Clare Bronfman has been sentenced to nearly seven years’ prison for her role in the Nxivm case – a longer sentence than prosecutors asked for. She’ll serve it in the United States. Bronfman’s connection with Montreal is through her father Edgar Bronfman; Clare’s sister Sara was apparently also involved with Nxivm but has not faced charges.
Updates from September, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
My doorbell rang just now, and someone was standing outside with a face shield and a clipboard. Assuming nobody would be doing this now unless it was something official and serious, I opened the door. I didn’t have a mask on – I was interrupted eating dinner.
It was some guy canvassing for Oxfam.
I did not give him hell, but what? The government has declared the city a red zone, and they still have people pestering folks at home for donations?
MarcG
I had firefighters with no masks on come by a week ago to make sure I had smoke detectors installed. I’ve taken to yelling at/through the glass pane in my front door but the people on the other side can barely hear me. I kind of wish I had a mailslot.
GC
I understand your frustration, Kate, but I’m sure lots of people are doing things today because they are still technically possible and not allowed tomorrow. Which is silly. The virus isn’t waiting for October 1.
Kate
MarcG, did you communicate with the fire dept. about that? I had firefighters come by a couple of months ago (which I recall posting about) but the one who came inside had a mask on, at least.
GC, well exactly.
MarcG
I didn’t call anyone. They didn’t come inside, just stood at a fair distance from the door after realizing I gave a shit and took my word that I had just replaced them all with the 10-year lithium battery type.
JP
I’m surprised Oxfam would still be having people going door to door…do they really get any donations out of that method during the pandemic and particularly, when we’ve just entered…red!?
To be honest, I really avoid opening the door for people I don’t know, kind of like the people who don’t answer calls when they see a number that they don’t know.
Very very few people should be knocking on my door if I don’t know them. In the past (pre-covid), we’ve had Jehovah’s witnesses, kids selling chocolates or cookies, and window cleaners trying to sell their services…It’s extremely annoying. Door-to-door tactics will not work for me. I understand kids fundraising, but to be honest, my parents never allowed us to sell chocolate door-to-door (they didn’t think it was safe and they weren’t willing to come with us). They’d just buy one or two of the entire packs…and we’d be eating that chocolate for weeks…
More related to the post, the agent from the city of Montreal, who came to our place in August to test our water for lead was masked. If she hadn’t been, I would’ve requested that she wear one.
walkerp
I think we are being a bit alarmist here. Somebody standing at your door, masked, keeping their distance has a very low chance of contagion.
Jonathan
I think it is still ok to knock on someone’s door and talk to them. It’s just not allowed to have them enter their house. This makes sense to me.
Oxfam and all those organizations still need money to function, and they have now COVID relief efforts in their countries of intervention. Many of these countries are worse hit economically speaking than Canada and Quebec (and often without the resources/welfare systems we have). So why wouldn’t they continue?
There are a lot of folks who are still working like before and have a lot of travel money they can burn!
Kate
Why wouldn’t they continue?
It’s an ominous time. At the best of times, who likes to be disturbed around suppertime by someone asking for money? But right now, with people out of work – I don’t have a day job myself, having had it go away mid-March and not come back – do they really think this is the time to try to squeeze money out of people?
Right now, with heightened alarm and despondency in the populace, the assumption is that someone with a clipboard and a lavalier ID could be an official who has a legitimate reason to speak to you. I simply didn’t credit that a charity could still be sending its minions around to hassle people in their homes, which is one reason I opened the door.
In the background of my thoughts once I saw who it was is that Oxfam is one of the most notorious charities for hanging onto its takings; it’s also been in a scandal in Haiti where its workers were caught out paying for sexual services. They would never get a red cent from me, even if I had stacks of cash to burn.
steph
It’s just like the restaurants and bars getting one last push. The red zone dangers only starts October 1st – Covid was asked to wait.
GC
I wonder if some organizations have stepped up their door-to-door canvassing, just because they know more people are at home.
Mark Côté
Note that Oxfam and all the other big charities outsource canvassing to marketing companies. I doubt Oxfam has any control over these day-to-day activities.
On another point, I used to think that Oxfam was actually “one of the good guys” up until the horrible stuff in Haiti. I didn’t realize there were other systemic problems with them.
Kate
Mark Côté, the systemic issues are with Oxfam UK, which is the parent charity – it was originally the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. I don’t think the Canadian branch has been as corrupt, but it’s still Big Charity.
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Kate
Since the city can’t magically create more parking spaces downtown, instead it’s launching an app to help people find available spaces.
Joey
They’ve also negotiated (and are working on more) street-priced spaces inside empty parking garages, which is about as close to magically creating more parking spaces downtown as you can get…
DeWolf
I can understand complaints about parking on the Plateau, because it can be difficult, but parking downtown is ridiculously easy as long as you don’t expect to find a spot for free. There are literally thousands and thousands of underground spaces. Even in normal times it’s not hard to park downtown.
Mark Côté
Weird contrast to the stories of how deserted downtown currently is and how much more it will become…
Ian
Agreed 100% with DeWolf, even if you just google “parking near me” you see all the lots downtown and even before the pandemic it was fairly easy to find spots any time. There’s even free street parking to be had in some parts of downtown, depending what time of day you’re there. You may have to walk a couple of blocks but big deal.
Kevin
I think the issue is locating these underground spots. The on-street lots are well-marked — but not the ones under buildings.
Thibault
@kevin going south on Berri after rue Ontario there is a big sign showing the name and the realtime available parking spots for three nearby parking lots. I didn’t look too closely but one of them I know is an underground parking lot. There must be more of these signs around the downtown.
Joey
But the indoor lots are very expensive during working hours (note they often charge by the quarter-hour). Evenings and weekends are a better deal, with rates more or less in line with outdoor metred spaces, assuming you’re staying around for at least a couple of hours.
Ian
Many, actually. All the big parking lots have signs all over indicating that you re coming up to one from kilometres away, and once you’re there you can see if it has spots or not. I think the point of this app is more that some of the less well-known parking garages that aren’t normally part of the big green P system are now being shown, like hotels, etc.
FWIW this already exists though, there are I’m not sure why the city has to get involved with an app… you could use parkopedia for instance – there’s also an app version of aprkopedia. Unless this is all just an exercise in optics, I suppose.
Plus, as Mark points out, there are tons of parking spaces downtown these days.I think we just found another way the city could have saved some money in these troubled times.
Joey
@Ian the city needs to be involved in the app because they have negotiated cheap rates in certian buildings and you need to enter a code in the app to park there. Also, my experience this summer (weekly appointments in the Sun Life building during office hours) has been that street parking has been extremely scarce in that part of downtown. I’ve often thought, circling around, that the office buildings probably had dozens of empty spaces that could be madea avilable, glad to see it’s happening.
Ian
I concede the point as you’re right, thee are lots of parking spaces going unused in private corporate garages. That said, I never have a problem finding parking downtown – though I might have to walk a couple of blocks. It’s certainly a lot easier than finding parking on a residential street in a stickered neighbourhood on a snow clearing day.
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Kate
Retail outlets are seeing the most workplace Covid outbreaks in town. Eighty cultural venues are being closed by the red alert. Our new lockdown is news on NBC.
jeather
Retail outlets, which remain open. This information was presumably known to the government when they closed museums but not stores.
Kate
There’s a rationale here, which is that people spend a few minutes inside a store, but longer periods of time inside theatres, libraries and museums. Except for the retail workers, of course.
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Kate
A bus driver in Terrebonne had her jaw broken in an attack by an irate passenger on Saturday, when she asked him to put his mask back on. The bus had no security cam.
MICHAEL JIVOTOVSKY
This animal must get a maximum sentense for attacking and injuring 1. A woman, 2.An older person, 3. A person on duties. All media is to follow up!!!
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Kate
A lot of Wednesday’s stories are on the theme of the unfairness or inconsistencies in the government’s October lockdown rules. It will be bad for mental health. People running arts facilities find their closure, while retail stays open, is not fair, and restaurant owners are in shock. It’s going to be rough on tourism in Charlevoix. François Legault is being urged to explain his rationales and anti-maskers are preparing to demonstrate in Lafontaine Park on Wednesday evening to defy the mayor’s request not to hold gatherings.
It feels in some ways like a lot of folks have turned into angry, defiant teenagers. How do you explain to presumably rational adults that this is not an unfair act against them but a measure against a force that has no will nor agenda, but only its own internal viral logic?
Update: 838 new cases over the last 24 hours.
Ephraim
Hard on tourism? Lost almost every reservation in a day…
Kate
You mean this time around? Or during the first wave?
The only thing that’s been surprising me is how lax everything got over the summer and into September. There was never an “all clear” and reports kept emphasizing how most people who could work from home were still doing so, but it seems like a lot of people went back to business as usual. And now look where we are.
jeather
They hide the data, make rules that don’t seem to make sense other than “keep as much business running as possible”, and then are surprised they get pushback? They obviously learned nothing from the “We’ll stop sharing daily numbers” fiasco.
I think a lot of people would be much more willing if the rules felt like they were based on actual public health concerns and not that mixed with a lot of politics (in both the economy and masking in schools), where politics mostly wins over public health. (Again, it’s the exceptions which are weird, not the closures so much.)
DeWolf
I don’t think restaurant owners are being petulant by arguing they are being scapegoated. It’s fair to ask why restaurants, theatres and libraries are closed, for example, but not gyms, offices and shopping malls. And none of these places have been linked to major outbreaks in Quebec – unlike schools and workplaces, which along with private parties and weddings seem to be the real culprits.
As jeather said, this government has begun to very quickly squander any trust it had because its decisions do not seem to be rooted in any transparent public health data. The leaked public health recommendations associated with the new colour codes were quite different than what has actually been implemented, which once again suggests that the government is letting political concerns override advice from doctors.
You can blame people for loosening up over the summer, but the government has arguably more blame for sending out the message that things were pretty much over. There wasn’t an “all clear” but there might has well have been. Allowing bars and restaurants to open their indoor areas at the same time as terrasses was a strange decision to make when other places like Toronto and New York held off on indoor dining for several more months. 250-person gatherings was just insane. That doesn’t even touch on the mystifying decision to allow kids and teachers to sit in crowded classrooms together without masks. If people have no clear leadership, you can’t blame them for improvising their response to a situation.
Now we have a 28-day confinement in which people are allow (expected!) to go out to work and school, but prohibited from doing anything fun. It’s like a zombie version of life. It all makes me worry that, if we get to the end of this 28-day confinement and the government announces that, actually, it needs to be extended again for another few weeks, and then another few weeks—and oh, by the way, libraries are still unsafe to use, so buy all your books from Costco—even responsible people are going to start behaving badly. It’s one thing to ask people to follow clear rules for a specific period of time, but quite another to ask everyone to follow rules that don’t make sense for who knows how long.
DeWolf
I see in the news today that libraries will be allowed to operate contactless borrowing services, so I guess even the government saw how absurd it is to close libraries while keeping shops open.
Michael Black
I’m thinking someone slipped, maybe because libraries are a foreign thing to them.
As I mentioned, the Atwater Library changed their page pretty fast to show it was back to pickups only. The Westmount Library didn’t change, but they never went back to letting people browse the stacks, so there was nothing to change.
So either they were premature or the “rules” just weren’t clear. Had many libraries gone back to letting people browse? It’s more like someone just didn’t put a clarification in abiut libraries closed.
Em
The message is that we need to avoid social gatherings, since too many people have showed they can’t and won’t keep it small and do it safely.
It sucks for the many bars and restaurants that were being careful and following rules, as well as the cultural sector and all the people who have been very careful. I wish they’d just enforced the rules instead of shutting them.
But the government did try a softer approach to see if people would adjust their behaviour, and last weekend showed once again that people won’t get it. I was genuinely frustrated to see so many massive parties, including two where people had tied a bunch of boats together and were singing/screaming/blasting music as dozens of people crowded on the decks.
They don’t want to hear it and they don’t care.
Michael Black
Was that your letter in the Gazette this morning, about the boats in St Anne’s?
Kate
jeather, DeWolf, Michael Black: you all make good points. Thank you for thinking about this and writing about it on my blog.
Em
@Michael If you’re referring to me, it was not me who wrote the letter. The parties I witnessed were in Boucherville by the nature park.
Ian
So I can go to a “massage” parlour because it’s a “personal care” business, but I can’t go to the Musée des Beaux-Arts to see the post-impressionist show. My youngest daughter is in class with 25 disease vectors all day with no mask, but we can’t send her to the home of a friend from the same class after school so I can take her older sister to a doctor’s appointment. Gatherings in parks are ok, but not backyards.
Makes perfect sense, of course. /rolleyes
It’s no wonder people are ignoring these edicts, and I say this as someone who has been faithfully trying to follow the edicts and then some… clear, consistent signalling would really help here. I question this government’s efforts to inspire confidence.
Kevin
Don’t forget: the government told schools they *weren’t allowed* to force kids to wear masks in a classroom.
Ephraim
@Kate – The first time, it took time for people to cancel, they had hope. This time, all cancelled quickly. Not that it’s really much in the way of reservations… so little that even with them, I qualify for CERB/CRB.
JaneyB
@Ian – Good points. If the govt wants people to follow the protocols, they have to make sense eg: max 5 people outside, distanced, both parks and backyards. That is doable. They should make all the school classes 12 kids only and make them and their families into a bubble. We have tons of empty commercial space and all of that could be commandeered for these tiny classes. The emerging hodge-podge is too messy to follow or even enforce.
walkerp 21:02 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
Well deserved. I hope she serves every minute and it is hard time.
Let’s hope this is a turning point that signals the beginning of the end of the 1% con artist
Tim 23:50 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
Can you provide other examples of “1% con artists”? Bernie Madoff? Gwyneth Paltrow and her BS wellness company? Those are the first two names that popped into my mind…
walkerp 07:02 on 2020-10-01 Permalink
The biggest concentration is in Silicon Valley. Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Adam & Rebekah Neuman of WeWork are the two biggies. You can stretch that to include all the techbros (many of whom come from wealthy families) and who business model is basically ripping off existing social and economic structures with “disruption”. And of course the ur-con artist of them all, Trump.
Tim 09:36 on 2020-10-01 Permalink
I’m with you 100% on the hubris of silicon valley.
Blork 12:04 on 2020-10-01 Permalink
Side note: apparently Elizabeth Holmes’s defense team is considering an insanity defense, claiming the environment in Silicon Valley is so toxic that she was unaware it was “wrong” to lie to investors.