Projet Montréal collected record donations in 2021 and the party is in the black.
Updates from April, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Ted Rutland tweeted: “The media, the police, and politicians continue to claim we’re experiencing an unprecedented and increasing level of violence in Montreal. There have been four homicides so far this year. That’s the second lowest first-quarter total in the last five years.”
Chris
Homicide is a subset of violence.
Kate
Very good, Chris. Well done.
Ephraim
As I have pointed out before, what the police publish are “Reported Crime” and not actual crime. There is a lot of unreported crime. Banks and companies often won’t charge someone because they don’t want the publicity posted. And then there is credit card crime, where the credit card companies will just write it off and don’t even have you fill out the police forms most of the time. Internet crime, which of course, isn’t reported at all for the most part… anyone seen ransomware before… they tried it on me… and I just reformatted the drive, never reported it at all. And let’s not forget all the telemarketing crime… anyone get a phone call from the “CRA” or Visa or a travel scam… do you fill out the police reporting forms?
It all boils down to “Problem Selling” see https://twitter.com/G_S_Bhogal/status/1492255274085851136
Kevin
Montreal is the only place I’ve ever been where I’ve routinely seen news stories like “gunshots heard, no victim found”
Kate
Kevin, Radio-Canada has an arty video report here on violence among teenagers – clever graphics, moody music, mostly soundbites. I’m not saying it doesn’t make a point about teenagers being on edge, especially in poorer districts with little to offer adolescents besides school. But it definitely builds an air of menace.
Chris
Kate, well what point is that tweet trying to make? Just because homicides are low does not mean violence is down. It’s pure sophistry.
walkerp
Chris, the point is that we don’t need to spend extra money on policing.
Kevin
As a lark here’s the murder data for the past few decades showing we’re back down to 1960s level crime
Chris
walkerp, oh? An increase in violence (if true) seems like a potentially good reason to increase spending on policing.
Saying homicides are down is not disproof of violence being up. It’s like saying “contrary to popular belief, precipitation did not increase this March: look! it only rained 10 mm!” and totally ignoring that it snowed 30 cm.
I don’t know if violence is up or down, but I do know fallacious reasoning when I see it. Looking at only a subset of violence (homicides) to “prove” a point is no proof at all.
Kevin: “showing we’re back down to 1960s level *homicides*”. Fixed that for you.
Kevin
Chris
Homicides are a good indicator of police-reported crime, and track well with other indexes of crime, severe and non-severe.
It’s not perfect, but here’s another Stats Can piece from a decade ago where they did the math.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015001-eng.htm
dhomas
It’s very difficult to count ALL violent crime since, as Ephraim pointed out, not all crime is reported, including violent crime. However, murder is the one crime that will pretty much always be reported. So, it’s not a perfect metric, but it is a good indicator that violent crime is down when murder rates are down.
walkerp
Why did I take the bait?
Chris
>Homicides are a good indicator of police-reported crime, and track well with other indexes of crime, severe and non-severe.
Exactly.
>It’s not perfect…
Exactly.
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Kate
The city is planning to make ten streets pedestrian-only during summer. The list has no surprises, but it’s nice to read that Wellington Street merchants have asked for it, rather than bewailing lost parking spots.
DeWolf
Nothing in Rosemont-Petite Patrie, which is disappointing because residents have been lobbying for summertime pedestrianization on Masson. Crescent Street is not on the list either. If there’s any street that should be one giant terrace in the summer, it’s that one, but I guess having fancy cars go vroom-vroom is more desirable than extra outdoor seating.
Kate
Last summer they wanted to pedestrianize Masson, but the belfry of the big church on the north side was declared unsafe and it limited what they could do. I don’t know whether that’s why Masson’s not on today’s list.
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Kate
Ensemble Montréal has admitted it isn’t a real party, was mostly a vehicle for Denis Coderre’s ambitions, but Aref Salem says he has hopes it will become a real party by 2025.
I’m placing a bet that the major party that faces off against Projet in 2025 won’t be Ensemble. That formation is too dragged down by debt, by its past history and its longtime habit of sniping reflexively at Projet without presenting any fresh ideas of its own. Balarama Holness’s party didn’t do so well last November, but its existence suggests that there are new political currents in town, and by 2025 a party may coalesce that presents new insights into what the city can do next.
At least, I certainly hope so.
DeWolf
Balarama Holness’ party seemed like a vehicle for Balarama Holness. Ideologically it was all over the map, and while it got extensive coverage in the anglo media, it was mostly ignored by the franco media, except for negative coverage related to official bilingualism and the Desjardins betrayal.
Projet needs a good opposition, ideally one from the left that can make sure it doesn’t stray from its goals in a quest to stay in power. At the moment, that doesn’t really exist, and so all we get is the toxic Facebook-comments style sniping of the Coderre dregs.
Joey
Projet really is unique, no? Have we ever had a real municipal party before (one that wasn’t 100% tied to whoever the founder/leader/mayoral candidate was)? Hard to imagine another party emerging that isn’t (a) too close ideologically to Projet to last or (b) capable of establishing an infrastructure that isn’t candidate-dependent and able to last beyond one or two election cycles.
Kate
Joey, the Montreal Citizens’ Movement was in some ways a precursor to Projet. It came into existence in 1974 in response to Jean Drapeau’s later excesses, and without a specific strong leader. Later, Jean Doré led the MCM to win City Hall in 1986 and 1990 but then lost to Pierre Bourque, which shows you how badly they declined while in power: Bourque was never exactly a scintillating leader but he somehow held onto power from 1994 to 2001. The Wikipedia article on the MCM gives a lot more detail including that the MCM ended by merging into Union Montreal in 2001, Gérald Tremblay’s party.
History does show that municipal parties tend to crumble when their chief quits, but we’ve only had city-level parties in Montreal since Jean Drapeau in the mid-1950s so there haven’t been so many test cases.
DeWolf
The MCM was indeed a real political party but Daniel Sanger’s book on Projet makes the case that its fundamentals were pretty shaky, which is why it fell apart. By contrast, Projet has survived two different leaders, with a host of competing characters that don’t always get along, and it has the usual trappings of a political party such as candidates that are nominated/approved by the membership as opposed to being appointed by the party leader. The big risk is that Projet eventually transforms into Équipe Valérie Plante, but it seems there are a lot of members working to ensure that doesn’t happen.
MarcG
There’s an essay in Montreal: A Citizen’s Guide to City Politics that ends with the suggestion that the party has changed its name to Projet Montreal – Équipe Valérie Plante but perhaps it was just a dig since I don’t see any evidence online.
Mark Côté
Projet Montreal – Équipe Valérie Plante is in fact the official name of the party, or at least it was in the last election. In fact it was changed from “Projet Montreal” back in 2017 according to that link.
James
Party names seem to always have the name of the leader in Montreal elections (Holness’ “Mouvement Montréal” was the exception in 2021). It helps with name recognition at the ballot box. If you have ever done door-to-door campaigning you will quickly see that most voters are horribly misinformed about issues, who is running for each position, and what the municipal government can actually control.
Kate
James, I canvassed around my immediate neighbourhood two campaigns ago with a borough candidate and learned two things very quickly:
1. A shocking number of people don’t understand the division of responsibilities among the federal and provincial governments and the city administration. The candidate spent a lot of time responding sympathetically to issues over which he would have no influence whatsoever as a councillor.
2. The topic that roused most people up to vigorous discussion was parking.
Also, working as a scrutineer during the 2017 election, we spent time explaining to people why they were getting three ballots, unlike other elections in which they only got one. Putting the mayoral candidate’s name on the party looks like egotism, but it does help people sort out their choices at the ballot box.
jeleventybillionandone
Can someone remind me why we have political parties in (Montreal only? Quebec-wide?) municipal politics? I get the impression that it’s uncommon elsewhere in ROC.
Kevin
@jeleventybillionandone
Because we have 100+ councillors.
Other cities have a few dozen at most. Some have fewer than 10.DeWolf
We have 64 councillors, plus the mayor. That number is 103 if you include borough councillors, but borough councillors don’t sit on city council. And if you’re going down that road, you have to compare it to other cities with distinct city and borough councils, like London, where all the nitty-gritty of municipal administration is done by borough councils, not the city council. London has a total of 1833 councillors for 8.9 million people – twice as many as Montreal, proportionally.
Otherwise, here’s how Montreal’s city council compares to a selection of other cities:
Lyon, population 1.4 million – 150 councillors (10.7 per 100k)
Paris, population 2.2 million – 164 councillors (7.5 per 100k)
Montreal, population 1.8 million – 65 councillors (3.6 per 100k)
Lisbon, populaton 544,000 – 17 councillors (2.4 per 100k)
Taipei, population 2.4 million – 63 councillors (2.4 per 100k)
Chicago, population 2.7 million – 50 councillors (1.8 per 100k)
Rome, population 2.8 million – 49 councillors (1.75 per 100k)
Madrid, population 3.4 million – 67 councillors (1.68 per 100k)
Vancouver, population 660,000 – 11 councillors (1.67 per 100k)
Toronto, population 2.8 million – 26 councillors (0.9 per 100k)
New York City, population 8.4 million – 51 councillors (0.6 per 100k)
Los Angeles, population 3.8 million – 15 councillors (0.38 per 100k)Tim S.
I really don’t mind the number of councillors. I’ve always found mine to be responsive and attentive to local issues. If we can’t have workable regional administration, might as well at least have good local representation.
And other cities certainly have slates (I’m pretty sure Vancouver does), and the connections to provincial/federal parties is usually only barely disguised (as in Montreal too, I guess).
Joey
When I was studying political science (around the time when the phrase ‘democratic deficit’ was getting tossed around a lot among Canadian eggheads), the consensus seemed to be that, generally speaking, we had too few elected representatives, not too many. Like, we needed to double or triple the number of MPs to (a) professoinalize the role of elected representative somewhat, (b) improve local representation, and (c) reduce the concentration of power among party leaders.
At the municipal level, aside from the reactionary groaning about too many candidates or positions or paid politicians (come on, there are 103 councillors but you only vote for a handful of seats, it’s not incredibly burdensome), I think the increased number of elected officials is a good thing. It means citizens have improved access to their reps when they have an issue and it makes it easier for non-connected people to get elected.
In my experience, the borough and city councillors are pretty responsive to citizen issues, even going so far as to actually solve a problem and not just listen. I can’t fathom that actually working if we had, say, one city mayor and one mayor + councillor for each borough.
Kate
Thanks for those numbers, DeWolf, and thanks for your thoughts on this too, Joey.
DeWolf
Thanks! My math was off on the London/Montreal comparison. London has nearly 6 times as many councillors as Montreal, per capita.
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Kate
On the one hand, TVA bemoans traffic difficulties for drivers, on the other, Metro tells us about work being done to make ten intersections safer in the north and east ends of the city. Slowing things down for drivers is not necessarily a bad thing.
Also in the east end, the city is looking for financial help from other levels of government in preserving or creating green space for the east end, in the area called Assomption-Sud–Longue-Pointe. Like the Ray‑Mont plan, the land in that area may be snapped up either for more industry, or for residential purposes, unless some is claimed for public use. Ensemble’s big idea was to have the city buy the Ray‑Mont land but the horse may have already left the terminal on that one.
DeWolf
The difference between traffic calmed neighbourhoods and those without much traffic calming is pretty astonishing. For all the bad press Ferrandez got about the one-way streets and blocking through traffic, the experience of walking around the Plateau is ten times better than it was a decade ago. And it’s not a bad place to drive, either, as long as you understand that you’ll be going slowly and you can’t take random side streets as a shortcut. By contrast, go to Park Ex (similarly narrow streets but virtually no traffic calming) and drivers are going twice the speed limit on residential streets. Jean-Talon is a traffic sewer despite being the main commercial street. Crossing at half the intersections feels like you’re gambling with your life.
Drivers can’t be trusted to follow the rules, so the streets themselves need to physically prevent them from going too fast. Curb extensions, speed bumps, raised crosswalks, filtered permeability, more greenery and visual complexity. Luckily these are all being implemented, but inconsistently in some boroughs. And planners are also way too reliant on stop signs, which only work if drivers bother to stop at them (and most don’t – they roll through, sometimes at shocking high speeds). I suppose that comes from the limited number of tools planners have in their kit, because it’s the same across Quebec.
One of the best examples of a street reconfiguration is actually one of the oldest – Duluth. Ideally, this is what every residential street should look like: bulb-outs at every corner, a textured surface that slows traffic. Add raised crosswalks at the intersections and you’ve got a pretty good traffic-calmed street. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone driving more than 20 km/h on Duluth.
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Kate
The Journal has some notes on where the poshest houses are sold and, no surprise, Westmount comes out tops. Downtown Montreal is second, but perhaps surprisingly there’s no mention of Outremont.
Spi
Outremont would just get folded into Montreal.
Robert H
Outremont a toujours été quelque peu éclipsé par Westmount, une tendance renforcée maintenant qu’il ne s’agit plus d’une juridiction distincte. Même en tant qu’arondissement de Montréal, le quartier reste un endroit charmant où vivre. Laurier et Bernard sont des rues où il fait bon flâner, et j’aime la façon dont les arbres forment une voûte feuillue dans les nombreuses rues secondaires résidentielles. Je m’y installerais si j’avais quelques millions de dollars de côté.
Kate
Both of you are right, but the article also mentions downtown Montreal, which is not a separate jurisdiction.
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Kate
Montreal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin won his first Grammy this weekend, but it wasn’t with a Montreal orchestra.
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