Another demonstration held Saturday demanded more action on social housing from the Legault government.
Updates from February, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
As always, Toula Drimonis with some calm good sense: You can’t honk away a pandemic.
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Kate
CDPQ-Infra, which last week almost sounded like it would accede to the ARTM critique of the REM de l’Est, has backed up and is now calling it into question. CDPQ‑Infra claims not to buy either the ARTM’s projection of low potential ridership and its problem with the unfair competition to the metro’s green line.
ant6n
I mean if course they answer this way. Infra for the cdpq has always been a PR game. During the REM 1 they kept releasing “corrections” to what critics wrote. Although back then the city, STM, VIA and AMT kept their mouths shut and the journalists mostly listened to the cdpq. Now it’s not so obvious what will happen.
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Kate
La Presse is looking back ten years to the printemps érable in which student dissent widened to become a general expression of dissatisfaction with how things were going in Quebec under Jean Charest. With a photo essay.
La Presse even talks to some of the cops involved in policing the demonstrations in 2012.
The Gazette also has a look back to that time.
Updated to add: the Journal talks to Gabriel Nadeau‑Dubois, who came to prominence during the 2012 protests, and La Presse to both Nadeau‑Dubois and Martine Desjardins. Desjardins, also notable as a student spokesman, was briefly a PQ MNA and is now director‑general of the Quebec federation of professional journalists.
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Kate
The vaccine protest and counter-protest are set to begin at Jarry Park.
Update: My street, which adjoins the protest, is jammed with traffic. I saw people walking past with signs saying things about Saskatchewan and Alberta, but I didn’t see more. Here are updates from TVA and La Presse.
Update: Christian Dubé seems set to withdraw the requirement for a vaccine passport. Well, that’s pragmatic. Give in to the populists and win votes.
A report from Le Devoir has some good photos including, sadly, one of the local cafés festooned with convoy support. I know where I won’t be bringing my custom any more.
Important observation by Jaggi Singh: SPVM cops wearing “thin blue line” badges, which they are not meant to wear with their uniforms. As he says, “The Montreal cops (SPVM) who were the most aggressive against us counter-protesters to the far-right convoy here were the riot police openly wearing the anti-racial justice “thin blue line” patches on their uniforms.”
Meezly
Any “protest” that attracts racists and fascists should always have a counter-protest. This is basically the purpose of Antifa. I’m glad they are there.
GC
You can’t control who shows up at a protest, of course but the main organizers set off so many red flags that the whole thing is tainted.
Blork
Here’s how this will unfold. The truckers will stand around being stupid and listening to ridiculous speeches by idiots like Maxine Bernier, and making noise and honking horns, but being mostly harmless and unthreatening. Some of the counter-protesters will become very vocal and angry and will start smashing things. As a result, the cops will come down harder on the counter-protesters because they’re the ones who seem to be the greater threat to public order. This will result in the truckers thinking they’ve won and that the public are behind them, and the public thinking that the cops are deliberately targeting the counter-protesters for political reasons.
In other words, the usual three-dimensional matrix of bullshit, with hardly anyone (protester, media, observer, police) being able to think clearly about what’s going on.
Tim S.
I keep thinking about how I didn’t go to the anti-war protests in 2003 because I didn’t want to be associated with people who were actual supporters of Saddam Hussein. All these years later I’m still not sure if that was the right call, but just pointing out that you do have a choice about who you associate with.
And as for the populist position, this poll showed most people are some form of cautious, with a slight majority saying it’s too soon: https://twitter.com/JeanMarcLeger1/status/1491901583231234051
DeWolf
I’ve had mixed feelings about the usefulness of the vaccine passport ever since Omicron hit. Given that two doses no longer prevent transmission, the passport should either require three doses or its use should be suspended until it’s necessary again.
But like everything else it can be an effective tool to control an epidemic. Denmark and Israel were both early adopters of vaccine passports, then they withdrew them when things got better, reimposed them when things got worse. Now they’re scaling them back once again as the situation improves.
Given that Covid isn’t going anywhere we will need to build some flexibility into our systems. We can’t have restrictions forever, but at the same time, we need to be prepared to reimpose them if the next time there is a particularly bad wave.
DeWolf
Before I get dogpiled i should clarify that I’m not in favour of dropping the vaccine passport right now – I think it should require three doses instead. All the data shows that a booster is effective at preventing an Omicron infection, even with the the new BA1 subvariant.
Keep the passport for places where transmission is most likely to occur (bars, restaurants, cinemas, etc.) and make sure it requires a booster. Drop it for big box stores which is just political theatre.
steph
>You can’t control who shows up at a protest,
You can sure make sure the racists and the fascist don’t feel welcome.I know in the first day of the Ottawa protest, their were sigtings of nazi flags & confederate flags. Can anyone validate if those displays have disappeared from the convoy?
Chris
>Can anyone validate if those displays have disappeared from the convoy?
There are hours of livefeed videos on youtube. I’ve flipped though them, and not seen any. Honestly, the videos I’ve seen remind me a lot of Occupy a decade ago. From the other side of the spectrum, sure, but otherwise quite similar. There too the media smeared the whole thing because of the behaviour of a small minority. And they let Occupy Ottawa go on for 6 weeks before forcibly evicting them, though the situations are not identical of course.
I really liked Robyn Urback’s recent comments.
Meezly, I think you are grossly exaggerating/misunderstanding who 99% of those protesters are. You are playing into a dangerously divisive game, accidentally or deliberately.
Chris
Meezly, I wonder: what are your thoughts are on all the rioting, looting, and arson by a small fraction of the BLM protesters? Do you recall how some media and politicians used that to tar the whole thing? How some tried to use it to nullify legitimate grievances? How it was used as a wedge to divide the populace? Do you see no similarities here today?
Myles
It’s not just random people. Their leaders are white supremacists who put in writing that they want to stage a far-right coup.
Raymond Lutz
Interesting story where we learn there were (still is?) TWO camps at Ottawa: Dispatch from the Ottawa Front: Sloly is telling you all he’s in trouble. Who’s listening?
Meezly
Quebec Pro Choix. Is it a movement supporting women’s right to access safe abortions, or have they coopted that too for government imposed vaccinations?
dhomas
Good ole whataboutism, eh Chris? Even if the BLM movement was “wrong” doesn’t make this one right.
These guys yelling for “freedom” make me laugh. What freedom have they lost? And who took it away from them? The government took away their “freedom”? And their solution is to topple the government? They are basically anarchists. They don’t seem to understand that a) there are and always have been limits to freedom and b) there is no freedom without government. People have always had their freedom limited by the law, otherwise things like private property would not exist and anyone could be “free” to take whatever they want from you. The government exists to enforce a social contract. These protesters wouldn’t survive in the world they are clamoring for.walkerp
dhomas, they aren’t even anarchists. These people are protesting so they can continue to suck from the teat of giant corporations. It’s pathetic.
Of the hundreds of reasons why their “protests” are bullshit, the biggest one is that if they had just shut up and waited, most of the restrictions would be lifted anyways. No government wants to keep these things in place. It’s cleary a tiny minority of idiots propelled by a few con artists and external agitators and money.
The very fact that the US has a vaccine mandate for truckers shows that the entire premise of the protest is based on a lie.dhomas
@walkerp I agree, these people are yelling at clouds. The restrictions will be lifted soon(ish) as the Omicron wave crests. This will happen whether or not these protesters had appeared. What worries me is that the “freedom” protesters will take credit for it, empowering them to hold these protests again in the future.
Kevin
Absolutely terrible misinformation in that Leger question.
And anarchists are short-sighted. One of the few philisophical arguments that can be defeated by argumentum ad lapidem.
GC
I agree with your, steph. Myles made my point far better than I did.
Joey
The parcours of the three principal student leaders really isn’t surprising. Léo Bureau-Blouin initially agreed to an interview but then backed out because commenting on these matters would interfere with his work as a McKinsey consultant.
Meezly
I debated whether it was worth responding to Chris’ direct questioning on a weekend, or any given moment really. It was a resounding no.
Someone I know and respect made very similar arguments that Chris had made, but much more articulately about the recent Vancouver protest in response to the Ottawa occupation: http://stuartparker.ca/why-the-coverage-of-the-trucker-protest-should-worry-all-canadians/
His arguments however had one big flaw that got exposed pretty quickly: https://www.straight.com/covid-19-pandemic/news/on-truckers-convoy-extremists-in-ottawa-and-a-fundamental-misunderstanding-about-covid-19
No matter how articulate you are in your arguments, to quote the Strait commentator, any minimizing of extremism in the organizers behind the protests undercuts the brave work of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network in highlighting growing fascism in Canada, as well as the brave journalists who are willing to physically be on the ground and cover these events.
Mark Côté
Kevin, one could make that same argument about liberal democracy literally only a few centuries ago.
MarcG
Anarchism is a very misunderstood concept since it’s been mixed up with Libertarian/anarcho-capitalism, which I think is what people are referring to in this thread.
Nick D
I just wanted to say “thank you” to meezly for those two links. The Stuart Parker piece really touched on a lot of concerns I’ve had about how us “urban progressives” have been reacting to the protests, and the Straight article is a very good counterpart.
Raymond Lutz
Oui, et il y a l’anarcho-syndicalisme et aussi l’anarcho-communisme (aka communisme libertaire) 🙂 (Chomsky interview)
nau
Argumentum ad lapidem is a logical fallacy. It can’t be used to defeat any position, philosophical or otherwise. Its usage only serves as an indicator of tribalism. While other posters might be referring to right-wing anarchism, in Kevin’s case, other comments he’s made in the past make it pretty clear his contempt is directed just as much at left anarchists (and the non-anarchist left, for that matter).
Meezly
@Nick D, you’re welcome. It’s complicated, and yet it’s not. Why try to explain it when both those pieces can do it for me!
Kevin
@nau
I don’t take people calling for anarchy seriously because it all falls apart as soon as people start throwing rocks (hence my argumentum ad lapidem pun).My contempt is reserved for people who make proposals based on a tabula rasa while not realizing they’re being influenced by existing power brokers.
Kate
Meezly, those are good links. Thank you.
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Kate
Aaron Derfel says the Jewish General ER has reached 211% occupancy amid an influx of Covid patients.
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Kate
Two Black teenagers have launched a racial profiling suit against three SPVM officers and the city over incidents in 2021 in which the officers allegedly knelt on the necks of the boys, both 15 years old at the time, in the environs of a big high school in Villeray.
I know the area well. It’s flooded with students at certain hours. When police have to resort to charging a teenager with jaywalking to concoct an excuse for cuffing and physically subduing him, you know there’s been dirty work at the crossroads.
NB that kneeling on necks “is part of the National Use of Force Model that is taught at Quebec’s policing school.”
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Kate
A woman was arrested Friday afternoon in connection with a fire on Queen Mary that injured three people and did considerable damage to a commercial-residential building.
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Kate
Free bus shuttles are circulating to bring people from Lasalle, Montreal North, St‑Léonard and Ville-Émard to vaccination sites, and back home again, but only till February 19. The line is called VAX‑19.
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Kate
Media are looking at this week’s shooting death of Domenico Macri, whom they allege to have been a “private moneylender.” Macri’s brother Mario was shot dead in Lasalle similarly in 2018. TVA also links him to brothers Jamie and Cody Laramée, of the West End Gang, shot dead in 2013, also in Lasalle.
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Kate
A rather cute little house in the Village was the site of a fire early Friday, which should be a warning to landlords that there are risks in leaving their buildings empty.
Jonathan
On that note, my neighbours recently bought a house out in the country and they are using their current place as a pied à terre en ville. Meanwhile, the hydro stand on their roof has been knocked down and is precariously just hovering over the sidewalk.
On the other side of my house, the neighbours (who are renters) bought a new house in the laurentiens and their rent is so cheap (they’ve lived there 20+ years) that they prefer to hold onto it for their kids to have occasional house parties.
I wonder how many houses are sitting around empty
dhomas
Whenever I see a story like this, I wonder if it was really an accident. That house was built in 1875 (https://histograd.com/graph.php?&id=1144663&street=Saint-Christophe) and perhaps couldn’t be torn down to build new condos. But if it “accidentally” burned down…
There’s also a nice empty lot right next to it. Perfect for building even more condos on a combined lot?Kate
Jonathan, a lot of residential space is sitting empty. I saw this while working for the census last summer. A whole row of duplexes on one street. An entire apartment building on another. Lots of duplex and triplex flats standing empty.
I was interested by this piece I saw about Amsterdam making it illegal to keep apartments empty, and giving itself the power to force landlords to rent places out. I wish we could do that here but I suspect Montreal simply doesn’t have the power within law.
dhomas, maybe so, but imagine owning a cute little house like that and putting it to the torch, it’s sad.
Kevin
The past two years have been weird as people figure out if they can live full time at their cottage. Or spend a month at a lover’s place to avoid commuting and curfew.
Meezly
Vancouver has been plagued by empty houses for decades for other reasons. It’s been very damaging to the city. The BC NDPs finally implemented the Empty Home Tax a few years ago. Too little too late. But yes, it’d be the province who’d have the power to do something about it.
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Kate
Errol Burke, whose racial profiling by SPVM police in 2017 has been acknowledged, says a 30‑day suspension of the officers is not enough. Not only that: the Human Rights commission ordered the city to pay Mr Burke $35,000 in damages, plus $5,000 from each policeman. The city has refused to pay up; he says the cops should be fired.
Ephraim
They should simply hire a bailiff. The costs of the bailiff are added to the bill and it’s usually really quick when a bailiff shows up and starts attaching items for sale. (And if you haven’t seen Quebec bailiff’s at work, they have a show on Noovo on Friday at 8PM showing them.) I’ve hired a bailiff once… it was quite swift, I got paid my judgement and the whole of the bailiff expense REALLY quickly.
Kate
I don’t think these rulings are quite the same kind of debt. The commission says “pay” – the city says “we don’t think we have to” – then it goes to the human rights tribunal, a higher body, which puts their foot down. It’s just a delaying tactic I’ve seen reported often.
GC
Does the fact that it’s a “non-binding decision” mean they can just feel free to ignore it? I’m not a lawyer, but isn’t that essentially a recommendation without a lot of legal weight?
Kate
I think that’s exactly what it does mean, GC. I think the commission hopes to use moral force, and when that doesn’t work, victims can appeal to the tribunal.
H.John
As Kate points out, decisions from the Commission are non-binding and not enforceable.
If the party against whom the complaint was brought does not agree to respect the decision, the Commission then decides whether or not it wants to take the complaint to the Tribunal. If it does proceed, it makes the arguments and pays the costs. If the Commission declines to proceed, the complainant can take it the Tribunal on their own, and at their own cost.
The CTV article mentions that it is before the Tribunal at this point with a hearing sometime this year.https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/the-human-rights-tribunal-introduction/
GC
Thanks for elaborating on that.
Kate
H. John, yes, thanks for the details.
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Kate
Serge Sasseville, elected as councillor for Peter McGill in November, has left Ensemble Montréal to sit as an independent. He’s only saying he has a different way of seeing municipal politics.
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Kate
The populist protest is planning to come to Montreal Saturday, gathering at Jarry Park at 10 am and holding a tantrum in the streets of Villeray. The mayor says she will not tolerate any street barricades.
JaneyB
Interesting choice of location. I guess they are planning to block the Met/Cremazie around there. Maybe add to the normal L’Acadie tangle. Apparently, some of the ringleaders are former cops and army people so they know where the cities’ vulnerable areas are.
Kate
Could be that. But I wonder if they even know that Trudeau’s riding office is near there, although it’s inside a fortress-like building now, and unlikely to be open on a Saturday anyway.
Or else they simply know that they might be able to get away with making a fuss in Villeray that would not be tolerated downtown. Populist groups have met at Jarry Park before, although not, I think, in wintertime.
SMD
La Presse has the itinerary:
« L’itinéraire des manifestants est déjà connu : ils défileront dans la rue Jarry vers l’ouest jusqu’à la rue Berri, qu’ils descendront jusqu’à la rue De Castelnau, puis remonteront vers leur point de départ par l’avenue De Gaspé et le boulevard Saint-Laurent. »
So residential Villeray.
EmilyG
Yikes, I used to live on one of the streets that’s on the march route.
Kate
Not past my place but awfully close. Thanks, SMD.
EmilyG
There will be a counter protest in Parc Jarry (Facebook link, but should be viewable) :
https://www.facebook.com/events/629896348087139Kate
Thanks, EmilyG. I’d seen that, and am not sure I want to risk injury or arrest, even if it’s the right thing to do.
MarcG
These people are going to feel pretty confused in a month when the restrictions are all gone e.g. Ireland https://i.redd.it/cfzejaj76kf81.jpg
Kate
Here are the relevant traffic cams for Saturday morning – no guarantees if they’ll be facing in the right direction or if the participants will follow the route SMD cites: de Castelnau and St‑Laurent, Jarry and St‑Laurent, Jarry and St‑Denis.
Most of the route is on residential streets without traffic cams.
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Kate
Ah, the CAQ. This week they refused to charge a fair price to companies extracting water from Quebec – we get $2.50 per million litres while Italy gets $2,000 and Denmark $10,000! – created an “affordable housing” program that helps fund private developers who will be free to rent their publicly subsidized constructions out at market rates, and now it comes out that three of their MNAs donate to anti-abortion centres.
maggie rose
…and I was having such a nice late evening, Kate. Is it my imagination that the pandemic has shone so much light on the CAQ that we are witnessing their awful governing style (greed) so much more clearly now?
dhomas
PHAQ these guys! (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!)
qatzelok
I think a lot of older suburbanites vote for Maurice Duplessis-Pierre Trudeau avatars out of fear of dying.
By bringing back the 50s or 70s, they feel “young again.”
CE
Cool theory.
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