Chantal Rouleau has softened her tone on the REM de l’Est a little, saying she remains optimistic the project will go ahead, a bit of a shift from ordering the ARTM to redo its homework, as she did last week. She also says, and this seems rather late in the game, that she will bend to allowing the city to have input.
Updates from February, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The city is planning to widen its right of first refusal on land and property as it strives to meet its promise of 60,000 new social housing units.
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Kate
Shady business is alleged to have taken place around Ricova, the company to which the city has confided its recycling.
DeWolf
Considering how dangerously its trucks operate on the street I am not surprised at all.
walkerp
So gross.
Am I understanding the opening section, that the Quebec Superior Court literally defended Ricova’s argument that they aren’t the same Ricova as the one in Panama, both of whom have the same president and lawyer? How could they possibly have done that? And when it says “la Cour supérieure” and “le tribunal” can we not get some names? Who are the judges who could possibly come to such a conclusion? How is this not blatant evidence of corruption?
This province, man.steph
these jugements are public: http://citoyens.soquij.qc.ca/
(I just searched for “Ricova” and sorted by datethe february 7th 2022 jugement is file no. 505-17-010785-188 SOUS LA PRÉSIDENCE DE
L’HONORABLE CHANTAL MASSE, J.C.S
jugement link:
http://citoyens.soquij.qc.ca/php/decision.php?ID=692502383B3183218001C75739EEABC3&captchaToken=03AGdBq25Ea6iTAY04MGXUDP8P1kb5v5I6lyJni2JCEXt_Kb5z7Q-tzbrXDkRE7qIDp2XmyHFNv8oKLrTCA_WVJqIie4JCjHVy7eHf_W1LfPASz_aB9kjkn__N_sJBjDfHDW75oIQpEsW656H9Tts06O5QVWNj84naRkOTy9XvjCs2C5O1Lm5-KOiPLiH-22ldpgYs2TTrDrdAAaj4fHNEWQfeW5NYMwFQoOEywnHWhjP4Ktu9PeDCivCGF-ShG6kFX4PJQtQ_ld_hZsz_e0zi8y05WVd6D4Knj3WFXe2zMRNsWf2UFw-riUIIzDn4KP_UH18icN04VEMVy938HGs9bKg4nrff2yYCC04ej5GazunKW92f3RYB0fOCPqbPaA-ARBCi48G0u4NkBGjpGu_rFiiXL2U3k9cKzgCraEnPmHvyJ8aAULuM5vKKyBJz2wpNi97owX1TKwZdpGblUY930m_oSUWbx1V_3gH.John
walkerp. Ricova (both companies) and their lawyer sought to have the case dismissed.
The judge wrote (original in French) “In light of the elements currently on file […], a reasonable and prudent person cannot conclude that there is no basis for claiming tort liability or abuse of process by Colubriale and Ricova Int. [of Quebec],..”
She agreed with the Italian company suing, and allowed the case to continue.
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Kate
Loew’s cinema, which stood on Ste‑Catherine since 1917, has been demolished to make space for a condo tower.
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Kate
The 2012 protests here, the printemps érable, got a lot of press, but did they achieve their initial goal of holding down university tuition? La Presse’s Francis Vailles says no. Since that time, tuition has risen twice as fast as inflation, but a larger percentage of the typical age group is now going to university than ever. Not surprising, given that even the meanest office job now requires a BA.
ant6n
Meanest office job?
Also, international tuition more than doubled…Kate
Mean in the sense of “Of a common or low origin, grade, or quality; common; humble.”
Joey
I don’t understand the framing/headline/lede. The article explains in extreme detail how the evolution of tuition, ancillary fees, financial aid and university participation have all trended in the direction students wanted since 2012 – students achieved their goal of killing the Charest tuition hikes (and, ultimately, the Charest government) yet it’s a “partie nulle” because tution is rising at the rate of individual revenue, somewhat faster than inflation (let’s check back in a year)? This is a shining example of how economics reporters can be out-clever themselves. A more honest approach would have been to look at different types of students and compare now to 2012 to the proposed Charest hikes. As ant6n points out, there’s hardly an even distribution of outcomes – low-income students? Better off. Kids of the middle class? Probably about the same, though that depends on whether they rely more on tax credits (worse off) or financial aid (better off). Rich Bahrainis? “Worse” off, technically speaking. GND? Much better off.
ant6n
I came as an international student, close to 20 years ago. I was a middle class German, not a rich Bahraini. With the hikes as they instituted them after 2012, I would´ve never been able to come to Canada and wouldn’t be a Canadian now. Framing international students as a bunch of rich folks from autocratic countries ignores that there are also plenty who aren’t rich (aren’t from France), and who may come from arguably more democratic countries.
(Btw, Canadians and Americans going to Germany pay the same low tuition as everybode else, so more and more North Americans are going there, as there are more and more programs in English. I feel somewhat ambivalent about that)
Joey
Fair enough, though the trend to treat international students solely as cash cows began well before 2012, and is certainly not limited to Quebec. Around that time universities could charge international students whatever they wanted in certain programs (science, engineering, business, etc.) and not those with whom the province had an agreement (Francophonie, chiefly) – those students paid QC-student fees. So you had scenarios where Acadians from across the NB border were paying more than students from France. Anyway, that’s a digression. I think the deregulated tuition for international students has been expanded to more if not all programs of study. When I was a student and then working in higher ed the student associations spent a huge amount of energy trying to maintain low tuition fees for international students, which really spoke to the global class solidarity angle – though, you know, the wealthy Bahrainis benefited as much as the middle-class Germans.
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Kate
An SNC-Lavalin vice-president arrested last year on charges of corruption says that paying out big bribes in certain situations is how things get done.
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Kate
Metro reports that the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine house is for sale for just shy of $6 million, and that Heritage Montreal would like it to become a museum or at least be bought by a conscientious owner.
JaneyB
It needs to become a museum or some other history-centric function. That man was, together with Baldwin, basically modelled the Eng-Fr political tolerance that made this country possible… I guess the museum will need federal money.
Kate
It should, but the option’s been there for some time and nobody has bit. The hope for a conscientious owner is an empty one, because we know that when you own a property, you can do what you like, within zoning regulations.
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Kate
It’s been some time that Linda Gyulai has been investigating a circumstance in which the city reclaimed some lots in the east end, more or less on the sly. Even though the Gazette fronts this story with clickbaity headlines, in the text we see that a report says the city made errors and didn’t keep records but there’s no evidence showing a lack of integrity.
ant6n 05:26 on 2022-02-15 Permalink
If the city gets to have some input now, maybe some public experts (not CDPQInfra) can study some options. For example, make a comparison with the Pink Line, or a combination of Pink Line and REM2.
ant6n 02:44 on 2022-02-16 Permalink
Now Rouleau is unhappy with the libs because they didn’t want a motion that rem2 is super important https://twitter.com/rouleauchantal/status/1493690542386987008
Faiz Imam 13:16 on 2022-02-16 Permalink
If the plan is to have an elevated line, the current route is about as good as you can get. Some small adjustments can be made, but on the whole there is no magic route that solves peoples critiques,
But that underlines the real point, which is that the much superior solution is to have a true underground heavy rail line, like the initial pink like proposals pushed for.
But the budgets don’t exist for that under the current government, and a heavy rail system cannot be compatible with the REMs existing stock and equipment.
I don’t know what the answer is, a ugly compromise that big business supports? or do we cancel it in favor of a superior plan that might never actually happen?
Speaking of not happening, whats up with the blue line extension these days?
Kate 15:01 on 2022-02-16 Permalink
Faiz Imam, good question about the progress of the blue line. I try to add updates on that story to this page, but the latest story I have is from last October on the progress of the Lacordaire station and I can’t find anything more recent.
ant6n 18:30 on 2022-02-16 Permalink
Not sure I get the point about “heavy rail” compatibility. That term has do many possible definitions that it’s effectively meaningless. Arguably the pink line proposal included “lighter” rolling stock than rem1 (by train width).