Musicians who used to make a modest living busking in the metro and contracting to play in old age homes and schools, for weddings and other private functions, have had their income completely axed by the pandemic. There are no more social gatherings, schools have limited their extra offerings, and musicians are not allowed to play in metro tunnels any more.
Updates from January, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Sameer Zuberi, MP for Pierrefonds–Dollard, has fessed up to visiting the U.S. over the holidays, and for penance is giving up various roles on parliamentary committees. Patrizia Lattanzio, MP for St-Leonard-St-Michel, has admitted to going to Ireland in September. Two other Liberal MPs from Quebec have also been on the flit, as mentioned in that CTV piece.
Update: Pierre Arcand of the Quebec Liberals, MNA for Mont-Royal–Outremont, has also lost his shadow cabinet roles after a trip south.
Jack
These two must be doing great work as Liberal backbenchers because I have never heard of either of them.
ant6n
So after vacation the guy comes back and as “punishment” does less work.
dwgs
At this point I’m beginning to wonder if there are any elected officials who haven’t travelled for personal reasons during the pandemic.
Kate
ant6n, if you’re an ambitious political newbie you have to climb by taking on parliamentary committee jobs, so losing them is a setback.
Jack, I’d heard of them only because I made the lists of local MPs and MNAs for the blog sidebar.
Tim S.
I gather that they also like committees because it’s something to do. Being a backbench MP/MNA without any responsibilities is apparently pretty boring and disheartening, and despite the cynicism (me included sometimes) most people who enter politics do hope to accomplish something. The MP exit interviews by Samara on this are pretty interesting and thought-provoking.
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Kate
Forty-five STM workers tested positive for Covid between December 21 and the end of the year. There’s a breakdown by category of worker (five were doing administrative work from home) and how they’re thought to have caught it.
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Kate
Basic Covid numbers are out Sunday after two days off, and we’ve had 7,663 new cases in Quebec since New Year’s Eve including one record-breaking day with 2,869 cases recorded.
Earlier Sunday, someone on Twitter said they wished there was a source for info on the settings in which Covid was being passed around, and someone else showed them a sample of official Quebec data. Since I had the impression it was on the same Santé Québec page where I get the numbers for the blog sidebar box I didn’t follow the link.
Well, it isn’t. The numbers I saw showed that workplaces were a significant source of contagion, and I want to find that data again. Anyone?
Bryan
Is this it?
There appear to be statistics on “outbreaks” by environment. But, I’m not entirely sure what percentage of all cases are associated with one of these recorded outbreaks.
Bryan
I need a comment do-over. I didn’t realize I posted the same page you have linked in the sidebar until AFTER I clicked reply.
I did find another page: https://www.inspq.qc.ca/covid-19/sante-au-travail/eclosions-travail
This one seems to have a report that’s updated weekly on the status of outbreaks and cases in various economic sectors, excluding long-term care facilities.
Kate
Thank you, Bryan. I found the tweet, which was a reply to one of Aaron Derfel’s thread.
It’s on this page and you have to select “Tableau” instead of “Graphique”
on the tab.Jack
Thanks for that page Brian. It also so shows what regions have put vaccinations in arms. I am kind of taken aback, considering Montreal and Laval’s population, how few vaccines have been administered.
https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/situation-coronavirus-in-quebec/#c75434Michael Black
But there’s so little Vaccine yet arrived in Canada, so does slow really matter? At least some of the delay is due to a select type of people, spread out. And the need to keep it cold. I’d be more worried later when (hopefully) the supply is running fast. If there are delays then, they are doing it wrong. They have to learn from now and get everything in place for when the Vaccine pours in.
I’m not waiting past May unless the Vaccine is still in.limited supplt.
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Kate
Eater summarizes predictions from a wide range of local food writers on restaurant changes and trends for 2021.
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Kate
In general local news, the question of government paying returning vacationers $1000 to self-isolate has overtaken the other story, of politicians buggering off to sunny climes after government begged us not to travel.
As someone tweeted, if you shopped carefully for a plane ticket you could get the federal government to subsidize your vacation. But as someone else observed, if it costs $1000 to keep people from bringing home new, more contagious strains of Covid, we should do it.
PO
I’m more than a bit uncomfortable with the idea that the government would pay someone to stay home after they disregard the anti-travel guidelines. Even if the cost to the federal government is negligible, it will still infuriate a massive part of the population.
If someone had the vacation time and money to fly out of the country, surely they would have known whether they can afford the 2 weeks of lost pay when they return…
And while I agree with you Kate that at this point money might be well spent if it reduces the chance of bringing further spread of the virus, can I trust that people who are being asked to self quarantine… Will actually self quarantine? If someone feels confident enough to vacation during a pandemic, I suspect they’re not the type of people who are going to bother to properly isolate for 14 days.
I’m neither for or against this at this point, but there are millions of people in Canada who’ve diligently stayed home and made sacrifices by rigorously following the government guidelines. This feels like the kind of thing that will swing people back to the conservative party if they feel they’ve been subsidizing the vacations of people who chose not to make sacrifices in an effort to curb a pandemic.
Risky territory.
steph
I’d like a 1000$ please. Can we make it 10,000$? While we’re printing money, can we make it a neat 100,000$?
Daniel
The sense of entitlement re: traveling astounds me. Not just among politicians — although, we can expect a renewed trickle of that news in a few weeks when they think the furor has died down from this recent round — but among ordinary folks, too.
Is it so much to ask that people forgo their week in Mexique? I know it’s cold here, but eesh!
DeWolf
The social shaming is a distraction from the failure of the government’s travel policy. From the very beginning, Canada should have followed the example of Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. by requiring all incoming travellers to quarantine at a designated hotel. No exceptions. Instead we got an honour system that invites abuse. If you open a loophole, people will exploit it. Instead of wasting time and energy by getting mad at those people, focus on why the loophole exists in the first place.
Daniel
DeWolf, that’s a good point. The government travel policy should absolutely be tightened.
Until such time, can I fall back on social shaming? 🙂
Chris
Also, let’s not forget that it’s not *illegal* to travel. The government could have chosen to make it so, and they didn’t. The minimum required behaviour in society is to follow the law. Sure, there’s social pressure to not do legal things, not just in the covid realm, but in the environmental realm, and every other realm too. We all heed that pressure sometimes, and sometimes not.
Ephraim
All I have to say is… learn from Taiwan. Lock them up in a hotel for 14 days, deliver them meals, not let them leave the hotel under $10K (or higher) fine. Require that they carry a call phone for tracking and that the phone is called at random times to see if they are there. If they are local, let them do the 14 days at home, but require them to show daily receipts for their meals… and yes, I mean daily receipts… no grocery shopping, no going out, you have to order your meals and show receipts or you are fined.
You went out of the country, you pay for the risk to society.
Uatu
I agree with Daniel. The sense of entitlement among the politicians is disturbing especially since I read an article that links fraud with a mindset of entitlement.
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Kate
The snow brought out a large crowd to Mount Royal on Saturday, the photo showing a lot of folks at the toboggan hill above Park Avenue.
dhomas
Other folks have discovered the secret hill in the cemetery close to my house! 😀 We went with the kids yesterday and there several other families. It had been a while since I’d seen unmasked people; it’s starting to feel kinda weird to see.
Oh, and the hill is in the cemetery, but in an unused portion next to the storage facility where they keep all the trucks and digging equipment. So we’re not disturbing any mourners.Kate
dhomas, I’ve walked through the Repos a few times and it’s always struck me as very flat (at least compared to the cemeteries on Mount Royal). Are the hilly bits toward the eastern side?
dhomas
Hi Kate. Yes, the (small) hills are towards the as-yet undeveloped eastern end of the cemetery. They’re now starting to develop the northeastern section of the cemetery where there are mounds of excavated rocks (presumably to build more private mausoleums). On the southern part, they’re building a giant outdoor tent (it looks a massive tempo car shelter). But the eastern parts in the middle, nearest to the quiet residential backyards close to Radisson street, are still mostly untouched, with the exception of a gravel access road that you can’t see in the winter on account of the snow. I could give a link on Google maps, but I don’t want to completely give out our secret spot. :p
Oh, and the hill is really small, like maybe 50m or so. But it’s perfectly sloped for short toboggan and/or crazy carpet rides for my kids that are between the ages of 2 and 6.
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Kate
The first snow removal operation of the year will start at 7 on Sunday morning. TVA has details on how to find parking when your street is being cleared.
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Kate
The Covid situation is getting bad among the homeless and I’m inclined to ask why the public health folks didn’t see this coming.
Chris
Why/how do you conclude they didn’t see it coming?
Kate
Chris, please read this Ricochet piece (also linked above). In short: the authorities have to know that the homeless have, for starters, nowhere to go to self-isolate. Many can’t handle the requirements of isolation because of drug or alcohol addictions or because they have deficits making it difficult for them to get a handle on what they need to do, or some combination of the two.
This is not news, but public health seems to be scrambling after the problem rather than planning ahead in the full knowledge that this part of the populace needs to be looked after. Now, whether that’s the fault of the health people, or because looking after the homeless is expensive and they never get enough funding from the government in time to do what’s needed, I don’t know, but I suspect the latter is a big factor.
I think in retrospect the fumbling of all the pandemic measures will be seen as a tug of war between science and politics, between the medical folks seeing what needs to be done and the politicians wavering over making the necessary hard decisions. This issue with the homeless is only one aspect of that tug of war.
steph 23:10 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
2000$/month is pretty good income for musicians. Online performances are still welcome.
EmilyG 22:43 on 2021-01-04 Permalink
I hope busking can come back sometime.