Pablo: The authenticity of his nationalist credentials.

Pablo claims to be a Quebec nationalist within a federalist Canada. That's not a powerful argument, especially for someone who doesn't recognize the truths of Francophone and Quebec history. For Rodriguez, history should not be discussed in its proper context. Here is his response to a speech by Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon: [TRANSLATION] [He uses] "another level of language and introduces terms of violence" by talking about the sad history of the deportation of Francophones from Acadia and the execution of patriots by British forces. And Pablo goes further: for him, [TRANSLATION] "it is deeply disappointing and even worrying to hear these references to events that happened a long time ago."

Here's what St-Pierre Plamondon had to say: [TRANSLATION] "I'm always surprised to hear news commentators say that there's no intention behind this. It's about forgetting recent history, like the unilateral patriation of the Canadian Constitution without Quebec, forgetting the work of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, forgetting what Francophones went through with deportations, executions, the ban on teaching in French. This regime has been constant throughout its history." Rodriguez is complicit in a climate of silence about the injustices suffered by our ancestors, whether in Nova Scotia, Manitoba or New Brunswick. For Pablo, these are old quarrels that don't seem to matter in today's federation.

Can we really claim that this attitude is that of a Quebec nationalist who takes to heart the concerns of the Canadian minority and the Quebec majority? Deliberately forgetting our history is not an attribute of someone who is naturally a Quebec nationalist. Frankly, it's far from convincing.