La Presse’s Louis-Samuel Perron tells a sordid little story of a drug deal gone bad that’s emerging from an ongoing murder trial. How could a guy hide $20,000 in his underpants?
Updates from November, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Montrealers’ consumption of alcohol has gone up during the pandemic, as has cannabis and probably a few other things.
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Kate
The city’s 2021 budget is out and there are various stories. The total is $6.17 billion. Residential and business taxes are not going up although boroughs have the option to hike residential taxes, which make up 20% of the tax bill.
Public transit will be free for kids under 12 as of next July, and fares for people 65 and over will be half of what they are now.
The city is not cutting services, partly thanks to money handed over by Quebec to help it face the pandemic.
There are bound to be more stories, and more reactions, to the budget over the next day or two.
It’s not part of this new budget, but the city is considering cutting garbage pickups to once every 2 weeks, in 2022.
The presentation of the budget was briefly held up by protesters at Marché Bonsecours who demanded the defunding of police,
Chris
Free public transit for the young is great, hopefully they’ll get used to it, grow to like it, become dependant on it, whatever, and keep it a lifelong habit. But giving seniors a further discount? They already own or car or not by their age, I don’t think it’ll increase ridership.
Kate
Chris, you’re displaying an exceptional lack of imagination here.
Blork
WTF, Chris? I guarantee there is no shortage of seniors in Montreal who are scraping by on a fixed income and who most definitely don’t own cars.
DeWolf
Even if an elderly person owns a car and is in the habit of driving, they can change their habits. Besides, many old people can’t drive or can no longer drive, and making transit more affordable for them will help them avoid the social isolation that can so often plague the elderly.
Not long after I moved to Hong Kong, seniors were given a flat HK$2 (about 35 cents Canadian) fare for any journey, no matter how long. Older people on a fixed income who previously stayed very close to home suddenly got into exploring the city. They travelled across town to see family and friends, to go to the central library or whatever. By all accounts it was very liberating.
Bill Binns
12 seems like an odd age to draw that line. Are we assuming they are gainfully employed at 13? I’d rather see them make public transit free for everyone. Mostly because the method of selling and collecting fares looks wildly inefficient and expensive.
To Chris’s point, I don’t see elderly people (or anyone else really) giving up their cars based on the price of public transit. Having a car is already orders of magnitude more expensive than public transit. Do we think these crafty geezers were just waiting for them to reduce the cost to nothing? Driving and public transit are not two ways to achieve the same thing. They are completely different ways of life. Somebody shifting from driving to transport will have to shop at different places on a (very) different schedule. Some places they currently go or may have been going for decades will become unreachable. I’m fit and healthy, work from home and can afford to rent a car when I really need one butliving without a car still feels like a serious handicap sometimes.
Orr
For non-monthly pass retired-people like myself and my wife, right now it is cheaper to drive and pay two hours parking than to pay two round trip bus tickets. So we are very interested in this development. Hopefully this applies to the round trip paper ticket and we don’t have to use the infernal opus card because as occasional users we never know how many trips still remain on the card. Having that number flash for a microsecond on the tap terminal for opus card when getting on to the bus is not an adequate source of this information btw.
We would prefer to not use the car for short city trips but we are not going to pay EXTRA to leave the car at home.Ant6n
Those seniors will likely avoid rush hour. Leveling demand throughout the day is a nice side effect besides increased mobility for the elderly.
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Kate
Forty-two Covid deaths have been chalked up in Quebec over the last 24 hours. In Montreal, it’s LaSalle, Lachine and Rivière-des-Prairies seeing recent increases.
Quebec is considering a school closure to break the chain of transmission.
Quebec’s also going to pour some money into the economy, CBC citing $600 million.
Meezly
Does anyone know what happened to the 432.2 million that was earmarked for QC by the federal government in late August for the express purpose of making it safer for kids and staff at schools from Covid?
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Kate
The Eastern Townships have been declared a red zone and although Montreal’s red zone status isn’t changing, Dr Drouin is hinting at loosening up some restrictions – which, to my mind, would blur the distinction of these zones and make it even harder for people to be clear what they’re supposed to be able to do safely.
Dr Drouin is said to be concerned with studies showing that we’re drinking more and consuming more cannabis as the restrictions continue.
dwgs
A lot of people I know, myself included, are chronically depressed these days. It’s not surprising that they’re self medicating.
JP
There is definitely a cloud, so to speak, that has set in….the last few days of nice weather were helpful in terms of sunshine and being able to be outdoors…
I used to go for daily walks right after work (working from home) but with the time change…it’s getting harder to do that while it’s still light out. I try to go in the middle of the day and make up for it later, but it’s not the same. I feel like I rush back for work.
And, while virtual connection is better than nothing, you’ll never convince me that it can replace real live interaction with other people. At least, not for me.
Nevertheless, I do understand why we’re doing this. I’m trying to make the best of it, but I know we all have varying challenges with it.
Mr.Chinaski
There’s like a 12-month wait just to see somebody for your mental health. no wonder alcool and cannabis is on the rise. I’d say some sort of weed is pretty good for small-levels of anxiety and depression.
At least there is a glimpse of hope in that there’s only 6 months left for all this…
Joey
If ever there were a year to ditch the fall time change, this was it.
@Mr.Chinaski six months is a very best-case scenario (unless you meant six months of winter)… I imagine we’ll have some vaccines administered by then, but probably not yours and mine.
Blork
While there has always been talk of dropping Daylight Savings Time, that would not be initiated by dropping the fall time change. Doing that would essentially move us out of the Eastern timezone and put us in the Central timezone, which is a much bigger deal.
Ending Daylight Savings Time means dropping the time change in the spring that moves us out of “regular” Eastern timezone and into “temporary modified Eastern timezone.” Removing that perennial “temporary modification” is not such a big deal, because it does not involve any permanent timezone shifts.
However, it also means the sun would set an hour earlier all summer and fall, and not just start setting earlier in November.
Mark Côté
I’m having a hard time parsing that last comment… we’d of course be dropping both clock changes; the question is (if we decided to do that next year), would we have one more change to move us to UTC-4, as we normally do in the spring, and stay there, or do we stay at UTC-5, where we are now.
Central time is UTC-6 in standard time and UTC-5 in daylight saving time. The only way we’d be on central time is if we *kept* on standard time, but the central time zone (assuming they ditched DST as well) stayed on daylight saving time.
In fact, the discussion in Ontario is about permanently moving to DST, that is, to UTC-4, as long as Quebec and New York followed suit.
Mr.Chinaski
Changing DST affects people really differently depending on where they are in the timezone. People in say, Sault-Ste-Marie (sunset : 17h06 today) have it really different from people in Sept-iles (sunset : 16h00 today). So you can’t please everybody evently.
Chris
Blork: I don’t think anyone is suggesting what you say, all the proposals are to *stay* on summer time.
EmilyG
I was sober for 6 years.
Was.
Then 2020 came.
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Kate
A Longueuil story: finding Michel-Chartrand park overrun with deer this season, that city announced it would be culling 15 of them and sending the meat to food banks. Now Longueuil mayor Sylvie Parent is receiving threats. TVA says it’s likely that Longueuil created the problem by having feeding stations for the deer.
dwgs
Wait, they fed the deer and now they have to do something to control the deer population? And what do the anti-cull people suggest? That they put out more food to keep them from damaging the trees in the park? Gee, I wonder what will happen then? It’s a miracle we’ve survived this long as a species. Perhaps one day the deer will take over.
Raymond Lutz
@dwgs, post Anthropocene? My money’s on giant and supra sentient immortal jellyfish.
dwgs
I, for one, welcome etc.
Michael Black
Aren’t jellyfish the “Borg collective”?
Blork
I’m really torn over this. While I understand the reasons for it, I walk in that park almost every day, and see the deer daily, right up close. As in, every single day I’m a metre away from a doe or six, looking right into their big doe eyes. So yes, I understand why people are upset about the cull (although threatening the mayor is just stupid and unnecessary). There’s a protest on Saturday at 2PM, and a bunch of petitions, etc. I’ll likely just sadly accept it.
Kate
If we went away, in a couple of million years North America would be populated with an intelligent species descended from raccoons, some of them worshipping the Trash God and others maintaining that the Trash God doesn’t exist.
Blork
…because that’s really what we need right now; A SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS!
LOL, yes I’m being dramatic, but those deer are like pets to people who walk in the park regularly. It’s like finding out there will be a cull of puppies. (See item above about COVID-19 related depression and self-medication.)
Kate
Could the deer be trapped and at least released somewhere further from town? Or is the idea that they’re so accustomed to people that they wouldn’t do well in a random forest with no supportive handouts?
Blork
Apparently the problem with trapping and moving is that the deer in that park have ticks that aren’t found in abundance elsewhere, so there is a fear of spreading the parasite. (Hey, couldn’t they “delouse” them?) Also, the official line is “it would stress the deer.” What, more stress than a bullet in the head?
There was also talk of allowing limited hunting in the park but that was shut down quickly. FFS the park is surrounded by housing and is full of people. That would be like allowing hunting in Parc Angrignon or Parc Mont-Royal. Jeez, who thought that would be a good idea?
dwgs
It was a bad decision to encourage the deer by feeding them in the first place. Wildlife are not pets and some sort of problem was inevitable. In the wild predators and food supply keep the population in check but with an absence of predators and unlimited food this was bound to be a disaster. Look on the bright side, those who are culled will have led a happy and well fed life and will likely be taken out quickly and painlessly. Better than starving to death or being chased down by wolves or coyotes.
Kate
That’s what Longueuil needs – wolves and coyotes. Maybe some bobcats.
dwgs
Bobcats are too small to take down a deer. Cougars!!
Kate
Google thinks a bobcat can kill a deer. Certainly they could kill fawns.
dwgs
Most bobcats (lynx where I come from) are about the size of a small to medium size dog, about 25 or 30 lbs. I wouldn’t want to meet the one that would take on an adult deer.
Kate
OK dwgs, we’ll put in the order for half a dozen cougar for Longueuil.
MarcG
Sell tickets and people will feel better about only having to deal with Covid and not being eaten alive?
CE
They were talking about this on the radio this morning. The problem with moving them elsewhere is that, according to the person being interviewed, more than half the deer will quickly die in their new habitat. Apparently some of the people against this are proposing introducing coyotes to give them a natural predator. I assume none of those people have lived in close proximity to coyotes or else they definitely would not have proposed it. If they do end up going through with the cull, I hope the deer are at least eaten.
Blork
Introducing coyotes is an even dumber idea than allowing hunting, especially if the “overpopulation” is fewer than 40 deers. (Besides, it’s only a matter of time before coyotes show up on their own.)
JS
How are the deer populations in the parks at the antipodes of the island managed? Are they regularly culled on the QT? You hear stories from time to time about coyotes, but who’s ever actually seen one?
CE
I grew up in the country and could regularly hear coyotes howling at night and it wasn’t uncommon to hear about small livestock or pets being killed by them. That said, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually seen them.
dwgs
I know an old lady who swallowed a fly…
Kate
JS, it turned out that a lot of the coyote sightings reported last year were of a single animal, and sightings in the north end dropped off in mid-2019. I’ve never seen one.
JS
Kate – my real question was about how the deer populations in the RDP/PAT nature park & golf courses and in the west island are managed. I’m guessing excess animals are just quietly removed from time to time.
Kate
JS, I’m pretty sure they must be, although not announced to the public. There are deer on both ends of the island, and no natural predators around, except us.
Chris
>some of them worshipping the Trash God and others maintaining that the Trash God doesn’t exist.
And of course the former would be killing the latter for crimes such as drawing pictures of trash cans. 🙂
Su
The question is; How did those fauna end up in a park surrounded by residential development with no way out?
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Kate
The city’s annual budget will be presented on Thursday and I can already hear pencils being sharpened at Ensemble and in the QMI offices for pieces on how much they hate it.
Maxim Baru
“Under provincial law, the city cannot operate under a deficit”…. as im sure many of us have already discovered from years of this policy, it makes no sense and leads to great harm.
david352
How do you figure that? I agree that cities should be granted more revenue tools, but what “great harm” makes you think that there’s “no sense” in requiring that cities balance the books?
Chris
david352, my guess: for the same reason that it sometimes makes sense for individuals, households, businesses, provinces, or federations to sometimes run deficits.
david352
Right, but what’s the concrete “great harm” we’ve suffered as a result of Montreal’s inability to run a deficit?
Bill Binns 12:38 on 2020-11-13 Permalink
It’s probably pretty easy to fit 20k almost anywhere if you have it in 100 dollar bills. I don’t know who, other than criminals have any legitimate use for 50’s or 100’s these days.
Kevin 12:49 on 2020-11-13 Permalink
I usually go to the ATM to take out a couple hundred bucks, and the default is to give me 50s and 100s…
Which I swap to give me 20s, because I don’t need to slap down a hundo at the depanneur.
Blork 13:13 on 2020-11-13 Permalink
Cash. Wow. I remember it well. Up until 2019 I made it a point to use cash for small transactions, for multiple reasons including nostalgia but also because of mistrust of tap payments, plus I’d rather tip with coins than do all that extra clicking. Then in mid-March 2020 I took a few hundred “just in case” dollars out of an ATM on my way home to begin isolation (coincidentally, that was also Friday the 13th). It’s still sitting there, untouched. I have not used a nickel of cash in eight months.
Joey 15:46 on 2020-11-13 Permalink
Mistrust of tap payments??
Blork 16:10 on 2020-11-13 Permalink
Well, mistrust of card payments in general, really, although contactless is apparently more safe than regular card readers. But still, so much potential for hacks and fraud, not to mention the behind-the-scenes user profiling based on purchases, etc.
CE 16:44 on 2020-11-13 Permalink
I actually just used a hundred dollar bill today. I don’t usually have them but there was one in my wallet and my purchase was going to be large enough that I felt comfortable using it. I feel awkward having to use 50s or 100s for small purchases but I also remember liking getting them when I worked retail because it means fewer 20s or 10s that need to be counted at the end of the day.
JP 17:01 on 2020-11-13 Permalink
I like 50s or 100s for cash gifts.
I like having some cash on me even though I mostly only use my credit card. I once lost my credit card. MasterCard had a new one sent asap, and of course, I could use Interac, but I always like to have a bit of back-up (at least $50-100).
Blork 20:03 on 2020-11-13 Permalink
We’ve come a long way on card replacement. Back in the mid-90s a Scotiabank ATM ate my card because of a small overdraft (which itself was due to an international withdrawal not being removed from my account until four months after I made the transaction so I had forgotten about it). It took something like three months to get a replacement card. That, and a few other ridiculous things that made me feel like the entire institution was being run by unpaid interns made me pick up and move everything to another bank.
Kevin 11:37 on 2020-11-14 Permalink
I don’t tap because I want to support small businesses and don’t see why they should have to pay a percentage to a giant firm to get paid.
CE 11:58 on 2020-11-14 Permalink
I feel the same way as Kevin. And ultimately it’s us who end up paying for these giant firms and banks to get paid. I also just like cash, it’s easy and fast, especially in a restaurant setting where you’re paying someone at the table.