Public sector workers from teachers and health care unions held protests Wednesday in Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec over contract offers they feel are stingy.
Updates from March, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Four new boroughs have been awarded francisation certificates since complaints arose last fall that the city was not trying hard enough to preserve French. CDN-NDG, Lachine, Montreal North and St-Laurent have been blessed.
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Kate
CHSLD Herron, where 47 people died in the first wave of Covid last year, has agreed to pay a total of $5.5 million to families of the deceased.
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Kate
Several Quebec regions are going back to red till April 12, but nothing in François Legault’s presser will change things for Montreal. People are already asking on Twitter whether 12 days will be long enough to squelch Covid transmission in those regions.
DeWolf
I wonder how much of a role vaccinations have played in keeping Montreal’s situation more stable. We’re currently at 22% compared to 14% in Quebec City and just 11% in the Outaouais. We also had the targeted vaccination drive after the west end school outbreaks.
Kevin
It is too early for the targeted Snowden CSL vaccination to have had any effect. Many people in that group are only getting their first shots this week.
DeWolf
I see. So basically Montreal has just had some good luck and things could explode at any moment.
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Kate
The Journal’s Philippe Léger has a topnotch bit of commentary here on what he finds disturbing about the return of Denis Coderre. I’ve seen a lot of examples of the kind of things he describes: people talking of Montreal as if it’s falling apart, manufacturing a widespread consent that the city’s been mismanaged and needs a strong hand to guide it, alongside – of course – a lot of property developers. “Denis Coderre veut retrouver Montréal. Le problème, c’est que plusieurs ne croient pas que Montréal s’est perdue en chemin.” A brief piece and a sharp bit of observation.
Spi
This is what goes for topnotch these days? Vague insinuations based on nothing, painting each side on different sides of an imaginary line. How he draws a line between economic interests preferring less regulations to them also favouring cars is some truly impressive non-sense.
Kate
I hadn’t seen anyone in the media pointing out the prevalence of the idea that Montreal is dying in quite the same way. Read Facebook or Twitter. A lot of folks say it, and once enough people keep saying it, it will feel like a fact. And if the city is dying, it’s someone’s fault, and somebody has to save it. It’s a fiction being set up for the election. I can feel it.
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Kate
Toula Drimonis spotted an egregious bit of captioning this week by QMI. A photo of some young people in a line, pre-Covid – taken in 2008 or so – was headlined “Les gangs de rue profitent de la PCU” (Street gangs benefit from the CERB) and the caption says “Des membres de gangs de rue, il y a quelques jours, dans le métropole.”
Nothing made these young people street gang members except that, in the eye of some at QMI, anyone with brown skin is automatically suspect.
François Legault, this is your systemic racism, right here: the automatic assignment of suspicion – ingrained, unquestioned, a knee-jerk reaction – to the sight of people with skin darker than one’s own. It runs through other societies than ours, yes, but it’s prevalent enough here that a page editor at the Journal felt safe in taking an old archive photo and labelling the people shown as criminals.
Meezly
A very observant article. But disappointing that it omitted the media trend of slugging in stock photos of masked Asian people for Covid-19 related online articles. It’s the accumulated association of image + content that keeps reinforcing stereotypes and biases.
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Kate
I see tweets saying François Legault will be holding a presser at 5 p.m. Wednesday about new anti-Covid measures. There were already recommendations that people should wear a mask at all times in the workplace, and students unwilling to return to school en présentiel.
Better stock up on toilet paper, mes petits.
Clément
Paul Journet (La Presse) made an interesting observation the other day.
He said the 1 p.m. press conferences were for the journalists and were used to make “business as usual” announcements.
5 p.m. conferences were intended for the general public and usually meant significant changes (good or bad) were coming.
In other words, the 5 p.m. press conferences are the ones we should be paying attention to.DeWolf
It sounds like the new restrictions will apply mainly to the problematic orange zones (ie, putting them back in red). It would be great if they rescinded the gym openings in Montreal, given what happened in Quebec City, but I doubt it.
The one thing I’ll be watching for is whether the magic curfew will be brought back to 8pm…
DeWolf
Another thing: maybe it’s time Quebec fine-tuned its vaccination strategy. There is growing evidence that the vaccines stop nearly all transmission. The director of the CDC gave an interview to this effect yesterday: “Our data from the CDC today suggest that vaccinated people do not carry the virus.”
We’ve already given a majority of 70+ people their first shot, which has had a clear impact on the death rate. Now instead of descending through the age groups in a linear fashion, we should open up vaccination to the people who are most likely to spread the virus. That means anybody who spends their days in public: teachers, retail employees, warehouse workers, adult students, bus drivers, kitchen staff, etc. It seems wise to have vaccine coverage run through a wide swath of society instead of being concentrated in just a couple of groups.
Joey
@DeWolf a very good idea in theory but implemeting it would be tricky; you don’t want to turn your vaccine site operators into reference-checkers or CV-scanners. Age is easy to demonstrate. Postal code is easy to demonstrate. It might make more sense to focus on targeted geographies (similar to the parents of schoolchildren in the west end) rather than categories of workers. Though I suppose you could go a long way by, say, vaccinating everyone who works at a school, or a distribution centre, etc. My sense is that with less than two months until all adults are supposed to have received a first dose, it’s unlikely the government would be able to implement a targeted approach quickly enough to be really game-changing.
jeather
They managed to put together a targeted approach for parents at some schools in a few days, I am sure they could do a not too terrible similar one (employees get letters with a specific url to sign in, you need to appear with ID and a specific letter from your employer) to target a reasonable number of employees. They could even check this against payroll info they have.
And of course, they could have done a reasonable enough system at any time, this was always going to be a known problem.
DeWolf
Exactly. The west end school vaccination seems like it was pretty successful. That’s what I mean – identify communities or groups of people that are at higher risk of infection and use employers or community groups to make vaccines available to them right away. Even though we will supposedly all be able to get our first shots in June, the situation is super volatile. If we can find a way to strategically use vaccines to avoid what is happening in Ontario, we should do it.
Chris
It’s super easy to forge a letter from an employer though. And there are zillions of employers, how is anyone looking at such letters to know if that’s really Acme Co’s letterhead? Demand is still higher than supply, so you can bet people will be looking to jump the queue. By geography indeed may be a better idea. Prioritize those that live in densely populated areas perhaps, with the idea being to reduce spread instead of reducing death.
jeather
I don’t think they should just show up with a letter. I think employers could have been given — possibly using payroll info — letters with individualized urls for each company (like the west end school project), then the name on the appt would be verified against the employee names, or they would come with a pay stub and a photo ID. There were lots of possible solutions had they wanted to do this, it’s clear that they did not want to do any kind of prioritization of essential workers.
John B
I’m pretty sure that many US jurisdictions prioritized “essential workers” for the vaccine, including people like teachers. They seemed to find a good-enough way to get it done.
Ephraim
And in spite of the vaccinations in the US, they are still dying at 3X to 5X per capita than Canada. They are looking at the vaccinations to be some sort of miracle and not doing anything to actually lower infection rates.
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Kate
UQÀM is suing a student over the publication of nudes of herself on social media that also include the university’s logo. Hélène Boudreau says she’s making a “powerful” point about how women who pose nude are just as educated and intelligent as anyone else.
Some NSFW-ish evidence here. I note that Ms Boudreau writes her captions in English. Maybe a note to the OQLF is in order.
John B
The Streisand effect is strong with this one.
Also, this seems like a double-standard. Someone showing displaying their diploma with their body, (probably because it’s a woman’s body): bad. Someone displaying their diploma in the office where they’re a lawyer for the mob? A-ok. (I don’t have evidence of the a-ok situation, but I bet nobody would have a problem with it).
steph
shame on UQAM for their body shaming.
Kate
Is this body shaming?
Ant6n
I feel the world has become very complicated when it comes to figuring out what’s right or wrong, proper or improper.
jeather
I don’t really understand why UQAM has a case here, but the civil code is super weird. Anyways I assume this will successfully drive people to her onlyfans account, so I think she is winning.
Joey
John B’s assessment seems right to me – UQAM does not appreciate its logo (as if it were not a public institution belonging to all Quebecers, even the Onlyfans ones) being used in an NSFW setting, which would have to imply that the female form as displayed by Helene Boudreau is inappropriate. Seems like body shaming to me. Also a huge overreaction and a foolish use of university staff time.
Chris
Ant6n: ain’t that the truth!
I also feel there’s some media commentary to be made here. We have an article all about some photos. Yet no photo is there. And now here we are discussing a sight unseen. Weird, no? It’s like when a news article talks about some website and doesn’t link to it.
Kate
Chris, La Presse would not usually display nudie shots. This is why I linked to the Clique du Plateau article, from which you can easily see her username and look her up elsewhere.
jeather, you’ll notice that although she’s called a student, the photo was taken in her graduation gown, so presumably UQÀM has no power over her any more – they can’t say “take those photos down or we’ll withhold your degree.” I think they do have a case that by using their branding she’s associating the school with her online exhibitionism, and they’re not “shaming” anyone by trying to shut it down.
This young woman knows she’s getting a lot of free PR this week.
Bill Binns
Anyfans pages are powerful examples of female agency and empowerment. A risque calander hung on a mechanic’s tool box is an attack on workplace safety and a serious barrier to all the little girls dreaming of being diesel mechanics.
Ephraim
@Bill Binns – Please explain to me the difference between OnlyFans and a Pimp. (I have no problem with sex work… but OnlyFans takes a 20% commission on other people’s sex work.
dmdiem
She should sue for defamation.
Nudity is used to sell things all the time. By saying she damaged their brand, UQAM is calling her ugly.
Kate
dmdiem, I don’t agree. No judgement was made on her personal appearance. UQÀM simply doesn’t want to be associated with the cultural trend to display nudity for gain.
dmdiem
I was attempting to make a funny, Kate. Obviously I failed. My bad.
steph
It’s shaming to decide which square inches of your body you can/cannot show. It’s far from a cultural trend, technology has just made access easier (this applies to ALL media).
Criticize the simps willing to pay her money, not her for taking it. Is ‘gain’ actually an essential element here? (would the school take the same steps if he balance sheet was 0$?)
DeWolf
Given that Instagram famously doesn’t allow nudity or pornography, I have trouble imagining how UQAM will prove in court that the images are obscene. In poor taste? Sure. But you’d have to be operating on some very 1950s definitions of obscenity to consider this pornographic.
Also, if you’ve obtained a degree from a university, are you not allowed to publicize that degree if the university finds your lifestyle distasteful? Does UQAM have a morality department? I’m no legal expert so maybe somebody can illuminate us on the difference between a commercial brand and a non-profit publicly-funded educational institution.
Tim S.
I would put this less in the context of female-body shaming, and more in the context of the centuries-long struggle of universities to develop reputations as serious institutions, even though their primary clients can sometimes be a tad immature. UQAM had no choice here – even if they don’t win, they can’t really stand aside while their reputation is eroded.
Although she doesn’t seem to have tagged UQAM, so I’m curious how they ever found out, or if they pursued cases of say, male students posting equivalently unsavory images, perhaps binge-drinking or something.
jeather
I’m going to take this seriously but the problem with calendars full of naked women at your workplace is that other employees, vendors, customers, etc, have to see it at work. Watching someone’s onlyfans at work would be a problem, also, even though neither the calendars nor the onlyfans are problems at home.
I assume that onlyfans calls itself a payment processor and hosting service, as well as an easy place to be found. Whether you agree with the amount they charge or not, they’re providing a service not unlike patreon/substack/etsy, with little control over what people post or how often etc.
Su
Lots of PR success for previously unknown and insignificant Hélène Boudreau ! What exactly was her academic specialty anyway?
DeWolf
Tim, UQAM had no obligation to do anything. It could have respected the freedom of expression of one of its graduates. Instead it decided to intimidate her for posing half-nude with the degree that she earned.
UQAM gave a degree to Mathieu Bock-Côté, it did absolutely nothing when Maïtée Labrecque-Saganash was subjected to so much racist abuse that she had to drop out of university, and yet somehow its reputation is seriously injured by… boobs?
Raymond Lutz
Ma douce moitié affirme en plus que ces nichons sont faux! Elle a travaillé deux ans comme photographe ‘médicale’ dans une clinique de chirurgie esthétique et passait ses journées à photographier les seins des clientes pré et post opération (principalement pour que le chirurgien puisse se défendre d’avoir introduit des imperfections qui n’y étaient pas avant). Elle a en a vu des seins et ceux-ci sont faux d’après elle. C’est tout à fait anecdotique et impertinent comme information et n’apporte rien de substantiel au débat, je l’avoue.
😎Le tatou sur sa main, lui, a l’air vrai par contre. Son sourire aussi!
«Couvrez ce sein, que je ne saurais voir.
Par de pareils objets les âmes sont blessées,
Et cela fait venir de coupables pensées.»Chris
>Chris, La Presse would not usually display nudie shots.
My point exactly. They wouldn’t write an article about a 70 car pileup without a photo. Or a sports victory without a photo. etc. etc. But an article *about* a photo, excludes the photo. They could always just cover “disagreeable” parts with black squares. At least then we could see how prominent, or not, the school logo is.
lol
well she was flipping the bird and flashing in public which is a trashy thing to do on the 50th anniversary of the uni. plus she was trying to monetize on the school logo, that’s a big no-no in any country. Do you think she was filing taxes on her income? If not then she’s gonna come off as a big dunce
lol
I think she wus asking for it too because she was going around telling people how much money she made as she started taking more trashy pics with the school logo and pushing her luck legally recently the past month, in Diana Nguyen’s words “this is an offensive display of wealth”. assume she doesn’t pay taxes, imagine what would happen if a drug dealer brandishes guns and flaunts his wealth-not surprised if agencies start investigating you and put you on a hitlist for not keeping a low profile. The only fame you can hope to get nowadays is if you’re claiming to be a victim of something sensational and not mention your income. It wouldn’t make sense to beg the public to fund her legal defense because apparently she’s loaded and doesn’t need the money. Maybe she can appropriate the slogan “save the titties” without claiming it’s about breast cancer to stay out of legal trouble. but anyway- double whammy: play stupid games, win stupid prizes
Astrid
well, the school didn’t consent to her imposing her body sexually on the school’s identifiable logo. Could say she raped the school’s reputation
Björk
If this is the best feminism has to offer, I guess the plus side is that fake tits are the culmination of man’s domination over nature. Every woman should diet, train and aspire to be a bimbo.
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Kate
Jonathan Montpetit has a good piece on “the new Denis Coderre” that leaves a strong sense that, while the erstwhile mayor wants us to think he has changed, he has not. But it also feels like Montpetit could have written a much longer and more detailed piece on this topic had the CBC platform allowed.
John B
> Coderre is sharply critical of how the current administration has often built bike paths over the objections of motorists and business owners.
How many business owners are really critical though? I live on the Verdun bike path and there are maybe 5 businesses that have been sharply critical. On Wellington there were two or three businesses that I remember hearing had trouble with the pietonnisation last year, and they had legitimate issues that the borough should have tried to work around.
I talked to a business owner on St-Denis back in the fall and it seems like it was similar there, some businesses strongly wanting the bike path, many quietly wanting it, and a few screaming that it was the end of the world.
Does Coderre want to govern for the screaming minority?
Joey
Agreed that new Coderre is the same as the old Coderre – his ideology seems to consist of one thing only: advancing Denis Coderre. If he could make ‘being in favour of bike paths’ a wedge issue to promote his campaign, he’d do it in a heartbeat.
Chris
It amazes me that cycling, with a mode share of about 5%, manages to provide such outsized fodder for political fights.
Jack
Its people’s attachment to their cars, they love them. If anything is done to challenge the rights of a cars free and unfettered right to all public space, folks get cross.
DeWolf
From the article: “He believes he lost the 2017 mayoral election to Valérie Plante not because Montrealers sided with her vision for the city’s future but because the election was ‘a referendum on my personality.'”
What an egomaniac.
Coderre’s platform = whatever it takes to make Denis Coderre mayor again.
DeWolf
Seriously, though, since I’m not going to read his group-written tome, I’m glad to hear some specific planks of his platform. And they are just as bad as I was expecting.
>> “He also proposes delaying property-tax increases for people on fixed incomes, as a way of limiting dislocations from gentrification.”
Great, but this only benefits house-poor homeowners, which is a pretty small group in Montreal. 63% percent of the population are renters and this would do nothing to protect them against renovictions and the like.
>> “Revitalizing the downtown would happen through tax cuts for businesses and developing smaller commercial spaces for retailers whose transactions occur mainly online.”
Tax cuts for businesses would be great because commercial taxes are very high in Montreal. Of course, this would create a budget shortfall and I’m curious to know how Coderre would make up for that. Would he slash STM funding again like he did in 2013? Fewer buses, less metro service, lower taxes for businesses?
We start to get into a problem with the second idea. It’s the kind of wishful thinking campaign plank that gets abandoned within the first year in office. Coderre was notorious for his handshake deals. How exactly do you get developers to build smaller retail spaces if they don’t want to? Besides, Montreal already has a lot of vacant retail spaces. I don’t think the problem is they’re all too big.
>> “He doesn’t oppose the idea of bike paths but he does say they should be built in collaboration of other stakeholders.”
Coderre’s bike strategy involved painting a lot of white lines on residential side streets and patting himself on the back for adding many new kilometres of “bike paths” every year. I expect that would be his angle once again: something that looks good on paper but is functionally useless.
A lot has been written about how Coderre lost all that weight by riding his bike, but the reality is that he’s a weekend road warrior who dresses up in a lycra costume, not the kind of everyday cyclist who uses their bike to get to work, school or shopping. Montreal needs safe infrastructure for people who wear flip flops and dresses while riding their bike to the grocery store. What it doesn’t need are more white lines in the dooring zone.
>> “Coderre also vows to repeal Montreal’s affordable housing bylaw, which, when it comes into effect next month, will force large developers to either include affordable units in a project or contribute to a municipal housing fund. (…) One of the reasons, though, that the city is dealing with a severe shortage of social housing is that the private sector has consistently failed to provide enough rental units for low-income Montrealers.”
And here’s the rub. Coderre’s strategy for affordable housing means repealing the only concrete measure Montreal has taken in this area (and one that only comes into effect this week!) and politely asking his buddies in the real estate sector to please sir build more units for the poors.
Kate
DeWolf, you mention 2 things that are in conflict. How would he get developers to build more small, cheap commercial spaces, if he’s unwilling to force them to build more small, cheap living spaces?
DeWolf
Exactly. Coderre’s platform on affordable housing: “Trust me. I know some guys.”
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Kate
Metro follows Le Devoir with a similar piece about the decline of commercial life in the Mile End. I’m puzzled by the person who says “il se passe la même chose ici qu’à Griffintown” because to me the two situations are nothing alike.
Joey
Yeah, hard to tell if they are referring to gentification in Griffintown that has displaced a lot of the (admittedly relatvely few) pre-2005 residents or just the homogeneous commercial culture that has sprung up there.
Kate
Griffintown was absolutely moribund. There was no lively commercial or residential presence there before 2005. The collapse of the area was a historic progression – the abandonment of the canal as a commercial artery, the feud between Jean Drapeau and Frank Hanley, the decline in industrial production in Canada generally, all kinds of things. Which isn’t to say that nobody lived there or did business there, but it would never have been considered a fun place to be – contrary to Mile End before the recent decline.
Urban churn happens gradually, but there’s usually a tipping point that makes people realize an area is on the skids.
Joey
Agreed, though there were a handful of occupied residential streets pre-2005 (stretches of de la Montaigne, the horse palace), but the development that has happened there was almost entirely, AFAIK, the conversion of abandoned buildings and parking lots to dense housing. I lived there from 2005-2010. When I moved in there was *nobody* around on the weekends and a handful of unusal businesses. I think there was one spot you could maybe get a coffee. The arrival of the Metro Plus on Notre-Dame was big news. Nothing happening on Peel, Wellington was very quiet, etc. Night and day from what’s emerged in the last decade.
DeWolf
Griffintown has become a bogeyman for anyone who doesn’t like how their neighbourhood is changing.
As Kate noted, Griffintown was virtually uninhabited when redevelopment started. About 200 people lived there.
CE
@Joey, we must have been neighbours for a couple years. I considered it pretty fun to be in Griffintown at that time because you could do pretty much anything you wanted, there was hardly anyone around to care. There weren’t many people but there was a community feeling among those who did live there. Not having a grocery store (or any other services other than the worst dep imaginable) and spotty transit made it tough to live there though. I’m still amazed when I walk around and see what it has become.
Kate
I remember going with a friend to hang out with some guys she knew who had sorted out a decent living space inside an old warehouse in G-town. There was a lot of extra unused space, partly empty, partly filled with random postindustrial junk. I don’t remember their names or anything, and I have no idea whether they had any legal claim on the building, or were squatting.
Later I also checked out New City Gas because a friend of a friend knew the owner, when it too was also mostly empty. It’s an amazing building, but I’ve never been inside it since it was turned into a club.
MarcG
My wife and I went to see some bands play at Friendship Cove in 2007. It was an old car garage I think, or related to one anyhow, that some artists were living and hosting shows in. Kids were hanging off the exposed pipes in the ceiling – hot water? gas? scary! Hey I actually found a review of the exact show http://lucabears.blogspot.com/2007/10/friday-oct-26th-2007-japanther-ddmmyyyy.html, and here’s the not surprising street view of the address: https://goo.gl/maps/ccp8gJcQp7G5F8BH9.
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Kate
Denis Coderre has been crowned the official head of Ensemble Montréal and enters into his role on April 7. Lionel Perez claims he’s thrilled.
thomas
Doesn’t Ensemble Montreal still have a significant debt left over from the last election? I wonder how that figures into things.
Ant6n
The caucus selected him to be party leader? That really is a crowning…
Jebediah Pallendrome
What an absolute joke
Kate
Yep. No party congress or election, no other challenger for the position, simply a coronation.
thomas, almost a year ago the party was in a $400,000 hole. That’s the most recent news item I can find.
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Kate
The SPVM is overwhelmed with fraud cases – identity theft, phone scams, all kinds – although perps often get off with little or no attention from the justice system, and victims are largely left to their own devices.
denpanosekai
In fact SPVM didn’t even want to hear about my case of identity theft, because I was not frauded ($$$) overall. Just have to change my SIN and stuff. NO BIG DEAL.
Ephraim
@denpanosekai – Did they take a report? Or did they try to convince you not to report it? No report… no crime.
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Kate
Quebec has begun to hedge on the baseball issue, saying studies on the question of baseball in Montreal have only just begun.
Kevin
La Presse had an article earlier this week (link buried in the above) estimating that the best case in tax revenue for Quebec from a baseball team would be around $4.25 million (and about the same for the Feds). It could easily be nothing.
That estimate is based on the assumption that players were taxed for the days they lived here during a season split between Mtl and Florida, which in turn is based on the assumption that players would not take advantage of Retirement Compensation Arrangements (conventions de retraite) which is like an RRSP* for super-rich people so they can take their money and run off to a tax haven when their short sports career ends.
*A player can put millions of dollars in it each year, cutting their income tax by hundreds of thousands annually. As far I can tell, players for a team split between countries could put their entire Canadian-based income in this shelter and pay $0 in Canadian income tax.
Spi
@kevin you should specify that $4.25M figure is only for income tax on player salaries. It does not include the income tax for all the related staff, nor business taxes for related entities. It also doesn’t include sales taxes on ticket or concesion sales.
So to say that $4.25M is the best-case scenario for all tax revenues is very far from the truth.
Kevin
@spi
2 quibbles: Last week Legault was taking about how the government could spend income tax revenue from players on other matters. So we’ve demonstrate the amount is pretty damn low.Secondly, the spinoff income from everything else you mentioned is fairly plastic — people who are going to spend money on entertainment will spend it on the entertainment is available. So if there is no baseball team, that money will be spent on other sporting activities, or movies,or videogames, or bars,or restaurants. A sports team doesn’t create new spending in any fashion – it just takes a little bit from everything else and collects it into a pile which is often hoovered out of the community.
To put it in other terms — Think of what Quebec City could have done with $400 million instead of building a hockey rink.
Spi
@Kevin, I usually disagree with pretty much everything Legault has to say but he was using the player salary as an example to demonstrate a point.
Your second point fails to look beyond local concerns, I’ll give you the business case that was floated by the promoters of the baseball team years ago when it was being discussed more seriously. The idea was that a team in Montreal combined with an often discussed realignment of the NL and AL into more regional divisions would see Montreal in the same division as some of the biggest teams in baseball like the Jays, Red Sox, Mets, Yankees. The rationale being that (when borders reopen) it would be a significant draw to bring American tourists here and their entertainment-related spending, which practically speaking is new spending that wouldn’t happen.
Whether you buy with the image they are trying to sell us is up to you, a new sports team doesn’t generate more spending it only displaces it from elsewhere. In this case, they would say from south of the border
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Kate
A decisive majority of the city’s blue collar workers have voted to accept a new contract offer.
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Kate
The OQLF has produced two new studies proving that French is in decline, nobody’s speaking it enough at home – but the trend can’t be blamed on allophone immigration. So now you know who the villains are – me and Shakespeare.
Thomas
I often wonder how French always seems to be in terminal decline as more and more English schools close every year. I would also be curious to know if these dire statistics include the entire metropolitan region, or just Montreal proper.
In any case, I live in Ahuntsic and the only place I ever hear or use English is inside my own head.Ephraim
Oh, a surprise… a self serving organization has produced a study showing it’s need for existence. Can we fold them into the OIB? About as useful and just as self serving.
Mitchell
I’m not sure how to articulate this, but there are kind of odd resonances between this post and the one below about anti-Asian (and other) racism. Elevating one language above others is also elevating speakers of that language above those who don’t, won’t, or can’t speak it. But the most knee-jerk way to identify someone who “doesn’t speak my language” is their physical appearance. And since Montreal is filled with people who “don’t look Quebecois” (whatever a Quebecois looks like), well, then . . .
jeather
And yet, the decline in French spoken at home — which is “what will the numbers be like in 2036”, not “what are they like now” — is actually not balanced out by an increase in English spoken at home. And something like 94% of people will be able to speak French.
Uatu
Here’s a deal, I will quit seeing racism everywhere if they quit seeing everything as an assault on the Quebecois culture 😛
jeather
Asking for that sounds like an assault on Quebecois culture, Uatu.
Paul
The study doesn’t show French in decline, they show unilingual (or french only) households in decline. The actual comprehension of French is increasing as we transition from unilingual to bilingual.
This should be celebrated
Jack
I know this is another Quebec taboo but this issue is not about language. It is about ethnicity. The French origin majority have a current birth rate that makes immigration essential, yet many in that community are not comfortable with this reality. Unlike before Law 101 these immigrants want in, it’s the wanting in that fuels the angst of MBC and Quebecor. They can sell fear with this issue.
steph
can’t we just go back to the glory of the 50’s, when white people didn’t have to worry about racism? //s
Meezly
I’m curious as to why this such a Quebec taboo, does this explain why there is a serious lack of critical analysis at how Quebec nationalism is based on fear of the other?
Jack
Because it allows you to talk about what is an ethnic issue and ultimately a question of supremacy, using neutral language. Francophone, Anglophone, Allophone are words that break us down ethnically.
Meezly 08:55 on 2021-04-01 Permalink
Stingy is an understatement! Our teachers and health care workers have been overworked and undervalued eve before the pandemic. They aren’t asking for much, just fair working conditions and fair wages that go beyond just meeting the basic cost of living.
What’s the point of protecting Quebec language and culture if there is no one to appreciate them because they are either too poor, too uneducated, too overworked, or too dead?