Two people were shot Saturday night in Little Burgundy, a man and a boy of 13. Neither is expected to die.
Update Sunday: a third shooting victim turned up at hospital Sunday. There’s some evidence the shootout followed a video location shoot that turned to verbal arguments, whereupon the guns came out.
A protest was held Saturday against changes in Quebec’s experience program for immigrants. This program has already been a hot potato that made the government backtrack on plans announced last fall. A new version was proposed in May, but this item doesn’t exactly get into the aspects still felt to be unfair. In Metro, there’s more of an explanation about the much longer waiting periods being required by Simon Jolin-Barrette’s newest vision of immigration.
The system as it currently exists is possibly the easiest immigration path of any western country. Essentially, you graduate, you get three years of work permit with which you can work any job. During that time once you have a year of work experience in a certain professional category determined by the government to be in short supply, you apply and then Quebec nominates you (awarding something called the Quebec selection certificate) to the Canadians to be a permanent resident, and the Canadians always grant it, by special agreement. Three years after that, it’s citizenship.
This path is behind the huge jump in French we’ve seen over the past years – they paid Quebec resident tuition until very recently. Now they pay Canadian tuition, which is still much cheaper than international. And, of course, most of the people protesting are french.
The changes would lengthen the number of years until permanent residence.
The French (and others) are incensed because under the proposed changes, their post graduate work permit time would expire before they could meet the minimum requirements for the selection certificate. This would mean they’d need to find some other bridge visa status until they meet the minimum requirements, likely employer sponsorship. Challenging, and only the most in demand people would get that.
The net effect will be to reduce the number of students who can stay.
Personally, I think this is dumb. It’ll reduce the number of French, which would make the city less annoying, but these educated types are precisely the ones we want. Especially when we’re talking about 2nd and 3rd cycle graduates. Also, there should be carve outs for STEM like the Americans and others have.
Quebec can’t control family immigration, unfortunately, so they’re stuck tinkering with this, where there’s no real problem, unless you’re legislating for the plateau.
Ah, cool, hadn’t read that Metro article. It seems the government made just the changes I want, namely, a carve out for professionals:
Ils demandent notamment l’annulation des prolongements d’années d’expérience de travail, de *l’exclusion des travailleurs de catégories C et D occupant des emplois peu ou non qualifiés,* de l’allongement du délai de traitement des demandes et de l’introduction d’exigences linguistiques pour les conjointes et conjoints du demandeur.
And this insanely entitled reaction (!):
«On discrimine des emplois, on discrimine des personnes, en fonction de leur statut, en fonction de leur métier pour accéder ou pas à la résidence permanente.», déclare Thibault Camara lors de sa prise de parole.
LOL! Yeah, of course Quebec would discriminate based on jobs. Immigration is based on the needs of the province, not your needs. We don’t need a bunch of semi-employed french working part time in cafes, who then become eligible for solidarity payments with their permanent residence. We want people who’ll actually contribute and grow the Quebec economy in some tangible way, and professional experience is the best metric for that in this context.
Still not a necessary law, but if the public wants action on immigration, I guess it does make sense to cut down on handing out permanent residence to a bunch of deadbeats.
david∞, has it not sunk in with you that it’s not the doctoral students and artificial intelligence researchers that have pulled our collective ass out of the Covid fire, but people with minimal educational qualifications yet a willingness to work – in many cases, doing work most Canadians are disinclined to do?
This process and the changes these french are protesting concern the educated.
The immigrants in that cohort of “minimal educational qualifications yet a willingness to work” would have come in by family or asylum, or they’re just straight up illegals working under the table. For the most part, that’s all stuff the canucks manage, not Quebec.
Does the province not manage all immigration, illegal or not, minimally educated or not, in Quebec?
J
Quebec has a non-exclusive path to immigrate into Canada.
Because once you are in the country you can go anywhere you want.
Kevin, I’ve wondered about that. Supposing someone immigrates to another province, then moves here. Can Quebec deny that person benefits if they don’t have a paper trail showing they were initially approved by Quebec?
No, they can move to Quebec the day after “landing” in Ontario or one of the Atlantic provinces, wherever.
Here’s quick primer on how Canadian immigration works.
There’s a bunch of different “streams,” you have family-based, you can bring people in with certain job offers, there’s a NAFTA visa, all sorts. Then you have the points-based visas. Basically, you can get permanent residence by scoring high enough points in a pool, and points are awarded for a variety of factors. Education and professional experience are greatly valued in this scheme, and Canadian education and Canadian professional score significant bonuses (boni?). The entire point of this is to bring in workers to build the Canadian economy.
Within this scheme, provinces can award bonus points to candidates they nominate, with these nominations coming out of various provincially-administered programs that target workers in short supply, usually nurses, software engineers, etc. but really runs the gamut.
Quebec administers its version of this points based system for this same class of people – people coming in based on what they can offer the country. Quebec doesn’t control family based immigration, can’t deny asylum, can’t deport anyone, nothing.
And if a person is admitted to Canada, they can come to Quebec, and vice versa – this is a charter issue and a fundamental right of Canadians residents.
Obviously, people use the Canadian system to get to Quebec, so as to avoid the French requirements. And the Atlantic provinces can’t keep their people either. But probably the biggest controversy is that Quebec is allowed to run an economic investment program that’s greatly abused by foreign people of means. Essentially, people give an interest free loan to Quebec (I believe the amount is up to $1.2 million now), they’re approved for permanent residence, and they then decamp immediately to Vancouver or Toronto. It’s a backdoor that those places don’t appreciate too much.
Moving Day is getting closer, and with it, the surge in rental costs, well beyond inflation or income levels. The city is waiting for calls for help from households that don’t have anywhere to go on July 1.
On Twitter, Jordan Bateman – I don’t know him, but he was cited by someone I do know – called back to the 2018 mass eviction of a Plateau building, including the sad detail (which I also remembered) “After handing over their pets to the SPCA, the tenants boarded a bus headed for a hotel on the eastern tip of the island, far away from their now barricaded home.” He notes that the building is now renting out tiny flats with a murphy bed for $1550 and up a month, headlined on the website “Affordable Quality Living”.
The Journal profiles several households that the pandemic has convinced to give up on Montreal and go live in the regions.
In two years time there will be a surge in Lyme disease and Zika virus cases and they’ll all come running back.
In some of the cases discussed, the people already had roots or a connection to the region. It’s more of a “return.”
It may be feasible or attractive for some to move away. It depends on a bunch of different things. My roots are in Montreal; my career and social network are rooted here. I’m not moving to some place where I don’t have friends and family. The pandemic showed me how important that is for me.
Agreed, JP. If people either have sufficient savings to move from the city, or have the kind of work that can be done 100% onlne, it may be a solution for them, but it certainly isn’t for everyone.
I don’t know how good the broadband is in some of the regional spots, though.
I couldn’t do it, because living out there 100% requires a car, but largely because I am a city person and the country gives me the creeps.
A man was shot by someone in the same car on Saturday morning in Hampstead. He’s not expected to die.
“gunshot wounds”
Certainly not how I remember Hampstead.
Doesn’t say they had any connection with Hampstead other than driving through it.
There’s a big Russian gang scene in Hampstead FWIW
A group of merchants along Mont-Royal Avenue has signed an open letter asking that the pedestrianization of the street be given a chance to work. They’ve just been thanked by the mayor.
Nice.
Wish we could see some bigger names on there. And I’d like to see the names of the owners who are fighting aggressively against this change.
To find out who’s against this, (and boycott them!), here’s what worked for the Verdun bike path last year:
The most vocal opponents are often interviewed in the articles about how businesses are dying because of pedestrianization.
If there’s a borough council meeting that involves the subject, (or maybe even if it doesn’t), see if you can watch the section where the councillors take questions from the public, often the really opposed people will be there, and if the opposition is organized, a lot of them will be there. This may be weird because of COVID-19.
Also, if there’s a local Facebook group there will be discussion there, although some of the most vocal offenders may have been banned from the group…
I think it’s important to let the merchants know that you’re boycotting them and why. I have a couple friends who live in the Plateau and follow local politics closely. When some stores on Rachel started putting up fake à vendre signs with Luc Ferrandez’s phone number, in protest of parking restrictions, they went around and told the stores they normally shop at that they wouldn’t be coming in anymore. A few merchants ranted at them but when they explained their case – that the stores are fighting interventions that would make their lives, as residents, more pleasant – it gave some of them pause and maybe they reconsidered their views.
Saturday evening on Radio-Canada, a feature called Québec My Country Mon Pays will examine the mysterious motivations of Quebec anglos.
Should be interesting, and could give francophones some insight into the identitarian basis of angryphonism. I’m sanguine about the Quebec anglo experience overall, but I admit that’s a super Montreal-centric view and I, like most Quebec anglophones my age or younger, speak french. God help you if you’re some multi-generational monolingual anglophone making a bitter last stand in Rawdon or Baie Comeau or whatever. The world must seem a hostile and unjust place.
david∞, do you ever get tired of signalling that you’re one of the virtuous anglos?
I do, yeah.
The SPVM is closing Station 33, which serves Park Extension, and La Presse has figured out why – the new owner of the building has ties with the mob. It’s unclear whether the area will have its own station again at some point.
Ah, interesting! Excellent journalism here, since none of the politicians seemed to know what was going on. Many things to critique here. How does the SPVM not prepare ahead of time for this contingency? They are now without a building where they once had one in an area where prices are (were) skyrocketing. Bad administration. How also do they get to make a move like this without explaining it to the public or anyone in politics ahead of time?
If they bought or built a whole new building, someone would complain: “Why are they wasting money? They should just rent from an existing building!”
walkerp, given the station was in place before the building changed hands, could politicians or the SPVM have blocked the sale even if they knew that the new owner had been in business with the mob?
Probably not blocked the sale, but as a business you should always have a contingency plan for when your lease is coming to an end. And that plan should be triggered when the building you are in is going to be sold. Usually the plan is to cost out a move and other leases and find a bunch of potential spaces to move into.
An organization the size of the SPVM should have an entire department that just deals with real estate who should have put that plan into motion and found another spot to move them into. Ideally that happens before you have to leave, but you can at least do better than getting kicked out and having nowhere to go for a year.
But then again, this is the Quebec government and the cops so not super surprising that they feel they don’t have to follow basic business practices. There only real stakeholders are themselves. The people of the neighbourhoods they are supposed to be protecting are clearly not a priority for them.
Good point, walkerp.
A new building constructed to house Microsoft’s lab in Mile Ex is generating so much ventilation noise that it’s blighting the lives of people living in the area. The landlord, Canderel, is promising to act.
Yeah everyone’s for hi tech firms moving into the neighborhood until they find out that it comes with an incessant drone from cooling systems. Just be thankful that there isn’t a full-blown server farm which is relentless regarding noise
Many high-tech firms have everything in the cloud now, and offices are (well, were) just the place where people went to work together. Research labs like this one with their own computer networks on site are a rarity these days.
The Quebec transport commission has published its report on the fiery tanker truck crash on the Met in 2016 in which driver Gilbert Prince lost his life. The blame is pointed squarely at Bombardier’s slipshod maintenance of its tanker fleet and of the particular vehicle whose known tendency to stop suddenly without warning was the cause of the crash.
This is not the first time Bombardier has been blamed for that crash. Last summer, a news item said Quebec was suing the firm to recoup the cost of repairing the segment of elevated highway, which was badly damaged but repaired in double quick time to put the Met back into service.
A black high school graduate was labelled as most likely to become a wanted criminal in his high school yearbook. It was covered up with an easily peeled sticker, but now Lindsay Place school is apologizing and promising to recall the book and produce a new version.
The Quebec government is making another of its U-turns: it will resume giving out daily Covid numbers on Monday.
Over the next few weeks, suddenly anyone taking an STM bus should expect to pay.
I admit to not knowing when was the last time I even knew where my Opus card was.
Since mid-March I’ve ridden the bus only twice, only locally and for short distances, and I admit I didn’t have the money for it.
Are they making buses front-accessing as drivers recover from Covid? Or is there an actual plan to protect them?
There’s been talk about installing plexiglas partitions. I don’t think anyone is assuming all drivers have caught Covid, and nobody knows yet whether having had it confers lasting immunity anyway.
So we’re going with “actual plan” then? That would be nice.
QMI also continues to hammer at how some people do not like the pedestrianization of Mont‑Royal.
I was amused by this tweet I spotted:
La montréalisation des médias, ça aussi comme effet que mon oncle à Jonquière a une opinion sur la piétonisation de l'avenue Mont-Royal. Et ça lui tient bizarrement beaucoup à coeur d'en parler.
(PS : Il est contre. Mais genre, beaucoup contre!)
— Louis T (@_LouisT) June 22, 2020
Louis T is very funny. I’ve seen his show a few times and trust me he is fearless. He pushes back hard on the Quebecor universe and for it has been trashed by their columnists. He is from the Saguenay and has a great shtick about growing up a Tremblay in the Sag.
He is also someone who speaks frankly about living with Aspergers.
Blokes check him out.
La Presse ran a bunch of angry letters about François Cardinal’s recent column, which suggested that now is the time to experiment with new ways of managing our urban space. Half of the letters were from people who don’t even live in Montreal. I don’t get it, why do people in Saint-Constant or Lachute feel so strongly about Mont-Royal being pedestrianized?
Thanks for that push, Jack. He is funny. Followed.
Orwell is proven right again and again. I suspect many of these people whose anger about something that does not affect their lives at all would welcome a Two-Minute Hate, commandité par Québécor, where they could froth and rage against pedestrianization and racial equality.
DeWolf: “why do people in Saint-Constant or Lachute feel so strongly about Mont-Royal being pedestrianized?”
I think it’s the symbolic value of this change, this central-Montréal de-automobilization.
Bungalow-dwellers see “pedestrianisation” on their screens and then they tremble imagining themselves walking 15 minutes back and forth to Couchetard every day past lawns and lawns and lawns.
Then they type – the same five or six posters after every car story in commercial media.
Ha ha, je suis certain que c’est la fin du monde. Mais moi, je vote aussi pour la valeur symbolique de cette matière de très grande importance pour tous les Québécois. Parce qu’il il ne s’agit pas seulement de la piétonisation de L’Avenue Mont Royal. Cette controverse est devenue la dernière indicateur de la guerre de culture entre Montréal et Le Reste Du Québec. C’est le signe d’une ambivalence envers la métropole ressentie par tant de personnes dans le ROQ. Les Rues piétonisées, vêtements religieux, minorités raciales, ethniques et sexuelles, 24/7 embouteillages et cones oranges, zone à ceux qui se croient chic et branchés, bondée et trop chère, le crime, anglophones (!), et jamais assez de place pour se stationner. Une tache au visage pur du patrie. C’est pourquoi on dit à Jonquière, Shawinigan, Sainte Agathe, Rimouski, Québec, Laval et Brossard «Montréal est un trou!» J’aime Montréal.
A CROP poll shows that even though Quebecers are inclined to be cautious about the province’s opening of bars, gyms and other such places, Horacio Arruda is unsettled about our relaxation given that the pandemic is by no means over, and Quebecers are generally disinclined to wear masks.
Quebec wanted a thousand more CHSLD helpers from the Canadian armed forces, but is not going to get them.
Carey Price is uncertain whether he wants to resume play should the NHL hold a summer playoff season.
Two researchers at Ste-Justine have been given millions to study the potential of vitamin D in warding off Covid.
QMI is hardly being objective faced with the ongoing pandemic. On peut recommencer à vivre cries one headline about bars and casinos reopening. Whereas Radio-Canada describes the Grande bibliothèque reopening as gradual, TVA scoffs at a déconfinement très timide. These are not QMI opinion pieces, by the way – they’re straight-up reportage, supposedly.
We’re warned that the courts will not take lightly gestures like people deliberately coughing in the faces of people wearing masks, as have been reported here and elsewhere.
News of this will surely cause a run on vitamin D at your local Jean Coutu.
Well, here’s my anecdotal evidence: I take a vitamin D tab every day in winter, and since the pandemic has meant staying inside so much, have simply kept taking it – and I haven’t had Covid, that I know of!
Proof it works! 🙂
Shopping for Vitamin D pills is a good exercise in how marketing and merchandising is designed to upsell us into oblivion. Go to the pharmacy and look at the selection. There are chewable pills, flavored pills, “fast-acting” pills, and all sorts of other useless variations, and they sell for $10-$15 a bottle, and the bottle only has 100 pills in it. Then you look a little farther and you find plain white no-frills vitamin D pills in a bottle of 300 and it’s selling for six bucks. FFS!
I take two 1000 unit pills a day because there is anecdotal evidence it helps with my neuropathy. That’s more than 700 pills a year, and if I were a sucker I’d be paying $75 or more for that. Instead I go to Costco (or a pharmacy if there’s a sale on) and get a year’s supply for about $9.
Heck, you can get a decent sized bottle at Dollarama now.
Its a very basic chemical, get the cheapest version you can find, its just fine.
Why would anyone need “fast-acting” vitamins? It’s not an antidote for poison. You ingest it and it will get through your system in the amount of time it takes.
It’s in case you have a sudden attack of rickets.
Deux précisions. Un, le 6M$ est réparti en 4M$ pour la recherche sur la vitamine D et 2M$ pour étudier le risque de réinfection chez le personnel soignant. Deux, la Vitamine D ne protège pas contre l’infection du SARS-COV2 mais une carence vous met plus à risque de faire un choc cytokinique lorsque infecté. [A. Daneshkhah et al.] et pour le dosage recommandé, lire [K. Razdan].
Or your doctor could make you get a Vit D test to find out if you’re actually deficient. And if you are get prescribed a certain amount.
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