Est Montréal notes that it’s 30 years since the Paul Sauvé arena was demolished, and looks back at the many political and sports events that happened there.
Updates from February, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
As with so many things in Quebec, the turbines on hydroelectric dams are wearing out, so Hydro‑Quebec will be spending billions on upgrades soon.
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Kate
Two hundred people including several public figures dived into the Lachine Canal on Saturday for something called the 15e édition du Défi de l’ours polaire, in support of athletes with intellectual deficiencies.
Good lord, I wouldn’t go in the canal on the hottest day in summer.
Kevin
When I was in dragonboat training, we would frequently be banned from the canal because of hot stormy weather making the e. Coli counts too high
steph
“The growth of Escherichia coli cells is impaired at temperatures below 21 degrees C and stops at 7.5 degrees C;” -google
Kate
steph, I guess that’s why they feel safe to hold this event.
carswell
From the Lachine lock at the western end of the canal eastward, the canal is drained in late fall and stays that way until the spring.
Going by the photos, this happened in Lachine harbour west of the lock. The stone building with domes looks to be Collège Ste-Anne and the wood-clad building on the other bank is, if memory serves, the harbour police station on the spit of land that was the reserve of the former marina.
That stretch of water may technically be part of the canal but, in terms of water quality, is probably closer to Lac St-Louis than what most people think of as the canal. It may also be near where the city is planning to create a beach with swimming as part of the Parc riverain slated to replace the marina.
The places where I occasionally see effluent discharging into the canal are all east of (downstream from) the Lachine lock.
Kevin
@steph
Freezing doesn’t kill e. coli bacteria. Scientists keep their strains at -80 and thaw it as needed to grow more samples and do research.As soon as they warmed up, all those people turned into walking incubators.
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Kate
Faced with lengthening court delays, the Crown (Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales, DPCP) has told prosecutors to prioritize the more serious crimes so that they won’t be thrown out for over‑long waiting.
SPVM police are disturbed by the directive because it may mean that a lot of people are let off the hook over matters that are criminal, although not as serious as homicide or violent assaults and abuse, which will be going to the top of the list.
…I was thinking, if Quebec can force doctors to work in the regions, can force nurses to do overtime shifts, why can’t they force new law graduates to act as prosecutors for a period of time? Then I thought, yeah, the Quebec Bar would kill that off immediately.
Joey
The issue is only explained far down that article – it’s about new rules about judges’ use of time, not a lack of prosecutors:
“ La Presse reported Friday that Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said the new instructions for judges are a direct consequence of the Court of Quebec’s decision to require judges to sit every other day rather than every third day. The new ratios put more than 50,000 cases at risk of exceeding the Jordan limits, Jolin-Barrette calculated.”
Kate
I can’t make it add up. If they’re sitting 1 out of 2 days rather than 1 out of 3 isn’t more judging getting done?
mare
It was also confused to get that sitting here apparently meant ‘sitting it out’ and not ‘sitting on the bench’. So confusing, the separation of Law and Sports.
Tim S.
Like many here, I am not a lawyer, but I gather much of judges’ time is spent writing decisions and so on. So more time sitting in court could lead to worse backlogs in actually delivering verdicts.
I have an aunt in the UK who serves as a kind of lay magistrate – she was given some basic legal training and serves on a panel that assess relatively minor crimes. Sort of a jury plus, I guess. I wonder if a similar system here would ease pressure on the system or just absorb more administrative resources. But just as every medical condition doesn’t need to be assessed by a doctor with 8+ years of training, maybe not every case needs a professional judge.
Joey
Basically they are doubling the non-bench time, giving judges more time to deliberate and write judgments. So, if in a given month they used to spend 10 days each in court and in chambers, now they will spend 6/7 days in court and 13/14 in chambers. The head of the Court says this is necessary to make better decisions and that the lost days should be made up by adding more judges (41, to be precise); the minister says this will mean too many cases will have to be dropped because of the timeline limits from the Jordan ruling. I gather a lot of this is posturing to influence the mediator working it out, but the primary issues seems to be shortage of bench hours for judges, not necessarily the shortage of prosecutors.
Kate
Joey, a belated thanks for spelling this out for me.
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Kate
The Journal spoke to an arrival from France who’s appalled that he can’t work only in French here. He was a policeman in France, but it’s a brief piece and doesn’t say why he left or why he thought he could pick up the same work here, where the laws, the culture and the languages used are bound to be different.
La Presse finds out that French-speaking people coming via Roxham Road are being funnelled to Ontario now, like everyone else. That’s what Quebec wanted, isn’t it? No? Maybe give a French test at the border to separate the sheep from the goats?
steph
SQ has no control to stop people from entering at Roxam-Road?
DeWolf
The Journal story fits so perfectly within a specific political narrative it makes me suspicious. This anonymous French immigrant was fired from a bank because he isn’t “perfectly bilingual”? Isn’t that illegal? Even before Bill 96 you couldn’t force workers to speak in a language other than French. The fact that he would be fired for this after have been in his post for years beggars belief. And there’s no mention of him taking any recourse against his employer?
Remember in 2017 when TVA fabricated a story about women being banned from the construction site of a mosque? I really won’t want to disparage a journalist’s work, but the dodginess of this story combined the notoriously unethical publication it’s in raises red flags for me.
DeWolf
@steph, the border is patrolled by the RCMP. The SQ has no jurisdiction there.
When people cross at Roxham Road, they’re arrested for crossing the border illegally, after which they make their asylum claims and are processed as asylum claimants, which is why the federal government takes charge and sends them to a hotel.
For practical reasons I don’t think anyone is actually charged and prosecuted for the illegal crossing, but I could be wrong. In any case, the police can’t physically stop anyone from crossing, they can only arrest them when they’ve arrived.
DeWolf
In the case of Roxham Road, there are clearly people upset that francophone migrants are being sent to Ontario when they’ve often made a deliberate choice to come to Montreal. Despite all the news about wanting more francophone immigrants, the CAQ made a gamble that closing the door to all migrants would satisfy xenophobic public opinion. But it may not pay off politically, because it turns out there are a lot of people who are only partially xenophobic – they’re okay with foreigners if they speak French!
steph
I wasn’t aware their was an arrest process already in place. thanks.
Blork
I agree with DeWolf that it beggars belief that this guy was fired from his bank job because he wasn’t perfectly bilingual. But I’m not sure the journalist is entirely to blame. It’s a common occurrence that people who cannot find fault in themselves will find a way to focus on something external that they can blame for their lack of success. I’m thinking he might have been fired for a number of reasons, and somewhere along the line someone mentioned he should try to learn some English and boom, that’s the one thing he focuses on with his complaint. That kind of behaviour is as common as dirt.
And BTW if he wants to work as a unilingual francophone but not leave the greater Montreal area, all he needs to do is cross the bridge to Longueuil. I guarantee you no one here has any expectation that anyone speaks English. I’m not saying that as a gripe, just a fact. (While many people do speak English the point is that no one is EXPECTED to, and many don’t. From grocery store cashiers up to bank tellers and virtually 99% of anyone who comes to your door, you should not expect to communicate with them in English.)
H John
I’m not often a fan of Andrew Coyne, but he did a good job of explaining some of the issues of the Roxham Road crossing:
Kate
That’s a level-headed analysis, H. John, I agree.
But there’s another reason Roxham Road is so popular. It’s physically passable and links two areas which are built up (although even there, if you wander off into the forest in wintertime, it can be fatal, as we saw last month).
Coyne says people could cross anywhere along the border, but given its length, there are surprisingly few viable spots. New Brunswick and eastern Quebec are mostly forest, most of Ontario is blocked by the vast moat of the Great Lakes, the Prairies are sparse and the Rockies are hostile, and then you’re in B.C. and back to forest. But there’s Roxham Road, a few kilometers from official border crossings, but you can get to the U.S. side by taxi then the Canadians scoop you up.
Nicholas
Banking is a federally-regulated industry, so provincial language laws don’t apply. There keep being federal bills that would apply provincial laws to federally-regulated businesses in Quebec, but iirc that hasn’t passed yet. Either way, all businesses are allowed to require other languages if it’s necessary for the business, such as dealing with clients in other provinces or countries.
JaneyB
The guy can work anywhere in the regions. They need immigrants badly. I see no problem.
mare
There are other places (not official border crossings) where the US Canadian border is easy to cross, but they’re in/near remote villages and not just a short taxi ride away from a major highway and a Greyhound bus stop (in Plattsburgh).
H John
La Presse had a very good piece on Roxham Road:
L’Entente sur les tiers pays sûrs en 10 questions
From the article, McGill’s Prof. Crepeau on closing Roxham ” « La solution de fermer le chemin Roxham ou d’élargir l’Entente sur les tiers pays sûrs n’a aucun sens. Ça ne résoudra rien du tout. Les migrants vont passer ailleurs. Tout ce que ça fait, c’est que ça renvoie dans la clandestinité plus profonde ces gens-là. Ça renforce les réseaux criminels qui les exploitent et ça permet à des gens qui leur promettent de leur faire passer la frontière de transformer ça en système de traite des êtres humains. »
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