When the Covid lockdown came in mid-March there was a lot of concern about non-payment of rent, but so far this has not been a major issue.
In other rental news, a landlord group is trying again to abolish Quebec’s ban on rental deposits, some imposing them illegally despite the law.
The city cut down 18,000 ash trees last year that were afflicted by the emerald ash borer. If you have an ash tree on your property the city will treat it for free, or pay for part of the cost of taking it down if it’s in bad shape, but not as many property owners have responded as the city hoped.
I was looking something up, and am struck that on Google maps, we have a “Red Light District” – yes, this area was called that back in the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps. But anyone who was coming from visiting Amsterdam’s or some other city’s red light district might be disappointed to find only a lot of glass boxes and Café Cléopâtre.
Drapeau is rolling in his grave 😀
Edu-tainment YouTube Half as Interesting has a segment that kind of touches this topic:
https://youtu.be/Df_hhk0abgE
Quebec’s Covid numbers are looking less dire, but some death numbers from back in springtime are still being added from cases not fessed up at the time.
Officially, 5,709 people have died from Covid in Quebec, to date, but Quebec is only starting to debate whether it should adopt the Canada tracking app. I’m prepared to bet a large poutine that Quebec will decide to go it alone and develop its own app, which will not be ready till 2021, but let’s wait and see.
Apparently neither Apple nor Google will allow more than one app per country for contact tracing so there isn’t much of an option for Quebec to make its own, it is either use the Canadian one or nothing.
Here’s how it’ll go down:
Quebec lobbies for, and eventually gets, an exemption from the “only one app per country” rule.
An app is developed. It’s released in March 2021.
The media is ablaze with comments on how bad the French is in the app. Investigation reveals the app company is two former real estate agents working out of a garage in Kirkland, and all of the actual development was outsourced to India. Total development cost: $200,000. Fee charged to the government: $8.5 million.
App is recalled because it doesn’t work very well and nobody’s using it.
Local app developer, properly vetted, is finally contracted to develop the app. Six months later the app is released, and it’s essentially the same app as the feds use, pulled in using an API and re-skinned in French. Fee charged to government: $4.5 million.
By April 2022 Quebec is the only place in North America and Europe where COVID-19 is still a problem, primarily because of a lack of contact-tracing. At that point, approximately .002% of the Quebec population is using the app.
June 2022: CAQ is re-elected.
That is funny, but I don’t think Google or Apple care nearly enough about Quebec to be willing to give them a second app, given that the first one is already bilingual.
@Blork, If you saw how unsuccessful contract tracing is in the US, you would change your prediction.
Jeez! The Canada app is available RIGHT NOW! If Quebec wants to develop their own app, at least let us start using the Canada app to begin with. Btw, you can already install the Canadian app here:
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/covid-alert.html
It is only really useful in Ontario where they already started using the “one-time key” when someone is diagnosed with COVID-19.
It’s really quite ingenious how they implemented the solution without resorting to location data.
Quebec isn’t “blocking” the app as many have suggested. It’s only available in Ontario where it is being piloted. And the pilot isn’t going very well – few people have bothered downloading it.
The app is available in all of Canada. My understanding is that if you download it, as I have, it’ll do it’s bluetooth spraying & listening thing no matter where you are, but the only place people can enter a positive diagnosis is Ontario.
I believe this means that if some Ontarian comes to Montreal, hangs out near me, then returns to Ontario, tests positive, and enters that in the app that I’ll get a notification.
There’s nothing really to “debate” or “study” here. Quebec should be jumping on the platform ASAP. Canada has done the work of developing the app, it’s secure & private, and they’re not going to get anything that’ll give them more detail, (like the location of every exposure), because that would require phones to be running, unlocked, with the app in the foreground, all the time, (that’s what the UK tried & failed to do).
The app & platform are done. I’m pretty sure all Quebec has to do is start issuing 1-time codes to people who test positive. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even free to do so, or very close to it.
I also installed the app whenever it was made available, though as the only people I am near for 15 minutes or longer are family, I am not terribly concerned about this. I do wonder what happens if my neighbours get sick — surely our phones are sometimes close enough for 15 minutes at a time that there would be a false positive as we are never physically close to each other without a wall between?
Why can’t they hire some market mavens to push this thing? The Feds could market this as a free subsidy to Quebeckers. They could encourage its use by entering everyone who downloads it into a lottery of some kind. Sometimes Canada needs to think less earnest, more flash especially with Quebec.
Nicola Spagnolo, whom La Presse calls a mafioso, is out on bail on charges of attempted murder in Old Montreal. He has to live under a long list of conditions. Daniel Renaud also adds a brief history of the man’s mob life.
The Journal has never been Bixi’s biggest fan, and now has a story about how the system will be more expensive for taxpayers, both because of the decline in revenues due to the pandemic, and the higher price of the powered bikes it has been adding.
I’m not sure I’m 100% behind Bixi offering powered vehicles myself – yes, I know these are just power-assisted and not little putt-putts – but these vehicles do extend Bixi to people who otherwise aren’t able to cycle, or might not choose to cycle, so they can be defended on that basis.
Yeah. And electric bikes require more overhead in terms of maintenance and infrastructure. Not sure it’s the right move if they’re already struggling a bit. Introducing those was probably to compete with Jump bikes, but hey, that’s nothing but a pile of scrap now.
I was sceptical of the electric bikes at first but I have to say they are very useful for long or uphill trips, and they’re a great alternative to the metro. I tested them out a few times but going up as many hills as I could and while it’s not effortless on steep inclines, it’s much, much easier than on a regular Bixi, especially in the summer heat. I will be happy to see more of them but I wouldn’t want to reach a point where they dominate the network and you have no choice but to use one.
I think that the hope is that by using e-bikes there will be less need for van/cargo truck/trailer bike recirculation. A lot of people are happy to ride the regular Bixi bikes down the Plateau but I’d guess fewer want to ride back up. I’d be curious to see what their numbers/data say.
Yes but Jim, then the trucks will need to bring those electric bikes back downtown. It’s already a problem.
The city’s first wet shelter is to open this fall, with places for ten people to start with. The location isn’t definite yet, but it will be somewhere downtown.
Early Wednesday, police chased a speeding car off autoroute 25 into east end residential streets, where it smashed into three parked cars and came to a halt. Two people were arrested, but a third fled on foot.
Is highway speeding really a good reason for a police chase? How do you suppose the owners of those damaged cars feel about it this morning?
I’m guessing that if a car that’s speeding doesn’t pull over when the cops show up, the cops assume (probably correctly) that the driver is up to something more serious. Only an idiot tries to flee from a speeding charge. The stakes aren’t high enough to warrant the risk.
The world is full of idiots.
I seriously disbelieve that most high speed chases are worth it.
Once you have the plate, what’s the point of the chase? You can just have every cop in town looking for it. You have the name and address of the owner. It’s not like you can really hide all that well. And if the car is stolen, well, they are just going to get out and abandon it soon, because they know every cop is looking for it. (And it’s almost a miracle when police do find a stolen car anyway… since they are mostly a reporting agency, and less an actual detective agency. Their solve rate is incredible low.)
The thinking is probably that if you just take down the plate number and let them go, it gives the perp time to dispose of all those guns, the 15 kilos of cocaine in the back seat, and the three teenage girls tied up in the trunk. So all they get is a speeding ticket.
Not saying that’s MY thinking…
They have the statistics on runners. They’ve pronounced the benefits of high speed chases do not out weigh the risks. The need to follow their own advice and stop letting cops run afoul
in 2014 my fully-paid-for car was destroyed after a police chase caused an criminal to smash into and destroy my car (and a couple of others). You are correct about my not being happy at all about having to buy a new car. The criminal died in the accident so I couldn’t even sue him. The famous Quebec “victims of crime” fund said no money for my loss and insurance paid very little because “not a new car.” So that was $20K I had to spend because of an unnecessary police chase gone bad.
There are good alternative solutions instead of police chases.
Dominic 07:57 on 2020-08-13 Permalink
When the CERB runs out, there might be a change in that pattern