I had thought Thomas Mulcair too intelligent to be found acting as a proponent of homeopathy. He wants the Quebec government to recognize the pseudoscience.
Updates from November, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
La Presse has announced it’s cutting its staff by 15 by attrition.
At the same time, a group that owns six Quebec papers, most notably Quebec City’s Le Soleil, is going to become a workers’ cooperative.
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Kate
City council passed a motion on Monday against arbitrary police checks, which have been shown to be done disproportionately on those of
African, Native or Arabappearance as listed in the report CBC describes below. It’s not a binding rule, though.Update: My apologies. I have seen various takes on this story, before and since the motion was passed, and various phrases have been used to describe the groups stopped most often by police. I am sorry if anything I have written here has offended, and will return to the source material as soon as I can to give direct quotes.
Here is a CBC story on the report that led to the council motion.
Later: As Le Devoir cites the report, it’s “les Autochtones, les Noirs et les Arabes.”
Ephraim
African appearance? First time I have ever seen that reference. The majority of black Canadians are Caribbean in origin and proud of that origin. The split between the two communities is why we call them Black Canadians, rather than use other terms.
Kate
Ephraim, I did not mean to be offensive. By chance, many of the black people I’ve known, and worked with, have actually been African.
Michael Black
There used to be a local weekly or monthly newspaper called “The Afro-Can”. It existed in the eighties, disappeared at some point. “Community Contact”has the same role today, I always wondered if there was some continuity between the two papers.
Kate
Afro-Can was produced in the Westmount Examiner shop. The Examiner was a weekly, so on a couple of days a week, other papers would sometimes contract to use the production facilities. Afro-Can was in for awhile, and there was also a paper in English and Ukrainian, a periodical for doctors and other things.
Ephraim
Kate – I assumed that you didn’t. It’s just not a term that I have ever heard. There is a rift in those two communities and the Caribbean don’t like being called African, which is why they call themselves black. One community is Caribbean-Canadian and the other African-Canadian.
Blork
Black Caribbeans are black because they are African. There were no black people in the Caribbean before the slave trade. So Caribbeans are “African” the same way that African-Americans are “African” (and virtually all white people are “European”). As to whether or not black Caribbeans like the term, that’s a separate question and has more to do with social issues and identity than ethnographic ones.
Ephraim
Maybe, but they don’t like being called African-Canadian.
Blork
And BTW, I get it WRT to Caribbeans not necessarily liking being called “African.” After all, there is African culture (with is weird to say because there are many African cultures) and there is Caribbean culture, and they’re quite different, and Caribbeans naturally identify with the Caribbean, not Africa. But when you’re only speaking of “appearance” and are painting with broad stokes, “African appearance” shouldn’t be offensive.
I’m white, and I never set foot in Europe until I was in my 30s, and I in no way identify as “European.” But if someone said I had “European appearance” I’d just shrug and think “I suppose so.” Because “North American appearance” really means native American appearance. (On and on…)
(@Ephraim, not arguing, but nobody here called them African-Canadian.)
Chris
>Black Caribbeans are black because they are African
Rather, because their ancestors were.
Anyway, I am reminded of a favourite George Carlin bit: https://youtu.be/Pc0ZHsoHAlE?t=1622
Ephraim
@Blork – No, but I’ve never before seen the term “African…. appearance.”
I’ve never really seen statistics about it, do the police not stop Asians disproportionately? Indians, Sikhs, Chinese, etc?
Kate
Ephraim, I gather they tend to stop 3 categories: people of African/Caribbean appearance, people of indigenous appearance, and a category even harder to define: brown people generally. The reports said Arabs, but I suspect the category is a broad one, and would stretch to include non-Arab people like Iranians and people from the Indian subcontinent.
I have a feeling that east Asians – Chinese, Vietnamese and others from southeast Asia – are not regarded as potential troublemakers in the same way here. At any rate they were not mentioned in this matter.
Meezly
I agree with Ephraim. The ctvnews article only refers to the targeted minorities as “black or Indigenous” and makes no mention of ‘African’ appearance. ‘Native’ is also an outdated term, which has generally been replaced by Indigenous or First Nations (https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/indigenous-peoples-terminology-guidelines-for-usage).
East Asians historically are not regarded as ‘criminal’ types here, and generally considered a ‘model minority’. In Greater Vancouver, they may get profiled by the police.
qatzelok
@Eph: “they don’t like being called African-Canadian.”
Most people from Africa I know smile if you call them “African-Canadian” because, first of all, you’re speaking English, and secondly, you are calling them something other than their name.
This obsession with “the correct term” is very 80s dorm discussion as terminology does nothing to help anyone except maybe your English teachers. If you really want to “help” Africans, make sure that our government stops helping other rich white countries bomb, sanction, and coup d’etat African nation states.
Mark Côté
The variety of “African appearance” is huge from the north of the continent to the south.
Ephraim
@Mark – generally they mean Sub-Saharan Africa. But it’s all a muddle anyway… these terms are so archaic… just like the discrimination by our police…. archaic things that just have to end.
Meezly
Actually, the ‘obsession’ with the correct terms for non-white peeps came about when non-white minorities became recognized as actual persons rather than as ‘other’.
The desire to be called by a term that most accurately describes someone’s racial or cultural background comes from a wish to have some agency in how they want to be recognized by society. I say ‘they’, but I could say ‘we’ as I’m a visible minority, or POC, or whatever term is current right now. Personally for me, to make an attempt to use the correct term is a sign of respect to those we rub shoulders with in our day to day. No one is trying to save the world here.To dismiss this as an obsession is – to quote an actual outmoded term from the 80’s dorm culture – is a totally gay thing to do.
Thanks for making the corrections, Kate!
qatzelok
Meezly, not only are the PC terms for “others” outdated, they’re useless. Our government and industries – the most powerful actors in our society – show zero respect for foreigners in that Canada helps destroy democratically elected and pro-local-culture forces all over the globe. This hasn’t stopped or even slowed down since college students started enforcing vocabulary words on guilt-ridden friends.
A strict political vocabulary (PC) has, as its main effect, served to eliminate working class people and the poor from political discussions. Perhaps this was its main purpose in the first place.
Meezly
Perhaps the college students are onto something then, if they are studying gender politics, ethnic/ racial/ cultural studies, sociology and intersectionality. esp. courses that are taught by professors who are neither white nor male. Labels and names have power esp. for those with less power in a milieu of systemic racism and sexism, so I would not dismiss them as useless. I do not know why you keep blaming the college students. Maybe those who are suspicious of so-called ‘PC terms’ see it as an educated vs non-educated issue (not dissimilar with rich vs poor). I really don’t see how using more accurate terminology for racialized people eliminates working class and poor people from political discussions when a noticeable proportion of working class and poor people tend to be non-whites? Why is it when a discussion about a certain marginality makes people feel like it’s taking the spotlight away from another person’s marginality?
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Kate
City ombudsman Johanne Savard is retiring after 16 years in the job, which she pretty much created.
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Kate
A fire Monday night in Lasalle led to the discovery of a cannabis grow-op so I suppose freelance production is still profitable – and, it seems, being sold on a website.
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Kate
Some NDG folks are in the dark Tuesday morning following a water main break and gas leak.
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Kate
We’ve got freezing rain on Tuesday morning
Clement 20:46 on 2019-11-19 Permalink
Considering how much our current provincial government loves to ignore science (legal age for pot, immigration, 3rd bridge in Quebec city, climate change, etc), Mulcair should have no problem convincing them. All he needs to say is “90% of people on the homeopathy Facebook page agree that homeopathy works”
Dominic 20:49 on 2019-11-19 Permalink
Isn’t Mulcair a 9-11 truther?
Kate 20:55 on 2019-11-19 Permalink
Dominic, I never heard that. The only local politician who could be called that, to my knowledge – and it’s a stretch, but it was mentioned a lot at one time – was Richard Bergeron, who floated the notion in one of his books, but later said he was just airing the idea out intellectually.
thomas 05:34 on 2019-11-20 Permalink
Explains why he espoused a watered down NDP platform.
SMD 13:16 on 2019-11-20 Permalink
@thomas He’s going to need some homeopathy for that sick burn.