Two things, the confluence in the news of the Quebec election to take place on Monday, and the criticism levied at government for its move to amend the Elections Act to make it mandatory for legal and reliable personal identification to be presented at election time for voter qualification, and to phase out the vouching system which may be responsible for 25% of voter irregularities, top of the news in Canada.

The Bloc Quebecois, a federal political party with huge popularity in Quebec and Quebec only, once represented the official opposition in the House of Commons. Its mandate was to aid the Parti Quebecois, the provincial separatist party, to gain power and relevance, to enable enough Quebec voters to cast their vote for separation from Confederation. And the Canadian taxpayer, on top of handing over equalization payment roughly equivalent to 46% of the entire enterprise, with a handful of other provinces receiving far lesser amounts, also had to pony up financial support for the separatists in Parliament.

Now the Bloc barely has a presence in Parliament, and the Parti Quebecois's leader, Pauline Marois, having called an election because the opinion polls gave her party a whopping lead over the second-place Liberal party, has discovered her clever attempts at social engineering is not capable, after all, of leading her province to the Promised Land of Separation. In that it now looks very unlikely that the voters of Quebec will vote in sufficient numbers to give the Pequistes their majority enabling them to facilitate a referendum for secession.

And here's the really amusing part of it all. Looking back on the parliamentary record of decades ago, one finds this tidbit:

Canada Elections Act November 15th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I think that the NDP's proposal, which would give voting rights to any person who swears an oath, is unacceptable. That proposal was rejected by the other three political parties last session during consideration of Bill C-31.

We believe it is reasonable to require photo identification, if available, to verify the identity of voters and ensure the integrity of the electoral system.

I would like to point out that there have been serious fraud cases. The time when someone could pile a bunch of people onto a bus and have a voter swear an oath to identify them is over.

 And who was the speaker? Why, Pauline Picard, then a Member of Parliament for the Bloc Quebecois.

She alluded to a time-dishonoured method of enabling voter fraud, when an desperately enterprising political party might pay vagrants and alcoholics a certain sum to have them vote ... bus them to a polling station where they would disembark, do their civic duty, having been vouched for under oath by a pol, then off they would go to spend their hard-earned gains.

It reminded me of an event that my husband recounted to me when once, many years ago, he had gone to the bank to extract $900 in cash for a vacation trip we were about to embark on. He was downtown, walking in the LeBreton Flats area, which back then was a deserted and fairly forlorn place just across from Quebec on the Ottawa side. He was startled to be accosted by a large burly man shuffling toward him, hand extended, begging for money.

The man explained he had just been released from prison and needed money for food. My husband reached awkwardly into his pocket, trying to discreetly detach a $20 bill from the roll that bulged in his pocket, handed it to the man who, eyes wide, thanked him profusely for his generosity.  And then followed my husband, to continue expressing his gratitude by exhorting my husband to tell him how he would like him to vote in the next election.