The headline here – Montreal cop suspended for three days after good deed goes bad – is a little misleading. It’s an amusing read, but the cop in question shows incredibly poor judgement at several points in the story. What cop with 26 years of experience thinks it’s appropriate to return lost property at 2 in the morning?
Updates from August, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Now that the construction holiday is over, Quebec wants anyone with any doubts about their exposure to get tested for Covid.
Health minister Christian Dubé is promising an updated school policy soon soon.
The WHO is warning us that there may never be an effective vaccine against this thing. Canada has created a tracking and notification app but it isn’t active anywhere but Ontario yet, and if Quebec follows its usual modus operandi, it will insist on building its own from scratch.
Update: There are complaints that the Canada app only works on phones less than five years old. To make the app do what it does, presumably it needs more recent hardware and software hooks – you can’t make older hardware do new tricks by magic.
j2
There was a public consultation by Quebec about the app that ended yesterday.
Kate
Thanks! I wonder when we’ll hear the results.
Mark Côté
Yes, unfortunately Apple and Google haven’t made the necessary functionality available on older phones (not sure if it’s impossible on the hardware or they just didn’t want to put in the extra effort). The app authors had their hands tied there.
Faiz imam
FYI, another requirement set by Apple/Google is that there only be one app per country that uses their technology. They expressly don’t want competing apps.
So Quebec literally cannot build their own. At least not if they want it to actually be effective. The alternative is to have an app that is permanently on screen at all times. That’s the only way for normal apps to have Bluetooth running persistently. An obvious non-starter.
I figure its only a matter of time before Quebec uses the official app. It’s extremely well designed, I’ve actually already downloaded it. There is no serious reason not to.
walkerp
Although I am always suspicious of Apple, there is a very valid reason that the app is designed for newer models. Apple updated their API a few versions ago and made the privacy requirements much stricter, forcing developers to be transparent and conscious about what data their app accesses. This is a crucial requirement for a contact-tracing app in the west.
The consensus among security experts that I follow is that privacy is much stronger in the iOS environment than Android. It always has been, but the new API made that even stronger.
Meezly
The last time there was a public notice urging people to get tested for Covid, there were massive lineups. Has the testing capacity and turn over improved at all since then?
Tim S.
I’m a little curious about the testing plan for the return to school and daycare. Kids get colds, gastros, unexplained pains all the time. Is every kid with a sniffle or headache going to need to get tested? If so, is there some kind of plan for them to be tested in their neighbourhood without having to wait for hours? Because for some families this might become a monthly event.
On the other hand, maybe all the COVID precautions will cut down on all the other germs too.Kate
Tim S., it’s one of the few silver linings that the precautions will also cut down on flu and cold transmission, yes. But you ask cromulent questions I have not seen answered and which will probably not be tackled till school’s been open for a few weeks.
DeWolf
Meezly, there are indeed new testing facilities and I haven’t noticed any significant lineups at any of the ones I have passed by. That said, I know people who were tested recently (all negative!) and some of them had to wait a full week for their results, even after being told they’d be ready in 1-3 days. So there are still backlogs, just on the back end and not the front.
Dhomas
About the complaints of the tracing app requiring a phone newer than 5 years, the journalist either did no research or is intentionally trying to blame the government for something outside of their control: “Parsons said criticism should be directed at the federal government, not those who designed the app.” If they had done a 30 second Google search, they would have found that the software infrastructure required for this app is Android 6.0 (https://www.google.com/covid19/exposurenotifications/ and https://developers.google.com/android/exposure-notifications/exposure-notifications-api) which was released in 2015 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Marshmallow). Also, most Android phones released in 2015 wouldn’t even have shipped with Android 6, as phone hardware manufacturers are notoriously slow at shipping current versions of the OS. Some of those 2015 phones would get an update to Android 6.0, others would not. That said, some even older phones WOULD get an upgrade to Android 6.0, for example the Google Nexus 5, released in 2013, was upgraded to Android 6.0 in 2015. So, there’s a 7 year old phone that would work with the app.
In any case, my point here is that the government could do nothing to just make it work on older software. It was simply outside of their scope.
And as for “you can’t make older hardware do new tricks by magic”, that’s true. But you don’t need magic. A lot of phone manufacturers don’t bother upgrading their OS to get consumers to buy a new model with a new OS capable of new tricks. It is possible and there are some community projects that will allow you to install newer versions of Android even when the manufacturer never provided an update. If you look up the Lineage OS project, you’ll see a number of older phones being upgraded to Android 10, way after their manufacturers wrote them off.
Dhomas
I didn’t mention iPhone/iOS in my post as I’m much more familiar with Android. For iPhone users, it’s much more cut and dry: contact tracing requires iOS 13.5 which is available on the iPhone 6S and newer. iPhone 6S was released in 2015.
Kate
Thanks for the clarifications, Dhomas.
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Kate
City hall has a survey about budget priorities for 2021.
david100
And we welcome the hurt like it’s something we deserve . . . Classic Montreal public consultation.
Question 2: Est-ce que Montréal devrait obtenir du gouvernement du Québec la levée temporaire de l’obligation d’équilibrer son budget en 2021, comme le font les autres gouvernements? La levée de l’obligation d’équilibrer son budget n’élimine pas la pertinence d’un soutien financier des autres niveaux de gouvernement.
^ This is actually the first question after whether you actually live here. They should have just asked if the government should grant them a autonomous status, same effect.
Question 5: Si Montréal devait revoir à la baisse ou même limiter certains services, quels sont ceux parmi les choix suivants qui devraient être revus? (Plusieurs choix possibles)*
(a) Service de police
(b) Gestion des matières résiduelles (par exemple, nombre de collectes)
(c) Chargement de la neige
(d) Autre (spécifiez)^ Very subtle.
Question 6: Est-ce que la Ville devrait participer activement à un retour vers une économie plus forte en faisant davantage d’investissements en immobilisations, et ce, en ajustant son plan décennal de retour à un ratio d’endettement de 100 % de ses revenus annuels?
^ The 1% of survey respondents who have a clue what the hell this question is even asking would still have to give this some thought, as we’re talking about budget priorities, debating what sort of debt the city holds, what future revenue looks like, and a lot more.
Like, I appreciate that it’s no more corrupt/amateurish/transparently intended to get a predetermined result than any past such exercise by other administrations . . . but it’s still sort of insulting.
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Kate
There were power failures around town Sunday during the thunderstorm, and it’s going to be a week of wet weather, with the remnants of Isaias expected to pay us a visit on Wednesday.
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Kate
More people are likely to find themselves homeless soon with the shortage of rental space and lack of support from Quebec for the city’s efforts to help.
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Kate
There aren’t many strip clubs left, and the remaining ones are now coping with masks. Couldn’t make it up.
Ian
Imagine the lucky person out there with a mask kink who feels like they have been waiting their whole life for this.
Michael Black
But what’s sexy about a naked body? It’s the face that makes the rest appealing.
MarcG
Comments are closed.
Kate
MarcG, no they’re not.
j2
Captain Obvious here, the issue isn’t the dancers wearing masks. It’s physical distancing and the whole fear of death thing that’s also keeping people out of bars. The late night alcohol thing seems spurious. If people were in bars then they’d be drunk earlier is all that would mean, it’s not like strip joints had later last calls.
Although I’m curious how much the habs win will affect the latter.
MarcG
Failed attempt at humour
Kate
MarcG: It’s OK, just wanted to make sure people understood it was not so.
I take your point. If the internet has taught me anything, it’s that one can’t make any universally sweeping statement about what’s sexually appealing.
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Kate
Le Soleil has an interesting piece on the origin of the Ligue antifasciste de Montréal which existed from 1989 to 1997. One participant has just published a book called Poseurs?: Scalpeurs de skins de la LAM which tells the tale.
Ephraim 07:52 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
What punishment is 3 days off with no pay? The note on his file is more of a punishment than the actual punishment.
steph 08:46 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
I wonder what would happen if the lawyer pressed charges? It’s basically a home intrusion gone afoul.
walkerp 08:51 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
This is super suspicious. Sounds to me like some kind of attempt to harass or get info was going on and he got caught.
Meezly 09:09 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
The first wallet belonged to the daughter of a lawyer who “defends clients who require legal aid and has displayed an impressive knowledge of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in cases heard at the Montreal courthouse.” Interesting. Coincidence?
Michael Black 09:32 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
The article did say that the cop claimed he didn’t know the guy was a lawyer.
There was that drug bust a few years ago where the homeowner shot a cop, claiming he thought it was a home invasion. Someone suddenly appearing in a home doesn’t seem very safe.
There was no mailbox to put the wallets? No way to lock both wallets back in the car and leave a note about it?
Kate 10:13 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
Michael Black: yes, the Basil Parasiris case in Brossard. That guy had a gun and killed one of the cops, thinking it was a home invasion – as, in a sense, it was. The Wikipedia page mentions nothing about drugs.