The tax valuation of the Bell Centre goes down every year, sparing it millions in tax. But some people still persist in claiming you can have major league sports without support from public money.
Updates from November, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The STM now has a swag boutique, but not – as you might expect – at Berri-UQÀM, but up the Main in the Youville zone. (See update below.)
In other STM news, the elevator to the blue line is finally working at Jean-Talon.
Update (re comment below), I finally determined that the boutique is on the ninth floor at 9494 St-Laurent. There’s zero indication of its existence in the lobby.
EmilyG
The new shop is near the STM’s Centre de transport Legendre.
Kate
EmilyG, the article says 9494 Saint-Laurent. I went there just now (I both live and work nearby these days) and there is no sign of any boutique. The address is one of those big blocky shmatte buildings, but there’s no indication from the street and no listing of the tenants near the elevators.
Tim F
I saw a lot of these products at the gift shop to the Expo-Rail museum on the south shore, also.
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Kate
Professors at UdeM are among those condemning the CAQ’s “simplistic” hatchet job on immigration, including the prof who was Simon Jolin-Barrette’s thesis supervisor till he quit to go into politics. Meanwhile, François Legault rejects the Montreal Chamber of Commerce’s resistance to his immigration changes, saying 90% of his Facebook followers agree with his plans.
That there is a textbook modern definition of populism. Never mind the professors and the business people, it must be right because Facebook says so.
Ephraim
90% of his facebook followers are bootlickers….
LJ
Classic example of biased sampling…what an idiotic statement from Legault who is either ignorant of basic statistical principles or is being deliberately misleading.
Daniel
Oh god, this is the most frightening thing I’ve seen in a while — to think that we are being governed by Facebook.
Blork
Government of the people, for the people, by the Russian social engineering and hacker people.
Kevin
Last night I told someone trying to reach me for a high school reunion that I was not on Facebook because Facebook was only for grandparents.
I’ll now amend my previous comment: Facebook is for grandparents and morons.
For og’s sake: it’s so fucking easy to game what is seen in the comments on Facebook. If the premier doesn’t know this, he’s not fit to be premier.
Sal
This is confirmation bias at it’s best. “99% of the members of my right-wing chat group agree with me.”
Douglas
Is this guy turning into our version of Ford? Everytime he is in the news its about something irrelevant they are trying to do.
Kate
Douglas, it’s quite relevant, according to a scale of values you perhaps do not share.
Chris
Why do y’all take him at face value? Of course Legault knows his own fb membership is a biased sample, he’s just trying to pull a fast one on the unwashed masses.
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Kate
A commenter asked below whether the report on the EMSB is public. I doubt it, but am not certain. Meanwhile, the CBC has a piece offering more details than we’ve seen hitherto.
Jack
“The excellent results achieved by EMSB students in the ministerial exams reflect the quality of the work done by frontline workers in contact with elementary and high school students,” the report concludes.
For the vast majority of teachers who worked for the students and their folks first. The Board was looked upon as an institution often working against our direct interests. The corruption and dysfunction was real and tangible. Our own Union ( MTA ) was also complicit, they were closer to the Board apparatchiks than they were to their members. ” What no quorum again !”
The ” political ” leadership assumed that we were all beholden to them.
The senior leadership often saw this political structure as a trampoline to the Holy Grail, a safe Liberal Provincial or Federal seat, Jennifer Maccarone a perfect example. Our own Angela Mancini ran for City Councillor with Coderre twice and was crushed ( Just because you get your family to vote for you only works at the school commissioner level ! ).
The upper board echelon and councillors were often folks who had simply given up on teaching and were often related.
The best department the board put together were the custodians, who were and are often the most popular members of any staff.
When people started hearing that the boards might be replaced did anyone feel a groundswell of support from our community, no, because we know.walkerp
Every time I listen to an interview with Angela Mancini, she says absolutely nothing. It’s amazing how she is able to say so many words and not reveal a single morsel of relevant information or give a single answer.
Ephraim
The EMSB is the merger of 4 boards. Protestant and 3 Catholic boards, the other two not mentioned are St-Croix and Jérôme-Le Royer. The most problematic was actually Jérôme-Le Royer, if I remember correctly, which became more dominant. The Protestant was generally run okay and the English Catholic was extremely well run.
Jack
@ walkerp you should have sat down and tried to talk to her about curriculum…crickets.
Kevin
Links to the Treasury Board report and the Ministry’s report are here
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-places-emsb-in-trusteeship-names-former-mp-marlene-jennings-as-administrator-1.4672308Kate
Thank you, Kevin.
JoeNotCharles
“For example, in May 2017, the EMSB’s director general spent $305 in public funds to take 20 staff members out to lunch.
There is no indication that these meetings could not have been held at the EMSB headquarters, the report says.”
That’s $15.25 a person. That’s not bad value at all.
Taking your team out to lunch once in a while is a good way to boost morale and promote good relations. What a stupid criticism.
Tim S.
Yeah, thanks Kevin. Some interesting reading in between all the redactions.
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Kate
I love how this kind of thing works. CTV announces that “the Irish community” is not keen on the new plan to name the Griffintown REM station after Bernard Landry. They cite Fergus Keyes on the matter. He wanted it to be called Station des Irlandais, even though it’s decades since the Irish working class community was anchored there. But it’s curious how quickly Keyes was able to speak for a community and get CTV to imply he has some official status in the matter.
Cindy
Because he does.
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Kate
Passing this along as a public service: a woman of Latin American descent is in need of a compatible stem cell donor, as none of her family members is a match. Donors need to be aged 18 to 35 and of similar ancestry.
Michael Black
And somewhat related, people should sign the back of their Medicare card about organ donation. This is about once your dead, so no need to worry about live transplants, but some people wait a long time for an organ, sometimes too long. It was a drag having dialysis three times a week (about five hours each) for ten weeks, but I was way luckier than people who have to go through that for years.
Michael
Dhomas
To your point, Michael, I really think organ donation should be opt-out instead of opt-in. I’m not sure I signed my new Medicare card, not because I don’t want to donate my organs, but just because I didn’t think to do it.
Kate
Dhomas, is it not true that, even if a person signs, his wishes can easily be contravened by family members? I don’t think it’s binding, although folks without family may be able to do it.
Michael Black
I thought that I’d read that. So you’re supposed to talk it over with them when you sign.
I actualy have my first will, and I had them put in it that any useful organs can be used reused, the rest can go to science, and if anything left over, cremated. I suppose that can be fought like any clause in will, but I did it to formalize the declaration.
I meant to add here that what I remember from Emru’s campaign for a stem cell search is that the test for a match is non-intrusive, and landing on a registry will mean you get contacted if you match,but that doesn’t obligated you to donate if you match. So you can change your mind then though at that point it’s hard to see why someone would back out, but I think it can be done.
At the hospital they asked me to participate in a kidney study which is interesting because it’s to keep raw data, so it’s there for future study rather than having a study and collecting data. It won’t involve taking samples, just using leftovers when samples are taken, or taking more blood when I have to give a blood sample anyway. It seems like a good way to do research, I’d certainly not sign if it meant extra tripe and giving samples just for the study.
Michael
Kate
Michael, usually the will reading comes too late for this. There’s “living will” stuff but I’m not sure how that works.
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Kate
When CDN-NDG borough passed a bylaw in 2016 limiting fast food restaurants near schools, the city was hauled into court by a group called Restaurants Canada. Now a judge has ruled in the city’s favour, saying it does have the right to restrict the proliferation of fast food emporiums as it sees fit.
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Kate
I don’t know anything about the blog called The Points Guy, but they must have good SEO because two articles by them are rating high and getting some discussion: Things no one tells you about Montreal and a first time travel guide which tells you, among other things, not to bother visiting the Biodome, which in any case is closed for renovations till sometime next year…
jeather
No one tells you we have sales tax of nearly 10%? It specifies federal and provincial, too.
Ross
They recommend MaTante poutine. Enough said. They are legit.
Kate
You know, I’ve never been to that place. Might be time.
CE
I just discovered it last spring. Definitely legit hotdogs and poutine. They celebrated their 90th anniversary last June.
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Kate
The city budget will be presented on November 25.
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Kate
Police blotter items for Wednesday evening rival a hot evening of summer: a young man was stabbed on Ste-Catherine at St-Hubert Wednesday evening – TVA suggests a drug deal gone wrong; another young man was shot a little later at Ste-Cath and Crescent. Yet another young man was being chased by police for reasons that are unclear and will be investigated by the BEI, because he leapt from a second-storey window and is in critical condition.
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Kate
Benjamin Shingler writes a very good state of play about the CAQ’s immigration fumbles. I had not realized till now that Quebec has no control over refugees and family unification programs, which are overseen by the feds. The group it can pick and choose from is economic migrants. So that’s where it had to make its cuts – among people wanting to come to Quebec to study and work – which is why it keeps making missteps like trying to throw out applications from skilled workers or ending programs allowing people studying here to apply for residency.
To cap it off, the CAQ lost a vote on these reforms in the National Assembly on Wednesday because not enough of its MNAs were present.
Update: Here’s another prize: a woman from France rejected because one section of her PhD thesis was in English. She has passed the official French test but has been declined because she has not proven she knows French well enough. Given that test, two thirds of birth francophones here would be booted out.
ant6n
I got in on a student visa, and later immigrated with the PEQ (Quebec experience program). As the CAQ makes it more difficult, I’m not so sure I would have been able to come here and stay. Although the biggest barrier would probably the international tuition, which tripled since ten years ago, when international students were thrown under the bus at the end of the student strikes. Also, once you pay 40K/year or so, you may as well try to make it to an ivy league college (where it should also be easier to get scholarships), the unis here aren’t _that_ prestigious.
david100
They have more control over the refugees than you might think by looking at the delimitation of immigration powers – basically, the province can refuse to house them or pay for them, which would force the feds to settle them elsewhere. As it stands, last time I checked, the province is happy enough to take the money – which makes sense, as the feds are supporting services that employ people in some first-on-the-block-during-cost-cutting type professions/areas.
I’m not following it at all so this is speculation, but I’d guess that, rather than killing the flow of refugees, the CAQ would dearly love to move some of the refugee money/jobs from Montreal into the towns to help their constituents, but that the towns are telling them that they don’t want a bunch of ooga-boogas from Libya or whereever creeping around, scaring people, whatever. A rhetoric-meets-the-road situation, with the resolution that – again, just speculating – they take the money and house the refugees mostly in Montreal, but rely on a bunch of onerous requirements (French, wear normal clothing, maybe some other stuff at a bureaucratic level) to push the newcomers out to Canada when they’re on their feet and the federal money has run out.
Kate
The newcomers are already in Canada, david100.
Douglas 22:07 on 2019-11-07 Permalink
They built it with private money so I don’t see what the problem is.
They are allowed to contest valuations and in this case the courts saw them in the right about it. Too bad for the money hungry city.
Kate 23:51 on 2019-11-07 Permalink
Douglas, that’s disingenuous talk. We both know that the Canadiens have leverage that goes beyond simple “contesting of valuations” and that this is exactly what investors in major league teams are counting on.
Max 23:53 on 2019-11-07 Permalink
I don’t get how Saputo Stadium merits a valuation 1/4 of the Smell Centre’s. I mean it’s a field, with some bleachers. The whole soccer complex can’t be worth as much as just the plot of land at the end of the train tracks. Kate’s absolutely right in her assessment.