Protesters gathered at Jeanne-Mance park on Sunday evening, organizers saying that the curfew “has a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities.” But a study comparing Quebec’s current Covid status with the precarious conditions in Ontario suggests the Quebec curfew may be an important factor despite complaints.
Update: Only one arrest at this protest.
Ideas like giving non-citizens the right to vote in municipal elections, and doing something at the city level to control commercial rents, are being bandied about.
So is the Parti Québécois ideal of denying English CEGEP to francophones and allophones – which 1. assumes the PQ will return to power and 2. assumes you can frame a law to control where people of adult age choose to get their education.
People going into CEGEP are adults…. not children. So, will this end with a lawsuit or with an exodus of people to other province preparatory programs?
Can someone explain why condo/co-op strata vote by the square foot, yet municipal elections are by tenancy? And the more people in the house, the more influence on the vote, so the rich may actually have less of a vote even though they pay higher taxes and receive the same services? Do commercial property owners get to vote? Does everyone in the household vote? So how is there equity when commercial properties pay 5X the tax than residents do? And what does citizenship have anything to do with tenancy? We have consular offices in Montreal, do they not have a right when they certainly have tenancy.
@Ephraim: do you have direct knowledge of voting by square footage? Usually fees are paid this way, but I have never heard of that for voting. Counting votes would be very difficult with decimals…
@Tim – It may have changed, but at one time that was the rule and there was a BIG fight in a few of the condo buildings where the penthouse were enormous and there were a lot of smaller apartments on the lower floors and the cable packages, for example. You know, 4 apartments at the top having the same weight as 20 or more apartments at the bottom. It’s one reason why buildings with too much variety in the size of apartments are problematic. Co-property is definitely by percentage owned… someone owning 50.1% of the property can do what they want.
Some condo boards (potentially all?) require a double majority to enact certain changes to their bylaws or major decisions. A supermajority of tenants representing a supermajority of the square footage. In that situation, more affluent residents in larger units hold more importance in tipping the balance.
@Tim read your declaration of co-property. It should detail how many fractions each unit has and how that translates into votes. Quebec law stipulates supermajorities for certain decisions. Other decisions, such as budget/fee adoption, are the exclusive purview of the board, and cannot be decided by the assembly of co-owners.
I’m not in favour of the PQ’s idea, but surely it’s legal for the province to decide which CEGEPs to fund. I imagine that, just as with K12, allophones/francophones could still pay for private English CEGEP.
@Ephaim : They’re completely different things. A condo is a private property. Municipal elections are democratic elections of our governing officials. One person, one vote. To base the right to vote on property ownership would be sliding back into feudalism.
Good comments all. I was on the board for my building for a number of years. Most people have no idea how things really work. The votes to “approve” the budget and projects at the AGM each year were purely symbolic. At the end of the day, if you are unhappy with the board the best you can do is vote them out and then take on the responsibility yourself.
vasi, Quebec could have chosen decades ago to cut off all funding to English-language education. To be honest, I don’t know why they didn’t. But they’re not talking about cutting funding to the CEGEPs, merely barring many people from applying and attending.
@Myles – So is a business and a home, private property. Businesses don’t even get a vote and yet they are paying even more of the taxes. And then we need to go into the democracy model itself.
@vasi – They absolutely can cut off money. The question is, do they have a right to tell adults what to do and where to study? And, law of unintended consequences, what will they do if you do. Will this leave to a flight of people to other provinces and therefore affect Quebec’s long term? Having people study elsewhere increases the chances that they will settle elsewhere, with their education and their tax-paying money.
Wait a sec, Ephraim. Business and property owners who don’t live in Montreal can certainly vote in municipal elections here. I’m busy and don’t have time to look up the laws, but I have worked in the elections and it was so.
@Kate – Can they? I haven’t seen documentation on WHO can vote.
One interesting piece of data that I did see, which might help people better understand why even the Plateau isn’t unified is Transport… Mile End is 19.5% by foot, DeLormier is 15% by foot, but Jeanne Mance is 30.9% by foot. I’d love to see where the cyclists in JM are, because they aren’t in my part of JM. This area is really foot and public transit. Even cars are low.
Re cegeps- they’re just creating a 2 tiered system. Those with money will just send the kids out of province or pay to get them into marianopolis while the rest are shit out of luck
That 2 tiered system already exists, it begins in high school. If I had to do it all over again no way would I send my kids to public high schools.
CBC Montreal has moved into the new Radio-Canada building as the crown corporation vacates the building it has sold.
I never worked for CBC, but I had a vague affection for the old creepy tower, although I can see the attractions of a new building with more light.
On a few occasions the hosts at Ici Musique have expressed their pleasure at broadcasting from studios with natural light and a view instead of being trapped into a windowless basement.
I can see that. The basement studios had an atmosphere of concentration, though. Windows mean distraction.
Projet is hoping to bring Will Prosper into the fold to run in Montreal North, but he hasn’t decided yet.
Denise Bombardier gets it up her nose about the city snubbing Camille Laurin by not naming a street after him.
There’s a bust of Laurin right on Sherbrooke Street, in the pocket park at St‑Urbain, kitty corner to the SSJB, a corner passed daily by hundreds if not thousands of people, in non-pandemic times, including many McGill and UQÀM students. That’s about the opposite of a snub.
And Bombardier cannot really be such a fool. She knows that Montreal city hall can’t be roped into divisive nationalist gestures, and naming a street for Laurin would fall into that category. However, it stirs the Quebecor pot.
There’s a (very small) “rue Camille-Laurin” in RDP:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/v1f4FxLbqPiTdhwy7
There’s also a school named after him:
https://camille-laurin.cssdm.gouv.qc.ca/
He was born in Charlemagne, QC, and yet that city has not named any streets after him.
And yet, according to Google Maps, Charlemagne named Highway 344 “Boulevard Celine-Dion” where it goes through the town.
Boul. Céline Dion is a pizza place, a muffler joint, and clusters of generic bungalows. Camille Laurin was right to wait for a higher-quality urban street.
There’s no street with a French CEGEP and a jail, though.
Gouin Boulevard has both the Cégep Gérald-Godin and Bordeaux prison on it…
True! But would we want to cancel Lomer Gouin in favour of Camille Laurin?
On the upside, changing “Gouin” to “Godin” could be done with a black permanent marker and step ladder.
So it has the potential of not going over budget.
The Mordecai Richler library is experimenting with offering a new service, that of a public writer, who will help people draft letters, CVs and the like.
The item mentions the prevalence of the tradition in France. The Wall Street Journal had a piece ten years ago about it (the first 4 paragraphs are accessible). French Wikipedia has an entry as well as examples from literature and movies.
There have been three seasons of a Quebec TV series called L’écrivain public, featuring a character who does just those things.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5477376/
Well there you go. I don’t watch TV, not just TV in French, TV at all. I don’t even know how you go about getting a TV and plugging it in, now.
I sometimes think I owe the blog the effort to get a TV and watch it, but you know how it is – you get a TV, then you have to get a sofa (don’t have one of those either), then a coffee table, and the next thing you know, you’re living in Brossard…
Good luck buying a house in Brossard in this market. Koodos on the ‘no tv life’.
Wait, no sofa?
Why would I need a sofa if I don’t have a TV?
To nap on with the cat? I like having them when there was such a thing as “visitors”.
Several real reasons. I like my apartment, but it doesn’t have any space corresponding to a living room in the classic sense. In normal times, I socialize with friends elsewhere, meeting in a café or resto, going someplace together, or visiting them if it’s agreeable.
Also, I’ve seen how people, especially women, especially as they get older, start living on their sofa. Watching TV, eating, sleeping on the sofa. It’s a passive form of life I don’t intend to adopt.
Yeah right Kate, men never lie on sofas, not with their cats, not even while typing replies to Mtlcityweblog – I’m with Jeather on this one
I’ve known a bunch of elderly women who have couches and none of them who were mobile ended up doing that (the ones who spent time on their couch didn’t do it until they lost mobility either). Not that I think you need to have a couch if you don’t want one.
Bixi hiked rates for its electric bikes this season, which is deterring many users.
I had to use one to rush some comfort items to my partner at the hospital the other day to beat curfew and was happy for the convenience and the massive savings compared to a taxi. (I just realized I forgot my helmet, mandatory on the electric bikes)
This reminds me of when car2go stopped rolling over to automatic 24 hours after 90 minutes. It was a hell of a feature but obviously cost them money.
Ignoring joyriding, the people using the 45 minutes to commute would be paying +$400/year (assuming 200 working days, bidirectional use) on the old rate.
This would be $1800/year with the new rate. But I’m trying to think of how far out you’d need to be to do 45 minutes on especially an electric bike. Capable of averaging say 30kph (assist kicks out there), but of course traffic. That’s quite the commute and also more likely to require withdrawal for charging (whether on the newer stands or by an employer).
You _could_ switch to the non electric bike for part of the ride. It’s not impossible to find flat rides that long in Montreal but most likely there’s downhill in at least part of your ride in one direction. (The bike swapping delay probably applies when swapping between types, but shouldn’t)
Oh and that BIXI ride saved me $15. I know because she ended up being freed and we took the taxi back. Downhill, alas, but there was no way I was putting her on a bike.
Pretty sure there aren’t even 200 working days in a Bixi season…
Weren’t electric bixis a flat $1 extra on top of your regular membership? So they’ve changed how they charge to 10 cents/minute. So if you go over 10 minutes, then it starts getting more expensive.
There are noticeably more electric bixis this year, so I guess this is a way to recuperate their investment. On weekday mornings, I’ve seen stands where it’s all electrics left and no regular bixis. So it does look like the new rates are deterring users.
Also the more electrics out there, there fewer slots left for regular bixis. But it used to be a minor challenge to find an electric one, so I think it’s a fair trade-off.
Meezly 09:05 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
They do have a point. The QC govt is relying too much on the curfew, when it should really be an emergency measure. But it’s easier to enforce the curfew than to do the harder, proactive measures.
Kate 09:22 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
No government in Canada, whether Ontario or Quebec, wants to be the one to shut everything down that’s truly not essential including most businesses. They want their cake – people working and generating profits and taxes – and eat it too – people staying home in the evening and not socializing. And with Canada being so sloppy about letting people into the country without quarantine, the inevitable has happened.
JohnS 10:51 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
Canada is not sloppy about letting people in without quarantine. The vast majority of those who cross cannot quarantine as they are doing essential work (eg truckers, HCW who cross for work – live in Windsor but work in Detroit). Those travelling for discretionary purposes (about 20-25% of those who enter) ate heavily tested. Compliance with quarantine measures was already over 90% before the hotel regime and added testing was put in place. Remember these are only potentially infected people – actual infected cases aren’t subjected to the same degree of scrutiny/quarantine supervision. Fussing over travellers is again part of the distraction governments have used to turn attention away from their failure to actually target workplaces, schools, and other congregate settings. As you point out that would be politically too costly to consider.
Kate 11:11 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
JohnS, it seems Australia and New Zealand have been doing well by being draconian about letting people in. Whereas we’ve seen variants blowing up, and it’s not just truck drivers. There have been stories about people refusing quarantine and just walking away or using loopholes to cross the border after long flights from abroad.
Kevin 11:15 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
The country has been sloppy about quarantining travellers. One of my neighbours has crossed the border multiple times in the past year. The only checkup is a phone call to a cell phone. One time she brought her dog specifically so she’d be allowed to walk around outside.
Flights into Canada are worse. Click on the drop downs at this link and you’ll see that every single day there are multiple flights into Canada with infected people. Flights across the country are also rife with infected people.
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/latest-travel-health-advice/exposure-flights-cruise-ships-mass-gatherings.html
Yes, the workplace transmission is a horrendous problem, but the notion that our country is doing anything to limit travel-based spread is a joke.
Bill Binns 11:36 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
I spent something like 150 days in the US last year and flew in and out maybe 8 times. My company worked for months to get me “essential worker” documents from our clients. I never had to show that letter to a single person. It was 100% the “honor system”. Unless things have changed since December, you can sail right through immigration simply by saying you are an essential worker.
walkerp 12:37 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
@kevin that is a real eye-opener!
But I have so many questions. How can there be all these cases on flights into Canada if you have to get a negative test before you can board the plane?
How did they discover these cases in the first place?
YUL514 12:41 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
@walkerp I’d assume incubation period. They should have shut all international travel, big mistake.
Kevin 12:48 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
@walkerp
You need to test negative anywhere from 72 hours to 0 hours before flying into Canada.
It can take up to 14 days from being exposed to being sick enough to test positive on a PCR test, with the median being 5-6 days.
So it’s entirely possible to be exposed a week before your flight, to test negative a day or 3 before you board, and to be ragingly ill on the plane.
There is no check on flights within Canada unless you’re showing obvious signs of being ill.
walkerp 12:55 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
Yes, I get that. Possibility I believe. It’s the rate that is shocking. 10 flights alone on April 14 with cases from outside the country?
And then how do they know about the domestic flights? I guess these are all based on investigative post-facto contract tracing?
GC 12:58 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
Couldn’t you also, theoretically, get infected at the airport before boarding your flight? I’m guessing most airports still have common international areas where passengers are mingling, regardless of destination. But I haven’t been to one in over a year, so someone please correct me if that’s not true… Of course, such a thing would likely not be tracked at the link Kevin shared, as tracing it back to the airport could be complicated.
Tee Owe 14:35 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
GC – I read (can’t find the link, was in the Guardian, too long ago) that in New Zealand they genome sequence all of their very few virus-positive cases and they could identify that at least one in hotel quarantine had been infected while on the plane – so it’s not just airports. To track this requires resource and unpressured time, both of which NZ have.
GC 16:10 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
Of course, yes. Good point. Which is just another reason why the test-negative-before-entering solution is so full of holes. It’s far better to just limit the international travel as much as possible.
walkerp 19:02 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
I agree with JohnS. I think that if it were really coming in from the outside at a higher rate, they would have shut the flights down much more. Most of the spread is community.
Tim S. 19:09 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
The beauty of the Canadian confederation is that we can have provincial governments that are failing to properly inspect workplaces, and a federal government that is failing to properly protect borders.
We have known for months about the disaster in Brazil. There should be no P1 in Canada.
Kate 20:20 on 2021-04-19 Permalink
Tim S., you’re quotable.