CFL players are on strike – imagine the outcry if they can’t arrive at a deal and we’re all deprived of CFL football.
Updates from May, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The mayor honoured 17 people with the Order of Montreal on Sunday, all listed in the article.
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Kate
The latest news on the minke whales is that one of them may have turned back downstream. Let’s hope the creature can make it back to salt water safely.
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Kate
Workers at the Casino held a surprise four‑hour strike on Saturday and plan to continue it Sunday. They haven’t had a new contract since March 2020 and voted in favour of labour actions two months ago.
Ephraim
Maybe it’s time to just shut down the experiment with government run casinos and licence it out to a company that pays fees. Because they are very well paid and beg for tips… and the service SUCKS
Kate
Ephraim, how long would it be before corruption sets in?
jeather
Corruption at a casino? The mind boggles.
Ephraim
@Kate – If they pay the government without the need to employ anyone, what difference does it make?
And you don’t think there is corruption already? I’m willing to bet that the person who bought the slot machines was getting a pay off… the choice of machines looks like they bought the slots that no one else wanted. You walk into a casino in Las Vegas and you are attracted by games that you know… Monopoly, Wheel of Fortune, Game of Thrones, 007, Game of Life, Lord of the Rings, Barbie, etc etc etc. And you walk into the casino in Montreal and they all look like what they removed from Vegas and sold off because no one wanted to play them.
Kate
OK. I don’t know thing one about slot machines. Is it better if they have some kind of familiar branding on them?
I remember when pinball machines had something similar. It didn’t make any particular machine more fun to play, it was just a skin, as we’d say now.
dhomas
Privatizing will only serve to funnel money into private hands. Until the pandemic hit, the Société des Casinos du Québec was always quite profitable and will likely return to profitability now that the pandemic is “over” (according to the CAQ). Why change a winning formula? We have a very poor track record in Quebec/Canada with privatizing and even public-private partnership. Why should we ever consider this for casinos (or anything else, really)?
Also, the crappy slot machines are likely due to our tendering process, where we always must take the lowest bid.Ephraim
@Kate – People gravitate towards the familiar… which is why people still eat at McDonald’s.
@dhomas – We can set the x-year contract that has to bring the government at least as much as they were bringing in before and they profit if they can do it more profitably…. like bringing in more people or having tables that are active. For example, you can’t get them to deal Pai Gow for less than $50 a hand… so they will leave a dealer there, standing doing nothing for hours instead of lower the limit and get the table started. No one wants to be alone at the table. It’s a 5% vig… 5% of $10 is still money coming in rather than 0% on nothing. Profitable and optimal are very different things.
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Kate
Too bad it’s likely to be cloudy into the evening Sunday, because we’re right in the sweet spot for the total lunar eclipse Sunday night. Totality will come at 11 minutes after midnight. La Presse includes a link to a NASA Youtube channel for watching the eclipse in case we can’t see it from here.
But between the birds chirping and the fragrance rising from the spring soil after a light rain it feels positively rustic around here today. I’ll trade that for seeing the moon go dark.
Janet
Um, petrichor.
Kate
I was going to use that word, but I didn’t think we’d had a long enough dry spell to justify it.
DeWolf
The city smells great today, like flowers and fresh greenery. Enjoy it while it lasts!
jeather
Fun fact! Humans can smell a (much, much, much) lower PPM concentration of petrichor than sharks can of blood.
Kate
jeather, there must have been a long, long time in the distant past when we desperately needed that information.
jeather
Took me a while to figure out why we would ever have needed to know the relative sensitivities of sharks to blood vs humans to petrichor before I clued in.
MarcG
I’m still clueless!
Kate
What I meant was: if we’re that sensitive to the smell of petrichor, that must mean it was really important information for the human (or even pre‑human) species for a long time. We must have needed to know “OK, the rains have come, we’d better get moving and do the things we have to do for survival.”
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Kate
After emergency services were called to a burning vehicle in Rivière-des-Prairies just after midnight, a body was found in the trunk. The victim has yet to be identified.
Update: Noon radio news said police had determined, not surprisingly, that this was a homicide (#10 of the year). The actual location’s a little vague. “Parc-nature de la Pointe-aux-Prairies, situé sur le boulevard Gouin, non loin de la gare de Pointe-aux-Trembles” is not clear because the station mentioned is at 10801 Maurice-Duplessis Blvd., not super close to the park also mentioned.
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Kate
Yves Boisvert writes a fair column on the plight of the anglo in Quebec and, among other things, on the risks of Bill 96’s clauses over search and seizure.
mare
Can (parts of) this law be legally challenged? Or is this democracy at work with yet another non-withstanding clause?
Doctors only allowed to speak french to their patients, and endangering their health because of miscommunication) seems like it could be against their medical code of conduct. What has a higher prevalence?
If people use French in the workplace someone can complain and as part of the investigation by the Office québécois de la langue française, confidential documents (medical, financial, trade secrets, etc) but also whole computer (systems) could be seized without a warrant.
There are many companies/sectors in Quebec that are heavily subsidized (like Artificial Intelligence, Visual Effects, Games) and do ground breaking innovative things. I doubt they would like their patents to be in some government’s office closet. They often do have many foreign nationals working for them, often using software that hasn’t been translated into French. Very illegal.Should the companies move? Do we get another exodus and brain drain?
Tim S.
It’s really hard to get the message through that “French needs to be protected” does not mean that “any law is a good law”
Kate
mare, the Journal even covered how a rural area of Quebec has lost their horse veterinarian because she couldn’t pass the French test. It’s a microcosm of what’s been going on here for decades, a loss of expertise that’s felt to be worth it, if it “saves French.”
If tech companies decide the terms of the law (warrantless search and seizure in their offices) are unacceptable, then too bad, so sorry to see you go.
In general, Canada has been unwilling to challenge the use of the notwithstanding clause because they know it could spark a new wave of outright separatism. Our PQ governments have always known this, and Legault’s government is totally counting on this.
PatrickC
mare raises the issue of the notwithstanding clause. Does this insulate legislation from just the federal Charter, or does it also do so against Quebec’s own charter of rights?
Kevin
Legault altered Quebec’s Charter before passing Bill 21, demonstrating that Quebec’s charter is a meaningless document.
Tim
Kate, is there a challenge that can be done against the Notwithstanding clause? It is not that Canada is unwilling; I don’t think that anything can be actually be done. I think even the Supreme Court’s hands are tied.
Tim
The only mechanism that exists AFAIK is the 5 year expiration.
JaneyB
@Tim – we’re stuck with the Notwithstanding clause. The only option is a constitutional amendment. Considering it took the better part of 50 years of regular premiers meetings to get a formula that the provinces could tolerate (and I still think the agreement was more of an accident given the regular failure rate of previous conferences), it is unlikely that any constitutional amendments will be possible. Also, the willingness to tolerate the existing constitution (mostly the Charter part) is significantly due to the existence of that clause so…very unlikely. However, the SCC did strike down parts of Bill 101 that QC couldn’t get around with the Notwithstanding clause so…a tiny window for tiny elements there.
My suspicion is that the search and seizure bit is just a legal offering to protect the meat of the Bill. There are many rules around that so I think the CAQ will lose on that but keep the rest and some politically useful indignation from the loss.
H. John
It’s difficult to comment on Bill 96 because it is so large and amends, in a major way, a number of laws (including the Civil Code of Quebec and the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms).
For example, Bill 96 s.136 amends Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms:
136. Section 50 of the Charter is amended by adding the following paragraph at the end:
“Moreover, the Charter shall not be so interpreted as to suppress or limit the enjoyment or exercise of any right intended to protect the French language conferred by the Charter of the French language (chapter C-11).”The Bill, in its current form, can certainly be challenged.
The Quebec Bar Association, in its submission to the National Assembly committee studying the Bill, pointed out that many of the Bill’s provision are contrary to or in conflict with s. 133 of the Constitution Act of 1867 (a part that can not be overridden by the notwithstanding clause).
They raised significant concern about the effect of the Bill on the administration of justice (see part 2 of their submission)
https://www.barreau.qc.ca/media/2958/memoire-pl96.pdf
Pearl Eliadis expands on other concerns:
https://www.mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/article/the-overreach-of-bill-96
While the notwithstanding clause has been used a number of times the courts have not yet had a final say on when or if it can be used, or what it means.
Robert Leckey, McGill’s Dean of Law (and others) explain:
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2019/faulty-wisdom-notwithstanding-clause/
The authors suggest that potentially discriminatory laws should be challenged for the benefit of clarity. Even if the court doesn’t strike down the law, a finding that it is discriminatory can be used in the court of public opinion to judge the government that passed it. Clearly an option limited to those with deep pockets, or financial support from others.
Kate
Thank you, H. John. Terrific links as always.
Josh 11:39 on 2022-05-16 Permalink
Kate, I mean that’s fair but we’re talking about people who make working wages – some in the mid-five-figure range. The League offered them a 10-year deal with zero salary increases. Let me say that again: Zero salary increases over 10 years.
So mock it if you like but these aren’t millionaires who’ll be just fine, these are people who put their bodies at serious risk to do a job that pays them in some cases and in some places less than the median salary who received a truly insulting offer from the employer. Sometimes your dismissive attitude about things you personally aren’t interested in is a bit much.
Kate 12:40 on 2022-05-16 Permalink
I admit I was being snarky – but it’s not as if we need football. This isn’t like a transit strike or a strike of longshoremen at the port. It’s almost comic to apply industrial action: dammit, we won’t play a game if you don’t pay!
Bert 14:12 on 2022-05-16 Permalink
You may not need football, but the beer sellers, the security personnel, the infrastructure people, the coaches, the FieldTurf makers, the football makers, the uniform makers and washers, the broadcasters, The reporters, personal trainers, etc. all need football.
Kate 14:25 on 2022-05-16 Permalink
Well, that’s always true. It’s not “fair” either when the Canadiens bomb out early and deprive bars of playoff beer sales. Building your business on the fate of sports teams is always going to be iffy.