Why does Justin Trudeau have to defend his decision to skip the first Canada match in the World Cup to accompany his girlfriend to a different game? The man is a private citizen now – he’s not a politician, even one out of power. He no longer has the duties, official or social, that go with that job.
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Kate
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Kate
Last week, Paul St‑Pierre Plamondon implied that the Quebec Liberals are funded by the mob; party leader Charles Milliard is threatening to sue but PSPP refuses to retract.
It’s going to be a long campaign.
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Kate
Christine Black wept at a presser on the weekend and asked residents to report racist acts by police*; Fady Dagher discusses racism among his officers (audio from CBC); the PLQ wants the SQ to start an investigation into racism in the SPVM. There will be more stories, but it remains to be seen how much will just be talk‑talk and a little performative breast‑beating, and whether anything will change.
Toula Drimonis on Bluesky: “I’m seeing way too much surprise/shock/disbelief expressed at the news coming out of Montreal North, like we haven’t had years of community advocates warning us (and studies and documented cases confirming their concerns) pointing directly to police abuse and racial profiling at the SPVM.”
Ted Rutland: “How do you tell a youngster to trust the police? You don’t. You do your job. A 16‑member racist gang was terrorizing the community for months (years? we don’t even know). Find out who the gang sent to prison or juvenile detention and free them. Find out who they fined and get their money back.”
Sergio Da Silva: “Activists, community groups, academics, the communities themselves have been screaming about this for decades and now the mayor is going “to ask the tough questions” Man, fuck you. The questions have already been asked. The answers have been sitting on your desk for years.”
*Report them to whom? And how?
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Kate
Groups which say they’ve been protesting police racism for years are planning a demonstration Monday evening at Station 39 (6100 Henri‑Bourassa East in Montreal North).
La Presse reports that Montreal North mayor Christine Black expects difficult weeks and is now saying she hasn’t done enough, presumably about the entrenched racism in her borough – and not just among the police, but among borough workers (reports from 2021) as well.
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Kate
The new terminal at the Metropolitan Airport will open on Monday, as previewed on Time Out.
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Kate
SMF has launched a consultation to update the bike plan for neighbourhoods.
This piece is so fraught with SMF Newspeak that it’s almost hilarious. If I were teaching journalism, here’s the exam I would set:
What does SMF mean by:
a) revision of its bike plan
b) broader public consultation
c) adapting cycling infrastructure
“A revised Plan Vélo is expected to be presented in 2027.” Still time to sell your bicycle and buy a car. Buy two cars, why not? There will be plenty of parking.
Ian
27 is only next year …
Kate
Well, clearly they don’t have enough information about cycling in Montreal to make any decisions this year, especially since the counters were turned off for the first part of the season.
Ian
If they actually do engineering studies like “real” urbanists in other cities, that’s just data, not a conclusion.
There were a lot of really bad implementations for bike safety & roadsharing in the SW. Having a “public consultation” that just means showing up at meetings and talking (usually FR only) if you get the chance is not a public consultation. It’s an announcement with some public participation. Contrary ot Velo-Qc’s lobbying, we can’t just shoehorn in fietspads and woonerfs & hope for the best.I agree we need more bike infra, and roadsharing normalization, and A LOT more atte4ntion paid to pedestrians but it’s not as simple as slapping in whatever wherever.
Ian
pardon, I meant an ellpsis instead of a comma – “cities, that’s” should be “cities… that’s”
I get that you are annoyed by cars and car culture but you don’t ride a bike either – I use both.
Personally, I think road safety is really important, and that pedestrians and circulation are more than a street-by-street issue..I see SMF considering all usage as it stands, not taking the “if you build it they will come” dreamscape PM seemed to embrace. If it takes more time, ok, maybe it will mean fewer studies that are simply ignored for political reasons like the PM effort to prove a Camilien-Houde bike piste was the only possible solution despite the studies they paid for that disagreed. They quickly learned not to have studies at all from that fiasco, Ferrandez even ragequit because PM wasn’t moving fast enough for his tastes. Maybe SMF will have a less reactionary approach – and really, I think the city has had enough ineffective reactionaries that ignore any problem that isn’t a special interest to last us a while.
Kate
Do you mean reactive, or reactionary, Ian?
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Kate
Fady Dagher finally bringing down the hammer on abusive police in Montreal North has met a deadpan lack of surprise among Black men in the area.
SMF has to say something about abusive police, but the situation went well beyond trust being broken between police and communities a long time ago.
Maybe our cops will get body cams now, but after this fuss has died down, maybe she’ll hold some consultations and have a report written eventually.
jeather
I notice nothing real from the premier, who I assume can’t figure out how to say this was bad but don’t worry, Quebec has no systemic racism.
That said I had no idea SMF was with a Black man, and she really did just say “there’s systemic racism and profiling and we need to talk about it”, which is a pretty big statement. That was my biggest problem with VP.
bob
After the fuss dies down the party line will be that there was an isolated racism problem, but we took care of it, and there is no systemic racism in Quebec.
Ian
Maybe… but SMF is a POC and an immigrant – and that makes a big difference, too.
I think she might have more skin in the game (pun intended) than any Montreal administration before hers.Kate
Is SMF a POC? She is a white woman from Chile.
Ian
Chileans are Latino.
Kate
A quick research has turned up the opinion that Latinos are not necessarily “people of colour” and a lot depends on context. We are not in the United States where being Hispanic is regarded as a racial category.
It would depend also whether SMF feels she is a POC.
MarcG
It always takes me a few seconds to process “Non-Hispanic Whites” when I see it as an ethnic identity choice on a form.
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Kate
Autumn’s election is already starting to loom, the Alto train factor providing various visual gags and Godin predicting the first of many phone surveys. Perhaps Christine Fréchette didn’t quite welcome the end of the parliamentary session.The ambivalent “noui” phenomenon came in for a few laughs, from Côté and Ygreck.
Banning social media to under-16s was illustrated by Godin and Côté, while the new Governor General was also a topic, although Ygreck seems to have forgotten the seven beige years of David Johnston between Michaëlle Jean and Julie Payette.
Trump never quite leaves the stage, but it was the criticism of Legault and Fitzgibbon’s rash investment in bad battery business that gave us the best caricature of the week from Chapleau.
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Kate
Shots were fired Saturday evening from a vehicle during a party in Angrignon Park. Police arrived and chased the vehicle, then arrested several people. That’s what these media reports describe.
Someone reported this incident to Facebook as police having shot and killed two people, pepper sprayed everyone else present, and locked down the metro station. This report was also posted to reddit. Whether any of these other things happened isn’t clear, but official reports say nobody got shot during the incident.
Nicholas
Good example of not uncritically trusting social media (and good to not link it). Maybe some bodies will turn up, but if at this point the police are suppressing that and not telling the media that would be the scandal of the century.
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Kate
A young kangaroo is on the loose on the South Shore, probably around Boucherville.
Deborah
the wallaby absolutely needs to be rescued immediately without authorization
Deborah
When Sauvetage Animal Rescue first located the animal,
they initially identified it as a wallaby. After talking directly
with the owners and wildlife protection agents, the lead rescuer confirmed the animal is actually a juvenile kangaroo.The fact that an exotic juvenile animal is wandering cold
and alone next to a major highway, with experienced rescue teams and a zoo ready to help, but a government agency
is blocking them because of paperwork is the definition
of bureaucratic absurdity.It highlights a massive flaw in how the legal system handles emergencies: protecting an illegal owner’s “property rights”
is being prioritized over public safety and a living animal’s life.MarcG
The story quotes “The story begins earlier this week when a simple visit to a boarding stable in the greater Montreal area led to a report of a baby kangaroo kept alone in a stable box” but then doesn’t say anything about the rest of the story, like what led to it wandering free.
steph
An adult wallaby typically weighs no more than about 50 pounds, the size of a large dog. They present unique capture challenges, snare poles are difficult to use on their wide necks and small heads. Trying to manually restrain one with several people can easily lead to broken limbs. To my understanding, the “authorization” issue is primarily related to the regulations governing the transport of tranquilizer drugs, many of which are controlled substances. Not all veterinarians are authorized to carry these medications in their vehicles.
is Deborah an AI bot?
Kate
MarcG: Nor why it was even here, or whether it was imported legally. Many questions.
steph: I can’t tell. All I can tell you is that she has commented a few times previously.
Uatu
I’m just waiting for the update about it being chased by a cat named Sylvester who’s convinced it’s really a giant mouse…
MarcG
If anyone has the interest and patience to watch 48 minute video from a pleasantly foul-mouthed gentleman from Sauvetage Animal Rescue on Facebook here you go https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1488235763047120
MtlWeb
Uatu…….hahaha……fond memories of Sylvester’s son
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Kate
Two people died in a house fire in St‑Michel on Saturday morning.
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Kate
A young man drowned off Verdun Beach on Friday evening.
MarcG
Just got back from the rainy beach and there’s lots of new huge ugly French-only signs with hard-to-read fonts and a security guard on duty, which I’ve never noticed before but he claims they’ve been doing it for a while (maybe only on weekends when normally it’s so crowded I avoid the place).
Ian
Classic. Is it at least clearly a warning, or another “on n’aime pas ça” passive-aggressive free-from poem?
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Kate
Police chief Fady Dagher is holding a presser late Friday evening to announce the suspension of 14 officers from Station 39 in Montreal North for committing or tolerating racist and hateful actions. Cutting and collecting dreadlocks as trophies is mentioned.
steph
Good start.
MarcG
Seems like it’s been updated since you posted: “He also confirmed that two police officers are suspended, three were reassigned and the rest of the unit was “relocated” so they won’t have contact with citizens for now.”
jeather
So fourteen of sixteen cops are still working and being paid, two are not working but may or may not be unpaid, and this investigation (run by whom exactly? Their coworkers? Good for those who reported this but I bet a lot more knew and said SFA) has been going on secretly for two months now. Glad we have so much accountability.
Kate
Charges may be brought against two of them. At least the DPCP is involved in the file now.
More detail in Saturday’s column by Patrick Lagacé where he emphasizes the unusual situation in which police informed their superiors about actions by their colleagues, breaking an ageless taboo.
SMF says she’s closely monitoring the situation. And wishing it would go away, I’ll bet.
Ian
SMF is an immigrant and a POC. One can only hope she takes this more seriously than Plante did.
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Kate
A man was attacked and mauled by a German shepherd dog, Friday afternoon in Maisonneuve. According to this account, the dog took off after the attack and has not been located, nor has its owner.
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Kate
SMF promised Friday to make Park Avenue safer all the way from Pine to Jean‑Talon. A period of reflection and consultation has been suggested over what to do next.
Plateau mayor Cathy Wong says it’s a vague announcement – she was hoping there was already enough information collected to move ahead with concrete plans for better cyclist and pedestrian safety.
SMF’s administration has a style, i.e. lots of public consultation, after which proposed new ideas will be set aside in favour of traffic fluidity and parking. In 2029, will we be looking back at four years of unimaginative status quo?
Joey
Too bad for Cathy Wong that Projet didn’t have two terms to redo Parc Ave.
DeWolf
It’s pretty significant that SMF has said she’s willing to consider removing a lane of traffic. The way Park is currently set up encourages drivers to speed.
DeWolf
Also just noticed that SMF has announced the plans for Berri will be redrawn. The current plans (which have already been tendered, with detailed technical drawings available online) call for one-way bike paths on either side of the street, similar to St-Denis, Pine or Peel. But SMF seems to be suggesting the bike path will be scaled back to remain the same bidirectional path that has existed for 30 years.
That’s terrible news because the existing path is overcrowded and dangerous at intersections — problems that would have been solved with two uni-directional paths. Which incidentally is global best practice for bike infrastructure.
Ian
Again, it’s too bad PM wasn’t in power for over a decade so all this critical bike infrastructure could have been implemented.
CE
Why PM never touched Parc in the 8 years they were in power will always be a mystery to me. They could have started by simply taking out the centre lane but absolutely nothing was done at all.
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