Muslims and Jews Targeted Falsely by Quebec Network

Fake news happens when reporters and or news organizations want a story to be true so badly that they throw journalistic standards out the window.

This week saw Quebec's largest independent network TVA, publish quite prominently, two stories that were completely untrue, stories that fed into the latent racism that marks Quebec society.

The first story, is that of a mosque in Côte-des- Neiges in Montreal, that was falsely accused of asking a construction company which was doing work in the street in front of the mosque if it could curtail the presence of women on the job site on Fridays during prayers.
You've probably heard about that fiasco and the network's tepid reaction to the revelation that the story was completely false, a figment of imagination of two construction workers whose word the dimwit TVA reporter took at face value without verification.
The reporter confronted the mosque officials and told them that the contract for the work had a clause banning women from the site, a complete lie that the reporter made up or one that she had been fed. If she was told this by a source,  she should have realized that it couldn't be true because the contract was between the city and the contractor, one which the mosque had nothing to do with, nor any input in its terms.
After the leaders of the mosque denied ever making such a demand, they asked for proof that such a clause actually existed, to which the dummy reporter, Marie-Pier Cloutier, told them she'd be back with the contract which according to her, would show in "black and white" the interdiction on women, which of course never happened. The city later confirmed that no such clause existed. The very idea that the city would include such a clause in a contract is ludicrous and the moron reporter, should have known this.
You'd think editors and bosses back at the ranch would smell a rat, but this story was too good to be true and thus they ran with banner headlines and video splashed across its media empire. Politicians, including our Premier, commented on how wrong this incident was and a militant anti-Muslim group announced a demonstration in front of the mosque to protest.

Credit the CCQ, the Commission overseeing the construction industry which undertook a lightning fast investigation after complaints from the mosque. In short order, the CCQ announced that the whole affair was a complete 100% fabrication.
TVA first defended its reporting but later reluctantly admitted that they were suckered and published what amounted to fake news. That being said, the network issued a 'clarification' buried at the bottom of its web page which wasn't really much of an apology.
And by the way, even after the story was debunked, the planned demonstration against the mosque still went ahead with one protester telling a reporter that the story was probably true, but covered up.

The mosque received the requisite number of threats and was forced to put up a banner proclaiming that it supports women's rights. Police were required to provide security and this Friday's prayers were sparsely attended for good reason.
Sheesh....

And that's not the only fake news coming out of TVA.
Earlier in the week, it reported that an SAQ outlet, (the government-run liquor monopoly) had left its Christmas tree holiday tree, unadorned in one of its locations because it did not want to offend the area's large Hassidic community.
"Pro-active unreasonable accommodations" was the outraged opinions offered by the network which reported the story without checking the sources. Let us remember that TVA is a large network with huge resources.

It turns out the tree wasn't decorated because it was too scrawny and couldn't hold decorations. When a customer asked why the tree wasn't decorated, an annoyed store clerk trolled the complainer by telling her the made up story about offending Jews. The outraged customer contacted TVA to complain and the network shamefully ran the story without ever checking the validity of the claim with the SAQ.
When the network realized that it had published another fake news story, they actually blamed the employee for the fiasco and playfully commented that they had been 'had' with a clever play on words.

 "FAIT PASSER UN SAPIN" is a French phrase which translates as 'getting stuck with a fir (Xmas) tree.' which means having been fooled.

At any rate, all this happens because Quebecers want these stories to be true, in order to validate their prejudice.
Quebec's TVA network suffers from the same disease that has befallen American networks like CNN, ABC and CNBC whose opposition to Donald Trump is so bitter that they publish any negative tidbit they can without applying proper journalistic standards, leading to the same embarrassing retractions as has befallen TVA.

TVA says they are reviewing their journalistic practices in light of the fiascoes, but it probably is just a smokescreen and when the smoke clears it will be business as usual, publishing real and dubious stories that make minorities look bad.
Why?
Because the public loves it. It feeds the xenophobia and anti-English sentiment that rages throughout the province.

For Liberals... The Trump Phenomenon Explained

It amuses me more than just a little to see Liberals throwing their hands up in the air in abject horror, exasperation and utter bewilderment at the ongoing saga of the Donald Trump presidency.
For those Liberals who took a small measure of solace in the misguided hope that Trump would somehow moderate his campaign rhetoric and morph into something more 'presidential' once he attained the office, it is as if their worst fears were realized and to their consternation Trump has perhaps gotten even more arrogant, dishonest and bizarre.
For Liberals, it is not only Trump's policies that have them unnerved, but his personal conduct and reputation that have them blowing smoke out of their ears, utterly confused as to how even staunch conservatives could ever vote for such a repugnant character.

But conservative voters did vote for Trump and most still support him.
This remains the most confusing element for Liberals to understand and most attribute Trump's unlikely and surprising support to the uninformed and simplistic beliefs of the great unwashed.

Just a few days ago Chris Matthews of CNBC displayed the most arrogant Liberal rage against southern evangelicals, typical of the Liberal disdain for those who hold religious views or conservative values.

"Don't think this isn't related to Alabama next week. It is related," Matthews said. "Because it’s the Christian Evangelicals down there with their crazy ideas about Israel which is, I don't know, mythical. They don't understand the situation over there, how tricky it is ethnically and tribally," he added. "They don't care because it's a religious belief. "

According to Liberals, only the deeply religious, the stupid and the naive could possibly support Trump while conceding that unfortunately, America has too many religious, stupid and naive voters.

And so Liberals continue to scratch their heads and wonder how on Earth any thinking person could vote or continue to support Donald Trump. Those on CNN and CNBC pontificate ad nauseum, citing Trump's gaffs and lies in order to attack and denigrate his conservative agenda.

To understand how big the Trump presidential victory was, between the Black, Hispanic and Muslim vote, which accounted for 32% of the electorate, Trump received just 25% support meaning that out of the remaining 68% of the electorate, he had to win 2/3 of their votes to become president.
So I guess that the Liberals are right, there are quite a lot of deeply religious, stupid and naive White Americans.

With pious claims of impartiality, CNN, CNBC and the like, mercilessly trample and denigrate Trump, his associates, his policies and his agenda, all the while its Liberal commentators and Liberal supporters are furious that most of the country pays them no never-mind.

The latest merciless attacks by  CNN on Judge Roy Moore, the Alabama state judge who is the Republican nominee in the upcoming December 12, 2017, Senate special election, has bordered on the hysterical and the obscene.
If  Liberals hate Trump, Moore has values and ideas that make Trump look like a Liberal card-carrying member of the ACLU. There can be no candidate, short of a neo-nazi or KKK member that can generate more Liberal hysteria and hair-pulling.

I watched the latest screed on CNN Sunday morning where the ever-smug ultra-Liberal Michael Smerconish checked off, one by one, the alleged transgressions of the Republican candidate, allegations that happened thirty years ago that purport that Moore had a penchant for dating young and underaged girls, sometimes against their will.
An incredulous Smerconish implored his guest to explain just how on Earth anyone could vote for the judge in the face of such overwhelming evidence of lechery and moral turpitude. Smerconish's obvious pain and exasperation was for me a delicious serving of schadenfreude.

Let me attempt to explain to Smerconish and other Liberals exactly why conservatives vote for Trump and the even less lovable Judge Roy Moore.

Let us return to a mythical high school where a certain freshman named Wally is a poor student who is bullied unmercifully by his peers for his bumpkin ways, his deeply religious affiliation, and his goofy attire and demeanour.  The bullies not only beat him up in the bathroom, dunking his head in the toilet and delivering painful wedgies, they steal his lunch money on a daily basis and make his life generally intolerable. Although he complains to authorities, the system doesn't seem able to cope and finally out of frustration and inner rage he decides to do something himself.
He lets it be known that he's looking to pay a senior to remedy the situation and receives two replies.
The first is from a honours student named Randy who is a champion of the debating team and comes from a great family. His reputation is impeccable and he promises to do right by Wally, explaining that he will confront the bullies and convince them through reason to let up or at least reduce the pain. He promises to do his best but warns Wally to be realistic in his expectations.
Wally is dutifully unimpressed.
The second respondent is Rocco, a nasty thug who has been suspended twice, once for grabbing a girls breasts in class and the second for unleashing a frightful foul-mouthed tirade against a teacher who gave him a failing grade. He was expelled from his last school for beating up a fellow student and for telling damaging lies and denigrating teachers and students who cross him.
He explains to Wally that his methods are simple, he will beat the living daylights out of the leader of the bullies and in the unlikely event that the bullying continues he will escalate the violence.
He promises unequivocably that the bullying will end. Period.

Wally ponders who to hire.
Rocco may be disreputable and he may break a few bones along the way, but his brutish methods sound like a winning formula and so, morals aside, the decision is easy. Wally doesn't care if Rocco is uncouth and violent, or if he is a sexual predator. He doesn't care if Rocco breaks the rules and a few legs along the way and he certainly isn't perturbed by Rocco's nasty reputation. He hires Rocco.

When word gets out that Wally has hired Rocco, the teachers and fellow students implore him to reconsider, citing Rocco's nasty and dangerous reputation.
How can you hire a guy who treats women like that?
How can you hire a guy who resorts to violence?
How can you hire a liar?
How can you put your faith in such an untrustworthy goon?

These entreaties of course fall on  Wally's deaf ears.
Wally cares little about those who complain about Rocco, because they are the ones who have let Wally down in the past. Their opinions are of no importance. In fact the more they howl about how nasty Rocco is and how uncomfortable he makes them, the happier Wally is.

And so well-ensconced and financially secure Liberals need to understand that America is full of Wallys who aren't doing as well and are none too happy about it. Donald Trump is their chosen deliverer and his misdeeds are of no import, his nastiness, lack of morals and dubious character are exactly what they desire in a leader who will defend their interests against the hitherto ruling class that has ignored their interests.

Voters are selfish.
If the choice is between someone of good reputation but who doesn't reflect the platform that voters desire, then the candidate who does, even with a checkered past or dubious reputation will get their vote.
This is the lesson of the 2016 presidential election.

So Smerconish and Mathews and the rest of the Liberal Press corps of CNN and CNBC can trash talk Trump all they want, supporters don't give a flying fig.

Donald Trump may appear rash and stupid, his hyperbole naked and embarrassing, to Liberals, that is.
But his branding of CNN, the New York Times, MSNBC as purveyors of 'fake news' was brilliant and not altogether untrue. These media outlets have been working overtime to bring down his presidency with skewered reporting and false stories rushed to air or print with too little or no editorial oversight.
Read: CNN error extends run of journalistic mishaps
Read: 7 Times CNN Botched The News In 2017

Trump has brilliantly rendered the Liberal media irrelevant to his constituency and as hard as this media tries to bring down his presidency, the people that it needs to convince, that is the Trump supporters, have tuned them out.

And that is why Trump endures.

Liberals may hate Trump's agenda but that is the agenda that America voted for.
This reality enrages Liberals who refuse to accept the results of the presidential election, choosing to believe that the unseen hand of Russia's Vladimir Putin somehow put his thumb on the electoral scale in favour of Trump and thus rigged the election. It is an ongoing fantasy propagated by the Liberal media in order to delegitimize Trump and assuage the very real pain and angst his presidency has inflicted upon the delicate Liberal soul.

And so Trump said he'd recognize Jeruselum as Israel's capital and he did so last week over the howls of disbelief by a Liberal media that actually believe the fiction that Mideast peace negotiations will be affected when the reality is that there are no peace negotiations.
Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accord exactly as he said he would, sending climate activists into a catatonic state. Too bad.
Trump said he'd re-negotiate the NAFTA free trade agreement and despite Canada's contention that the treaty isn't unfair, our Prime Minister is offering untold concessions because he has no choice. If NAFTA survives, the United States will win some impressive concessions. Too bad for Canada, good for the USA.
Trump will build a wall across the Mexican border because he promised he would and the Liberal media's will continue to peddle the fiction that the project is unrealistic and too expensive despite security walls existing in over sixty-five countries, including poor countries like India which has built a 2,500-mile fence across its border with Bangladesh. Read: How 65 countries have erected fences on their borders
The illegal alien situation will begin to be addressed under Trump, despite the Liberal's endorsement of the status quo where illegals work as indentured servants, depressing salaries of lower class Americans and continuing America's fine tradition of slavery.

Too bad for the Liberals.
The meek of America have finally inherited the USA power structure.

In closing, I'd like to comment on the Trump character assassination that pervades the Liberal media.
Trump is certainly no angel, but consider;
In constantly painting Trump as a misogynist and a liar, the Liberal media forget that their presidential idols, Bill Clinton and John F Kennedy were infinitely worse scoundrels. Cheaters who lied to the world about their reckless and serial infidelities and this while serving in the White house, employing secret service assets to hide their sex addiction, counting on the Liberal media to defend them.

Perhaps the nastiest trait that Liberals manifest is their unflinching belief that they have all the answers and that those who offer a different scenario are seriously retarded.
Look to the American colleges and universities that are thrashing free expression because views other than the that offered by the Liberal ruling caste cannot be tolerated.
This attitude continues in the Liberal media which cannot fathom or accept a president who isn't a Liberal and one who ignores their entitled pronouncements and demands.

Their pain is palpable and real. This comeuppance is a continuing gift to those who cannot stomach Liberal arrogance and watching them suffer is a particularly pleasant gift this holiday season.

Anglo Betrayal...Et Tu, Couillard?

To all those politicians who claim that it's no big deal for the Quebec National Assembly to produce a unanimous motion decrying bilingual greetings, I wish them to imagine Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario, rising in Parliament to decry the fact that too much French is used on the streets and in the stores and restaurants of Ottawa and should, therefore, be discouraged through parliamentary motion because it is an 'irritant.'
Ridiculous, you say..??

I laugh when I hear quislings like Geoff Kelly, Liberal MNA of a predominantly Montreal riding of Jacques-Cartier, characterize the affair as “a tempest in a teapot.”

REALLY? 

Of course, Kelley would like to downplay his betrayal because quite simply, he sold out his constituency along with other Liberal MNAs who represent predominantly Anglo ridings.

For some turncoats, it is to be expected, like the always backstabbing, pretend francophone Kathleen Weil who does a rather effective impression of the infamous Rachel Dolezal, the white women who pretended to be black in order to secure a job with a Black organization.
Like the unfortunate Dolezal, Weil fails to understand that try as she might pretend to be francophone, she will always be considered nothing more than one of 'Les Autres' by the pur et dur.

But for me, the most disappointing turncoat is David Birnbaum, the MNA for the heavily Anglo and Jewish riding of Darcy McGee who also voted for the motion, an act that reminds me of the KAPOs, those Jewish turncoats who brutally supervised fellow prisoners as warders for their Nazi overlords in the concentration camps spread across Eastern Europe in World War Two.

Too much?......I think not.
In Birnbaum, the spirit of self-preservation is more important than the collective good of his constituency and like the Kapos, I bet he'll claim that by siding with the enemy, he can best mitigate the damage to the community by playing both sides.

I wonder whether Mitchell Brownstein, the Mayor of Cote Saint-Luc, Hampstead mayor William Steinberg and federal MNA Anthony Housefather, all members of the tribe and voted in by their largely Jewish and Anglo constituencies will condemn Birnbaum for his insulting betrayal.
Somehow I am betting they will all stay silent, pooh-poohing the affair, too afraid to rock the boat and jeopardize the cozy and incestuous relationship they enjoy with the Liberal party.

And so finally, the Quebec Liberal party, despite its entreaties of love and respect for the anglophone community has laid bare its utter cynicism, throwing us under the bus without much of a fight at the first sign of trouble.

"I would rather people, even an English-speaking Quebecer, just said Bonjour,” Couillard said.

For the Government of Quebec, to call the use of English an 'irritant' is beyond the pale, perhaps a Freudian slip that usually occurs while under the influence or in the heat of a familial argument. The ease at which the slur rolled was made and the non-existent pushback by any politican lays bare the reality of the enmity to which English is held in the National Assembly by ALL PARTIES.

I hope this monumental faux pas comes back to bite the Liberals in the ass, but I remain unconvinced as Anglos have always sighed, put water in their wine and voted Liberal anyways, as the better of all evils.
Nothing would please me more than for the Anglos to finally say enough is enough, that platitudes and false entreaties of respect and love won't cut it anymore.
For us, it isn't a case of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me," because let's be honest, we have been lied to and deceived on an ongoing basis by the Liberals who snicker at our stupidity and gullibility behind our backs.
The Bonjour-Hi affair isn't a trifle, it is, in fact, the latest manifestation by Quebec politicians and their compliant media accomplices to erase the face of English in Quebec while pretending that they respect and value the Anglo presence.
The sad fact is that they want to render us invisible in order to foster the myth that Montreal is a French city, instead of what it really is-- bilingual.
As so the powers that be, want us to be like the Christians in ancient Rome who were forced to practice their religion in secret, underground and out of sight. The reality is that the Quebec Liberals and all the other political parties view us as interlopers who represent a threat, one that must be constantly checked and contained lest we propagate like a plague of household cockroaches.

The Bonjour-Hi parliamentary motion is a continuation of the ongoing effort to eradicate anglophones and English in Quebec, nothing less.

The Premier can blather on about how trivial this affair might be and that Anglos should take the affair in context, but who has a thinner linguistic skin than these same politicians who went collectively apeshit over a pronouncement of a low-level shoe store manager who inadvertently insulted the French majority by expressing himself majorally in English during a news conference.

Holding such primal anti-English views is par for the course in Quebec, where nasty and racist anti-English public pronouncements by those in high places goes without any public reproach because it generally reflects the common Francophone Quebecers views and attitudes.
Being offended by Bonjour-Hi is really about being offended by Anglophones and the English language. Wanting Bonjour-Hi to disappear is wanting the Anglos to disappear, short and simple.

“First thing you have to say, I think, is ‘bonjour.’ It’s about respect, it’s easy to understand.” Pascal Beribé of the PQ

Readers, I am tired of being lectured and hectored about respect by cheap separatist politicians and language fanatics who heap scorn and disrespect on the English, while demanding that we demonstrate undeserved respect on the basis of numbers.
I wonder how separatists would react to being lectured by federal politicians that they owe respect to the Canadian majority and the Canadian cultural mosaic based on nothing more than the numbers. Ha!

Does it matter who we vote for in the next election?
Not on the basis of language, where the other parties are no better than the Liberals.
So who to vote for?

I am reminded of a long-gone family member, an uncle who lived in Philadelphia, a cigar-chomping grouchy old codger who always crowed about voting against the sitting President, Republican or Democrat. According to his logic, all politicians are bums and deserve to be tossed out, even if it means replacing losers with losers.
That attitude may seem to make no real sense, but funny, to me it makes perfect sense.
I will never vote for Phillipe Couillard, David Birnbaum or any Quebec Liberal party candidate.

It's time for a new batch of losers.

In Quebec the Customer is Never Right

Reading the outrageously stupid reaction of Quebec politicians to the contrived BONJOUR/HI  controversy I am reminded of Shakespeare's eloquently descriptive line from Hamlet.

“A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.”

Which roughly translates as; being more sad about a situation than angry about it.

That pretty much sums up my feelings over the moronic and Kafkaesque debate in the National Assembly with politicians decrying the use of the familiar phrase by store clerks in greeting customers.

"The National Assembly is formally asking Quebec’s merchants to “warmly” greet their clients with the word “Bonjour,” and drop the old standard “Bonjour-hi.”A resolution to that effect, sponsored by the Parti Québécois, sailed through the legislature Thursday morning following a short debate over semantics.
The vote was 111 for and no opposition, which means the Liberals, Coalition Avenir Québec and Québec solidaire MNAs all endorsed it." Link

It goes to the nastiness that pervades the language debate whereby petty linguistic slights are elevated to absurd heights by thin-skinned Anglophobic politicians who pretend to encourage Quebecers to be bilingual but don't really want them to express themselves in the language of the oppressor. Sadly this includes politicians of all political stripes including the Premier who called "BONJOUR/HI" an 'irritant.'
Couillard who is acting more and more bizarre as the next election approaches, offered up this nose-stretcher when he noted that it was never the intention of the father of Bill 101, Camille Laurin, to impose French as the exclusive language of the workplace.
Really?????  Are you kidding me!!!!!!
Camille Laurin was a despicable anglophobe who wished nothing less than to chase every anglophone out of the province and worked with a measure of success to do so, successfully contributing to the decimation of the anglophone fact in Quebec.

So let us dissect what is so offensive about "Bonjour/Hi."
It is a phrase used in the downtown and western part of Montreal and in some malls in Laval. Those areas account for at least 30% anglophones and so the use of the phrase in greeting customers signals that the server or clerk is bilingual and happy to serve customers in the language of their choice.
This is what is so offensive to these politicians, the serving of anglophones in English, an outrageous scenario that in their mind mocks and diminishes the French language in Quebec.

Now you won't find the term used by clerks in Abitibi, Lac-St.Jean or Trois Rivieres, because there are few if any English customers and few bilingual employees able to speak English anyways, but in the Montreal area, clerks and servers offering English is a customer service issue that fosters happy clients, a concept that quite frankly these politicians cannot fathom.

Jean-Francois Lisée the leader of the PQ is tilting at windmills in a stupid but sadly successful attempt to drive language divisions in Quebec to restore a measure of relevance to the moribund PQ.
The PQ leader has supported Quebecers learning English but is wary of increased English courses in public schools. He thinks that it's a horrible idea to speak to your boss in English or for that matter to use English in the workplace. He also believes that its wrong to speak to customers in English and that watching English television or movies hurts the French language.
In essence, he and just about all Quebec politicians believe that everyone in Quebec should speak English, but not use it in Quebec.
How's that for stupidity?
And so the English that francophones are supposed to learn should only be employed in that two-week vacation in Old Orchard Beach, never at home!!
This is sadly Quebec.

And the French anglo-bashing media is no better...

We all know that gaining proficiency in another language is no easy task and I'm reminded of the old Jack Benny joke which tells of him being stopped on the street in Manhattan by a tourist asking how to get to Carnegie Hall, to which Benny offered his now famous rejoinder,
"Practice, Practice, Practice!"

If francophones don't practice English by either speaking it or watching English media how will they ever become proficient?
Lisée wants everyone to be bilingual, but never use the language inside the province. Bah!

The great lie is that as much as we are told by politicians that they love and respect anglophones and English, it just isn't true and they are quick to throw us under the bus in response to stupid language attacks.

I'd like to comment on an item in the same Gazette article about the Bonjour-Hi controversy.

"In 2012, a poll commissioned by the Conseil supérieur de la langue française found that 79.8 per cent of those surveyed disapproved of the expression and would prefer just Bonjour."

I am more than familiar with polling having worked as a political organizer in charge of internal polling for many years for various political parties and various candidates. I know how to run an honest poll and how to run a dishonest poll. I've done both.
The above poll is nothing more than an infamous "Push Poll," an ostensible opinion poll in which the true objective is to sway voters using loaded or manipulative questions.

Let me explain this concept by stealing from the brilliant physicist Werner Heisenberg' whose famous 'Uncertainty Principle,' states that simply observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes that phenomenon.
In polling, just asking a certain question or asking a certain question in a certain way may necessarily change the results.
"Do you believe that man really landed on the moon?"
This is an example of how asking a stupid question will push some to believe the absurd by legitimizing the question.
Here is a classic push poll.
"Do you believe that if democratic candidate John Doe had an affair with his daughter, he should be allowed to serve in Congress?"
And so readers, asking if the public preferred Bonjour to Bonjour-Hi, is just a push poll, a blatant attempt to sway public opinion. 
Whenever you see a poll, first look at who or what organization commisioned it and ask yourself if the organization has a hidden agenda.
Would you really take seriously a poll commissioned by the tobacco institute that asks the question; "Are smoking risks exaggerated?"
The organization that ordered the above poll is a French language lobby group with an agenda. The Montreal Gazette should never have published it.

French Language Obsession Finally Bites Montreal Canadiens in the Ass

This morning I was driving my grandson to school, listening to the radio tuned to the NHL channel on satellite radio.
I like to hear the American take on the game, but in this case, it was the Canadian Pierre McGuire, dishing his opinion on the Jonathan Drouin/ Mikhail Sergachev trade between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightening which occurred in the off-season.

McGuire waxed eloquent over the play of Sergachev while throwing shade on Drouin, hinting that the Habs may have made its worst trade in history, even eclipsing the disastrous Subban/Weber trade that has come to haunt the Canadiens already. McGuire, who knows a thing or two, predicts that Sergichev may one day win the Norris Trophy as the best defenceman in the league, calling the rookie 'magical.'

Last night the nineteen-year-old Sergachev (a defenceman) scored his sixth goal of the year with Tampa, to go along with his ten assists. Not even the vaunted Weber, Montreal's number one defenceman can match those numbers with only four goals and ten assists.  Weber's time on the ice averages out at about 26 minutes, where he has recorded  a plus/minus of -7. (he was on the ice for seven more opposition goals than goals scored by the Canadiens.) Sergachev, as a rookie has carved out a respectable average of about 14 minutes of ice time per game and has racked up an impressive +7 in that same statistic.
No doubt Tampa Bay is a better team and so one would expect the team numbers to be better, but nobody can deny the Sergichev's  brilliant start.
As for the underwhelming Jonathan Drouin, his four goals as an attacker is a bitter disappointment to those fans who look on the game dispassionately.
Of course, nobody in the French media is ready to state the obvious, that the Canadiens got the decidedly short end of the stick in a trade orchestrated by Bergevin driven by the desire to add a francophone presence to the team.
The French Canadian sports media has embraced the infamous "Savard Doctrine" enunciated by the former GM Serge Savard who told reporters that given a choice between two equal players the Habs should always opt for the francophone.
Oh if life was only that simple.....
The Savard Doctrine dictates that all potential coaches are equal and so the Canadiens must always have a French-speaking francophone coach as well as a French-speaking francophone general manager.
Even though Bob Gainey muddled through adequately in French, when things got tough the French media rode him out of town on a rail faster than a Paul Byron rush. As for losers like ex-coach Michel Therrien, the French media couldn't have been gentler, despite his disastrous record and him completely losing control of the team room. For Therrien, it was the second time around as coach of the Habs, because after all his first stint was so super successful.
Who will be the next coach after the current Claude Julien will be fired (also for the second time.) Look for Alain Vigneault to come back for a second stint as well, as the Rangers will  inevitably sour on him.
Do you see a pattern?
It is a sad case of musical chairs with the same limited bunch of francophone coaches circling the coach's chair and where qualified Anglos are barred from joining the game.

There is an unspoken bond in the  Quebec francophone hockey media whereby criticizing one of their own and calling for a Francophone coach's firing is just not cricket. It isn't deliberate, but ingrained, like a good brother protecting his sister, no matter what.

I suppose there is a place for affirmative action in some situations, that is placing other considerations before talent when making selections. I can actually think of one, that is the admissions criteria for medical schools where there are so many qualified applicants for each place that promoting minorities can be justified.

But the NHL is not an organization where any consideration but talent can lead to a successful team.
The French press can go on blindly supporting the Savard Doctrine, but the disappointing results over time are to be anticipated.
Considering the bonehead moves that GM Marc Bergevin has made and gambles that haven't panned out, one might think the press would be up in arms calling for his sacking, but alas such is not the case.
As long as a language plays a part in the selection of players and coaches, the Habs are doomed to plumb to the depths of ignominy.

And you know what?
Although the French sports media will be fine with it, I'm not so sure that the real fans will be.
Already there are rumblings in the stands and despite what the team says about sell-outs, the Habs popularity is on the decline, directly proportional to its success on the ice.

But in Quebec, French solidarity is more important than success.