, his bull-in-china-shop schtick is getting thin. Crypto is a ponzi scheme and about as useful as NFTs as legal tender. Conservatives should be the first to defend unintrusive government, not suggest it would interfere with the BoC. Charest is probably going to be my guy. Still hoping Lewis gets better, have high hopes for her. She sounded better than this the first time around.

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...juste mon vote de soutien à l'écriture bilingue

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Thanks. Saved me from watching it

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Une bonne article, je suis curieux c'est quoi ton avis de Maxime Bernier? J'en suis curieux et veux savoir davantage au sujet de lui.

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What a pleasant surprise! Your french is solid. Witty. Charming. I was thoroughly entertained by this piece. C’est le fun de voir de vous voir innover et sortir de votre zone de comfort!

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This bilingual content was a treat, please do this again

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Thanks for covering the French debate, en francais, and the translation for us anglos. Nice to see an inclusive approach where we are becoming increasingly polarized. Perhaps Yesterday's Man has something to say, indeed.

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MUCH prefer [nay, demand] that you begin your report[s] in my language.

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So here's the thing. I make the journalism and you decide whether to read it. I'm entirely comfortable with that arrangement.

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You solicited 'comments'... I would posit that the vast majority of your 'subscribers', both paid and otherwise, are unilingual, or at least English speaking. Not to say that I don't enjoy reading you.

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Thank you. The longer answer -- I was walking when I wrote the short one -- has two parts.

(a) I'm just going to write what I want to write. This will sometimes include stuff that's not of broad interest, even among my subscribers. I considered making this newsletter a very service journalism-y thing, with things like a look-ahead to business on Parliament Hill next week, but honestly, that didn't sound fun. Indulging broad interests sounds fun.

(b) This platform allows me to hive off the more niche content to sub-sections. You'll see that I now have sections marked "Positive Jam," where I'll put arts writing, and "En français svp" for writing in French. Apparently you can unsubscribe from specific sections, while keeping your subscription to the main newsletter, which will always be politics (broadly defined.) This link explains how you do that:

https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360059788812-How-do-I-unsubscribe-from-a-free-subscription-#:~:text=Unsubscribe%20from%20a%20section&text=On%20the%20Account%20page%20of,to%20stop%20receiving%20notifications%20from.

All that does is stop sending you email notifications of my writing in those sections. You'd still have access to it on my website.

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Good luck with the project, and thanks for the explication.

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Well Paul, it appears a knight who says 'Ni!' is demanding a sacrifice...(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIV4poUZAQo)

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