A policeman who rammed a citizen’s car in a road rage incident in 2015 has been let off scot‑free.
Updates from August, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A trove of old medical books, some dating back as far as 1694, were found in the basement of Hôtel-Dieu, and will go to four institutions as treasures.
Meantime, Quebec is preparing to scoop up the Sulpicians’ massive archive and look after it.
Ian
Wow, a collection of rare medical books is a heck of a thing to find just lying around!
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Kate
Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery is dealing with a lot of marmots this summer, which is being blamed on a shortage of foxes, their natural predator. What’s happened to the foxes this season is not explained.
Dhomas
There were a number of foxes living in the cemetery close to my place, le Repos Saint-Francois d’Assise. Sometime in autumn 2019, I saw them being trapped by some animal control types. I assumed they were being relocated because there was insufficient food for them here and some of the younger ones did look a little sickly. Maybe they relocated the ones on the mountain, too?
Ian
In years past my kids and I would go up to one of the high points in NDN and make a game of counting groundhog holes. This may be confirmation bias speaking but I think I did see substantially more groundhog holes than usual this year. I’ve been seeing more rabbits around town, too. I wonder if with the complaints about coyotes a few years back the city decided to quietly relocate as many predators as they could, and this is the result …
Kate
You do have to be careful walking down between graves that you don’t ankle yourself into a groundhog hole. Then there are the tinier, cuter holes made by chipmunks.
As for the foxes, we always seem to fall on our faces when we arbitrarily tinker with natural balances, even in the city. But the journalist in this article should have investigated further about the foxes.
Kevin
For the first time since I moved back to Canada I saw a racoon.
And the little jerks have ruined my apple trees…
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Kate
Quebec City mayor Régis Labeaume is worried about the state of French in Montreal and says he wants some action musclée to protect it.
EmilyG
I’ve disliked that guy ever since he called people “autistic” as an insult.
Jack
Be ready for a punishing affirmation, not of the French language, but of the French ethnic majority’s supremacy. Simon Jolin-Barrette already has made it clear where this is going. “Comme beaucoup d’autres Québécoises et Québécois, je suis préoccupé par les données récentes sur la langue française. Au travail. Dans les choix que nous faisons pour nous instruire et pour nous divertir. Dans notre environnement visuel et sonore. Dans nos échanges publics.” It doesn’t take much to realize what and who will be targeted. Again this has nothing to do with the French language it has everything to do with ethnic politics.
Kate
Yes, Jack. I’m quite accustomed to having my language and culture viewed as a contaminant. It comes in waves.
Update: Jack, did you already see this?
thomas
I am surprised, but perhaps shouldn’t be, by this statement “Le Service de police de la Ville de Québec (SPVQ), qui ne compte aucun policier noir”
Jack
“Quebec was, is and should be Francophone,” said Jolin-Barrette. “This is a non-negotiable principle.”
This conceit has no historic basis. Quebec was originally settled by members of the First Nations, who oddly didn’t speak french. Then it was colonized by France. Then came the British. By 1844 “According to the data available for Lower Canada as well as for the districts of Québec and Montréal (which include the cities and their surrounding areas), we can reasonably deduce that in 1844, francophones probably accounted for less than half the populations of the cities of Québec and Montréal.”. By Confederation Quebec was 75% French speaking and 25% English speaking.
I would argue that this language debate has never really been about language, it is about supremacy (affirmation sounds nicer). The use of linguistic terms to identify ethnic cleavages is even more telling. Francophone, Anglophone, Allophone are used to cut us up ethnically by savvy politicians like Dr.Laurin and Labeaume.
I am not looking forward to what Jolin-Barrette has coming because he more than anyone else knows the power of targeting minority’s in Quebec’s racial landscape. The CAQ will also use this as an opportunity to further other Anglade.
Also let’s be honest at one point their will be a reckoning of how badly the Government of Quebec handled the Covid crisis. This issue will help them turn that page, especially if the right people are targeted.Ian
Ratcheting up interethnic tension as a means of political misdirection is as old as the hills, and that nobody sees through it even after all these centuries is a bit saddening but not very surprising.
Let’s be real here, the only reason the CAQ is playing this card is because they know it works – they are all about money and business, and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about people speaking English or wearing hijabs or whatever else except insofar as it keeps them in power.
I think that Derfel is a Jewish name plays no small part in all of this. “The troublesome Jew is getting the Anglos all worked up” is Legault’s implicit message, and a lot of his constituents are hearing a name like Derfel and know exactly what Legault is getting at by singling him out.
Kevin
Absolutely nothing that any government can do will be effective.
Francophones, like all other Canadians, don’t want to have children at a replacement level for society.
Without that, there is no hope for Montreal bring a French city. The minister has said it himself that fewer than 50% of the inhabitants of the city are Francophones. That number will only continue to drop.
Dhomas
Let’s just see how the CAQ are hypocrites.
Danielle McCann: Ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur. Educated at McGill University.
Eric Girard: Ministre québécois des Finances. Educated at McGill University.
Pierre Fitzgibbon: Ministre québécois de l’Économie et de l’Innovation. Educated at Harvard Business School.
Mathieu Lacombe: Ministre québécois de la Famille. Educated at the University of Ottawa.
André Lamontagne: Ministre québécois de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation. Educated at Mount Saint Vincent University.
Lionel Carmant: Ministre délégué à la Santé et aux Services sociaux. Educated at McGill University.And this is just doing a 5 minute Wikipedia search. There are a number of ministers who list no alma matter.
Uatu
Typical of the double standard. These ministers are ok for English post secondary, but apparently everybody else is a weak minded fool susceptible to the Jedi mind tricks of Anglos
DeWolf
Kevin, that doesn’t make any sense. The last census showed that Montreal is 49% francophone, but 65% of the population describes French as their predominant language. Just 23% of the population use English as their main daily language. Allophones will soon represent a plurality in Montreal but most of them are de facto francophones.
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Kate
This Daily Hive article clarifies a few things about the contactless bus fare payment meant to start soon.
It’s a pilot project meant to last till the end of the year.
You have to use either the Transit or the Chrono app on your phone.
The payment of $3.50 allows access to all the ARTM’s buses for 2 hours, which presumably means all the bus services on this map. However, if you’re staying within the STM, a block of 10 trips bought on an Opus card costs $29, so it’s slightly cheaper per trip. (This goes up to $29.50 on October 1, when a few fare increases come into effect.)
Shoe dropped: another drawback (mentioned in the graphic shown on the Daily Hive piece) is that the $3.50 ticket doesn’t allow transferring, so if you need two buses to get where you’re going it will cost you $7.00 and so on.
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Kate
A La Presse journalist followed and observed the activities of the city’s Escouade mobilité for a day, as they moved around, unjamming the city’s roads.
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Kate
phys.org reports on the opening of Lufa’s latest rooftop greenhouse in St-Laurent, said to be the world’s largest. Bill Brownstein also writes about it, as does La Presse.
I have no connection with Lufa except being a satisfied customer. If anyone here wants to join, I can send you an invitation and we’ll both get a discount. Hit me up.
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Kate
A Globe & Mail editorial excoriates François Legault for his handling of the pandemic, but more specifically for his targeting of Aaron Derfel. And this was probably written before Quebec turned down the contact-tracing app.
(I can see the article – apologies if anyone runs into a paywall.)
Kevin
Quebec has one of the highest covid 19 death rates in the world, and Legault is busy going after schools that want to enforce masks.
thomas
I know that Mila (UdeM) is quite disappointed that their proposal was not selected and was counting on that money to fund some activities. Perhaps, this is a way for the Quebec gov. to subsidize it.
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Kate
City hall opposition is supporting boat owners who tie up in Lachine marina, forgetting that a lot of these folks live off-island and won’t even be voting here. Projet wants to turn the marina, which benefits only a relatively small number of people, into a waterside park for all.
Mr.Chinaski
it was clear when the Marina people bought a Lobbyist that they would transform this into a political battle. Lachine is one of those borough in 2017 that had a lot of candidates. It wasn’t just Plante vs Coderre, you also had Dauphin and VCM. So there is a political re-alignment that is starting for next year with such battles.
It’s also a generational situation, all those pro-Marina people, look at them, they are mostly out-of-towners middle-class families or upper-middle-class boomers. They do not represent the young people at all, just look at the age range and demographics of people using SUP’s and Kayaks…
Blork
I have no skin in this game and I don’t give AF about boats or marinas, but it must be noted that the marina is immediately next to an existing gigantic waterside park for all (Parc René-Lévesque). So right now both populations are being served, but if you remove the marina then only one population is being served.
I supposed it looks a bit like if you had a basketball court next to a botanical garden and some people wanted to turn the basketball court into another botanical garden because they don’t like people playing basketball. “But botanical gardens are for all!” (The only difference is the wealth angle, so call this what it is: pitchforks against the wealthy — something I’m not against when it comes to the very wealthy, but most of the boat owners I know are just middle class.)
Chris
Does Montreal even have any other marinas besides this one? We’re an island, it’s pretty normal that some people would have some boats. It’s not like we’re talking super yachts here, many boats are not *that* expensive.
walkerp
More like if you had a private basketball court that only a limited amount of members was allowed to use.
Mr.Chinaski
Blork, not all green space and parks are created for the same reasons. This is a transformation of an existing ramshackle site that is in the need of extensive rehabilitation (either as a Marina or a park). Parc René-Lévesque doesn’t serve the matter in which they want to transform the marina. Neither is the Promenade Pere Marquette.
It’s like saying we don’t need Parc Jeanne-Mance because gosh darnit, we have the Mont-Royal on the next street!
DeWolf
I really do wonder how this is going to play out for Ensemble Montréal. They may see some quick political gain here, but it could also backfire when people understand they’re basically lobbying for the city to pay millions of dollars to maintain and renovate a private club on public land. And it’s not like most of the boat owners can vote here anyway.
Then again, we’re living in 2020, when people’s heads explode in rage at the thought of the city building a new public park, children riding their bikes in protected lanes or the mayor drawing a comic book in her spare time. Maybe at this time next year we’ll see the rise of some kind of Rob Ford type candidate who will personally bulldoze all the bike lanes, kind of like how Denis Coderre took a sledgehammer to that mailbox.
Kate
Chris, there are a ton of marinas and yacht clubs all around the island. I got this map to auto-display on Google and I’m not sure this is all of them. Also, in addition, there are several slips in the West Island where you can park and put in a boat:
John B
Most of the marinas in that map are off-island, (although the old port isn’t on the map). I believe Verdun doesn’t take anything much bigger than a 14″ fishing boat. That leaves on-island boat owners pretty stuck, especially if they live in the eastern 60% of the island.
I feel like we should be working to make the river more accessible, and with the currents in the river part of that is motorboats. Restrict it to island residents, (or even better, Montreal residents), charge enough so it’s not a money pit, and call it a day.
Kate
John B, as I said, there may be more than shown on the map. I started digging and found two in Pointe-Claire, several in Beaconsfield and Baie-d’Urfé, at least one in tiny Senneville, and Ste-Anne’s waterfront seems to be made of marinas. I stopped listing them then and screenshotted a map.
Admittedly, the situation reflects the relative wealth of the West Island; the eastern end includes the working port and various industrial accesses like the piers around Lantic Sugar, it’s obviously not so leisured. It would be nice if more people could feel connected to the river, but it seems to me that riverside parks offer a little more connection to more people than a marina. I realize you don’t have to be fabulously wealthy to have a boat, but you do need to have some extra disposable – for buying it, storing it, keeping it in good repair and moving it around.
Ian
I looooove how people here are making out like having a boat is just for rich people so public land shouldn’t be used to support their hobby… while meanwhile lycra warriors on 12k bikes get entire roads closed off for their use. Some of those competitive bikes actually go for substantially more than an 18′ powerboat, go check out prices on kijiji like I just did if you don’t believe me.
At least nobody had to tell boaters to stay out of the cemeteries because they were being a nuisance, haha
Kate
Ian, how often do racing cyclists get roads closed off? There’s the Grand Prix Cycliste one day in summertime, but that was cancelled this year. Am I missing something?
Ian
I was referring to the road closure going up the mountain that all the PM bikes-first kerfuffle largely stemmed from – even now it is closed off on Sunday mornings until noon to cars.
I get the value of bike paths around town, lots of people commute or even ride for fun – but let’s be honest here, there is typically a very specific type of well-heeled, exquisitely equipped bicyclist that goes up the mountain. The same ones that got barred from the cemeteries.
My point here is that a very small handful of sport cyclists are being catered to with this kind of thing – I don’t see why boaters are being picked on as some kind of elite rich people hobbyists if we accept that the Tour de France wannabe lobby group with their $10, 000 ++ bikes is totally valid & we should reconfigure our roads to their needs.
Max
The Senneville Yacht Club’s notable for its clubhouse.
Designed by Victor Prus, architect of metro Bonaventure, metro Mont-Royal, the first iteration of the Palais des Congres, and a Senneville resident at the time of his passing a couple of years back.
Kate
Wow, Max. Looks like a mini Expo 67 pavilion.
Max
I posted to reddit about him after he passed away, along with a list of his works and a gallery of metro Bonaventure construction pics I plucked out of the Archives de Montreal. Check it out. I thought his passing was a giant loss to the city that wasn’t properly appreciated at the time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/5xxic2/metro_construction_bonaventure_16_pics_sad_news/
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Kate
The Chamber of Commerce wants a reduction in commercial taxes downtown. It’s not like we can’t see why, but this isn’t really a great time for city hall to pass up normal revenue. They also want the city to leave economic development to other levels of government, and suspend the requirement for social housing to be included in new developments.
Another thing discussed here is Cadillac Fairview’s plan for a “centre-ville de l’est de Montréal” to be built up around Galeries d’Anjou (and competing with the STM’s desire for a parking lot for the new blue line terminus)? If people talk about our old downtown doing badly, I’d counter with the competition from Dix30 plus the impending Royalmount project and now this new monster.
Ephraim
Important rule. Never listen to the Chamber of Commerce, they always have alternative agendas that they don’t disclose. And what percentage of businesses are actually a member? We need a group to represent all the commercial merchants, equally, not just those that pay in and have heavy pockets.
I thought that Galeries d’Anjou was fighting the city because it doesn’t want the terminus to be where the city wants it. Right where the McDonald’s is, on the corner of St-Zotique
Kate
Ephraim, as I understand it, the STM wants not just room for a station, but a huge parking lot. And this is conflicting with a plan (which wasn’t mentioned till recently) to build the area up with a lot of condo towers and other stuff.
Now, having observed how this stuff works, I think it likely those fancy plans have only existed since the city started making expropriations, so Cadillac Fairview can say “hey, you’re not just taking away a piece of a mall parking lot, you’re taking away land that’s MUCH more valuable – potentially – so you have to pay us a lot more money!” Which could keep lawyers tied in knots for many expensive years.
Ephraim
They actually are taking a corner that has businesses on it. Look at http://www.stm.info/sites/default/files/media/Travaux/Ligne_bleue/19817_37_plans_infrastructures_anjou.pdf and you will see, there is a Wendy’s, an Academie, 3 Brasseurs, McDonald’s, Madison’s and RONA and it’s parking lot in that corner.
But I stand by my mistrust of the Chambre de Commerce, they are the people who ripped off the city with “buying” the parking meters, run Tourisme Montreal and of course set up Bixi and ran it into the ground intentionally paying the people at the top unsustainable salaries and leaving the city holding the bag.
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Kate
A study by SHERPA examines reasons why Montreal’s poorer and more ethnic communities have been hit harder than average by Covid, and these should come as no surprise: they include poverty, having high-risk physical jobs that can’t be phoned in, and not speaking or understanding French or English well. Another Canada-wide study is also examining data linking racism and Covid-19 outcomes.
In May, François Legault said Quebec would collect data on the race and economic status of Covid patients, but by July, he had changed his mind.
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Kate
With people less afraid of Covid, city emergency
awards are getting crazy busy again.PatrickC
“awards”: was that a Freudian slip–wishing frontline workers got more recognition? 🙂
Kate
Oh dear. I blame the cat.
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Kate
If I were advising Mayor Plante on getting re-elected, I would tell her to pull out all the bike paths, because so many people hate them, specifically in this case merchants along St‑Denis, who’ve written a letter complaining about the “active transport” lane going in between St-Joseph and Bélanger – not, I would’ve thought, the most commercial stretch of the street.
As things are going, the next city administration is going to be floridly pro-car. By 2023, I am willing to bet, green spaces will have been paved over to make more parking lots. I am not kidding. I’ll direct you back to this post here in three years’ time.
It’s amazing to me how much people hate Plante. Things like traffic disruptions for the REM are being blamed on her and any street repairs with cones, drivers always seeming to forget the repairs are being done for them. I decided just now to open Facebook and see if I could find any examples of Plante-hatred, and the first thing I see is a graphic showing cones and the words ARRETÉ LA QUELQUN… PLANTE STUNE FOLLE [sic]. (Not from a friend, it’s on one of the groups I follow specifically to scout stories for the blog.)
I never saw anything close to the vicious hatred for Tremblay or Coderre that is coming out for Valérie Plante. If she wants to be re-elected, she has to pay attention and try to soothe these people and give them what they want – as much as she can, because, as I say, much of what people are complaining about is coming from the transport ministry or REM construction, and a lot of the rest is because WE’RE IN A PANDEMIC, and if people are not shopping, eating or drinking downtown it’s because they’re currently not working downtown, not because Valérie Plante isn’t personally offering valet parking services.
JoeNotCharles
If she wants to be re-elected, she needs to be born a man.
Blork
People love to go after anyone who is “different,” especially if they can combine it with something that seems like a legitimate reason to complain. I think a lot of what passes for overt racism or sexism or homophobia can ultimately be traced back to primarily neophobia. For example, I’m thinking of kids picking on the only black kid in class; random run-of-the-mill black kid might not suffer that problem, but if he’s got something else going on, like he has thick glasses or is a bit of a nerd, then he’s a target. It isn’t explicitly racism (or at least not exclusively racism, because they wouldn’t have gone after the non-dorky black kid). Would they have gone after the same dorky kid if he were white? Some would, but being black (or gay, or short, or fat) is that extra “different” thing that pushes them over the edge and then they attack.
In Plante’s case, the difference is obvious, and it’s gender. But if she had been politically neutral and had not brought in any changes, then people probably wouldn’t have gone after her. It’s that mix of “different” (gender) and perceived “legitimate” political issues that tip things. If she instead were a black male, you’d see the same thing. If she were a white male, you’d see all the griping about cones and things but you wouldn’t get the same level of hate. It would be just another standard mayor (male) doing unpopular things.
Chris
>It’s amazing to me how much people hate Plante … I decided just now to open Facebook
Hmmm, social media is not a representative sample of people. Are you sure you’re not just seeing your bubble?
david102
Blork – I think your evaluation on neophobia is correct, but the gender thing is just demonstrably false. Exhibit 1. Luc Ferrandez. Exhibit 2. Counterfactual where it’s Bergeron presiding over the city. No difference in outrage.
It would be nice if we could link the backlash against PM to the current American auto-da-fé moment that has, of course, been embraced here. And sure, people might be a very little bit more likely to think that a woman would do green stuff, or culture stuff, or be a little less business focused, whatever.
But the problem is just like you say – Plante is very slowly and conservatively applying a long overdue program of very gradual change to make driving less convenient. And these moves – and anything that resemble them, her doing or not – just irritate many many people.
Plus, rent is skyrocketing (artificial land shortage), there’s a big pandemic thing that’s making people more agitated, the economy is dog shit, and everyone in power is spending money like crazy – all of which compound the anti-Plante feeling, as she’s just who happens to be there right now.
walkerp
Why are you assuming she is so unpopular? Do we have any current polls?
I think we are seeing an amplified minority and that there are a lot of quiet people who are mostly okay with the Plante administration.
Also, as we skew anglophone here, we see much more of the angryphone voice, which venns up nicely with the anti-car assholes (and the big lobbyists and advertisers behind them).
This is the same thing you see with Trudeau and yet he keeps winning, despite major actual fuck ups.
Mr.Chinaski
Kate stop saying she’s unpopular, this is pure media-bias. Commerce-owners? Probably. Citizens? Nope. Let’s remember this result from not even a year ago:
Plateau Mont-Royal 2019 by-election –> Projet Montreal : 67%
SIXTY SEVEN PERCENT!
Jonathan
I agree with Walkerp and Chinaski. It’s more media bias than anything. I don’t think a few merchants who have the audacity (caucasity?) to write a letter represent public sentiment. They are just misinformed idiots, in my *humble* opinion. Nevermind the research that comes out time and time again (last week on London) that bicycle infrastructure improves the overall economics of a street.
I would like to see a poll.
DeWolf
Luc Ferrandez was constantly excoriated in the news and on social media and yet he was consistently reelected with large majorities – and Ferrandez is an unapologetic asshole, whereas Plante goes out of her way to be upbeat and friendly. When you see the same names over and over in these stories (hi Francesco Miele!) it’s usually an indication of a concerted media campaign rather than a grassroots uprising.
I don’t know if Plante will be re-elected. But it’s way too early to tell. She still has 25% of her term left to finish and a year in politics is an eternity. By the time the election is held, the REV will have been in place for a year, it will likely be a success (given the experience of just about every other city that has built something similar) and the economy will be improving, so the situation could well be very different.
Tim S.
One thing to consider is that Plante/Project at least have a constituency behind them. I was up on Mont Royal a few weeks ago and came across one of those expensive 375th anniversary granite rocks, and it reminded me how much effort Coderre put into things that no one wanted.
MarcG
@walkerp: Do you mean anti-bike or pro-car instead of anti-car assholes?
DeWolf
That’s a good point, Tim. If PM scrapped the REV at this point there would be a huge backlash from people who voted for exactly this sort of thing.
Another thought: almost every major piece of bike infrastructure in North America has been greeted by the same kind of hysterical overreaction we are seeing here. When Vancouver took away two lanes of traffic on the Burrard Bridge to make a protected bike path, people predicted traffic chaos. That didn’t happen. The introduction of Citibike (ie Bixi) to New York was greeted by all sorts of catastrophizing. It’s now a huge success. And remember when the de Maisonneuve bike path was built in 2007? How many column inches did the Gazette devote to slamming it? Now it’s too popular for its own good and de Maisonneuve is a much livelier street than before.
In other words, ride out the opposition because these types of infrastructural investments are known to bear fruit.
walkerp
Whoops meant pro-car asshole. I`m one of those anti-car assholes! 🙂
mare
Another data point: Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, took much more extreme anti-car measures before Covid and changed the center of Paris in a bicycle friendly area.
Despite getting *a lot* of flack in the media for that, she was recently re-elected with a rather large difference.
Sarah
What are all these bike paths achieving in the grand scheme of things? Have there been any studies revealing how this is beneficial for the greater good?
Interesting article here: https://financialpost.com/opinion/lawrence-solomon-ban-the-bike-how-cities-made-a-huge-mistake-in-promoting-cyclingWe live in a city were it’s snowy and frigid most of the year. All the money used to create the lanes and maintain them including snow clearing for few cyclists who use them year round.
The traffic bottlenecks by removing lanes is ridiculous (let’s not even talk about all the parking she’s removed and the simultaneous construction projects EVERYWHERE).
While it makes sense to have bike lanes near universities, downtown, etc., I’ve seen boulevards transformed to accomodate a handful of cyclists throughout the day. It’s utterly nonsensical.
I have never witnessed so much road rage in this city before.
All those cars idling and causing even more pollution.
And motorists are supposed to keep paying while cyclists aren’t even required to have a license?This doesn’t make any sense and people are sick of it! This lady needs to go and she will in the next election. And I, along with many will be glad to see the back of her.
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Kate
It will soon be an option to pay your STM bus fare with your phone. I’ll have to use up the remaining tickets on my Opus first, which could take awhile, since I’ve been averaging one bus ride every couple of weeks since March.
DeWolf
These phone tickets cost $3.50 which means they’re significantly more expensive than using your Opus, which costs $2.90 per trip if you’ve bought a batch of 10 tickets.
Kate
DeWolf, I made the same point later in the day without having read this comment, but thank you.
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Kate
Quebec has declined to take advantage of the federal Covid notification app – unless things get bad.
Dhomas
When is the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. When is the second best time? Right now. The Quebec government has the opportunity to deploy the app before things get bad but they’re going to wait, for what exactly? “It doesn’t protect the most vulnerable”: those who can’t afford (recent) smartphones. That will not change if they deploy it later. It just makes no sense. I don’t understand why they don’t just do it now.
I never thought I’d agree with Doug Ford, but he’s right: “Just do it. It protects everyone. It’s not a big deal.”Derek
My read on this is that Quebec is buying time to build their own app. Why use something that’s already available when you can build your own?
dwgs
*insert gif of person slamming head against desk on infinite loop*
Kate
Here’s Blork’s thoughts on this again from a couple of weeks ago.
Ian
Really this can’t come as a surprise to anyone. This is the way Quebec asserts its national identity, and it has been thus for many decades.
dmdiem
I saw Star Trek when I was a kid and thought, “Yes. This is the future I want. Where everyone put aside their petty differences to explore this wonder filled universe in the spirit of peace and cooperation.”
Now it dawns on me why there were no Quebecers on the Enterprise… they’re all back on earth trying to build their own god damn Starfleet.
Sigh… enjoy the universe, everyone else.
mare
In order for this app to be useful it needs to be used by >70% of the people. If it is promoted now, it might slowly gain traction.
On the other hand, almost all Quebeckers really trust authoity, so if the Quebec government says that everyone should install this tomorrow, everyone will.
I was kind of surprised when wearing a mask went from ‘recommended’ to ‘required’ and suddenly everyone was masked in the grocery store, while beforehand 50% of the shoppers were mask-less.JoeNotCharles
I installed the app myself to find out why it won’t work in Quebec, and it turns out to be not as bad as it sounds:
Canada’s “COVID Alert” app is just a minor modification to the open source “COVID Shield” (https://www.covidshield.app) which says:
COVID Shield is not currently available for download or use.
COVID Shield is provided as a reference for your local public health authority to build their own app. If you are interested in using COVID Shield, please contact your local government representative and ask what they are doing about exposure notification for COVID-19.
So all Quebec needs to do to “make its own app” is replace the “Canada” splash screen with one that says “Quebec” and swap the order of the “English” and “French” buttons. (Or remove “English” altogether.) Alberta has its own app too, which is exactly that – it looks the same as the Canada one, but with an “Alberta” splash screen, no language selector (it’s probably English only but in theory it could just be based on your phone’s language setting) and has an extra “Privacy Policy” screen you have to accept.
I believe that even if Quebec publishes their own app there’ll be nothing stopping people in Quebec from using the national COVID Alert app instead. It all uses the same backend.
The thing that’s missing right now is that when Quebec health authorities notify someone they have COVID, there’s no way to enter that data into the app. So you can install the app right now, and it will keep a list of all the phones with the app you’ve gone near, but if any of those phone’s owners are diagnosed, you won’t actually be notified. The patient needs to get a code to enter into the app to register that they have a diagnosis (this prevents people from causing a panic by clicking “I have COVID!” and causing fake notifications). Literally the only thing missing to use the app here is that health authorities need to give out those codes when they make a diagnosis.
JoeNotCharles
Hah, I see a bunch of people posted the same thing about how the app works in the earlier thread. And I thought I was providing a service.
One thing from the earlier thread, someone said: “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.”
That can’t be true, since there’s a Canada app and an Alberta app already.
Dhomas
@JoeNotCharles the Alberta app has been replaced by the Federal government app:
Also, I’m not sure it was using the same Google/Apple developed tracing system since it needed to be in the foreground to work and appeared to be a battery hog.
Ephraim 21:38 on 2020-08-26 Permalink
It’s a surprise?
Hamza 22:48 on 2020-08-26 Permalink
“Pokora blocked Tomarelli’s vehicle in a driveway and got out to confront him. After a verbal altercation, Pokora got back into his car and called 911. Surveillance video of the incident shows Tomarelli then getting into his own vehicle and ramming Pokora’s car.
Tomarelli also called 911 and then chased Pokora in his vehicle. When more officers arrived, it was Pokora who was arrested and charged with uttering threats and harassment.
this is insane. what the hell does “off-duty” mean anyway? the behaviour of both the cops and investigating commitees really gives you the impression that “reform” is not going to solve anything with the public problem of having a hostile armed force operating among us, totally unaccountable to civilian oversight