I have heard things that Quebec wants to indepent is that true?

I believe that a mixed system just like that one is the one the NDP have been pushing for in the last few years, but the idea gets zero traction with Libs or Cons craving the God-like power of a majority government. Even the Bloc could care less, because their regional concentration tends to inflate their representation.

 Whatever happened to the single transferable vote system that citizen's council in BC recommended? Nobody could ever really describe how it worked in a succinct, simple fashion.

It's nice that provinces still have the courage to try to refine the political process. Perhaps you're right, and changes at the provincial level will precipitate changes at the federal level. That's how health care got in, after all. :P

Sadly, there's almost no chance of that passing. Despite governments getting majority rule with less than 40% of the vote sometimes, the reform requires 60% overall AND over 50% in 64 electoral districts to pass. Just like in BC where the majority voted for reform, but it didn't pass because it didn't meat the arbitrarily high 60%.

It's amazing just how undemocratic an attitude they are taking towards democratic reform.

 Nah, only 49.5% of Quebec wants to seperate. :P

 Quebec nationalism flares up every 20 years or so, and the rest of Canada has to get together and beg, bribe, and/or intimidate them into staying in. Basically whenever things get tough and the rest of the country wants to vote out the current government, Quebec wants to do away with the federal government altogether.

Regional tension and distaste are pretty much a defining aspect of Canada at this point. One of the consequences of having a weak national myth. 

um...I'm an out-of-touch American....but your currency is called the loonie?

Yup, thanks to the Loon that adornes the side of our one dollar coin. When a two dollar coin was issued years ago, it was called the toonie.

However, if you have a pile of 20 loonies, you'd just call it 20 dollars.

Do you use paper single dollars too?

Not since the loonie's intro in 87. The 2 dollar bill was turned into a coin in 96. I can't see the same thing happening to the 5 dollar bill though.

If anything, our next major currency change will be the elimination of the penny. It's been talked about a fair bit when you consider that pennies are absolutely useless and cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars to produce and circulate.

I hear it costs the mint $0.03 to make a penny...

Meh, i kinda just wish the US and Canada would form an Amero or whatever it'd be called. A more equal exchange rate benefits me because I never remember to get canadian money when i visit ontario or quebec.

Everyone seems to accept american money anyway and most of them seem to give me back change in candian somewhere near the exchange rate but i never really know what the exchange rate is to argue anyway, hence why i'd perfer a universal currency.

The only advantage really is that if you give a homeless guy American money the guy sometimes gives you advice about the city and such. That was really my biggest surprise my second trip to Quebec, the amount of homeless people, seemed like there was a homeless person on every block guess it has to do with the population, i mean i'm used to the homeless but to see that many was a bit of a shock. I'm used to seeing more like 3-4 homeless guys a month and even then it's like the same 4 guys.

Hah and then some kid in purple hair hanging out with a bunch of other punkesque guys tried to beg for some money with some hand mime trick. Yeah there's like a homeless guy on every street corner and i'm going to give some money to the guy with enough money to dye his hair purple. All the money i don't need for boarding and eating are going to be going to the people who actually need money.