The new G.G. consort is getting a little hysterical.

Quebec — Governor-General Michaëlle Jean's husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, lashed out at Quebec separatists yesterday, saying they promoted terror by calling him a "traitor" and a "renegade" after his wife's appointment last summer.

Them's may be fightin' words, but they're not death threats. I don't think that it's exactly "promoting terror" if they are just scaring you, Chicken Little.

During a live, 45-minute radio interview on Radio-Canada, Mr. Lafond didn't mince words. He called his separatist critics "terrorists" and said if he had been subjected to the same type of verbal "terror" in a country like Iran, he would have been killed.

In a way he is right. Some of those separatist critics may actually be terrorists. Not because they are scaring M. Lafond, but because those same people may have actually bombed others in the late 60's. Nevertheless, "verbal terror" doesn't actually kill you, no matter what country you are in. And comparing your own discomfort at having your old buddies mad at you to the plight of dissidents actually being arrested and tortured to death in Iran is a little egocentric.

"Faced with the situation, I said to myself – I saw myself back in Tehran, where I had been a few months earlier – I said: 'If you were there, you'd be dead.' That's called terror. And that terror, when it is expressed in words, it becomes extremely dangerous," Mr. Lafond said in his first extensive interview since his wife was designated Governor-General in August.

Again, no. Terror expressed in words isn't extremely dangerous; terror expressed in bombs is.