The city’s program to help merchants whose business has been blighted by major roadworks has disbursed less than a quarter of the funds available since 2018. So it’s planning to simplify access, although is it really possible for a bureaucracy not to be bureaucratic about things like this?
Updates from November, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
A window has blown down from the 40th floor of a building under construction on René‑Lévesque. TVA says it was the 34th floor.
Power’s out here and there because of the wind, too.
walkerp
That whole wind storm warning was, ahem, overblown.
Kate
Environment Canada is leaning hard into crying wolf. If a real weather event shows up, a lot of us will shrug it off because we’ve been scare warned so often over a dusting of snow or a few gusts of wind.
-
Kate
There’s an Irish expression, an béal bocht a chur ort, to play poor mouth, meaning to exaggerate one’s hardships to coax money out of people. In response to a very generous city budget, the SPVM says it’s millions in debt because of all the overtime it pays. They have it down.
Other budget reaction pieces Wednesday: both landlords and tenants are worried about the tax increases, as are building owners who are neither. On the other hand, tax on commercial properties is not being felt to be unreasonable, according to La Presse.
tee owe
Google translate gave me ‘put the poor mouth on you’ – same meaning, but when I saw ‘ort’ i couldn’t fit it to your version – go raibh maith agat!
Kate
I just found the extended expression on Wikipedia, having known an béal bocht from Flann O’Brien’s book of the same name.
-
Kate
François Legault is promising that immigration will be 100% francophone by 2026. It’s to be one of the two pillars of his new government, and probably the more important, the other being transitioning Quebec to a green economy. Numbers from Statistics Canada showing a slight drop in the use of French in business and even a slight decline in the regions are fuel to Legault’s fire.
DeWolf
Quebec’s top 10 sources of immigration over the past decade: China, France, Algeria, Haiti, Morocco, Iran, Syria, Cameroon, India and Colombia, in that order.
So new immigration will be restricted to people from… France?
PatrickC
Not necessarily francophone, says Christine Fréchette, but at least “francotrope”–meaning people from Romance language countries who will find the transition to French easier. Now there’s a scholarly category! But I love the word, which I’m sure has a bright future.
mare
@DeWolf Immigrants from Algérie, Haïti, Maroc et Cameroun are considered francophone. We only want the educated ones (brain drain be damned) even though their professional credentials aren’t recognized here, and a lot of our workforce shortages are in jobs that don’t need higher education.
The law and anti-immigrant discourse is working in other aspects though. I’m seriously thinking of leaving the province, and I bet I’m not the only one. Finding the perfect place (for me) is hard though, my excel sheet with pros and cons is getting very convoluted.
DeWolf
Of course. It’s just a chance for Legault to score some political points from the more hateful corners of the province.
Most immigrants selected by Quebec already come from “francotrope” countries, with the notable exceptions of China and India. And as Pierre Fitzgibbon specified today, there will be exceptions for people whose expertise is needed, even if they don’t speak French. China and India will probably remain major sources of immigrants. So we’re basically maintaining the status quo.
That just means we can look forward to another round of xenophobic grandstanding in five years when the next census results reveal the proportion of francophones has continued to decline, because “francotrope” people from Morocco and Vietnam are literally not francophones, and are not counted as such in the census.
Anyway, just another day in CAQistan!
DeWolf
@mare, You would really uproot your life in Montreal because of provincial politics?
Spi
Francophone or not doesn’t matter if the yard stick is going to be % of households that speak French at home.
It doesn’t matter how well you’re able to speak French or integrate if you’re from Haiti and speak Creole at home or Algeria/Morocco and raise your children to speak some Arabic according to the stats that Legault cares about you’re activelly hurting French.
Seemingly what Legault wants is a household that consists of people that speak only French amongst themselves but pointing that out leads to all sorts of nasty questions he’d have to answer.
shawn
Grateful for this thread. I hope we all stick it out.
Kate
Spi, the one thing Legault is trying hard not to do is to urge women from French‑speaking families to have more babies. I’m sure he’d love to, but somebody in his cabinet has warned him he can’t get away with that now.
In fact, I recall a previous government doing this thing where you got modest payments for your first and second child, but a much larger payment for child #3 and beyond. Is that still in effect?
Kevin
A politician that really thinks this is an important issue could change attitudes, but it would require a lot of work. You’d need a government and civil servants that value excellence and competence. You’d need the creation of daycare spots and schools. You’d need family doctors. You’d need a substantial baby bonus, scholarship funds/RESPs, and parental leave. You’d need developers to build family-sized units.
Said politician would have to drum up that support and present it as a national project to improve everyone’s lives, to deliver purpose and optimism.
But as long as the politicians focus on negatives, as long as people continue to feel economically uncertain, Quebecers will continue to have small families and seek out that comfortable suburban bedroom community.
Chris
>…We only want the educated ones…
You know that’s the federal policy priority too, right?
>my excel sheet with pros and cons is getting very convoluted
Does your sheet have an entry for countries more accepting of immigrants than Canada? I’m curious which you’ve found. Genuinely.
Mark Côté
> In fact, I recall a previous government doing this thing where you got modest payments for your first and second child, but a much larger payment for child #3 and beyond. Is that still in effect?
It seems the amount is fixed per child, though the table is weird as it splits “1st child” and “2nd child and subsequent children” into single rows despite the number being the same—maybe a throwback to a time where 2+ children did result in a higher benefit.
Mark Côté
@Chris: mare said leaving the province, not the country.
Ephraim
You would think that a businessman would understand diversity and that you hire the best person for the job, regardless. Nope, we don’t want the best immigrants, we want immigrants who can speak to Moliere.
-
Kate
A young man was found shot dead in Dorval on Tuesday evening. There have been no arrests. It’s the 35th homicide this year.
Reply