I realize that no-one except me is interested in Canadian politics (this especially applies to Canadians) but I feel obliged to point out (because no-one else will) that two (more) predictions I made at the end of my 1986 book about Canada, The Patriot Game, have now come true:

"5. There may be 'a time of troubles' in Canadian politics, with no party able to gain a majority.

"6. ...a sectional party, probably from Quebec, but possibly from the West, could hold the balance of power in the House and demand radical reform."

With 51 seats to the Conservatives' 124 in a 308-seat Parliament, the separatist Bloc Quebecois now holds that balance of power. Although I don't see much awareness of it in MSM commentary, this is exactly what kept happening in the U.K. Parliament with the Irish Nationalists at the end of the nineteenth century, and is the reason that there was a Home Rule bill actually on the statute books when World War I - that world-shattering tragedy - broke out in 1914.

What this means in Canada is that Quebec has taken another step to becoming an independent nation-state. What it means more generally is that, when something is inevitable, it eventually happens.

Or, as I wrote at the end of my U.S. immigration book, Alien Nation, in 1995:

'...immigration restriction is inevitable in America...And no political issue, once it reaches the surface, has more elemental power than immigration. It could quite easily destroy the present political-party system, as it helped to do in the years before the Civil War."

Ken Mehlman, call your office.