Sadly, I think Paul Wells hits the mark here in his piece castigating Justin Trudeau over the SNC‑Lavalin affair. Sadly, because Trudeau hasn’t lived up to everyone’s hopes – starting, as Wells observes, with his waving aside of promised electoral reforms. Sadly, because I would hate to see Trudeau’s mishandling of this relatively trivial affair – as someone said this week, politicking on behalf of a firm like SNC‑Lavalin would be standard unremarkable politics most places – lead us back into another dark era of Conservative power if the Liberal machine can’t drag this back from the edge.
Updates from March, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Work begins next week on installing elevators in Place des Arts metro as well as integrating one of its exits into a new building.
Meezly
Well, this should be interesting. There is currently heavy construction underway at the former Domtar Garden on de Bleury & de Maisonneuve. With the construction trucks, No.80, 435, 129, 125 and 35 buses and regular traffic converging on that one block, and now more construction – can’t wait to see what kind clusterfudge will come of it!
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Kate
The water taxi experiment between Pointe-aux-Trembles and the Old Port was such a success that it will run for three years, in summertime, starting mid-May.
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Kate
Global is trying to make a scandal out of a bad paving job on Papineau but the city says it’s just a temporary asphalt covering for winter.
Jonathan
I think it’s a great thing. If it’s temporary, then why not pave the cone into the pavement. This way it will be sure to stay and a city worker won’t have to come back and replace cones.
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Kate
QMI is alleging that at least some of the city’s snow removal workers are dangerous to the public because they aren’t properly trained and aren’t given enough time to do the job safely. They also allege it’s too easy to get hired.
Update: Other media are getting aboard this story: CTV reports on a journalist who was hired within five minutes and put behind the wheel immediately. He brought a hidden camera along. And CBC reports that contractors are now promising to do better training next season.
I feel a certain muted irony in that the same media that complain loudly about snow removal not happening fast enough are now kvetching about the firms hiring too fast.
Ian
Well the guys on the sidewalks are certainly a menace, but that’s always been the case AFAIK
PO
I still enjoy telling the story of a time a sidewalk plow guy literally pushed me off the sidewalk with his plow. He came up behind me, continued till the snow pile he was pushing caught my feet and I was pushed out of his way. He saw me, but rolled past without turning his head as I looked at him in disbelief.
MtlWeb
Wow; the infamous Hans Marotte as spokesperson for the union representing the city’s blue collar workers.
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Kate
The REM’s solution to the Deux-Montagnes line delays is to send bus shuttles to Côte-Vertu metro station, but that station will be closing for several months in 2020 so it can be integrated with the huge new underground metro garage currently under construction. I guess it’ll be a mess over there for awhile.
La Presse predicts that the bill for public transit in the Montreal area will double in ten years.
Kevin
I like that line saying the REM didn’t mention the Cote Vertu closure because it was already public.
At their technical briefing last week they also failed to mention all the stuff that starts in 3 weeks.
Faiz Imam
“La Presse predicts that the bill for public transit in the Montreal area will double in ten years.”
Good.
Quebec spends substantially less per capita on public transit than most advanced jurisdictions. We are even behind a place like Ontario, which Quebecers love to crap on.
This chart is one I find particularly damning. https://twitter.com/MariePlourde/status/1100049106284826624
$5650 per capita vs $1081.
And Ontario spends 75% of transportation spending on public transit, 25% on roads. Montreal is the opposite.
We need to dramatically increase funding, and both higher taxes as well as shifting money from the road network is needed.
Brett 22:46 on 2019-03-04 Permalink
We need Maxime Bernier ASAP.
Tim S. 00:08 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
There are alternatives, we just have to vote for them. With Nathan Cullen retiring, I’m still a little sad to think of what an NDP government would have looked like in 2015.
david100 03:44 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
Compared with Liberal scandals of the past, it’s very surprising to me the play this is getting. I’ve carefully read the public stuff in this matter, and I can’t figure out what the big deal is. You know, I do about 20 minutes a week thinking about what a terrible crime is was that Mulcair lost the premiership to a stone cold hustler like Trudeau. Still, though, what has he really done wrong in this case?
I’d love to see Trudeau gone, obviously, in jail even. But not at the cost of the Conservatives getting into power, and certainly not on a completely weird story like this.
Kate 07:57 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
Brett: Yes, it would be great to have a guy in power who leaves top-secret papers with his dubious biker gang girlfriends. First class material, Bernier.
david100: Why do you want to see Trudeau in jail?
All of this rather dull little scandal is specifically tuned to get the Tories back into power. A big corrupt Quebec firm subverting federal justice procedures is just the news to get right‑wing voters frothing – and get them out to vote.
I’ve found Justin Trudeau a disappointment, but he’s 1000% more acceptable to me as prime minister than Andrew Scheer.
Ephraim 09:09 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
The PPC is pretty far-right libertarian, Koch brothers and Frasier Institute stuff, while trying to stay out of the abortion and gay-rights stuff (which frankly is OLD politics). Ending supply management, moving towards private healthcare, lowering taxes on the rich, If anything, we need a more centrist party in Canada.
The CPC is off it’s rocker thinking that I’m going to vote for a party that can’t even manage to modernize their human rights stance…. I mean seriously still talking about GLBT rights, about 30 years out of step. And frankly when Ireland accepts abortion, you know that it’s an issue of the past! Between that and the climate thing, they have become the party of OLD MEN.
Frankly, it’s time for Trudeau to man up and do something about SNC Lavalin. Is there anyone that doesn’t think that company is corrupt?
JaneyB 09:31 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
I have fantasies of SNC’s board hanging in small cages from the bridge every time I cross the Champlain. Still, is this scandal really different from the govt making concessions to the US in the latest trade deal in order to protect jobs in the auto sector in Ontario? Big companies create political pressure by their mere existence – SNC, Chrysler, Bombardier etc. I like JWR, JT, and Philpott and nothing illegal was done – unsavoury yes, but in the usual way for capitalism. Certainly it’s not worth nixing a national carbon tax or allowing further degradation to medicare, both certainties under the Conservatives. I’m really not getting how this SNC thing is so scandalous. Moreover, the two ministers, though good at their jobs, really seem remarkably politically oblivious.
Octavian 12:28 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
While PJMT might not have “lived up to everyone’s expectations” I think that to call him an impostor is major hyperbole and throws Wells’s objectivity on the matter into question. Let’s face it, how many elected politicians do live up to expectations? How many people in your life have disappointed you in one way or another? Let’s not forget that life is a matter of trial and error and we bumble our way through it as best we can. Ideals are to be striven for but you have to be very naive to think they will be achieved in all cases for everyone. And I don’t think it’s fair to bring the electoral reform failure into this argument, which is about another matter entirely.
As for SNC, isn’t it true that the entire board has been replaced and there is a new management there? You want to punish innocent employees and pensioners as well as the city of Montreal, who would lose yet another corporate HQ a la Alcan, CP Rail, etc.?
Kevin 14:36 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
The idea that SNC would move its headquarters to England is insane.
“Oh, we’re in trouble in the country where we were founded so let’s go to the country that (checks notes) is breaking up with Europe and doesn’t have a plan yet.”
Yes, we as a society DO punish companies and their employees for corruption. Even in Quebec. (Seen Tony Accurso running anything lately?)
This whole scandal is Trudeau and the PMO believing their own hype, throwing their weight around, and shooting themselves in the foot.
And because of the differences in how right-wing and leftish voters define loyalty, the Libs have handicapped themselves.
Hamza 16:06 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
I’ve been a fan of Trudeau for years , before he was even leader, before even he was thinking about it.
This scandal as wonky and esoteric it is (seriously try explaining it to a non-Canadian without getting into the legal minutae of DPAs , judicial independence, the weirdness of having the attorney general and the minister of justice be the same person, solicitor-client privilege and the position of Quebec vis-a-vis the Liberals and SNC) but it is still gravely damaging.
Trudeau’s four major pillars , the hallmarks of his brand are ‘Sunny Ways’ (transparency, honesty and integrity in government), feminism, native reconciliation and improving the economy, mainly through spending
This one little scandal strikes at all those pillars simultaneously.
Even worse is that despite how much the media and the Tories are going nuts over it, this is all self-inflicted by the Liberals themselves. It hearkens back to the worst parts of the sponsorship scandal, which Trudeau was supposed to have buried just by virtue of being himself.
I think he’ll hang on until the election but Jane Philpott just drove the knife in that much deeper.
Octavian 16:26 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
I think we all forget or at least ignore that the Libs “try” to operate in an open fashion. After all, it was Paul Martin who called the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal and Trudeau who waived attorney-client privilege to allow JWR to testify.
Tim S. 18:19 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
I’ll believe the Liberals are transparent when somebody is able to show me where, among their hundreds of promises made in the 2015 campaign, they said “What’s good for SNC-Lavalin is good for Canada”
Mostly, I’m just discouraged by how many people are defending the Liberals “because Harper.” Every election, there are 6-8 names on the ballot in each riding. Most of them are good people who genuinely want to try to improve our society, and put themselves out there even though they know they have little chance of winning. Instead, we just keep electing non-entities who successfully sucked up to the right people inside a big, recognizable party.
steph 21:51 on 2019-03-05 Permalink
…each election we’re stuck with the same broken electoral system that these current goons promised to reform.
walkerp 14:01 on 2019-03-06 Permalink
Anybody arguing that this behaviour by the Liberals and their cronies was no big deal should never ever complain about quality of services in Quebec and Montreal. SNC-Lavalin’s corporate culture and the lobbyists and politicians that work to support that culture are directly related the acceptance of corruption at municipal and provincial levels here in Quebec. How much did we all pay for the new super hospital that ended up in pockets of upper management and the lobbyists that supported them? How much of our taxes go to the massive markup (and low-quality materials and work) on road work here?
I don’t want to hear your whining about snow removal or waiting for a doctor when you accept the federal government going to bat for one of the biggest contributors to corruption in Canada.