Updates from March, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 12:26 on 2023-03-25 Permalink | Reply  

    A big local story this week has been Gilles Proulx lashing out at Québec solidaire on QUB radio, and QS determining to boycott the station – although I doubt many party members habitually listen to “radio poubelle” like that.

    Proulx called QS MNAs bâtards, cochonneries, gangrène and menteurs and given over to putasserie, and on another occasion said “On devrait les achever une fois pour toutes, ces épais.”

    Not surprisingly, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois has condemned these words and their tone, and the encouragement to violence.

    Updated to add: Isabelle Hachey finds plenty of other incidents of Proulx using not only harsh words but rants proposing violence.

     

    • shawn 15:25 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      Right and the Liberals made their own statement and the QC and Liberals are supporting each other.

    • qatzelok 16:04 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      One unfortunate strategy that many political parties share… is their singular attachement to polling data and short-term victories, rather than any kind of real conviction about anything long term.

      QS seem to be just as bad as the CAQ in this regard.

    • Kate 08:56 on 2023-03-26 Permalink

      I don’t see signs of QS editing their principles to get closer to the mainstream.

    • shawn 09:05 on 2023-03-26 Permalink

      And whether they are or not, not sure what that has to do with this.

    • qatzelok 11:15 on 2023-03-26 Permalink

      Kate, I’m not sure if QS (or the CAQ) have any real principles other than getting elected by tapping into whatever is trending. QS from media-promoted leftist-branded trends, and CAQ from suburban reactionary trends.

      Number-crunching and virtue-signalling are strategies, not a platform.

    • Tim S. 11:22 on 2023-03-26 Permalink

      If their only interest was getting elected, then the obvious thing back in the 2000s would have been to join the PLQ or PQ. I have a lot of respect for people who set up alternate parties in the first-past-the-post system.

      Also, keep in mind that what gets a political party media coverage often has more to do with the media than what that party actually cares about.

    • Kate 13:11 on 2023-03-26 Permalink

      qatzelok, what would convince you of a party’s honest principles? Standing on ideas nobody supports in order to make sure they get no votes and thus stay pure?

      Every party has to come to terms with bracing itself to face the knowledge that to forward its main purpose, it has to make common cause with ideas it either doesn’t care about or finds initially uncongenial. Projet Montréal has had to swallow increasing police numbers and funding so that it can continue with its main mission of making the city a more environmentally sound and comfortable place to live without getting cut off at the knees by a law‑and‑order groundswell. Québec solidaire has to genuflect to the old Quebec separatism idea to get wider support for its socialist ideals. A party like the CAQ, which brilliantly represents Quebec’s old Duplessiste heart, doesn’t really have to do anything – yet.

  • Kate 09:41 on 2023-03-25 Permalink | Reply  

    Various common single-use plastic items are to be banned in Montreal as of next week.

     

    • shawn 09:50 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      I wonder if this means Tim Hortons will finally consent to bring back ceramic mugs. They did away with them during the pandemic, and they will now only give you a coffee, even if you are dining in, in a disposable cup.

    • DeWolf 11:04 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      At least in the many independent cafés, I’ve found Montreal has a pretty good culture of using ceramic cups. When I was in New York last fall, nearly everyone used disposable paper and plastic cups even if they were staying put. Mountains of trash everywhere.

      My biggest worry is that we’ll start seeing more and more heavy-duty plastic takeaway containers for things like food delivery. They are in theory reusable, but nobody has space to store all of that, so they’ll probably just get thrown away. Some restaurants are now using paper containers which are at least compostable.

    • shawn 11:19 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      Oh yes indie cafés better… except for a while there Olimpico seemed to stop using glass for iced coffees, leading to an even greater mountain of trash at Waverly and Saint-Viateur.

    • JaneyB 11:22 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      A nice step in the right direction. I’m still wishing for standardized containers for everything but that would require a different world – even Canada’s now-gone modest standardized stubby beer bottle policy got a ruling from NAFTA some years back as biased against imports.

      Here’s a chart with some photos of permissible cups etc: https://guichetguta.ca/en/packaging/cups-glasses-and-lids/

    • shawn 11:25 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      BTW so restos can only use non-laminated paper cups, which makes them compostable and (if clean) recyclable, amirite?

    • Kate 14:41 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      I don’t know. Part of me suspects this is environmental theatre – the kind of thing that would only be truly useful as part of a much bigger program of change. I don’t like to feel myself being cynical, but there it is.

    • jeather 16:48 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      I don’t know about cups or anything, but paper shopping bags are much bigger than plastic, so you have 10x as many containers being shipped on the ocean, more local shipments because it isn’t like every random store has lots of excess capacity to store bags so they need more deliveries, etc. And all of this is — look we KNOW who pollutes, it’s a few dozen giant companies, not people using plastic knives.

    • DeWolf 16:56 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      The plastic bag ban resulted in nearly everyone carrying around reusable bags. Even when paper bags are available, not many people use them. So it’s probably a net reduction even if the paper bags take up more space.

      I also imagine that paper bags are manufactured locally so there wouldn’t be any cross-ocean shipping of them.

    • jeather 20:21 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      You would imagine incorrectly. It is not a net reduction wrt number of pallets and they are not manufactured locally.

    • JP 20:49 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      I don’t have evidence and don’t feel like trying to do a search right now, but I also think that some of this is environmental theatre….reusable bags and totes have become an industry unto their own. I wonder how much goes into making one resource-wise and how many times one has to be used to balance out environmentally speaking.

    • shawn 09:07 on 2023-03-26 Permalink

      Being able to compost or recycle non-laminated paperware would be good. But if they’re adding more PFAS to the product to make up for the loss of the moisture-resistant laminate, that’s very bad.

  • Kate 09:34 on 2023-03-25 Permalink | Reply  

    The swift change of policy between Canada and the U.S. and the immediate closure of Roxham Road has come as a shock to those trying to get across. The closure is felt to risk humanitarian catastrophes by some immigration experts.

    François Legault says it’s a beautiful victory for Quebec.

    La Presse’s Laura-Julie Perreault says it’s wilful blindness on both sides of the border. Godin’s editorial cartoon.

     

    • JaneyB 11:40 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      So the migrants will have to apply for asylum in the US instead of Canada…that does not seem catastrophic to me. Also, Canada does have a refugee stream – a whole system designed to accommodate people fleeing for their lives and/or freedom. I think it’s fine that asylum-seekers are required to use the system designed for them and plenty of them do. It’s true borders feel harsh sometimes but they protect a culture, an economy, a tax and service system etc. We want a well-managed system so it requires a kind of container and rules. As numbers of migrants increase with climate crisis instability and disasters, limiting access to our county will certainly feel increasingly awful though. No doubt about that.

    • Kate 12:29 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      One of the points being made is that although the Canada-U.S. border is long, there are surprisingly few points where a person can get across without physical risk. We’ve got oceans, mountains, desolate prairies, thick forests, huge lakes – and then we have Roxham Road, where you’ve been able to cross after a taxi ride from Plattsburgh.

    • shawn 12:54 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      My feeling is that when another route opens up, it’s a good chance it’ll lead to Quebec, perhaps from Vermont or Maine. I’m curious about the Akwesasne region, which of course borders Ontario and Quebec. I expect we’ll see soon enough.

    • Kate 16:12 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      Ontario, Quebec and New York State. There are occasional hints that this is where many illegal guns come across the border, but not much about how this trade is policed outside the reserve.

    • DeWolf 16:58 on 2023-03-25 Permalink

      @JaneyB, many migrant advocates argue that the US has an overly restrictive asylum policy, and it’s only getting worse with the Biden administration pushing for even fewer claims to be approved. The US accepts only about 47 percent of claims whereas Canada accepts 60-70 percent.

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