Updates from October, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 18:47 on 2021-10-27 Permalink | Reply  

    A law student writing for CBC raises the perennial question why police are still ticketing the homeless.

    Emily Knox points out this amazing fact: “nearly 40 per cent of all tickets for bylaw infractions in Montreal are issued to people experiencing homelessness, despite accounting for less than one per cent of the population.” Won’t those tickets essentially end up costing the city money, as they drivel on through the bureaucracy but can never be paid? Even if some people feel the homeless should be relentlessly badgered and punished, surely the thought of wasted police and bureaucratic efforts might raise a spark of concern in their shrivelled hearts?

     

    • Ephraim 18:58 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

      Wonder if there is a quota on tickets and this is a way that they can hand out tickets without getting citizens angry at them. Low hanging fruit….

    • Bob R 09:06 on 2021-10-28 Permalink

      Sometimes the claim is made that this is about health and safety of those experiencing homelessness – not just to point out infracting behavior, but to track individuals who are exposed to dangerous situations. If so, this civil law system should be replaced with a social services system – which is also empowered to provide a sort of “ticket”, not with a fine, but to inform the person of the infraction, and track them over time, and try to encourage them toward services that can improve their well-being.

  • Kate 18:40 on 2021-10-27 Permalink | Reply  

    So I received a reminder about voting, and this time at least it has my name in bold type, although it’s still over on the right and the form is now addressed “À l’électeur/trice / To the elector” rather than to just Occupant.

    Voting days are this coming weekend and the next. The form tells you where the advance and regular polls will be.

    However, a regular reader points this out:

    While the English side reminds us to bring a pen or pencil, the corresponding block on the French side also says – rather crucially – “ainsi qu’une pièce d’identité,” which the English does not.

    (If it’s like other elections, people like me, who have no driver’s licence, may also need to show something proving our address. I brought a bank statement with me to the federal poll for this purpose, but they didn’t even ask to see it, nor did they make me remove my mask for identification.)

    (I am also curious why my form says “Mc Donnell Catherine (68)”. I am not 68 and have no idea what this number indicates. A line number maybe? Also, why do some authorities feel a need to put a space after the Mc? Many questions.)

     

    • EmilyG 19:55 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

      And the English part says “or EVEN a lead pencil,” whereas the French side doesn’t have the “even” and I guess doesn’t seem to think there’s anything unusual about a pencil.

    • mare 23:01 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

      There’s a big confusing design error in it though.

      The first section has two columns next to a big number 1, with three paragraphs on the left in French, and three paragraphs on the right in English. Each paragraph starts with a big arrow.
      But in the second section, with a big number 2, both columns have French *and* English in them, and each column has a different date and polling place. (On the left for advance polling, at the right the actual voting).

      So if you have figured out that the right column is for English and follow it down, suddenly the text changes into French. It even threw me off, and I’m pretty bilingual. Old people and people who don’t read very well (a large part of the Quebec population is functional illiterate) must be confused. It’s almost like the francophone population has to vote on another weekend than anglophones.

    • Kate 09:07 on 2021-10-28 Permalink

      mare, you’re right. Whoever works in graphic design for the city is not exactly focused on usability issues – and they’re not even proofreading carefully. That omission of a mention of bringing ID ought to have been caught right away.

    • EmilyG 11:40 on 2021-10-28 Permalink

      Ah, it does say in English that you need to bring ID, but on the other side (where it also says it again in French.)

    • SMD 09:28 on 2021-10-29 Permalink

      I think the 68 refers to your number on their list, so that if you bring the paper in it is easier for the pool workers to find you. Your neighbours are likely #67 and #69 (within your overall poll, which is typically a block or so).

  • Kate 10:07 on 2021-10-27 Permalink | Reply  

    Another new book, this one, by two of QMI’s Bureau d’enquête writers, about imprisoned gangster “Mom” Boucher, says he sits in jail dreaming of vengeance against his enemies. The article dwells strangely on how much Boucher has changed physically after years in prison.

     

    • Kate 09:28 on 2021-10-27 Permalink | Reply  

      City hospitals are overcrowded and waiting lists for CHLSDs are getting longer.

       

      • mare 12:38 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        “our population is getting older”

        Gosh, what a surprise, who could have predicted that?

        Why haven’t we built enough CHLSDs to meet the predictable demand? The waiting lists are ridiculously long for decades, this is not a new situation.
        All the shortages of money and people in healthcare existed before Covid, they’re just exacerbated and getting more press now.

        This hospital overcrowding is going to cost lives, or probably already *is* costing lives. People read these articles and they don’t go to the hospital or see a doctor and many serious conditions are diagnosed too late. (Cynical me says that the waiting lists won’t get longer that way, and maybe our politicians are cynical as well.)

        This nurses shortage is not going away anytime soon, but will get worse, much worse. Nurses are burning out, some have to stop working because they refuse to get vaccinated and some of them are just also of retirement age. Nursing school takes 2 years and students need support during their practical periods. Nurses don’t have time to give them that support. I’m not sure enrolment is very high at the moment.
        We should import some nurses from elsewhere. Oh wait, we reduced our immigration quotas and nurses are in high demand in every other country in the world. And even qualified nurses from other francophone countries, like France, first need many months of additional schooling before they can work in Quebec.

        And the situation is the same with doctors and other medical professionals. The Quebec healthcare system has been cracking at the seams for years, and they will come apart eventually.

      • Spi 19:30 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        School age children don’t just magically appear, yet we failed to build schools, Even freaking Cegep’s are forecasted to be (and already are) short on space and they’ve got a solid decade minimum to see a trend coming.

        Growing population with stagnant affordable residential housing stock.

        Don’t mistake this for a health-care problem, it’s a QC politics problem. Inept politicians that would rather spend their time picking a fight with Ottawa and what ever made up problem that QMI can drum up instead of showing the least bit of foresight.

      • Kate 09:52 on 2021-10-28 Permalink

        Spi, I have a theory about this that I’ve ventilated here before. Quebec achieved a great deal in the early 1960s when it turfed out the control of the Catholic church over education and health care, built new highways, dams, bridges and schools, and refocused its life away from religion onto nationalism. It’s not for nothing they call it the Quiet Revolution. But as a culture we seem to have felt that we made a huge effort and now it was done. That the new structures would need constant maintenance, renewal and repairs was not part of the vision.

        We even forgot to do proper maintenance on buildings, bridges and roads that lingered from before the Q.R., so that we’ve had to tear down schools and rebuild them because they got so moldy and unsafe.

        I don’t know what this kind of social amnesia is called, and I don’t know whether it has happened in other forms elsewhere, but we’ve certainly lived through it here.

      • Kevin 15:43 on 2021-10-28 Permalink

        Social amnesia is the perfect term for a province losing its institutional memory. It happens anywhere with a lot of churn and leads to lots of easily prevented disasters.

        There’s a whole whackadoo of articles about corporate amnesia: mining safety, deepwater rig, banking collapses…

    • Kate 09:23 on 2021-10-27 Permalink | Reply  

      François Legault says he has the names of general practitioners who are not taking enough patients, and wants the health authorities to read them the riot act. He’s preparing a law to force them to take on more patients.

      First, the PREM forces you to practice in St-Glinglin rather than in Montreal, then you’re disciplined for not taking on twice as many patients. I don’t want Quebec’s GPs to leave, but if I had put that much effort into my education only to be jerked around by the government, I’d be looking for a gig beyond Quebec’s borders myself.

       

      • Daniel D 10:15 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        This is interesting timing. From the UK, where the current government is also waging a war on GPs for not taking on enough patients: https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2021/oct/21/face-off-the-government-versus-gps

        Do populist governments around the world just copy each other?

      • jeather 10:28 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        Don’t GPs in Montreal also have to do shifts in hospitals etc? Cutting further into time they can have patients? (Again I don’t understand why the government doesn’t start threatening to punish doctors who see patients who don’t reside locally, except I suppose that it would bother their voters.)

        Really hope that lawsuit moves forward.

      • Kevin 10:52 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        @jeather
        I believe previous governments tried to do that, and the courts told them patients cannot be prevented from seeing a doctor in any region they want.

      • steph 10:54 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        The government is intentinonally sabotaging public health care to keep opening the doors to privitization. it’s disgusting.

      • Uatu 11:01 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        Yea because the chsld Herron showed us how great privately run health care is

      • Blork 11:07 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        “Doctor, please help me! I’ve been shot in the stomach and have a knife in my neck. And is this spot on my cheek a melanoma?”

        “What’s your postal code? I can only treat you if you live nearby.”

        No. This isn’t the goddamn Soviet Union. A person’s address should have no bearing on whether or not a doctor can treat them.

      • Ephraim 11:13 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        The all-inclusive fee for taking charge of a patient or for a number of medical services is just $9.35… Maybe if you start paying them more for being a family doctor and less for being a clinic doctor, you might be able to fill the family doctors. You know… by convincing some of those no appointment clinics to become family doctor groups… where a team of doctors take over the patient file. And maybe give a bonus to ensure that people get their regular check-ups. You know, pay +$20 for a physical that’s scheduled. Figure out based on criteria how often you need to see certain people to reduce the costs to the system and then pay doctor a bonus if they see people on those schedule.. you know… SCIENCE

      • SMD 11:48 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        Le Devoir has a really interesting interview today with a family physician who just quit to work for the feds. Like for nurses, it seems that quality of life is a much greater issue than salary. And I didn’t know about the blind spots around GPs taking maternity leaves.

      • jeather 12:24 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        If you are going to restrict where doctors practice by population, which I think is a bad idea even before you play political games with re numbers, you need to equally restrict who they see, otherwise there are more doctors off island but people who live there and work on the island see doctors in Montreal, fucking it up for the rest of us.

        I have friends who do this! I don’t blame them for all sorts of reasons. But it is a problem.

        There are better solutions than restricting who doctors see, even keeping the crappy PREM system. But it is one. I’d love to see the details of that court case, Kevin.

      • Azrhey 10:01 on 2021-10-28 Permalink

        My family Dr (I know, lucky ) does “Monday admin” schedule… Talk to insurances, fax things, fill paper work ..etc… Why the hell is a Dr spending 25% of his clinic work time doing admin???? (Fridays he’s also the Jewish doing er work …) Last week he spent a lot of time arguing with my insurance company they because they didn’t want to cover 25mg inversion if a med I take and I am fed up of getting the 50mg and having to cut it in two everyday..
        It’s ridiculous! I want my Dr to take care of the next patient not talk to a call center and explain how half of 50 and 25 is the same thing….

    • Kate 09:15 on 2021-10-27 Permalink | Reply  

      CBC has a piece Wednesday about whether Projet Montréal has strayed from its progressive roots, partly a review of Daniel Sanger’s new book Saving the City. The argument is that the party has become more middle-of-the-road since coming to power – but I bet this always happens.

      Not only does a party have a tendency to want to remain electable, they also wear down some of their edge on the simple tedious matters of governance, the practicalities of running the ship, along with a better grasp of the limitations. Obviously members with more radical ideas will fall away. Obviously compromises will be made with their principles. The difference between an election platform and reality will always come as something of a shock.

       

      • jeather 10:30 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        And yet people won’t vote for them because they are too progressive.

        Maybe “they became middle of the road” is a bit due to the Overton window shift.

      • qatzelok 21:04 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

        a bracketed aside from the article: “(Sanger previously served as (Sue) Montgomery’s chief of staff)”

    • Kate 09:05 on 2021-10-27 Permalink | Reply  

      Shots were fired in St-Michel on Tuesday evening, but no victims have turned up. CTV emphasizes it was near a playground but at 8 p.m. in late October it’s unlikely it was in use.

       

      • Kate 08:51 on 2021-10-27 Permalink | Reply  

        The death of Mort Sahl is being noted in local media because Sahl was born here, although he made his reputation entirely in the United States.

        I hadn’t even been aware Mort Sahl was still alive, nor that he was born here. Like Saul Bellow, he left at a young age and never came back, so that – unlike Leonard Cohen or William Shatner – his fame never got entangled with the mythos of Montreal.

         

        • Raymond Lutz 10:42 on 2021-10-27 Permalink

          Geez, c’est fou comment je m’instruis en lisant mtlcityweblog, merci à Kate et son lectorat!

          En suivant le lien référencé par Kate, j’ai trouvé ceci: “À la suite de la mort de John F. Kennedy, en 1963, Mort Sahl – qui a écrit des blagues pour la campagne du président démocrate – est dévasté et sombre dans des théories conspirationnistes qui lui font perdre la faveur du public.”

          Hmmm, cancel culture du monde médiatique contre quelqu’un qui n’adhère pas à la version officielle?

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