GO THEIR OWN WAY

With so much having been written and said concerning the reemergence of the sovereignty debate here in Quebec I was not sure what more needed to be said. That was up until now. You see, over the last three weeks I have been actively participating in the ''Twitterverse''. More specifically trending on Hashtags like #qc2014, #qcpoli, #qc2014medias along with a few others. My foray there has enlightenment me to the incredible amount of partisanship, passion and sometimes outright lunacy of this debate. For established Quebecois the discussion of language, culture and identity has long occupied a major portion of the landscape around here. The ongoings on Twitter and other social media has expanded this landscape to degrees I never thought possible. The most perplexing element is that the discussion surrounding sovereignty is not the result of a pending referendum but more the possibility of the party who champions this cause winning a majority Government. The belief, based on statements made by the leader of this party and various of its members is that if they are given a majority government a Referendum on separation from the rest of Canada would not be far behind. So given that, many have weighed in on the subject. So what can possibly be left to say. Well here goes!

I have never considered myself a Federalist nor a Separatist. I grew up in Quebec believing that I was simply a Canadian. I grew up here a second generation Finn (Finland). I went to school here, learned french in a program back then referred to as ''French Immersion''. I got jobs here, had numerous friends (in both languages). I raised my family here (4 children) and the love of my life is as ''pure laine'' Québécoise as they come. My children are all bilingual and interact daily in school and in part time jobs with more Francophones then Anglophones. I have always felt like part of the Quebec fabric. I have worked throughout North America and have traveled all over the world. I have always come back here because simply put; ''this is my home''. I have never felt or experienced what many radical separatist militants call being disenfranchised. I was always a minority here but no one I interacted with ever made me feel like one. I felt no distinction from either being a Quebecer or Canadian. As a rule I speak more French here then I do English by far (80%-20%). I respect the language and the people. I am not one of those Anglophones that believes I should just be able to speak English here and everyone should respect that and service me in my language. The majority here are French and to deny this or try to speak over it simply helps to define a fundamental part of the problem. It lies in the belief of some inside Quebec and some outside, that this place is like everywhere else in Canada. It is not. It is an Island of a specific language and culture surrounded by almost 343 million people who do not share it. To the true separatist, Quebec never belong here within a Confederacy of 34 million. It has remained in-trenched in their minds that the 6.2 million of them are distinct and deserve to be identified as such in a stand alone model. In essence they are correct. To understand this is to begin to understand why the issue of sovereignty means so much to a great deal of the population here.  

In 1980 I was 15 years old  and plugging my way through grade 9 of High School. It was the year of the first referendum. At the time I had little, or no comprehension, of the magnitude of the debate or for that matter the repercussions it might have. The outcome of that vote and its iconic dreamer René Lévesque remains locked in the history and folklore of Quebec. A constant reminder to those who dream of Quebec, ''The Nation''. To understand its impact today you have to consider that someone between 20-30 years old back then is now 54 or 64 years old. In the 1995 referendum those same individuals were 35-45 years old. The legacy of those two defeats have stayed frozen in the psyche of the Separatist dreamer. In 1995 I was 30 years old with a two year old daughter and a 1 year old little boy. I understood more the importance of what such a vote might mean for not only me and the place I called home but for two very young children as well. At that time I could not see any up side to voting in favor of separation. Even though no one really made a strong argument for staying either. This unto itself has lead to a great deal of distention between both Separatists and Federalists.

The question of why to stay vs. why to go. This argument has never been resolved. In many ways it was born out of M. Lévesque's speech on the evening of the defeat of the 1980 referendum when he said  to a Montreal Forum filled with Thousand of Separatist supporters (translated), ''My dear friends ''If I understand you correctly you are saying until the next time''. This sowed the seed that the dream of sovereignty was not a one time deal but a project in development. Separatist have clung to this, ''next time'' idea. It is rehashed every time the issue of sovereignty comes up. The year might now be different but the tone is always the same and seems always to boil down to that which best resembles a parent and teenager dispute. Teenager (Separatist side): ''I am going to leave home because your rules and systems are suffocating me. I need to leave to be free and achieve all the greatness I know I have. I need to find my identity, my purpose. Oh and by the way I am taking all my bedroom furniture, the car and you still need to pay me my allowance.'' The Parent ( Federalists side): ''So leave if you don't like it, no wait don't leave. Well if you leave your going to starve, you cannot make it on your own, you need us. You cannot break up the family, what will your brothers and sisters think. You can't go because we say so! No more allowance for you your cut off''. The reality now though is that both those arguments are no longer close to being valid. More importantly the context of 1980 and 95 has changed so dramatically that no longer can  it past the ''litmus test''. Sure both sides pull out the staple arguments of ''we will use the Canadian dollar'' and the other replies with ''pay your portion of the debt''. Back and forth it goes. The reality though is neither side is actually correct.

So now we find ourselves in another debate about sovereignty and what that means for both Quebec and Canada. The simple fact is when you get beyond the ''breaking up of Canada'' and the ''Mon Pays'' rhetoric; you begin to see take shape a debate that might not be that easy to win for either side. One one side you have the staunch Separatists who believe that Quebecer's cannot flourish or attain their full potential in a Federal system. To paraphrase one twitter user, ''Anglo Canada has always stood in the way of Quebecer's''. There is also a strong belief that the language and culture is justification unto itself to not belong to any other Confederacy and that only as an  independent ''Nation'' can  they ever achieve their goals. This ideology is ingrained and handed down from generations dating back to the loss at, ''The Plains of Abraham''. In French Universities the graying, nostalgic and bearded Professors speak in ideological terms to their students about the loss dream of independence. Anyone who has followed Quebec history understands that the evolution of the French (or Quebecois) culture has been defined over the last 255 years built on the idea that they have been subordinate to the Englishman. Now one can appreciate the sub culture and the actual reality of this thinking but it is in essence irrelevant. An in bread belief exists that cannot be washed away out of a desire to define the true context of history. So they have created their own revisionist version of history.

On the other side you have the staunch Federalists who believe separatist are; ''turn coats'' traitors to all that Canada stands for. To Paraphrase one twitter user, '' My father defended Canada in World War Two for what? So a bunch of Frenchies can destroy this country''. This goes along with a strong ingrained passion amongst Federalists of the greatest that Canada represents. In their mind there is no greater country then Canada and why in the Hell would anyone want to leave it. Historically Anglo Canadians have downplayed the minimization of French Quebecers, their language and their culture. Separatists are seen primarily as violent radicals ( mainly due to the FLQ and to radical Nationalists). The idea that they are intolerant has been fueled by bills 101 and most recently the Parti Quebecois (PQ) ''Charter of Values'' which seeks to curb the exposition or demonstration of any religious affiliation by those holding job in the public or para public service. Mixed into these two groups are staunch French Federalists who have always had an allegiance to Canada. While many still value their Quebec identity they believe that French Quebecer's can do just fine within the Confederacy. This group is often chastised by the staunch Separatists who see them as affronts to the ''cause'' and are often misunderstood by the staunch Federalists who do not understand their desire to conserve a strong Québécois culture within the Confederacy of Canada. This helps to highlight how cloudy the whole issue is and how difficult it would ever be to reach any common ground. The debate can not even get going simply due to the lack of any common understanding between the parties. One is either to far left or to far right for the other and those in the center are seen as a confused hybrid.

So where does that leave us? Between the years 1995 and 2012 the whole separation debate slipped into hibernation. A Liberal Government from 2003 to 2012 tended to simply ignore the matter and focused on more social and pressing issues. Not until late 2012 when the Parti Quebecois came back to power ( minority) has the discussion begun anew. It was notched up and fueled up by the calling of a general election in which numerous Parti Quebecois members voiced their support for a referendum and a call for sovereignty again. Only then did it get strong local interest as well as interest in the rest of Canada. Except this time the attention is different then it was in 1980 and 95. There is an undercurrent which did not exist back then, an overtone of murmuring a ''let them go if they want to go'' philosophy. Within Quebec the response to the idea has met with anything but enthusiasm, unless of course you belong to the 33% staunch supporters of the idea. Even then, numerous previous supporters of the question are not interested, as they believe Quebec has bigger fish to fry. A general, ''we need to clean up our house first'' before entertaining the idea again'' mentality prevails in a younger demographic more concerned about education, healthcare, jobs and debt. This ideology of a better Quebec more prosperous for everyone predominates over the idea of a Nation. This new more society based thinking is lost on the old age separatists still longing for the, ''chance'' to finally get their Nation. Supported by a small percentage of a younger generation fed the separatist food by their Teachers, Parents and Grandparents the staunch Separatist continue to try and rally the troops. The Federalist from their side tend to over react and call the Parti Quebecois leader ''Hitler'' or ''Stalin'' without realizing that it does nothing but inflame the passion of all Quebecer's as they see this rhetoric coming from the rest of Canada as misplaced and interfering. Another portion promotes the, '' let them leave then'' position out of fatigue from discussing the issue a third time around.. In this entire debate this final thinking might actually be the best to learn from.

It has occurred to me in the last few weeks that the bed has already been made on the subject of Separation. There is absolutely no use to try and make it again. It is an old argument, it is stale on both sides. The simple fact is that if Quebecer's truly want to separate then that is entirely their choice. Not anyone else. The simple fact that they have on two occasions chosen not to leave says more unto itself then any Federalist Politician ever could in the current debate. No Separatist can make any greater impassioned plea then has not already been made. No Franco Federalist Quebecer can be any better understood in this debate then in the last two. In the final analyses what everyone needs to understand is this: Canada speaks for itself. It is what it is, recognized.world wide for being one of the greatest countries. It has more to offer in its collective then it has in its parts. It needs no introduction nor defending in its current model. Those who dream of a separate Quebec, of a ''Pays'' will not be dissuaded from the dream. There is nothing anyone can offer them to make them want to stay. The idea for it needs no greater justification to them other then to look around them and see themselves floating in a sea of English. It is nothing more than this and nothing less. For those who cherish and hold sentimental the idea of a Canada from coast to coast. We must accept that at some point in time this may no longer be possible. That the inevitable desire a portion of the Quebec population has to stand alone, may lead to a democratic decision to leave. What that will look like and the form it will take will take centuries to define. Most of those who championed for an independent Quebec will actually never get to see the final model of their Nation. They will only know that they in some way contributed to its birth. For older Canadians they neither will see the final outcome of what a new Canada looks like without Quebec. They will simply know that they believe it was a mistake for Quebec to leave.

What will be left at the end of the day weather that is in 4 years from now or 40 is that the Country we know and love today will be probably much different for our children then it was for us. This will be as equally true for the Separatist who always saw Quebec the same way as the Federalists saw Canada. Their Nation, their home. An un-daunting desire to go their own way.

FLYING BLIND

In the post 9/11 era one would have thought, or been lead to believe that every ounce of the skies covering the earth would be covered by a multitude of high tech satellites and radar technology. The unfortunate reality as we are learning with Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 that is not the case. On March 08th 2014, the flight carrying 239 souls vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on a scheduled flight to Beijing. Most of the passengers were Chinese. Since then an exhaustive search involving at times over 20 nations and dozens of aircraft and ships have scoured a region larger then the entire country of Canada. No definitive piece of evidence has yet to be found as of March 24, 2014. The question on everyone's mind is, ''how do you lose a Boeing 777 in 2014''.

The reality came full circle on Monday March 24th when Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said,  ''Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 "ended" in the southern Indian Ocean''. He said, ''searchers used a new form of data analysis — never used before in a search for a missing plane — to determine the aircraft was lost in a remote area of the Indian Ocean west of Perth, Australia''. The area where the plane is believed to have gone down is far from any possible landing sites, Najib said. "It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean," he said. This came one day after NASA said it would use high-resolution cameras aboard satellites and the International Space Station to look for possible crash sites in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. space agency is also mining archived images collected by instruments on its Terra and Aqua environmental satellites, said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel. "Our satellites and space-based cameras are designed for long-term scientific data gathering and Earth observation. They're really not meant to look for a missing aircraft, and obviously NASA isn't a lead agency in this effort. But we're trying to support the search, if possible," Beutel said. 

So how did we lose a Boeing 777 and what does it say about modern aviation transportation and the security in using it? Every day throughout the world there are approximately 49,000 commercial flights. That is Per Day! Expand that to the number of people traveling per day and that gives you approximately 3 million travellers. Based on the sheer numbers alone one would think that mankind has a mastery of everything that goes on in the skies above us. Right? Unfortunately, Wrong. Since we began firing satellites into space there have been approximately 6,600 satellites launched. Recent counts estimate that 3,600 remain in orbit. But only 1,000 or so are operational; the rest have become redundant and are now space junk. Approximately 500 operational satellites are in low earth orbit, 50 are in medium earth orbit (at 20,000 km), the rest are in geostationary orbit (at 36,000 km). So we do have high tech military satellites that watch over the entire earth 24/7/365 right? Well yes and no. The primary function of Military satellites fall into the following categories, Early warning, Nuclear explosion detection, Photo surveillance, Electronic-reconnaissance and Radar imaging just to mention the ones we actually know about.So what about all the Movies showing Satellites looking in to our bedroom windows? Well in reality they are extremely advanced but not as much as we might like to believe. Satellites called Kennan "Keyhole-class" (KH) reconnaissance satellites have been orbiting the Earth for approximately 30 years. They are typically used to take overhead photos for military missions. The big issue for a lot of people is: "What can they actually see?"

A KH-12 is a $1 billion satellite that resembles the Hubble Telescope, except it is looking at our planet. Due to security restrictions there are no published orbit schedules for the imagery spacecraft. They are supplemented by the 15-ton Lacrosse-class radar-imaging satellites.You can think of a KH satellite as a gigantic orbiting digital camera with an incredibly huge lens on it. Optical image reconnaissance satellites use a charged couple device (CCD) to gather images that make up a digital photograph for transmission back to Earth from an altitude of about 200 miles. Since the satellites are in orbit, they cannot hover over a given area or provide real-time video of a single location. The satellites are often placed into various secret orbits by NASA space shuttles or Titan 4 rockets and managed by the National Recognizance Office (NRO), headquartered in Chantilly, Va. Digital images from the satellites are analyzed, manipulated and combined by powerful computers at the National Geo-spatial agency (NGA). The black and white images are used by the military and civilian communities. Many of the details about this class of satellites remain classified, but it is known that there are several of these overhead at any given time. They have an imaging resolution of 5-6 inches, which means they can see something 5 inches or larger on the ground. These satellites probably can't read your house number, but they can tell whether there is a bike parked in your driveway.

So what about weather satellites? Weather satellites take low-resolution pictures of the entire planet each day, but the high-resolution images needed to search for a plane are less frequents. There are only around 10 US, Russian and European satellites capable of such detailed images. They each orbit Earth roughly every hour and a half, imaging a strip a few hundred kilometers wide as they go. Each one probably covers a few per cent of the Earth every day. Factoring in things like maintenance, cloud cover and the fact that they don't take images all the time, that probably means at most 5 per cent of the planet is imaged in high-resolution each day, he says. That's not all – some areas, such as cities, are imaged much more than others. Open ocean is not what you're taking pictures of, because you're not getting anything interesting normally. 

Well what about the plane itself? All planes have a radar transponder that squawks their identity and location via terrestrial radio signals. But once they pass out of range of land-based radar, a few hundred kilometers from the shore, aircraft are often on their own until they're picked up by the next receiver. In addition, to aid maintenance, most airlines use the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS). Aircraft system reports are sent via VHF radio or satellite at take-off, during the climb, at some point while cruising and on landing. Earlier this week New Scientistlearned that Rolls Royce, which made the engines on the missing Malaysian plane, reveived two real time ACARS reports before the plane vanished, but Malaysia Airlines has not revealed whether it has learned anything from ACARS data, or if it has any.The simple fact is with all of our man made technology we are still far from being able to see everything all the time. It indicates that modern day mysteries will still occur. So all of this leaves the families of those on flight MH 370 where? And equally important where does it leave the aviation industry going forward. For those of us who would like to think this is an isolated incident involving tracking over the ocean we better think again. It took 2 years to locate Air France flight 477 debris field which plunged into the Atlantic ocean killing 228 souls.The primary wreckage was found sitting on the bottom of the ocean 2 miles down. Through extensive work and enormous cost the black box was recovered along with significant amounts of the aircraft. The lessons learned from flight 477 did not in any way improve or increase the way civilian aircraft are tracked. Advancement in technology are ''in the works''. An emerging system called automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) is gaining popularity: this signal includes GPS information about the plane's location as well as identity and velocity. You can see ADS-B data on amateur plane-tracking site FlightRadar 24, which told Canadian Broadcasters that the Malaysian flight "was within our coverage – until it disappeared".The unfortunate reality is we still have a great deal of work to do to cover all of our skies.

Somewhere approximately 1300 nautical miles from Perth Australia there is perhaps a wreckage sitting at the bottom of the turbulent and dangerous Indian Ocean. For the families this will most likely become the final resting place of those they loved. Regardless of the innovations in future tracking technology this will not help with their pain and anguish. The simple fact is the entire aviation community owes it to the 3 million passengers they carry each day to implement new measures as quickly as possible to ensure that never again is anyone flying blind.