French hockey; on Duceppe's remark

This story was bound to make lots of headlines in Canada:

Gilles Duceppe's Bloc Qu?b?cois called for the partitioning of Canada's national hockey team while unveiling the party's campaign platform Wednesday.
Duceppe suggested the creation of an all-Qu?b?cois hockey and soccer teams to complete in international tournaments, comparing the idea to the fact that in the United Kingdom, Scotland and Wales have their own seperate football (soccer) clubs, separate from the English team.

What has followed is a predictable of mixture of (self)-rigtheous indignation, hand wringing and separatism cursing, which incidentally makes little or no sense.

It's one thing to hear it from a sport writer, such as David Barnes, who in his column on the subject managed to offer just two, not particularly impressive, arguments against the idea while the rest of his column was filled with exasperation and insults (at one point he called him an "imbecile").

Although the Toronto Star refrained from slurs in its editorial the argument it put forward was equally flawed:

If Quebec were to have its own team, why shouldn't there also be Team North Ontario and Team South Ontario? Or Team Toronto?

Well, that's precisely the point you don't get, folks. Duceppe and his supporters, which seem to constitute a majority of Quebec's population as of now, believe that Quebec is a 'distinct society'. One may of course call it a balooney but it does make sense, from the standpoint of someone who believes in it, to argue that having a separate Quebec hockey team is legit unlike a Southern Ontario team.

Having said that I'm at a risk of being cast a separatist sympathizer. Well, I'm not and it's beyound the point here - I just like coherent arguments and do not tolerate non-sequitars regardless of the side they come from.