Quebec City has been stood up by the NHL, which has punctured François Legault’s hopes of reviving a team for la vieille capitale. I wonder whether this makes it more or less probable that Montreal will be forced to adopt half a baseball team, as a consolation prize, or whether it’s irrelevant to that issue.
Updates from January, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Quebec says parents may be recruited to replace sick teachers, once schools reopen on Monday.
Good luck with that.
In other Covid news: cancer surgeries are being postponed; hospitals are running out of Covid treatment drugs; the soccer stadium will shelter 300 homeless people with Covid; large stores will have to observe the vaccine mandate for customers; the curfew will be lifted on Monday. The Journal is citing Quebec public health’s optimistic view that we’re already past peak Omicron.
Kevin
Thursday morning, INSPQ wrote that it was a 50-50 chance that we were at the peak.
“Dans la moitié des simulations, les cas et les nouvelles hospitalisations pourraient avoir déjà atteint leur sommet ou l’atteindre d’ici quelques jours. Pour l’autre moitié des simulations, les cas et les nouvelles hospitalisations pourraient continuer d’augmenter encore quelques jours ou semaines. ”
INESSS, which was led by Luc Boileau until Monday, said they didn’t have enough data to make any projections.
Attachez vos toques
Bert
What if the parent wears a Hijab or Kippah? At least crosses ward off vampires. /s
Meezly
Legault: “I can’t say it enough: the priority in Quebec must be education.”
That’s rich considering his administration hasn’t done anything to prioritize it.
Kate
Bert, I haven’t got a media link, but I’ve seen it reported on Twitter that the parents would not be subject to the secularity law.
Maybe I should put on a hijab and go around and offer to teach English at the big high school on St‑Laurent…
dhomas
What he means is “the priority in Quebec must be to keep kids in school, so the REAL businessmen can get some work done.”
Just the fact that he’s recommending parent volunteers shows what he thinks of teaching as a profession. Sure, you spent 4 years getting a degree in order to be qualified to teach, but yeah, it’s fine, we can just take someone off the street to replace you, no problem.
Or, “how to invalidate one’s profession in only one press conference!”, if you want the clickbait title.Tim S.
How long until they ask the army to start helping out?
Meezly
@dhomas. Oh, I knew exactly what he meant, and what his real priorities actually are.
dhomas
I figured you did, @Meezly. I was just piling on. Full disclosure: my wife is a teacher, so this hits close to home.
GC
@Meezly 100%
@Kate Thanks for the laugh!Meezly
@dhomas. Courage to you and your wife.
MtlWeb
@dhomas. Perfectly said about our teachers; after the infamous anges gardiens reverence from Legault, the same ‘recognition’ perspective is being given to acute/critical care staff in our health care sites by the powers that be via redeploying staff from non-acute care roles to working in the ICU/ER armed with 1-2-3 shifts of ‘training’….disrespectful and a brutal source of stress for them, an added workload for the present staff, and then there’s the patients….in case anyone still doubts what is going on in our fair city’s sites at this point, 22 months later, it is a bed management mess. Have been doing this since 90, including that period when we closed 5 hospitals and absorbed the affected staff, and have never seen the overall morale at such a low, powerless point. And it’s not the 45-60 year old veterans who have remained (so many took their retirement during the past 2 years) who are showing the effects, it’s the 30-45 year old crowd who are questioning their choice of work environment as most have children in daycare/school and are exhausted/stressed at work and at home. If these professionals choose to leave for positions that allow some type of work/life balance, I have no idea who will replace them. Also, in case anyone thinks that the 15k government stimulus has been successful and ‘attractive’ for retention and new hires in health care, it’s the 22-35 year old newbies who are taking advantage and signing the contract, as they should, not the older staff, who would rather be like me and work part-time to maintain some sense of physical and emotional rest – yes, I was told in December that I would need to convert to a full time position but being a teacher as well has allowed me to keep my status part-time. Thank you Kate for all the work you put into this resourceful site for all Montrealers.
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Kate
I’ve seen some of these ironic Covid deaths from U.S. sources, but here’s an anti-vaccination Canadian army veteran from the Montreal area who just died of Covid.
YUL514
I shouldn’t laugh at the dead but this site is hilarious.
walkerp
It’s a really sad story about that guy and one more person who got sucked up into conspiracy and delusional madness that harmed him, his family and society. The reaction to these articles is always a big argument about whether we should be sympathetic or not to these people, while completely ignoring the real culprit in the room: unregulated social media and the criminals who exploit them.
I am sure you are all tired of me going on and on about this, but to me putting some serious laws in place, going after the big social media companies is the most effective path to prevent this damaging behaviour (and not just damaging for public health but also our polity). We can do this in Canada, too. The government sure moved fast to protect local media industries (though it got stalled by the senate). Why is not a priority to start protecting citizens?
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Kate
The city is refusing to take delivery of its new recycling centre because the paper waste it produces is far too contaminated.
It isn’t mentioned here, but isn’t this problem partly due to the sloppy way we’re told to recycle? If we made more of an effort to keep paper and cardboard away from other recyclables, if people were educated a little better about garbage vs. compost vs. recyclables, that might automatically produce a better result.
Andrew
I only recently became aware of https://cavaouwebapp.recyc-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/accueil which seems like a good tool, but going by what I see in my building’s shared recycling bins a lot of people have no clue.
Ephraim
When you see the homeless peeing into the paper recycling in the park (green bins), you sort of understand that it’s not going to be what you expect it to be. But basically used paper goes into the compost, as long as it’s not plastified.
mare
@Ephraim The park attendants who pick up the garbage in ‘our’ park throw both bags (garbage and recycling) together in the back of their trucks. Both bags are black, so I doubt they’ll be triage later, so none of that is going to recycling. I just hope someone has picked the cans out because aluminium from returned cans is almost 100% recyclable. (There’s a reason tomato juice cans don’t have a refund charge, they’re too contaminated.)
Ephraim
All metals should be easily recyclable regardless of contamination. The temperatures of smelting should burn all contaminants.
John B
I have been told that, at least in Verdun, the contents of recycling bins in parks get put with the garbage. Too many people just use them as a second garbage can for them to to to the recycling plant.
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Kate
A police officer trying to deliver a subpoena was beaten up on the front step of a Lasalle residence on Wednesday. La Presse tells the same brief story but goes into a side story about Sanjay Vig that doesn’t seem too relevant.
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Kate
Quebec may have reduced the obligatory Covid isolation period to five days, but the STM is keeping its workers home for ten days nonetheless.
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Kate
The city has been losing people since the pandemic began, as people began fleeing to the regions.
Joey
A .05% decline and La Presse says the city is emptying out. I wonder how much of that is international students.
Joey
Sorry, that should read 0.5%, not .05%…
GC
Is there any reason to think it will continue after the Pandemic is over? Maybe, if remote work continues to be more of a thing. I’m not sure there’s any reason to panic, though. I’m curious how it compares to other sizeable cities in Canada/USA. They compare it to other cities in Quebec, in the article, but there’s a whole world out there…
Kate
News today also talks about Toronto losing people. I’ve seen stories about how people are leaving London for smaller towns.
The irony is that big-city people can ruin small-town life for people who were already living there. I saw something recently about how rents in Sherbrooke have become unaffordable, for example.
Kevin
It is the largest decline in 20 years. 2.6% according to Stats Qc, although they appear to be including deaths to get that figure.
Joey
@Kevin don’t all time-series statistics need to be interpreted with extreme caution because of COVID? In the past 20 years only 2020 and 2021 are serious outliers.
Anyway, La Presee yesterday said Montreal is emptying out, that’s why today it reports home prices are up 10% year over year, because everyone is fleeing.
Kate
Joey, what’s the logic? Fewer people, less demand, why would home prices rise?
Joey
@Kate – that’s the point of my sarcasm, no? The city “se vide” says La Presse but the price of homes continues to skyrocket. Either the city is not actually emptying or prices are increasing despite falling demand.
BTW the difference between the number I quoted and the one Kevin cited, I think, is the difference between greater Montreal area (mine) and Montreal Island. It seems as if the net decline in Montreal Island population is offset by a net increase in non-Montreal-Island but still greater Montreal population. Anyhow, the data is for the year ending July 1, 2021, meaning the trend may have already abated with the return of international students in the fall (“Avec la reprise de l’immigration internationale observée l’été dernier, le phénomène devrait s’estomper dans les données qui seront publiées l’an prochain. « Dans quelle mesure, il faudra voir, mais à mon avis, c’est le changement auquel il faut s’attendre pour l’année prochaine », estime la démographe.”)
Kevin
Housing prices rise because of the mismatch in supply and demand.
It has been decades since Canada built enough family sized homes to match the population increases. Instead cities have built tremendous numbers of small condos.
So even though more homes went on the market in Montreal the past 2-3 years, there weren’t enough of the places that families wanted, hence bidding wars and, as the demos show, an exodus of families.
And that is without even getting into the places that have been taken off the market and changed into Airbnb’s.
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Kate
A man got shot walking along in Nouveau-Bordeaux on Wednesday evening. He and his companion were, for a change, not known to police.
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Kate
A building development in the Dorval Technoparc has been cancelled, which is good news for the local ecology.
Meezly
That’s great news for a change. But using “plug pulled” for wetland development may not be the best phrase since Technoparc has already been drained twice by construction!
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Kate
Students are ordered back to school Monday and it’s also predicted that the curfew will be lifted as well, although that’s not yet official.
walkerp
Seems a bit hasty to do both, though I guess restaurants and gyms, etc. are all still closed and the holiday season is over.
Lot of amateur epidemiologists on twitter freaking out about schools opening.
Tim S.
Aren’t we all amateur epidemiologists by now?
My own impression is that what kept kids reasonably safe up until now was contact tracing – the fact that public health was able to quarantine infected classes quickly. I don’t think the ability to do that has been there since mid-December. We’ll see, I guess.
walkerp
Also, there has been a big push for vaccination for kids, though it is sadly much higher in higher-income neighbourhoods.
Why do you think the contact tracing is no longer there? Did they stop doing it? My understanding was that it was quite good in Montreal, at least.
Kevin
Contact tracing stopped because there are no longer enough people to do it. Everyone’s been diverted to vaccination, or to working in hospitals.
Tim S.
Well, it’s hard to contact trace if you can’t get a test. Is there a way to self-report rapid tests yet? If a family calls in a positive rapid test to the school, who has authority to send the class home?
I’m not dead-set against going back to in-person school, but my stress level has definitely gone up this morning and I found Legault’s announcement really tone-deaf. We’re sending our kids back to get sick, and maybe on some level the cost-benefit works out but it’s hardly a « bonne nouvelle ».walkerp
Got it.
They do have rapid tests at the schools, so we shall see if they get reported starting next week. Good times!Joey
@Tim S. something definitely changed in December – the DSP was offering inconsistent guidelines. For example – a friend’s child is in kindergarten; there was a positive case and the class was shuttered for two weeks, and then that was shortened after all the other kids tested negative (PCR – early December before Omicron really showed up). Our kid had a case in his class (and a couple of others in older classes). The kids were told to come to school and to stay if they tested negative on a rapid test. The next day (last Friday of the calendar year) two more kids called in positive and they sent everyone home at 9:45. Note that this isn’t a question of inadequate contact tracing – it’s not having clear guidelines/rules for what to do to prevent an outbreak.
Given the presence of rapid tests and the fact that many kids are (even double) vaccinated, I think the return to school can work. That said, the main challenge will likely be teacher shortages. At a certain point, the school system just becomes a babysitter.
Meezly
Has anyone seen the interactive map of the school vaccination ratios? The majority of schools are not ready.
Kevin
@Joey
In mid-December, the week before schools closed, public health sent out notes saying that they were overwhelmed and had sent out incorrect information regarding isolation/quarantine orders to many schools.
vasi 22:21 on 2022-01-13 Permalink
Can’t we give Quebec City the expensive and pointless baseball team? Why does it have to be in Montreal?
DeWolf 10:48 on 2022-01-14 Permalink
Because Stephen Bronfman and his buddies aren’t from Quebec City.
Jebediah Pallendrome 14:06 on 2022-01-14 Permalink
Coming later this year thanks to your tax dollars: the LNH-Quebec
paulg 15:05 on 2022-01-14 Permalink
Stood up implies the parties agreed to something prior…More like Quebec’s pleas to go on a date with the NHL were unequivocally rejected (again).
We are heading into Steve Urkel territory here.
Kate 15:32 on 2022-01-14 Permalink
I had to look up Steve Urkel.
Uatu 19:03 on 2022-01-14 Permalink
Heh I’m curious to see if QC can level up to Stefan urquelle