While François Legault lifts some of the pandemic measures, federal public health honcha Theresa Tam worries about the new coronavirus variants that have just arrived here but haven’t yet propagated widely.
It feels sometimes like Legault can’t stand it, just when numbers are starting to look a little more hopeful he feels an itch to back off on the rules and give the virus another chance to spread.
Update: Wednesday morning it seems some epidemiologists agree with me.
Saw this tweeted by Steve Faguy: 24H will no longer be published daily. Metro, which reports this, is only printed twice a week, and 24H will go to once a week.
Metro still does pretty reasonable local news online, but clearly both these commuter papers will have lost a lot of readers of their paper editions over the last year.
You know it.
More on the delay or cancellation of the airport REM station after a year of crashed revenue at Trudeau.
A man was badly hurt in a fire overnight in Montreal North, this following the death of a woman in a fire in Cartierville on the weekend.
A warming tent for the homeless is opening in Cabot Square Tuesday. Some of the funding comes from donors in Kahnawake.
Update: They’re naming the tent after Raphaël André. I don’t know whether that’s irony, or what.
Is Denis Coderre betting that the post-Covid world will echo the Roaring Twenties that followed the Spanish flu? He’s tweeting about getting the Olympics for a Montreal-Toronto consortium – with a TGV linking the cities – as well as militating to get some FIFA games in 2026.
Something that seems to be missed when this Roaring Twenties thing comes up is that the 1920s didn’t just follow a big pandemic; they also followed a horrific 4-year war, the likes of which the world had never seen. I don’t understand the cause & effect here but seems like a notable omission.
I agree, but it’s the closest thing we have to a historical forerunner and, like you, I keep seeing it mentioned.
I’m not saying holding the olympics is a good idea, but sharing the olympics between 2 cities and having a lasting green transport infrastructure instead of excess massive sports stadia is much better than what’s been going on in recent Olympic times.
I was just thinking about earlier discussions here about the technical obstacles to creating a TGV between the cities.
Coderre is probably counting on the simple effect it will have on the populace to announce some future bread and circuses, whether or not he has the ability to make them materialize. He was always about the flashy event, but he was voted out for a party who made it clear they were more about day-to-day quality of life. Could Coderre grab enough votes with flashy promises, though?
FWIW, we are just coming out of a four year war on science, reason, and social progress, the likes of which most living people haven’t seen before. (OTOH, I’m not convinced that war is over…)
Oh fuck the fuck off. The Olympics is a grift and a con.
Into the fucking sea with this idea.
It smells of money pit, especially since Quebec just said they wouldn’t be paying to bring any FIFA matches here. But Coderre is calculating that he could get votes simply by making flashy promises.
The argument against this is that, during his term as mayor, Coderre never managed to get anything special out of Quebec for the city. Why should we believe he’d be capable of it now?
Big Daddy Mayor is coming home with gifts for everyone!
If he replaces the TGV idea with a monorail I think he might gain some traction.
Isn’t the idea of a downtown MTL to downtown T.O. TGV pretty much dead in the water since the REM is monopolizing the Mount-Royal tunnel?
> TGV pretty much dead in the water since the REM is monopolizing the Mount-Royal tunnel?
My understanding was this mainly affected planned routes to Quebec City along the north shore. I’d be amazed if Coderre of all people could single-handedly align Montreal, Toronto, Ontario, Quebec and the federal government to make this happen. As we can see from the UK’s HS2 project, the costs of high speed rail can be astronomical, so there really has to be buy-in from everybody to make it happen. Is Coderre really such a kingmaker?
VIA Rail has been talking about TGF – purchasing some older line and running services frequently, but not necessarily quickly. VIA already ordered a bunch of 200km/h rolling stock from Siemens (I would`ve preferred they had purchased 230km/h-capable vehicles, but oh well).
TGV could probably be built in the Montreal-Toronto corridor for much cheaper than HS2 in Britain – the area is much less developed and much less populated than England. I´d say a better comparison would be the LGV lines in France, like the LGV Est: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Est
Btw, isn´t Coderre an expert on high speed rail now, given that he´s on the board of Eurostar (where the CDPQ is a major shareholder)? =P
With the huge influx of work-from-home, wireless meetings and the increased ability to do ones job entirely on a laptop, I wonder if train speed isn’t THAT big of an issue anymore. Sure, crank up the kmph a bit and maybe throw in some more (and maybe some express) departures, but if they can provide guaranteed high speed wifi and adequate tray table space, maybe the business traveler would see the VIARail as a better alternative. I know I would. Avoid the security lines. Work hours aren’t interrupted by boarding/taxi/takeoff/landing where you can’t have laptops out. Reliable internet and cell service the entire way. Way more comfortable and roomier. Dining car instead of pretzels. Downtown to downtown instead of relying on cabs/public transit to get to the airport (especially if the REM station isn’t built…). Far less expensive. Less chance of delays, weather related or otherwise.
The Olympics is a con run by eurotrash royalty who demand ridiculous infrastructure projects to appease their neo bourgeois sense of entitlement. And after the city runs an enormous deficit and is left with a useless velodrome in the middle of nowhere, leaves and Pat’s themselves on the back for a job well done
A while ago I looked at the Canadian TGV studies to get an idea of the total system costs for Montreal-Toronto/Quebec City-Windsor and the cost then was around $10,000 per metre of track distance. Yes, per metre.
The man accused of attacking a cop who was ticketing him in Park Ex for using his phone at the wheel is still locked up although he has no criminal history. Mamadi III Fara Camara is a graduate student at the Polytechnique, but he’s finding out fast what can happen if you’re suspected of attacking a policeman.
I’m coming back later to add to this post that Mamadi Camara was entirely cleared of accusations against him, although police and, to some extent, media, were all complicit in assuming his guilt at the start.
Did he attack the cop? If so, why? I have zero faith in the SPVM to tell the truth and not be racist. He may have feared for his life.
A priori, you have a guy with several degrees, working hard in his field and teaching with no prior criminal record. Then you have a member of an organization that tends to hire the poorly educated and have a history of violence and aggression towards minorities. Who do you think initiated the violence?
“A guy with several degrees working hard”
So like Guy Turcotte, Mark Lepine, Kimveer Singh Gill or Valery Fabrikant?
University students and the highly educated have a much higher body count than the cops in this town. Be fearful of the right group.
@walkerp – They hire the poorly educated, because that is what applies for the job. That they don’t do, as the army does, and further educate them… is part of the failing.
Bill Binns: Two of the people on that list did not graduate from anything above high school, and were not enrolled in university either.
Hm:
“Dans son profil sur un réseau social, l’accusé indique qu’il est chercheur au doctorat à l’École polytechnique de Montréal depuis janvier 2018.”
“L’école affirme également que Mamadi III Fara Camara y est étudiant à la maîtrise, et non au doctorat, comme il le mentionne sur un réseau social.”
And what’s the strange business about calling 911 and pretending to be a witness rather than a perp (or victim, if you’re going in for the ‘police are framing a black foreigner’ line)?
As for his peaceful disposition, what do we know? Contrary to what that article says, it appeared he moved here in late 2017 to take that Maitrise slot at Polytechnique. Maybe the guy is a nutcase, maybe he just found oit that after three years pretending to be a doctoral candidate, his application to a doctoral program had been rejected, causing him to lose it, or even attempt a suicide by cop.
That said, I’d like to know of he shot the cop, as initially reported. Non life threatening upper body injury, transportation to hospital from the scene, and discharge of a weapon would hint that way. But maybe the cop was old and had a heart attack! what’s the story, SPVM?
This is just Occam’s razor. Obviously we are all speculating, but simply look at statistics. How many cops have been shot in Montreal during a traffic stop versus how many people of colour have been pulled over and harassed?
What would be the reasoning behind him shooting a cop? He is either a real criminal and desperate enough to try and escape (which appears not to be the case at all) or he is completely insane or something happened that made him for for himself enough to react physically.
This latter is clearly the most obvious possible explanation. I am skeptical if he even shot the cop. The cop could well have drawn his gun and shot himself in a struggle.
There will be more to this story and it won’t look good for the SPVM. Mark my words.
There’s lots of info in article about the driver and very little about the officer, not even his name, which is easy to find in other press articles, and a quick search turns this report up: http://www.crarr.org/?q=fr/node/20055. No prize for investigative journalism here.
Interesting… Thank you MarcG. A history of powertripping right there.
>Did he attack the cop? If so, why? … He may have feared for his life.
Pro life tip for y’all: The power imbalance between you and a cop is basically insurmountable. Even fearing for your life is not a good reason to attack a cop. You’re much more likely to live by being complaint. Not saying that’s how things should be, but that’s how they are.
@MarcG: The Gazette listed the police officer’s name:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/man-charged-with-injuring-and-disarming-montreal-police-officer
Wow, the Gazette actually had the best account, how often does that happen?
Anyway, this will be on the dashcam, so the African guy is toast (and there’s pretty much no way it was made up by the cop – if that story were fake the charges would have been tossed right away after the dashcam disproved).
Also, sounds like the cop isn’t a white guy, so ww can go back to the standard anti-cop grumbling here rather than the cops-are-racist beat everyone has been bopping to since everything popped off in America last year.
I didn’t see anything about a dashcam. And if there was, none of that evidence would be presented yet anyway.
@David∞: not sure why you think that because he’s not white, he can’t be racist. In the link MarcG shared, we see that this is not the first time this officer’s had trouble with a traffic stop, both times with people he might assume are Muslim. More info here:
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2018/11/10/un-policier-a-exige-de-largent-avant-de-remettre-une-contravention
Anyway, there are a LOT assumptions and guesses here. I prefer to wait for the investigation to get facts. One fact that is readily available: the cop claims to have been disarmed. Whether this happened or not will be determined by the investigation. In either case, his duties should likely change in the future. Either because he lied about it or because he allowed himself to have his weapon taken. Neither is a good look for him. He should NOT be making traffic stops anymore.
Also, I don’t know if Montreal police cars are equipped with dash cams. It’s really hard to find anything about this on the SPVM sure or anywhere else online. The closest I could find is this, which is fast from official:
https://www.davidanber.com/do-all-police-cars-have-dash-cams/
The officer Sanjay Vig was in the law asking to pay cash the ticket since the drivers was telling he would flee to Alberta,it was just wrong in a technical way. Police bashing is easy until you need them. We have one of the most respectful police in the world… go to US and try to argument with a policeman… youll see… walkerp does not represent the majority of opinion here. Keep the good work SPVM and SQ.
Last week Yvonne Sam had an opinion piece in the Gazette. She mentioned people not sitting next to her on the bus. That’s something I used to do, until I noticed and changed thirty years ago. “I’m no racist” , I framed it as they not wanting me to sit next to them.
But I’ve been in crowded stores and seen cashiers with no customers. That seems racist, Chinese, black, wearing hijabs and people avoid them.
We have to get rid of the notion that racism is nazis and southerners spewing hate. Those people will rarely change, and fighting them is just good for people who like to fight.
It’s easy to blame cops, or the government for racism, way harder to look inside ourselves. If we can blame someone else, we don’t have to do a thing.
The cops are other, but so are Blacks, and Natives and Asians (and everyone else). So are homeless people. Maybe there are exceptions here, but they keep it mostly quiet (which is their right). “They” makes people one dimensional, it allows racism by seeing only one thing. Different does not mean inferior, but too often that’s how it plays out.
This is too important to be coopted or hijacked by white people. Racism isn’t a cause, or “proof” to be used against things you don’t like. For some people, it’s simply being alive.
People got tired, that’s why it’s visible now. But white people shouldn’t get carried away. There were lots of stories about police abuse, from the people willing to speak up. In 1986, the Quebec Human Rights Commission had hearings on racial profiling. That’s a long time to wait. About that time there was civil disobedience against apartheid, at Bata Shoes. The Gazette asked “why no Black people” and the reply was “I don’t know”. When anti-globalizatiin was big in 2000, “why is it so white”? “They don’t have internet”? In 2012, Darryl Grey said they were going to have a demonstration (it must have been the death of Treyvon Martin), but cancelled because of the mess the students were making. Police abuse is everyday, not something that happens at demonstrations.
Sixty years ago, southern sheriffs were racist. But so was that society. They didn’t accumulate as cops, they were racist and so was segregation.
There may be hardcore racist cops, but mostly it’s likely like those people who wouldn’t sit next to Yvonne Sam. They see someone not like the others, and they see criminal. And most people don’t care how criminals are treated. So any resistance is seen not as an honest citizen objecting to mistreatment, but as proof of criminality. It’s a very fine line between doing their job, and overstepping.
Invoking broad things don’t help. Hating cops doesn’t either. Neither does templating. If cops can dusappear so one can threaten to beat me, then isn’t there ways to get around bodycams? Cops are trained to be a certain way (which isn’t racist), but it ends up affecting lots of people.
Most people do rely on cops, which contrasts with those of us who have seen police abuse, how can cops protect us when they treat us like criminals?
I don’t know how to fix things, except that the voices of people who feel racism need to be louder, and in mainstream places. That has to be primary. I’m not perfect, but some of my understanding of this goes back over forty years.
And for the record, I’ve never heard of dashcams in Montreal, so either it’s very secret, or likely not done.
The Palais des congrès is being turned into a massive vaccination clinic, but we still don’t have the vaccine to go around.
Additionally, Canada is trying to get a vaccine production facility set up, and the news Tuesday morning is about how it will be in Montreal.
Update: Canada will have a facility to make a vaccine but it’s for a product that’s months away from approval.
I’m wondering if there’s any way people can help with the vaccination clinic. Volunteering, item donations, places to donate money?
The coming ramp up is going to be wild.
We did about 120,000 a week in Canada for the last month, with a temporary drop now.
But in a few weeks we will rise to almost 500,000 a week
And in 3-4 months we are suppose to get a million doses a week.
Things will change fast, if we are able to cope.
the UK is doing 500,000 per day these days, and their population is only double ours.
We can do it!
EmilyG: I doubt it. This is going to be virtually military in execution. They need to pay people properly, not rely on charity and volunteers.
Quebec is indeed asking for volunteers to help give out vaccines – but only people who have training in a field that is authorized to administer vaccines. You can apply to help out in other Covid-related matters, though.
Thank you, DeWolf.
Wow! Thank you, DeWolf.
I don’t think it is volunteer, though. I think they actually pay people who are recruited through the Jecontribue portal.
Raymond Lutz 09:06 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
Ne lisez pas cet article, l’incompétence de nos gouvernements (provincial et fédéral) vous révoltera.
The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe Half measures haven’t worked. It’s time to beat the virus the way other places have done.
Kate 09:57 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
Legault is keenly aware of what he thinks he can get away with politically, especially because his support is all outside Montreal. He has to throw a bone to the regions, while throwing the city under the bus.
maggie rose 13:35 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
Thanks for pointing to Andrew Nikiforuk’s article, Raymond Lutz. More of us need to be getting info from people like him, who has won awards for his books and articles on epidemics.
As for the Covid variant B117 that he is warning us about – we are in a world of trouble here, considering the way the clowns in power have reacted at every turn for a year now.
For citizens there’s been a lot of info to sort through about Covid for months now. I happen to like to do a lot of reading and sorting in my mind. I’ve seen mention of Getting to Zero in my travels a lot, but this article explains it in a way that is clear, while maintaining the urgency. The quotes he offers from actual relevant experts are dire. I think it’s time for leaders to listen to the people, if we would only speak up. There is no hope with Legault. We need to be louder and more numerous. And like with Nikiforuk’s tone, it wouldn’t hurt to allow ourselves to show our appropriate anger towards the idiots running the show. This variant is swift.
DeWolf 14:07 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
I appreciate the urgency of the situation and agree that getting to zero cases is the right approach. But Andrew Nikiforuk is leaving important facts behind in his polemic. In particular he suggests that the vaccines are essentially useless because they cannot be administered fast enough. This particular section is dead wrong:
“Meanwhile Canada’s vaccine campaign is flailing. It can’t end this pandemic by itself, because immunity won’t last as long as the vaccination campaign. And the South African variant can already impair their efficacy.”
The latest data suggests the vaccines offer immunity of at least a year – possibly longer. All the approved vaccines eliminate severe disease (ie death and ICU). And the South African variant impairs their efficacy but not enough to render them ineffective, particularly in the case of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
I get that Nikiforuk is warning against the temptation to throw the doors open because the vaccination campaign is underway. But he doesn’t need to discredit the vaccines in the process of doing so. He’s just feeding the anti-vaxxers.
Mark Côté 15:38 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
No reason for Legault to do anything differently until his popularity drops. Quebec thinks he’s doing just awesome, tied for highest approval rating of premiers in December. His failure of imagination is only matched by Quebec’s populace as a whole. So depressing.
maggie rose 15:53 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
Good points, DeWolf. The reason I mentioned that this pandemic generates so much information is that as much as I want events as they unfold to be explained clearly, the very nature of health and science data is that they are not simple. Nikiforuk could have been more clear about what he meant on that point. Why not add a comment there?
What I took from his article is that the general sloppiness of most provincial leaders in organizing every aspect of the pandemic, including overseeing vaccines, may well mean that any variants that we come to experience here, which may or may not be more severe or vaccine resistant, could easily make it more difficult to track and thus avoid having our lives and life needs upended. And for ever-expanding periods of time.
I myself vaccinate between preferring calm yet accurate experts sharing what they know, and wanting to hear people who are more assertive towards leaders who seem to be good at twiddling their thumbs, and little else.
Dr. Fauci says that the more we let the virus spread, the more it gets a chance to mutate. So yes, vaccines do help. I just wish we had more clear scientific facts given at the Quebec press conferences. It could prevent a lot of stress and anger in citizens. Do they really think they’ll lose support with honesty? Are they that devoid of the ability to communicate? One thing I know is that this virus, and it’s recent off-spring, does not stay in one place on earth. It seeks out hosts 24/7 and loves to travel to do it.
DeWolf 16:21 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
I won’t disagree with you there!
dwgs 21:09 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
maggie rose, it was probably just autocorrect but I’m amused at the thought of your fingers overriding your brain and typing ‘vaccinate’ in place of ‘vacillate’.
maggie rose 21:44 on 2021-02-03 Permalink
LOL, indeed dwgs!I think it was the dreaded auto thingy. The irony. There must be a word that describes two verbs so close in spelling with no connection.