Ninety-five cases of Omicron have been identified in Montreal – almost all vaccinated.
François Legault is hanging on hard to allowing 20 people to gather for that secular holiday that’s coming up.
Updates from December, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
No charges will be laid against the police who shot Nicholas Gibbs dead on an August evening in 2018.
-
Kate
Plateau mayor Luc Rabouin is vowing to save La Tulipe. This story suggests it was a joint error by the borough and the city that led to a permit being issued for residential occupation in an adjoining building. But there are other complications, as outlined in this La Presse piece. I expect the owner to hold out for a huge payout from the public purse.
-
Kate
As Plante and Legault vow not to give public money to the Bronfman baseball heist in progress, with every word they say about it, I become more convinced that that’s exactly what they’re going to do. I cannot agree more strongly with Taylor C. Noakes here on Montreal pondering digging itself a billion-dollar baseball hole.
-
Kate
In September it was reported that the Catholic church’s new ombudsman, appointed in May, had received 45 formal complaints. Now that number is up to 75 including 30 sex abuse complaints and 16 for other kinds of abuse.
Marie-Christine Kirouack says “listening to people about their suffering is an important part of her job.” Is that her main job? Acting as a sort of counsellor, letting people unburden themselves? Acting, in short, as a mother confessor?
Can she, does she, ever direct them to lay charges?
Update: Radio-Canada has a more detailed report on the ombudsman’s experiences with her recalcitrant and secretive organization.
-
Kate
While this city is not quite the tax haven that the Bahamas are, it does have at least one firm that helps wealthy French investors squirrel funds out of sight of the fisc. There are also articles in Libération but not much is accessible outside the paywall.
Not surprisingly, according to La Presse, it’s due to a loophole consciously left open by the Tories in the early 2000s.
ant6n
Wait so how can a European use Quebec as a tax Haven? Asking for a friend.
Kate
ant6n, it’s a mystery to me why we have finance laws enabling people who have no assets in Canada to hide assets here from foreign governments. In fact, if I were the French government I’d be steamed as heck about this.
(Incidentally, on an unrelated topic, ant6n, are you going to apply for that seat on the STM board?)
Chris
The Liberals have had 3 terms now to close it if they wanted to. No doubt they don’t.
Meezly
There was a CBC doc a few years called Cities Held Hostage – Who Owns Montreal? that looked into how many of our structures were built by a few foreign construction co’s from France/Europe, which has been going on for several decades. I wonder if that loophole is just another extension of the intricate web of 1% control.
ant6n
@Kate
Would like to apply, but I’m probably not in Montreal too often these days.
-
Kate
The federal government has designated John Molson a person of historical importance. I wonder what inspired this, right now.
-
Kate
The only shocking thing about reading that the SPVM is to have an indigenous liaison as of next year is that they don’t already have someone, if not a team, already doing this.
DavidH
Agent DeAngelis had that role. He’s retiring.
The only news is that the new person can now be either a civilian or a police officer.
-
Kate
Quebec’s got 2,386 new Covid cases in 24 hours on Wednesday.
And now Richard Martineau says he’s had enough of the pandemic and flirts with the idea that Omicron is “une façon de vendre plus de vaccins à nos gouvernements.” He draws back from going full conspirationniste by the end, but making a point like this, now, is to tickle a sleeping dragon.
Dr Mylène Drouin says we should cut down our interactions and avoid parties in the lead-up to Christmas. We can also expect tighter restrictions generally.
The federal government is advising against international travel.
H. John
I wish the government was doing more to remind people the virus is airborne.
Vaccine, absolutely; I’m lucky enough to have had the booster.
But distancing, hand washing, and masks need to be stressed more.
Santé QC should have already recommended moving from cloth masks to ones that provide better protection such as N95 or KN95.
While we’re nowhere near the UK, which had almost 80,000 new cases today, the QC government is sending extremely mixed messages at the worst time.
In the UK, Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, an epidemiologist, said:
“I’m afraid we have to be realistic that records will be broken a lot over the next few weeks”.
“What we’ve got is two epidemics on top of one another: an existing Delta epidemic roughly flat and a very rapidly growing omicron epidemic on top”
Chris
H. John, why do you feel hand washing should be stressed more, when, as you say, the virus is airborne?
I went to a cafe the other day, where, in 2020 style, they forced people to use sanitizer when entering, yet no one was wearing a mask (as is allowed). Seems backwards.
-
Kate
Stephen Bronfman met the mayor Tuesday to discuss baseball but this brief piece from CTV tells us less than nothing. What does “We’re going to have a ‘no’ or a ‘go’ soon enough, hopefully a ‘go,’ and we’ll be able to show everything” even mean?
The Journal is more forthcoming, saying the mayor has ruled out devoting public money to helping half a baseball team come to the city.
steph
Can we learn something from the Quebec City Vidéotron Centre? Even if they build a stadium, it won’t even be half a team.
Kate
steph, they’re still hoping to get the “Nordiques” back.
Joey
The writing has been on the wall for a while that the city won’t be contributing any money to a stadium project – it sounds like the ask of Mayor Plante is to (a) cede the option the city has on the federal land Bronfman et al want to build on and (b) sign off on the stadium/real estate development. The big ask is to QC City and the writing is on the wall too there: if Bronfman can get some ‘experts’ to endorse a ‘revenue neutral’ contribution, Legault will be more than happy to be the politiican who brought baseball back ‘for free.’
Interestingly, it feels like even though the request from Montreal is a fraction of the value/size of the ask of QC, getting a yes from Plante will be a bigger climb for the baseball guys.
Kevin
The big lie is that any public money for a stadium will be made up by income taxes paid by players.
Except any player paying their full share of income taxes in Canada is getting terrible financial advice due to existence of Retirement Compensation Arrangements.
-
Kate
The final Azur train from the batch ordered by the STM in 2018 has been put into service. There are 71 Azurs in the system now, and this item says the STM still has 423 MR73 trains too, which sounds like a lot.
James
I’m very proud to say that I worked on that project from 2010 to 2014. We delivered a high quality train to the STM.
Kate
Bravo, James.
Spi
423 surely refers to the individual cars, each MR-73 metro set consisting of 9? cars. Now that the azur is one single long train 1 azur replaced 9 older metro cars.
That’s the only logical explanation
Kate
What I was thinking as well, Spi.
carswell
Seconding that bravo, James. I still get a thrill when boarding the Azur trains and the quality of the onboard experience is a quantum leap better than the MR-73s deliver.
Max
I spotted this unusual door track a couple of years ago. Presumably has something to do with calibrating the automatic braking system. It was on the very first door of the lead car. Something to look for if you’re bored and riding in the first (or last) car.
James
The MR73 are composed into 3-car units. So 413 cars makes 141 3-car sets that are then coupled together into a 9-car train. So they can make 47 trains.
The Azur trains are: 52 (base order in 2010) + 2 (penalty for late delivery in lieu of money) + 17 (follow-on order in 2018).
The Azur gains a lot of interior space by deleting the 4 unnecessary operator cabs in the middle and adding the inter-car gangways.Kate
Is the MR73 only used on the blue line now? Or is it also running on the yellow line?
Max
I don’t know about the blue and yellow, but you see them on the green line sometimes. It’s kind of a disappointment now whenever one shows up.
James
According to the STM’s own press release: https://www.stm.info/fr/presse/nouvelles/2021/la-stm-met-en-service-son-dernier-train-azur there are only 360 MR73 cars in operation now (40 trains instead of 47). Even Wikipedia is confused as it says 216 cars.
carswell
@Kate Have never seen the Azurs on the Yellow Line. In October, the last time I rode it, all the trains were MR73s.
mare
I think the Azur trains are pretty good, especially compared to our old rolling stock. Compared to many European train designs they’re just adequate.
Two of the few things that are bad in the Azur have to do with metro stops. The next station announcements above the ‘corridor’ show 50% of the time the totally useless indication “Prochain station” instead of the actual name of the next stop. And the alternating is very slow so there’s a very high chance that a quick glance is not enough, but you have to keep looking for a few seconds. “Prochain station” should be omitted or printed above the sign, and the name of the station should be displayed at all times, maybe with a very short blank to draw attention.
The other one is that the screens with the track line and the current and next station are the same on both sides of the train. So on one side the train appears to go backwards. Maybe a minor detail, but it annoys me every time I see it.
ant6n
Also lack of handles. And given that they went from 4 to 3 doors per side of car, they could’ve made the doors even wider.
James
Mare: I was actually the person that programmed the automatic announcement database when it was delivered to the STM. The STM can freely change the types of messages as they have full control over the system. However, the current messages are what I delivered in 2014.
There are three messages: “Prochaine station XX” when the train departs a station, “Station XX” as the train enters a station, and just “XX” when the train is stoppped in the station. The last message is fixed for the duration the train is in the station.
These three visual announcements are syncronized with the audio annoucements. The scrolling speed and upwards direction was decided by the STM for accessiblity and ease of comphrehension reasons.
The “Prochaine station” words are necessary – imagine if the train stops in the tunnel.
There is a benefit of having the “thermometer” always display in the same format – people get used to it and know where to look each time. Also there is only a single video stream sent to the displays.CE
Weird, I looked at that screen this morning and thought the same thing. As we were rolling into Jean-Talon, I thought, why are there a few seconds when the screen just says the word “station”? Why not just say the name of the station?
Max
The LED displays on the exo trains suffer from the same single-line inadequacies, but worse. Some of the abbreviations they use to cram the station names into the 15 available characters are just laughable, never mind their typographically obnoxious inability to display lowercase descenders. And when you board the train at Lucien L’Allier they just say “exo”, as if showing a countdown to departure or the train’s ultimate destination were some sort of technological impossiblility. Gah!
At least the STM went with two-line displays for their buses.
-
Kate
A fourth arrest was made Tuesday in the shooting in August that killed three people in Rivière‑des‑Prairies.
-
Kate
The group that owns and operates La Tulipe is calling for help as it is threatened with closure.
Late last night I saw a good tweet: “You’d think in a province that is hyper focused on preserving its culture it would do more to keep the places where we can experience and participate in that culture from being closed by one fucking idiot. In a heritage building, no less.”
The Monument National has a sort of protected zone around it. So should this one.
The Plateau has lost a bunch of performance venues in recent years. This didn’t come up in the election, but maybe it should have. The Plateau, including Mile End, is not a dormitory suburb, it’s supposed to be a lively part of the central city, but that isn’t going to last if its venues are shut down by property owners.
Tim
Unbelievable fail for the city to approve the conversion of the building adjacent from commercial to residential.
Kate
They say it was a mistake. That’s a big mistake to make. Or could somebody have used leverage or money to get a spot zoning change made for them?
Tim
Follow the money. Who from the municipality signed the approval forms? Who is on the board of directors for the company that did the renovation?
Chris 22:10 on 2021-12-15 Permalink
Those 95 include *suspected* cases, if I’m reading it right.
Also, “cases” is a less interesting metric these days, with almost everyone vaccinated. How many of these 95 have any symptoms at all? sniffles? hospitalization? Article doesn’t say. I guess a less scary headline would get less clicks.
Kevin 22:39 on 2021-12-15 Permalink
Cases is always interesting because they’re the canary in the coal mine. Quebec has gone from no cases on Nov. 30 to 95 in Montreal in 2 weeks.
The symptoms among these few currently infected with Omicron don’t matter as much as you may think. As always with Covid, many have mild symptoms, a few need hospitalization, and fewer still need an ICU.
What matters is how many, over a short time frame, get infected. The game plan has always been to stretch out that time frame as long as possible so the hospitals are not overwhelmed. And two years into this war, a lot of resources are being stretched thin. There’s very little left to give.
What’s notable about Omicron is, according to the WHO in today’s meeting if I understood it correctly, a) It is far more virulent than other strains and b) those who have the mild symptoms are those who had Covid, and were subsequently given two doses of vaccine. The young age and better health of the average person in those areas affected until now is also a factor.
Chris 23:49 on 2021-12-15 Permalink
>Cases is always interesting because…
Sure, but *less* interesting, because more and more of the cases are less and less consequential. And for the article to say nothing beyond raw case count is quite, ummm, a disservice (I’m feeling charitable).
>What’s notable about Omicron is… It is far more virulent…
On the contrary, it is *less* virulent. I assume you meant to say it’s more transmissible.
nau 09:14 on 2021-12-16 Permalink
In terms of overwhelming the healthcare system, more transmissible can easily be worse than more virulent. If Omicron turns out to cause half as many hospitalizations from the same number of cases as the original strain, while causing three times as many cases, that’ll be more hospitalizations. Also, as it can infect people who are vaccinated, that means the vaccinated healthcare workers are susceptible. Even if their cases are personally mild, they’ll no doubt have to quarantine so as not to contribute to further transmission, which would reduce staffing just as demand for their services increases.
Kate 09:42 on 2021-12-16 Permalink
nau, news Thursday is that Notre-Dame hospital is dealing with an outbreak in its surgery department, meaning the postponement of a lot of procedures. As you say, that’s the kind of problem Omicron can cause.
Kevin 10:49 on 2021-12-16 Permalink
Chris,
Sorry, I meant infectious. It spreads easily even to those who have been vaccinated.
We don’t know for sure that it causes less serious disease because as the WHO points out, the people who have been getting it so far are the equivalent of being triply vaccinated, and they tend to be younger and healthier than the average North American and European populations that were hit hard by Alpha and are being hit hard by Delta.
Omicron hasn’t hit elderly populations yet, so nobody can say if it’s milder or not.