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Updates from January, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 21:58 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  It’s notable how much money Téo Taxi got from Quebec while the Liberals were in power, and thus no surprise that Alexandre Taillefer put his efforts into trying to get them re-elected. TVA reports “5 millions $ du ministère des Transports, 5 millions $ du Fonds provincial de modernisation de l’industrie du taxi, 5 millions $ du ministère de l’Environnement et 4,5 millions $ du ministère de l’Économie à Téo Techno, ainsi que près de 1 million $ du gouvernement fédéral.” More millions were injected by Investissement Québec, the Caisse de dépôt, the FTQ solidarity fund and the CSN.

  It’s the coda to this piece that has me steaming. François Legault says that he’s only worried about the twenty or so well paying jobs and the app. “Mon obsession, ce n’est pas de créer des emplois à 15 $ de l’heure. Mais des emplois payant à 25-30, 40 $ de l’heure.” To hell with the 450 drivers for whom a steady $15/hr was a solid deal. Legault just can’t imagine people for whom a regular job $3 over minimum is a matter of aspiration, not disdain.

  And yet the CAQ remains popular.

  Kevin, qatzelok, dwgs, and 3 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • david100 03:30 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Wow, that’s a remarkably high poll score. That 16% for Solidaire is looking pretty good though.

  • Kevin 08:42 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Quebec is at the bottom of the chart for income per person in North America. Only three provinces and one state have lower average incomes.

    It may not be polite to say so, but creating a bunch of near-minimum-wage jobs isn’t going to let the province afford the services so many people want and need.

  • dhomas 09:09 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    That type of logic doesn’t seem to make sense. We want higher paying jobs, I get it. But there is a need for taxis. Téo was paying drivers more than Uber is, thus driving the average up. Should we be paying taxi drivers 25$/hour when we couldn’t even make it work at a modest 15$/hour?

  • Spi 12:07 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    @dhomas

    Legault’s point was that he wants to create high- skilled/higher-value jobs not to simply pay workers above market wages.

  • qatzelok 12:21 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Kevin, Quebec already has some of the best services in North America, and our “low income” is more than offset by the low cost of living. It’s called “social programs” and it’s why Cubans live longer than Americans now, with one twentieth the money to play with.

    You can’t really compare “disposable incomes” when the regional supply of collective social programs differs as dramatically as it does in North America.

  • dwgs 17:10 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Qatzelok, I fear you may be ignoring the Quebec debt that is approaching 200 Billion dollars. One day that chicken will come home to roost.

  • qatzelok 18:18 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    dwgs, debt-strangulation is all over the world, and I am as concerned about it as anyone.

    https://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=173128

  • Kevin 19:12 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Who is comparing disposable income? I’m talking overall income, and there are many places nearby where people earn more and spend less to live.

    Our public services are wonderful, but we know we can’t afford to pay for them unless the average income goes up.
    (And despite those services, Quebec’s lifespan is lower than the average in Canada… )

    So, let’s use our debt wisely to improve our collective lot.
    It’s about self-reliance as a people. Surely that is a good thing?

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• Kate 21:50 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  It’s a report by the police service, so reach for the salt: they say body cams on their officers are pretty useless and would cost $24 million a year, so they’re recommending against. Apparently cops have to activate the devices themselves, which suggests they wouldn’t exactly be an objective eye on police actions anyway.

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  • david100 03:33 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    $24 million a year, if true, is a colossal waste of money. For far less than that, we could have cameras installed London-style every dozen meters. Why adopt these technologies best suited to lonely highway stops when most interactions with the police could be recorded off a building or dashboard?

  • Kate 07:38 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Not everyone likes the full-time surveillance they have in London, david100.

  • Ephraim 09:32 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Bodycam footage isn’t merely an expense, it lowers the cost of prosecution, it lowers attacks on the police, it calms situations, it helps improve policing. BUT what the Montreal police are fearing is video of their doing the wrong thing, of course we could just tell them to STOP doing the wrong thing…. but the reality is that the bodycam is there to ensure the integrity of the whole situation, including how both the policeman and the public are treated. The one thing it isn’t…. useless. And sorry, but you don’t have to activate it. In fact, there is a button to deactivate it… which brings up questions of WHY you did.

  • Marco 12:16 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    The Toronto Police Service did a pilot project with body cams and reached the opposite conclusion:
    https://www.torontopolice.on.ca/media/text/20160915-body_worn_cameras_report.pdf

• Kate 20:26 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  A hole stoved into a major gas line at Ste-Cat and Crescent was plugged up in time for happy hour, after several hundred folks were evacuated.

   

• Kate 20:19 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  Valérie Plante has written to all the boroughs reminding them that the city requires a certain standard in snow clearance.

  So far Tuesday, the city has only had a relative dusting rather than the forecasted snowstorm.

  Kevin is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Kevin 08:43 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    So… City hall is complaining about the terrible job being done on snow removal.

• Kate 08:07 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  Must-read of the day: Martin Patriquin tears a strip off François Legault and his stated preference for “Europeans.”

  Chris, dhomas, Hamza, and 8 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Steve Q 09:38 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    Funny how Patriquin is doesn’t seem offended by Israel’s preference for Jewish people ?

  • Kate 09:52 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    Patriquin doesn’t mention Israel in that piece.

    He’s pointing out the shift from linguistic to ethnic preference, which I noted briefly a few days ago here on the blog. He’s saying it wasn’t unreasonable for Quebec to give preference to people from e.g. Algeria and Haiti who already knew French, but that choosing “Europeans” who may not know a word of French, but have white skin, is a different thing entirely.

  • Jack 12:19 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    The picture of Legault with Dany Lafferiere makes it even more appalling.

  • qatzelok 14:08 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    J Trudeau startes his term by making boycotting of Israel “condemnable.”

    But it’s also clear that imitating Israeli policy is off limits to non-Israelis.

    The level of subtle racism in our government is much more serious than what a bunch of hicks say at town halls in Sudbury or Ste Hyacinthe. Or a slip of the tongue of an inexperienced government spokesmodel.

  • Hamza 14:33 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    I was hoping for him to make the point in a more aggressive way but he surprisingly goes really easy on Legault and the CAQ.

    Just in the last year or so we’ve had the SLĀV/Kanata thing, Gabriel Chaput, the First Nations hockey players in Quebec City and if you want to go back further, the Mosque Shooting.

    This is a systemic problem in Quebec and all you need to do is ask a PoC and they will recount to you their experiences off the top of their head.

    Oh, and I musn’t forget those perennial lads whom Rage Against the Machine summed up as ‘some of those who work forces/are the same that burn crosses’

  • qatzelok 17:57 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    People in small towns all over most of the world express similarly bewildered opinions of other cultures. What is really exceptionally racist (and important) is the hierarchy of races in the international arena – of all rich countries’ political leaders.

    Our government protects Israel and will attack Venezuela for the same reason: money, not race. But the distribution of money follows ethnic lines because of tribal loyalty, so this money-based politics is racist by the very definition of racist: ordered according to racial lines. And it’s extremely influential: it determines the way the world functions.

    Using media memes to prove a point on this topic is problematic because commercial media isn’t neutral at all and chooses which memes to run on loop. It also exists for money, which follows tribal lines. Media is, thus, also tribal and racist.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjrD3wachW0 (Michel Onfray on how the Gilets Jaunes are being framed inaccurately by commercial media)

  • js 23:45 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    Wasn’t this yahoo banned for promoting anti-semitic nonsense before? Why do you keep letting him back in? Does ranting about how Jews are control all governments, banks, and news media really advance understanding of local politics?

  • david100 03:57 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    I’m not sure what to think of qatzelok’s thoughts or the others.

    Overall, I think it’s pretty obvious that we should be dead against the hard conservative values of middle easterns, Asians, and people from here.

    Obviously, it’s not ideal that so many people in Quebec would prefer not to have non-white people around, but here I think it’s also not great to project “Canadian” multi-cultural values on a semi-autonomous political entity like Quebec that hasn’t ever adopted the Vancouver/Toronto ideology that Trudeau parachuted in here to take nationwide.

    I don’t have an opinion on any given creed, but it strikes me, just as a guy who gets really annoyed with have-every-answer Canadians coming to Quebec and imposing their views, that in the same way a lot of you types demand rights for, say Muslim immigrants to practice their religion without restrictions or interference, it should also be fairly normal to allow the Quebec majority to voice opinions about how crazy they think it is. And to impose limits to its influence in the political and social community.

    The Canadian idea that some positions voicing concern about change are off the table and just can’t be discussed because doing so violates some identitarian compact that you cooked up in Toronto? That’s just not a majority Quebecois position.

    I don’t know what turn we took where people wearing burkas are who we on the left are defending, I must have missed it, but I think the sensible position in this column is right: yeah, let’s not go nuts on this stuff but, also, let’s not pretend that we want it or think it’s normal or desirable to be a religious fundamentalist from the middle east. Like, wtf.

  • david100 04:02 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    And obviously it’s not a big problem. I think the idea a lot of people have is that if there were just a lot less tolerance, these people would come anyway, they’d just assimilate a lot fasted and more effectively.

  • Hamza 06:01 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Racists don’t deserve tolerance. Trudeau senior gave us multiculturalism in the constitution, so I dont know where u get ‘Toronto values.’ Ppl who obsess about hijabs/niqabs reveal their own racism/sexism and ignorance of individual women’s rights to choose.

    Individual and particularly group/minority rights exist as protection against tyranny of the majority.

    The quip about ‘middle eastern’ (are not Israelis Middle Eastern?) and ‘Asians’ (oh brother) is 18th century in its ignorance.

    Define ‘effective assimilation.’ Does it mean look and dress European? Kill your cultural roots and practises? Eat bacon and swallow Timbits?

  • Ephraim 09:33 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    If seperatism wasn’t already dead after seeing the mess of Brexit, the fact that it’s racist has certainly loss them every vote of every immigrant forever.

  • Hamza 13:16 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    @Ephraim

    Trust me when I say that mask slipped with Parizeau’s concession speech and nobody ‘ethnic’ who was around then will forget it

  • Chris 22:35 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Hamza said “Ppl who obsess about hijabs/niqabs reveal their own racism/sexism and ignorance of individual women’s rights to choose”

    I suspect a reason some people “obsess” about hijabs/niqabs is because they are legally mandated in several places. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I know of no country on Earth where wearing a crucifix or kippah is required. So yeah, how about the woman’s right to choose? Iran and Saudi total ~100m people, say 50m women. That’s almost 2 whole Canadas of women *without* the right to choose. (No doubt a fair chunk would chose to wear it anyway, but they are not given the choice.) Strangely, this forcing applies only to women, and not men. So yeah, I agree sexism is at play. But racism? We’ve got brown people forcing hijab, and white people wanting to forbid hijab. In fact, we’ve also got brown people forbidding hijab, example Turkey. Seems forcing women transcends race. Almost as if assholes come in every colour.

    Forcing hijabs is wrong. Forbidding hijabs is wrong. I can understand that some in solidarity with the former group think the latter policy is warranted, but beyond being illiberal, I think it’s a tactical mistake too, as that which is banned is often coveted.

  • Hamza 07:11 on 2019-01-31 Permalink

    Saudi and Iran’s regimes are terrible yes. Last I checked, there aren’t many Christian or Jewish theocracies left so it doesn’t make sense to compare. The fact that men (white) want to take away the right to wear Islamic dress in Western countries is hypocrisy. Kippahs and crucifixes are not nearly as important to those religions as the Islamic commandments of modesty, and btw modesty in dress is mandated for men as well.

    Anyway my point was that if these supposed defenders of women’s rights actually gave a damn, they would talk about domestic violence, sexual assault, inequality of employment/pay, voting rights, reproductive rights, maternity leave, media and political representation, FGM, and a dozen other more pressing and relevant issues .

    As it stands, this is only about cultural hegemony and forced ‘assimilation’

  • Chris 10:28 on 2019-01-31 Permalink

    “there aren’t many Christian or Jewish theocracies left so it doesn’t make sense to compare” -> There’s only Vatican City and Mount Athos. Total population about 3000. They are basically all there by choice.

    “modesty in dress is mandated for men as well” -> The standard of ‘modesty’ is not the same for men vs women, and you know it. It’s a sexist standard.

    “these supposed defenders of women’s rights” -> who are you referring to exactly? Anyway, there are plenty of us that talk about all those issues you listed, *without omitting* religious stuff too.

    “more pressing and relevant issues” -> there are countless pressing and relevant problems on this Earth. No one can tackle all of them. There’s nothing wrong with picking a subset of issues and tackling them. Some people focus on environment, some on feminism, some on nuclear proliferation, and yes some on hijab. You might find it more pressing were it forced on you.

    If the topic of Islam and feminism interests you, check out some of the exmna videos, ex: youtube.com/watch?v=QToH2x8njJM

    Anyway, my overall point is to push back against the idea that being anti-hijab is _automatically_ racist. Of course some anti-hijab people are also racist! But the one does not require the other. Hijab used to be illegal in Iran. Were they racist against themselves? Today Iranian women are being arrested for taking off their hijab, are they racist against themselves?

  • dhomas 20:58 on 2019-01-31 Permalink

    I’ve been to Iran. The standard of modesty is pretty similar for men and women. I was advised to avoid shorts and wear long sleeves, but no tie. The only difference for women is the hijab, and even then it was pretty loose. Most women I saw in Tehran had a simple veil covering the back of the heads (basically starting around the same place a Jewish man would wear a kippah). I could tell you stories of all the propaganda we are fed her about Iran…
    I can’t speak about Saudi Arabia, though.

  • Chris 22:18 on 2019-01-31 Permalink

    dhomas, if the standard is similar towards men and women, perhaps you could cite something analogous to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_of_Enghelab_Street where men are arrested for wearing shorts?

  • dhomas 12:08 on 2019-02-01 Permalink

    When I was there, men definitely could be arrested for “unacceptable” clothing. We don’t hear much about it because the situation is worse for women.
    This article mentions that the police were supposed to stop arresting people for breaking dress code: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/irairan-police-tehran-women-rights-islamic-dress-code-arrests-police-hijab-hasan-rouhani-reform-a8132726.html
    It also mentions that “men can also be stopped by the police if they are seen wearing shorts or going shirtless”. I think this happens less often, but since I didn’t see a single person, man or woman, stopped by police for indecent clothing, I can’t confirm first-hand.

  • Chris 15:42 on 2019-02-01 Permalink

    dhomas, men in Canada can be arrested for “unacceptable” clothing too (Criminal Code sections 173 & 174). But the same rules apply to women, topfreedom included (though only recently).

    In Iran, neither the rules nor enforcement are the same between the sexes. The rules for men are a *subset* of the rules for women. No shorts for men, but no shorts for women either. Head covering for women, but *no* such rule for men. Enforcement likewise is biased against women. It’s textbook sexism.

    Sure we are fed propaganda about Iran, but this isn’t an instance of it.

  • Chris 15:29 on 2019-02-02 Permalink

    And very timely: youtube.com/watch?v=vVpZ0FZc8SY

• Kate 08:05 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  Curious little piece says city hall adopted an opposition motion to adopt a carbon budget with the aim of making city operations carbon neutral. The city had already made plans in that direction, so once again the opposition tries (and fails) to activate an issue against Valérie Plante.

   

• Kate 08:03 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  An AI hub that’s a collective effort between UdeM, the HEC, the Polytechnique and McGill has been inaugurated in Mile Ex. (It’s called Le Mila, although probably not in honour of Brian Mulroney’s wife.) One of the aspects it’s supposed to be studying is the ethics of how AI is implemented in human society. I think, in retrospect, this will be told as a joke.

  su is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • su 10:02 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    I just read an article about this AI Hub and it’ s financing subsidies from 2 levels of government in the 10s of millions of dollars. https://www.directioninformatique.com/le-mila-inaugure-ses-locaux-du-mile-ex/65354

• Kate 07:55 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  Lavacon, the contractor who renovated the library in Pierrefonds, has been accused of fraud by the inspector general. The company allegedly tweaked its accounts with subcontractors to inflate its invoices at the taxpayer’s expense.

   

• Kate 07:45 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  A lifetime spent in this city has taught me that, no matter what city hall does about winter weather, people will complain. Lionel Perez has caught onto this and added it to his list of leverage issues against the Plante administration. It’s a safe bet. Everyone who’s gone outside over the last week has had to traverse ice. It’s how it is.

  We’re expecting more snow Tuesday and the mayor says a new snow removal operation will begin as soon as the last one is completed. That makes sense. She doesn’t have a magic wand, Lionel.

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  • jeather 12:54 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    I have no idea what the city could possibly be doing. It gets up to 0, everything melts, the next day it’s down to -20 again and we’ve got a skating rink. I have had my issues with them (living in the poor Pavages d’Amour area), and walking is completely horrifying now, but I just can’t see a solution.

  • Joey 13:24 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    The only real potential (emphasis on potential) is heated sidewalks and roads. It’s a lot cheaper to pray for a thaw, I guess.

  • mare 15:01 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    Just make a nasty fall and hurt your knee, then you don’t have to walk on icy sidewalks anymore. That’s what I did, although my fall happened while walking the dogs in a snowy park, on the day it was raining.hit an icy patch under the 30 cm of soggy snow and fell flat on my face. It was very funny back then, only later it started to hurt.

    Crampons help with the ice, but taking them on and off when entering and leaving a shop or the metro is hard.

  • Jack 22:04 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    I have to say I’m impressed with Perez’s easy demagoguery, he will go far. He claimed that clearing the winter bike paths were more of a priority then sidewalks…you know cyclists.

• Kate 07:42 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  The single mothers living in a decrepit building in NDG with their kids, but with no heat or hot water, have been moved out of the place to temporary hotel rooms, but with no plan where they should go next.

   

• Kate 07:38 on 2019-01-29 Permalink | Reply  

  I guess I took my last Téo Taxi ride yesterday. Radio-Canada says the company’s drivers have been told not to come in Tuesday, and the company will make an announcement later in the day.

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  • Steve Q 09:41 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    Very sad. A company that wanted to do things better and it doesn’t seem to work. While major international companies who couldn’t care less about local, environmental or social issues seems to thrive. We have a problem !

  • Bill Binns 11:46 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    They made it 4 whole months after being unionized by the Teamsters.

    Sad to see them go. They were the only Taxi company I have used for the last year or so. Great service to the airport. I wonder if all those Tesla’s are going to be auctioned off cheap?

  • SMD 12:21 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    “À ceux qui soutiennent que le fait que les chauffeurs aient adhéré à un syndicat soit une des causes des difficultés de l’entreprise, M. Lacroix réplique que « les conditions de travail ont été établies bien avant que le syndicat arrive dans le dossier », notamment le fait qu’ils soient des salariés, contrairement aux autres chauffeurs de taxi dans l’industrie.”

    In other words, no need for knee-jerk anti-union speculation. The hourly wage of 15$/h had already been set before the drivers unionized, and they hadn’t even started negotiating a collective agreement yet. I will miss taking their gull-winged Teslas to the airport, I have to say.

  • John B 15:02 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    Well, it was the union spokesperson that said that.

    That said, it looks like the the fate was sealed a while ago.

    I wonder if we’ll ever really see what the problems were. Was the $15/hour unsustainable with the revenue cap that taxi laws impose? Was it just too high-end, (with cleaning, leases, uniform costs, etc), for the amount that it could make?

  • Joey 16:51 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    I’m guessing buying a bunch of $100K+ cars that need to be recharged multiple times per day probably wasn’t a shrew decision, even if “ride a Tesla from the airport” has some novelty appeal.

  • John B 19:34 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    I’ve read other articles over the years about using Teslas as taxis and they have all said that the numbers work out. this guy in Quebec just passed 300,000 km on his Tesla taxi. Apparently taxis drive less than the range of a Tesla during a typical shift, stop & start city driving works pretty well on cars with regenerative braking, and electricity is way cheaper than gas. If that’s all true then Téo should make more by using Teslas vs. gas cars.

    Maybe the problem is that they have too many Leafs and not enough Teslas.

  • Chris 22:16 on 2019-01-29 Permalink

    As if Teo could compete against Uber!!!

    Uber loses *billions* of dollars, i.e. riders are subsidized by Uber investors. Teo doesn’t have access to capital like that. I’m surprised they lasted this long.

    Sure, some people like Teslas and well paid drivers, but 99% of people just want cheap rides.

  • JoeNotCharles 01:47 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    I wonder what’s going to happen to the app – you could order Diamond from it as well as Teo for a while now. Will that stick around?

  • david100 04:06 on 2019-01-30 Permalink

    Real shame.