Updates from February, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 20:38 on 2021-02-11 Permalink | Reply  

    François Legault was so steamed up in a recent presser that he swore over how Paul St‑Pierre Plamondon accused him of breaking pandemic rules by socializing with his adult sons. I clicked on this CTV link in mild curiosity, watched the story – and when they get to Legault swearing, they bleep it! That kills the story, right there.

    La Presse reports the incident straight up. Legault was speaking English at this point – I wondered if he’d curse in English or if he’d slip in a tabarnak – and, without fuss, La Presse translates what he said: merde, s’il vous plait, n’impliquez pas les enfants.

    Really? The delicate ears of Quebec anglos can’t hear someone say “shit” on TV? In 2021, in French?

    I wish this pretense would stop. The bleeping and the asterisks. If the story is about swearing, especially, there’s no story unless we know what was said. Kids say worse in kindergarten: stop treating us like babies!

    Also, do we believe Legault’s adult sons both still live with him? Plamondon had to withdraw his accusation when Legault assured him that they do.

     

    • Kevin 21:23 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

      Believe me, people complain about swearing on TV. The regulators have determined it’s okay to say the word Fuck on French TV, but airing profanity on English TV before 9 pm is unacceptable—even on specialty channels.

    • DeWolf 04:06 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      As far as I can tell, anglo North America is the only part of the English-speaking world that is so fussy about swearing.

    • steph 10:24 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      His sons are 27 and 28. I don’t believe they live at home.

    • Kate 10:34 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      But fiction shows on television show sex scenes now – don’t they show some swearing?

    • GC 10:47 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      I don’t trust Legault, as a general rule, but it is at least _possible_. They could have moved back in during the pandemic even if they weren’t already there? I have no idea how wealthy their family is, but it’s probably not like they would all be cramming into a 4 1/2 or anything. Now that he’s doubled down on the indignation, it’s going to look really bad if it proves to not be true.

    • Kevin 10:59 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      Kate
      CRTC rules are that swearing is only allowed after 9 p.m. It last came up with Star Trek Discovery where one character said fuck during the 8 o’clock hour, and the network had to run an apology multiple times over the following week.

    • Kate 11:29 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      People are so weird. Words they hear and use every day, but hear it on TV and there’s pearl‑clutching.

    • jeather 11:43 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      Yeah, I’m sorry, you leave the kids out of it when they are kids, once they are adults if they are breaking pandemic rules they can be held accountable. That said it seems possible that at some point in this past year they decided to move back in with their parents.

    • David Senik 12:14 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      Totally agree with you the silliness of censoring swear words in the news, Kate. I’ve even noticed that the anchors on CNN will occasionally swear and include colourful metaphors in their reporting. Isn’t the US supposed to be the puritanical country compared to our liberal paradise? My kids are in elementary school and know what swear words like fuck and shit are. I’ve tired to inculcate the notion that these are bad words (emphasizing that they’re just words) but that kid shouldn’t use them because it’ll just get them in trouble. Once they’re older they’ll understand when they’re appropriate to use or not. We all figure it out eventually.

    • Blork 12:47 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      When Schitt’s Creek first started, ads for it on CBC Radio would bleep it. “Sch…FADEOUT …’ts Creek.” They eventually stopped.

      When Schitt’s Creek was getting all those awards at recently, the host of one of the US shows (I forget who it was… Jimmy Kimmel maybe?) mentioned that he was only allowed to say “Schitt’s Creek” if he preceded it with “Television series…”

      People really need to grow up.

    • walkerp 13:26 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      Once you have a child and start entering the world of thinking about swearing, it gets anthropological. I mean what even is swearing? Why does one set of syllables create so much conflict in one language and none in the other? Or just shifting syllables slightly completely neutralize a word? The other weird thing that happens is the child becomes the one policing the parents about swear words, because they learn all these rules at school that you hated at that time and have now abandoned.

      It’s all a bit moot as, like with pornography, technology is driving culture. All these new channels of content don’t have to follow any of the old rules.

    • dwgs 19:43 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      15 and 18 year old boys under my roof, I largely gave up trying to police the f bombs long ago. When we could go to weddings and such things I would get feedback about how polite and well spoken they are so apparently we have done our job well enough that they know when to curb the potty mouth. Small victories.

    • Uatu 12:56 on 2021-02-13 Permalink

      Didn’t Kids in the Hall have salty language and racy sketches back in the 90s? And on prime time CBC no less. What’s the big deal?

    • MarcG 13:15 on 2021-02-13 Permalink

      SCREW YOU TAXPAYER!

  • Kate 15:13 on 2021-02-11 Permalink | Reply  

    Mayor Plante and police chief Sylvain Caron have announced a new squad to counter the rash of shootings we’ve seen in the east and north ends of town.

    After reading the TVA piece about how easy it is to get a gun, with sellers in the U.S. prepared to send weapons piece by piece for assembly that can’t be easily detected by law enforcement, while I can see the need for social intervention in RDP and Montreal North, I also wonder if there aren’t technical means to stop this illegal trade at the border.

     

    • Meezly 15:37 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

      Wait. A new anti-gun squad in addition to the existing Quietude anti-gun squad? Jesus, that was fast.

      I wonder if additional funding for mental health support systems will be just as speedy?
      You know, something that could have made a difference for the youth workers who took their own lives this week?

    • Andrew 16:00 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

      Thought I was having deja vu, this is the same gun squad they announced in December and was supposed to start in January

      http://mtlcityweblog.com/2020/12/18/police-promise-fight-against-firearms/

      It might just be the headline writer, none of the quotes in the article sound like an announcement.

    • walkerp 16:57 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

      Is this the one where they are going to go around and target and harrass black people even more than they do now?

    • Meezly 18:37 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

      Ah, I missed the news about the ELTA during the holiday excitement. Ok so the ELTA is for the trafficking of firearms and Quietude is for the seizing firearms, but god forbid they should have one squad to do both. Meanwhile, there will soon be two squads to sow fear and distrust amongst the black community. Got it.

    • dwgs 09:03 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      And the two squads will never talk to one another or share intel.

    • GC 10:14 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

      Sadly probably true, dwgs :(.

  • Kate 15:08 on 2021-02-11 Permalink | Reply  

    François Legault wants more testing for Covid variants, especially in Montreal. Quebec also wants to speed up vaccination in the city. They can’t stick those needles in my arm fast enough for me.

     

    • Kate 12:48 on 2021-02-11 Permalink | Reply  

      Quebec has made a 180 on supporting a REM station at Trudeau.

       

      • Taylor Noakes 16:30 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        Excellent news. No better way to kickstart the economy than spending $600 M in public money on something 4,000 might use.

      • Jay Van 18:07 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        Let me get this straight.

        You’re under the impression that an airport that has 20 million + passengers a year (increasing by about 1 million a year pre-covid -per 2019 stats), and which also employs about 29,000 full and part-time workers a day, would be a waste to have connected to the public transit system?

        Doesn’t sound like very logical thinking.

        Also, did you even read the article? If you look into the details, it’s only 100 mil from the federal and provincial governments and the rest is a loan from the BDC.

      • Taylor Noakes 23:52 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        @Jay Van – a few corrections:

        1. Year over year growth was falling before the pandemic, from FY2017-FY2019, from 7% in 2017-18 to 4% in 2018-19. It’s unlikely growth in the 4-7% range (per annum) will recover in the next few years. The 20 million passenger record will probably stand through the rest of the decade.

        2. The CDPQ’s own estimate is about 4,600 users ramping up to 5,600 users over a decade, and those are pre-pandemic figures.

        3. Roughly half the airport’s workforce doesn’t work in the terminal, but in the industrial section on the other side. The airport station isn’t going to help them. In fact, the CDPQ’s prohibition on STM buses drawing passengers away from the REM likely means the cancellation of buses designed with the airport workforce in mind.

        4. I did read the article, the loan is from the CIB, not the BDC. It’s $200 M in direct public subsidy from two levels of government, plus another $400 M in a public-backed loan. When AdeM can’t pay that amount, they’ll likely ask the city of Montreal to hand over the $300 M they’re supposed to get from the Fed but cannot use on infrastructure development. It’s all public money, but the public has no oversight or control.

        5. Do the math. $600 M is a lot of money to spend on 5,600 passengers/day under a best case scenario. Air travel is increasingly expensive and unavailable to working and middle class people. There was a depression, and now we’re in a recession with no clear exit date. The idea that we’re all going to get back to normal as soon as everyone is vaccinated is naive.

        6. Montreal has Canada’s third busiest airport, but we’re much closer to fourth place than we are second. Despite all this talk about Montreal being an important tourism destination, we’re not the port of entry we used to be. We compete much more with Calgary than Vancouver.

      • Taylor Noakes 00:28 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        Also, at $600 M you’d figure they would use the train station that was already built back in 2008 to reduce costs.

        Except reducing costs isn’t in the interest of the CDPQ, who are going to profit off this.

        See: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/805332/gare-train-aeroport-montreal-trudeau-rem-servir-pas-caisse-trace-site

      • ant6n 04:30 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        So with this 600M, the public clearly has paid more than 50% of the overall costs of the project. Does that mean the public will get control of the project? … sigh

      • ant6n 08:03 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        @Taylor
        I’m liking the rational Numbers-based Taylor Noakes.

        To continue this discussion about number, the 600M$ station cost is interesting: the construction cost per daily Passenger is about the same as the very expensive Mascouche line (100K$/pax) often considered a waste – but that was for the whole commuter rail line, including rolling stock. Compare to the Orange Line extension to Laval, which cost about about an eigth of that (12K$/pax). Remember also: There was a proposal to build up the Vaudreuil Line for more frequent service and better connection to the airport, which was ten years ago eyeballed at around 7000-1000M (for 40K extra pax or so). So as much as I like the idea of the airport connection, it has become become a pretty expensive addition to the project.

      • walkerp 11:09 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        I don’t give a shit about cost. Any city that doesn’t have a direct train to its airport at this point is bootleg as hell.

      • Kevin 11:12 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        For most of us air travel is only done on a vacation, but business travel is where airlines earn their money.
        The analysts I’ve spoken to — those who work in the industry, and outside observers — think business travel will never return to pre-pandemic levels.

        Those people who popped from Montreal-Toronto a few times a week for meetings are never going to do that again: they’re making Zoom calls and for anything they need to do in person, they will line up their meetings and go one day every other week at most.

        That said – Rail to the airport is always a winner for vacationers. It’s just so fricking easy every time I’ve done it.

      • DeWolf 14:00 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        It’s impossible to say what air traffic will be like five or ten years from now, but in the pre-pandemic context, the REM’s projected passenger numbers seem improbably low. In 2019, YVR had 26 million passengers a year and its airport train station had 3.139 million riders per year – just under 9,000 per day. I don’t see how they could expect the YUL station to have only 4,000 riders per day with 20 million airport passengers at year.

      • Taylor Noakes 14:50 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        @ant6n – there’s no other version of me but the numbers version. That other variant was a factory defect. I’m the real deal.

        @DeWolf – this may be just disembarkation. The study didn’t seem clear to me. For people who work at the airport, it’s assumed they would be re-embarking at the end of their shifts and heading back home, but when we talk about the necessity of an airport link, we’re thinking more of locals who would use the REM as part of their overall travel plan. We’re also thinking about business travellers. The data was based on 2014-15 estimates IIRC, and this would have been right after the Coderre cuts took effect.

        AFAIK the majority of 747 pax are either workers, on the lower end of the income scale, or people with a preference for public transit. I think the promoters of the airport link think business travellers will be zipping between the airport and downtown on the REM, but business travellers are also typically travelling on someone else’s dime. If the REM eventually leads to guaranteed 15 min door to door service, that may make it competitive. I think a lot of people will continue to use ride sharing services or cabs. If the REM offered direct ‘end-to-end’ airport runs from all the other termini (Deux-Montagnes, Ste-Anne’s, Brossard) without requiring disembarkation, then maybe they’d see some impressive increases in the number of passengers. The REM wasn’t designed to do this.

        I think the key difference with YVR is that it’s a more substantial line – there are many stops between the airport and downtown Vancouver. My underdtanding of the REM is that it will only stop at a few of the stations along its path, and it’s competing with two other lines that will hit the same stations. The Canada Line , AFAIK, doesn’t do this.

        Even if the airport REM station handles 8,000-10,000 passengers per day (and assumedly gets the same number of cars off the road), is that still a substantive improvement over what 600 buses carrying a maximum of 42,000 pax/minute could accomplish for CO2 reductions and congestion alleviation?

        @walkerp – there are only two cities in Canada with airport rail connections and both carry more passengers than Trudeau. They’re also located much farther from their respective downtowns. If Mirabel was our main airport, I’d agree with you completely. The problem with Trudeau is that it’s relatviely close to the downtown. If Montreal had a more important airport or had a larger population, I could see it working. By contrast, if the REM wasn’t so self-limiting in terms of its utility, I could see it working.

        It concerns me that, in order for the REM to work, the CDPQ is planning on eliminating STM bus service and further refused to connect the airport to the Dorval train station.

        The CDPQ has set it up so that the REM is not only the only option to get to the airport, but there’s only one very specific way to use the REM to get to airport.

        If it was such a slam-dunk idea, they wouldn’t be trying to prevent other modes of accessing the airport. That’s the big glaring signal something’s not quite right here.

      • Ant6n 17:07 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        I had done an analysis back in 2016, when cdpqinfra was claiming 10k riders a day for the airport station. It turns out vancouver is quite an outlier, and back then cdpqinfra was expecting the yul station to be an outlier as well. Back then I suggested that 5k-6k would be a more realistic estimate — which is also where cdpq‘s more detailed ridership studies put it later.

        http://www.cat-bus.com/2016/05/airport-connectors-underperform-will-rem-as-well/

      • Ant6n 17:15 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        @Taylor
        600 buses don’t carry 42k passengers per minute. They carry 42k passengers instantaneously, max. Since bus trips take more than one minute, the per minute number of trips would be substantially lower. Perhaps you can carry 300K passengers per day, if u got some busy routes.

      • qatzelok 18:54 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        As long as a High Speed Rail line connects at Dorval, this investment can be recuperated whatever happens to air travel.

    • Kate 10:29 on 2021-02-11 Permalink | Reply  

      Québec solidaire is proposing a bill to freeze rents in 2021 and are also supporting another proposal to make it illegal to evict tenants in wintertime.

       

      • Ephraim 19:59 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        Let me get this right, you could stop paying your rent in November and the landlord would get NOTHING and not be able to evict you until April. And they expect that landlords are going to want to continue to rent apartments with no payments for up to 5 months and no way to get rid of them. And they don’t think this will be abused? I mean, they already abuse the fact that it takes so long to evict people… expect even less apartments available on annual leases if they pass this.

      • Kate 20:24 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        Hydro-Quebec can’t cut you off in winter for non-payment. It’s an extension of the same idea.

      • walkerp 21:06 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        @ephraim, fewer apartments, not less.

      • Ephraim 23:02 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        @Kate – Right… and people run off without paying. And who are they stealing from, Hydro Quebec or you and me? Because Hydro Quebec is… you and me.

      • dhomas 01:37 on 2021-02-12 Permalink

        My mother-in-law has tenants who know full well that nothing can really be done against them for non-payment until the 21st of the month, at which point you can try to evict them. They routinely pay around the 15th of the month. I can only imagine what they would do if they could extend 3 weeks into 5 months. Probably spend a lot more on weed that they’re smoke inside the house, even though the lease specifies no smoking indoors (another thing that is virtually impossible to enforce).

        In my case (as I’m sure for many others), not getting rent paid means not being able to pay my mortgage. I mean, I’d still pay, but it would put me into significant debt. It’s literally taking food off the table for my family.

        Also, I really wish we would stop comparing ourselves to France all the time, as is done in that second article. Can’t they mention some other place, like Austria or Seattle, where there are also protections against winter evictions?

    • Kate 10:14 on 2021-02-11 Permalink | Reply  

      There’s a Covid outbreak at tony Collège Stanislas so all the classes are being held remotely.

      Quebec is pondering putting in roadblocks to stop travel between regions over the spring break.

      The pandemic has made the illegal guns situation worse, though this item doesn’t make a persuasive argument why there’s a link – is it really just boredom and powerlessness among restless young people? But TVA looked into how easy it is to get a gun by mail.

      Covid summary from CultMTL.

      Did anyone really think, if there are more contagious variants spreading throughout the world, that we wouldn’t get them? Wednesday on CBC radio at noon they had the theme of “snowbirds” wanting to be exempt from quarantine if they returned to Canada. They had no case for it, except “waah, we deserve it!” But people have been pleading exceptions since the start of this thing, and it only takes one or two people slipping through with the new bugs to set them loose here. A year later, I didn’t think I’d be writing The virus doesn’t negotiate and it doesn’t care about human arguments.

      Quebec has the worst numbers in Canada, and I saw a piece this week (will link when I find it again) that a survey showed a tendency for speakers of French to be less afraid of the virus. Nonchalance can be a wonderful thing until it comes face to face with a plague.

       

      • dwgs 10:17 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        Aaron Derfel tweeted last night that it was a case of B117 at Stanislas, which is why they shut it down for 2 weeks so the could test and trace.

      • Mark Côté 11:15 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        “tony” I have a pretty good vocabulary but this is one place I can still learn new words!

      • MarcG 11:26 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        I figured it was a typo, thanks!

      • Kate 12:14 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        For “tiny”?

        Tony: Stylish, high-toned, upscale. (Wiktionary)

      • MarcG 12:20 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        My mind just kind of glitched over it, I’m a bad skimmer.

      • Raymond Lutz 13:48 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        I think covid nonchalance is more correlated to urban/rural rather than french/english… And I guess our worst situation (vs others provinces) is indeed related to the massive return of snowbirds last year.

      • Nick D 14:32 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        This social psychologist Michele Gelfand has been writing about « tight » vs « loose » societies. It might well be that Quebec is « looser » than some of the other provinces (maybe).
        https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/feb/01/loose-rule-breaking-culture-covid-deaths-societies-pandemic

      • Raymond Lutz 14:41 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        also, 7 weeks ago Alberta had almost the same infection rate as ours, but we distanced them again. So much data to crunch!

      • Kevin 15:14 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        Kate
        Jack Jedwab spoke about it on CTV this week. https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2136474&jwsource=cl

      • ant6n 21:07 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        The “snowbirds” want to be exempt from the three-day 2000$ quarantine hotels. The three day quarantine is supposed to be for the time it takes to wait for the result of the test when entering. But really, it’s supposed to be a deterrent keeping people from traveling (i.e. leaving the country now for tourism). The snowbirds want to quarantine at home – a 14-day at home quarantine has been mandatory for months.

        But the quarantine hotels don´t make a whole lot of sense. The cost is excessive (650$ per night?). It doesn´t take three days to do a test (more like a day). You´re supposed to have done a test before you arrive anyway – meaning this would only capture cases where people had an infection that became measurable between the time they did their pre-travel test and their post-travel test, but not if they got infected while travelling. If you wanted a true quarantine, it should be longer. But also, does it make sense to have this policy now, when coming from any country, as cases are actually going down in many places? (The UK hotel quarantine isn’t for every country). Also, it appears only a 1-2% of cases are due to international travel, most cases are transmission at home (unlike, China or Australia, where strong measures including 14-day hotel quarantines have kept the number of cases very low).

        I think the focus on snow birds is unfortunate. It´s a group of people that can be identified as “rich” and “whiny” to drive a wedge. There are plenty of people who´ve been outside Canada for a long time, and there are some that need to travel to Canada for pretty valid reasons. Why force this punishment on them, that appears to be a deterrent against tourism? This will mostly hit immigrant families, international students, returning expats.

      • Ephraim 23:12 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        The $2000 covers everything, not just the hotel room, the private tests, the security system, the meals, etc.

        Let’s be realistic, people have been breaking quarantine. They say they are going to stay in quarantine and then go out to the supermarket, the drug store, etc. In some countries, they require you to carry a phone with a special sim at all times. They call you up to check that you have the phone with you and they monitor where the phone is with GPS, because… people break quarantine.

        Do you remember the story about the American soldiers in Newfoundland, who said they were doing quarantine when assigned to the base there… and were found sitting in restaurants. People just don’t understand and the fine isn’t big enough to scare the hell out of them. Well, set the fine high, make them make a deposit, make them carry a phone with tracking GPS. Make a program that randomly calls their phone and makes them enter a four digit code each time. And then maybe you won’t need to put them into hotels.. because otherwise, they just LIE and do what they want.

      • Ephraim 23:18 on 2021-02-11 Permalink

        BTW, in one country, they deliver your meals, that’s when your door unlocks. They track the door opening times.
        This is the list of requirements for hotels in this program. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/latest-travel-health-advice/mandatory-hotel-stay-air-travellers/apply-listed-hotel.html#a4

    • Kate 09:36 on 2021-02-11 Permalink | Reply  

      Two workers in the Direction de la protection de la jeunesse (DPJ) in Montreal killed themselves this week, an incident described as sending a shock wave through the health establishment.

       

    • Kate 08:39 on 2021-02-11 Permalink | Reply  

      A man was the victim of an unspecified serious attack in Montreal North overnight and the SWAT team was called in, but not much detail is available on the incident. Part of Pie-IX is closed for the investigation.

       

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