Police seized guns and drugs in raids in the east end this week. In another story, they arrested a man found with guns, ammo and a bulletproof vest.
I suspect these are in the news only because of recent shooting incidents, and police want us to know they’re on the job. They don’t sound like major blows against either drug or firearm trafficking, but they’re something.
The city will need to adapt to more, and more severe, heat waves. Public health already looks after a list of vulnerable isolated individuals, but work still needs to be done on fixing heat islands.
Want some opinions here. Since the pandemic, I haven’t worked in an office with other people. I haven’t socialized indoors even with my closest friends. I did census work, but always outdoors and with a mask on.
I’m double-vaxxed.
This weekend I’ve been invited to a drinks party indoors in the Mile End. I don’t know the place, but I’ve looked at it on Streetview and know where it is, what kind of building it is (row triplex) and there isn’t likely to be an outside patio or deck or yard.
The host has not told me how many guests are invited, but he does say everyone’s been double-vaxxed and none of the guests have recently travelled internationally.
I’m antsy, but for reasons, it would be good politics for me to go.
Would you go?
I would go provided the capacity of the place is not a huge number (say dozens rather than a hundred or more). In a medium sized gathering of people who purport to be fully vaccinated, it’s not too likely you will be exposed. Will people be wearing masks indoors? Even without masks, if you have no risk factors and are fully vaccinated then if you are exposed it’s not likely you will get very ill.
I don’t think people will be wearing masks if it’s a drinks-and-snacks scenario.
The gubment created this tool to help people make decisions like yours but it’s always told me “ehh, don’t worry about it!”, even when there are immunocompromised people involved, inside, without masks, so I don’t trust it myself. https://covidvisitrisk.com/riskscore-english.html
MarcG, yes, I tried that out, and I also tried out MicroCOVID Project. MicroCOVID was like, are you joking? Don’t go anywhere near it! whereas the Canadian one was, yeah – “ehh, don’t worry about it!”
The numbers speak for themselves, Kate. I think everybody would like to go to a few parties but it’s not a great thing to be doing right now. I’m really hoping that the higher vaccination rate here will make the difference but that’s not a given. It’s likely from what you say that no matter what in a group that large there are going to be people who are pretty far off what you think is right. In this case that makes a big difference. People will be hanging out emoting at each other in place and indoors, not a good idea.
I wouldn’t; but I’m a senior.
You’re the only person who knows all the factors that apply to you.
Can it be any more risky than the buses you’ve been on?
Yes, I know people are masked on buses; and, they are supposedly masked at grocery stores, and yet today at least 50% of the people I saw at Provigo didn’t have the mask over their nose. The women in the line ahead of me had to be asked by the cashier if she had a mask (she dug it out of her purse).
If you think it would help your mental health, and you’re willing to roll the dice, then it’s probably safer at this point than it will be three weeks from now. This wave has just started.
If you find the space claustrophobic, or you feel unsafe, leave.
With cases on the rise it seems counterintuitive to start socializing now. Me, I’m keeping to myself until herd immunity is officially declared. Or the apocalypse arrives. And in these “it’s all about me” times, who’s to say some of the guests aren’t bullshitting about their vaccination status to get some socialization in? I’d pass.
I would absolutely go; by definition it’s not against public health guidelines and your risk of acquiring severe disease is infinitesmally low if you’re double-vaxxed. I’d personally be more concerned about getting hit by a car on the way there, but your risk tolerance may obviously vary.
I got covid back in October at the beginning of the second wave thinking the thing was over and that the risks are small. It was not fun. We didn’t have vaccines back then tho.
I wouldn’t go to anything indoors with more than a couple of people, and even then it would have to be people I know who are vaccinated. Maybe I would go to an outdoor picnick or barbecue; a terrasse with a handful of people, but I’m not gonna be indoors, up close, and breathing the same air as strangers, no matter what my friend says.
Also, Mile End has lots of patios and parks. Maybe you could suggest moving it outside?
You say it would be good politics so I’m guessing some professional options might emerge as a result. That would be good but people who would hold an indoor mixer right now are a certain kind of people and they will continue along that vein in other ways so this predicament will not be a one-off thing and they will do non-event things in this casual, imprudent / provocative way too.
You could invent an excuse for not coming eg: family issue, birthday etc. Alternatively, you could make a cameo and claim to be on the way to a birthday backyard bbq. Your risk is technically low but no need to linger at this event.
Maybe you could ask the host how many people might be there.
I would go if it was outside in an open space like a park or a big backyard but if it’s indoors I think it’s unwise (because you don’t know how many people are going to be in the enclosed space). There’s enough evidence that the Delta variant can spread even among vaccinated hosts.
I would go. You are double vaxed. What are you waiting for? The extinction of SARS-CoV-2? 100% of the planet vaxed? 95%? 0 hospitalizations? 0 cases? If so, I think you’ll be waiting a long time indeed. In a province of 8,200,000, there are only 80 people hospitalized. 0.001% of us. Your risk is tiny.
Aside from sometimes needing to wear masks, most everyone I know has been back to normal life for several months now.
Earlier this summer, a friend had a birthday gathering with a dozen people on a brewery patio. It was outdoors and everyone there was double-vaxxed, but there was no real effort to keep distance. It was definitely the largest social gathering any of us had had for a long time, aside from distanced picnics in the park. One person showed up, chatted a bit from just outside the patio and left saying she still wasn’t ready for such a big gathering. Everyone understood and nobody held it against her.
Personally, I’d also be nervous about an indoor gathering with strangers. I’ve reached the point where I am comfortable hanging out indoors but only with people I know well. You always could make an appearance and leave early if you want to balance the professional benefit of showing up with your safety concerns. At the same time, current restrictions mean there can only be 10 people at a table indoors and everyone has to be seated, which means the risk is probably quite low. If it’s an old-fashioned stand-around-and-chat mixer, that means the host is willing to break the sanitary rules and I’d certainly avoid it altogether.
Interesting range of opinions. Thanks everyone for giving your angle.
The host has been very kind and emphasized they would not take it personally if I chose not to go, and that’s what I’m doing – staying away from indoor social gatherings for the moment. (He mentioned a small deck, but the party was mostly conceived as an indoor gathering.)
There are 426 new cases of Covid in Quebec on Friday, hospitalizations are up, and Quebec is asking Ottawa to tighten the border again.
The federal government is going to insist that all its workers get vaccinated and is also going to make vaccination mandatory for air and rail travellers.
Wow. In one weekend of border entries to QC, they found 60 positive cases? That’s nuts. The feds need to shut it down again.
That’s not what the article says, JaneyB.
“Le ministre Dubé déplore que dans la fin de semaine du 31 juillet au 1er août seulement, 60 cas positifs ont été identifiés chez des voyageurs au Québec. De ce nombre, 68 % n’étaient pas adéquatement vaccinés.”
This data is from before the US before opened. From what I understand, it’s all Canadians returning from overseas trips. I’m not sure why would travel before being fully vaccinated, but there you go.
Wow, that was a scrambled comment! Sorry for the errors. What I mean is that, these numbers were taken from before the border opened. It’s all un/undervaccinated Canadians returning home with infections they got overseas.
This weekend the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel will be closed and a triathlon is taking place all weekend in various parts of town, closing off streets in Old Montreal and surrounding areas. (I’ve never been able to take “quartier international” all that seriously.) More on Mobilité Montréal.
Police had blocked off parts of the old Port today.i Wonder whether that’s related.
Very likely, ant6n. The piece said the event started Friday.
What’s not to like about the Quartier International? Between ICAO, IATA and the Palais des Congres, we’ve got people from the world over (normally) flocking to the area. Ok, the “World” Trade Centre name is a bit of a stretch, but the city’s branding effort with the street furniture and sidewalk pavers gives it a cohesive feel. I remember the huge scar left by the 720 ditch. Between Viger and St. Antoine, sure it’s still pretty trafficy, but having a nice business neighbourhood where there once was an ugly barrier to accessing Old Montreal is a huge improvement.
Not objecting to its existence, Max. I just find the label a bit silly, although you make a good counter-case for it to be called that.
It is a bit pretentious-sounding, I’ll admit. But as an exercise in neighbourhood-branding, I think it’s a smash hit. Money well-spent for a change. Besides, what would we call it otherwise? “Autoroute 720-Ville”? “Old Montreal Adjacent”? I like it just the way it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartier_international_de_Montréal
I think I would tend to describe the area as “lower McGill” but I completely take your point.
The city keeps track of all the publicly planted and maintained trees, and now a Concordia prof is doing a census of the many trees on private land, which she says are about half the canopy in the city. She’s starting with NDG.
A new group called Coalition Pozé – a Haitian word said to mean “take it easy” or “calm down” – is asking for help in reducing gun violence at the community level in northeastern Montreal.
Investors are sashaying through a massive loophole in the requirement for “affordable” condos in new projects: they’re buying as many as half a dozen condos then renting them out at sky‑high rates, thus putting them well beyond the reach of the people for whom they were intended.
The city has just widened the area in which “affordable” units must be included in new projects. They should also rewrite the laws about how many of these units a person can buy, or simply forbid renting them out once owned.
It’s just so much easier to TAX, than to get them to pony up spots.Let the developers pay a tax on the permit, or if they decide not to, a TAX of double the rate on the occupancy certificate. See if they want to pay it, or pass it on..
New rule: if you’re going to make new edicts/laws/bylaws about affordability of whatever, you have to hand it off to a bunch of gamers who have the task of discovering how your rule is broken and will have the opposite effect of what you intend.
Ephraim, the thing about your plan is that it only works in retrospect, and if it’s reported and followed up. It still sees the “affordable” living spaces taken away from the intended market.
After Revenu Quebec went easy on Airbnb for so long, I doubt their will to undermine what they probably all feel is fair business game.
Don’t think you need gamers to spot the loophole here. Trying to “micro-intervene” in the housing market to make it more accessible/affordable doesn’t work. It makes our Projet friends feel like they’re doing something good, but the results just aren’t there. Promoting new construction and development might, though.
Kate – I’ve been saying the same thing for a LONG time. And we have seen a few “broken” buildings because of too much diversity in size within the buildings. A condo building (or even an apartment building) is a little like a microcosm, especially considering that voting is by square footage. If you put too much diversity, you end up with some owners have 4 to 5 times the sway as others and the wants of the rich making it hell on those of lesser means. So you really can’t have too much diversity in size within a building.
Taking the cash and using it to subsidize rents or build is a lot more effective than the rules that never get enforced. You build, you pay, now go away. Also, the what you get per square foot in one neighbourhood might mean more housing by simply spending the money.
The same as I have said about the city running buildings… it’s not equipped for the job and it’s expensive for them to do it. They have let buildings go derelicts and they have trouble with maintenance. Apartment REITs employ maintenance people, regularly have to report to the stock market, etc. It’s easier to subsidize and let them handle it (like a black box) than it is to build the entire subsystem to run buildings. It’s their job.
You don’t ask a welder to run a restaurant with no experience. You don’t ask a gardener to teach computer programming. You hire the best people you can to do the job that you have. And in Canada, the best people to run apartment buildings are… REITs. CAPREIT for example has quite a few buildings in town. https://www.caprent.com/apartments-for-rent/montreal-qc/
We need a lot of microapartments and we need rooming houses. Everything larger than that, we should look at either subsidy or charities like habitat for humanity to help stretch our money. But we also need more condos. It’s supply and demand… if they don’t build, rents go up. Cities need to plan for expansion.
Ephraim, my problem here is that there’s no linkage between a punitive tax and the creation of more new housing. You can write new laws for a new building and try to ensure that the units are sold to people who actually need them – I realize this isn’t easy – or you can put up a new building with modest pricing, see all the units go into the pockets of speculators, and then punish them with a tax (and I don’t see how framing the law for that tax will be any easier than framing a law to block this from happening in the first place).
OK. How long does it take for that tax to be collected and to percolate through the government’s coffers so it can afford to put up a second building with modest pricing, and what stops speculators from doing the same thing again? The speculators will have worked out some loopholes to avoid paying the tax or to minimize its impact, and by now will have come to regard it as the cost of doing business – and passed most of it on to their tenants anyway. You haven’t solved the problem, and you’ve created a mechanism where the government is locked into creating living spaces to sell cheaply to speculators.
Also: there isn’t unlimited space in town for new buildings.
@Kate – That the city has to plan. But the other problem is… you get more value in some parts of town than in others. Even if you are getting 10% of the condos in the Golden Square mile (let’s say 30 condos in total, so you get 3 condos), that money might pay for 6 condos or more in the village. Or 10 condos in St-Laurent, not far from the Cote-Vertu metro station. But also, the size. For single people, what we need are literally the size of a container. The minimum size in Montreal is 17 sqm. But we need to equip them with furniture for small home living.
As I said, attach the tax to the permit. Or to the occupancy certificate. It’s harder to wiggle out of a tax than it is out of supplying condo space. And double the amount if it has to be paid at the occupancy certificate. Minimize the laws, make trying to wiggle out of it more expensive.
The Delta variant of Covid is driving a new rise in cases in the city, just as school’s about to start. A third of these cases are in people who have recently arrived from outside the country, although it’s not mentioned here how many of these cases are from the United States.
There have been multiple cases of people attempting to get fake proof of vaccination in Quebec, too.
I can only assume that if someone is willing to part with several hundred dollars and commit bribery in order to avoid getting vaccinated that they actually believe the Covid-19 vaccine is detrimental to their health. Sociologically, this is concerning, to say the least.
I think the ratios they are seeing in the US are 10:1 to 11:1 for unvaccinated versus vaccinated. And much better outcomes with the vaccinated and very mild cases.
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