This sounds a bit abstruse, but it may be a bonus for people living in that part of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve: the city is giving up on the Écoparc industriel de la Grande-Prairie by changing its management to the urbanism and mobility service rather than the economic development people. More green space and, yes, more bike paths, and less logistics and industry.
Updates from June, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The CRTC gave Radio-Canada a dressing-down a year ago about using the N‑word in a discussion involving the Concordia teacher who faced censure over mentioning a book by Pierre Vallières. In the course of the radio discussion the N‑word was used three times in French and once in English. Now the Federal Court of Appeal says the CRTC overstepped its jurisdiction because it’s not meant to regulate speech on the airwaves. Now the case is back to the CRTC for another review.
I would not want to be the CRTC person who has to find a politic way to say that it’s fine if you say that word on air.
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Kate
The city reports a budget surplus of $343.8 million which TVA notes follows a hefty tax increase.
I see this as an area where the city can’t win. Whether it comes up with a surplus or a deficit, it can be spun to sound bad.
Update: Predictably, Ensemble is kvetching.
steph
Don’t we have a debt we could pay down with that?
Kate
Yes, but don’t forget, money at that level isn’t just cash sitting in a piggy bank, it’s debts receivable, bonds, all kinds of instruments that you don’t just bring to the bank in a sack. That money could evaporate in an instant. They could give it to the STM, for example.
Taylor
@Kate – They could or could not give it to the STM?
Kate
I suspect it will be soaked up by some funding need. The STM came to mind but it needn’t be that.
Joey
I feel for the city comptroller – surpluses are driven by higher real estate market values and one-time or time-limited transfers from other levels of government. Both of those are very hard to forecast. Perhaps the city should (or might already) have a protocol in place for managing surpluses… like the provincial Fonds des générations…
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Kate
A man attacked in the Orange Julep parking lot on the evening of May 31 has died of his injuries. More charges are pending for the suspect arrested at the time.
TVA has a good deal of detail about the incident at the Julep, including names and ages of the men involved.
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Kate
Global now has the story about the jilted music instructor at McGill, but with the claim that Jonathan Dagenais is more qualified than the woman who was given the job. However, a commenter on this blog discovered that “she has a PhD while he only has a Masters in Music […] he is a course instructor at USherbrooke and McGill. This is a universe of difference in academic qualifications.” Global confirms that Dagenais is suing the university for $300,000.
Meezly
Exactly. Why are they giving this guy a soapbox for a one-sided story without even doing their due diligence to see if the chosen candidate was truly less qualified? The media obvs wants to stoke the anti-woke flames.
Tim S.
I think you over estimate the media, Meezly. As part of the Westmount-NDG byelection I just witnessed an interview where the reporter hadn’t bothered to do basic common knowledge research about which parties were traditionally strong in the riding. It was appallingly lazy and ignorant.
CE
Why is this even a story that is being reported by journalists? This is an HR issue at a university, not a big story we should care much about. I guess it’ll get clicks which is the most important thing.
Kate
As I surmised yesterday, it gave MBC a premise for a scathing (?) column about how relentlessly oppressed white men are.
Blork
You folks are not understanding the story. The story is not that the guy wasn’t chosen for the job. The story is that the guy is suing McGill over it. Whether he was the more qualified or not is irrelevant, or at least not directly relevant, and not in need of “due diligence,” since the media are not the ones to decide whether or not the suit is valid. The media’s only job is to report the story.
EG
(I’m the commenter who knows the guy, and has played in a community band that he currently conducts, and has commented before with additional information.)
It’s mentioned in the Global article that he thinks he might leave music altogether. I’m fairly shocked by that, knowing him. He still conducts several community bands (though they might be on summer break at this time of year.) It seems surprising to me that he’d leave music as a whole, as he still has various music jobs, as well as being well-known in the local concert-band scene.
He still seems to have a lot of support now, judging by comments from his friends, as well as others on news-company posts on Facebook. But I’m wondering what all of this will do to his reputation. If he’d just been passed over for the job, and felt bad about it, but didn’t do anything further, the story could’ve ended there. But going public about it, talking to the media about how he “wasn’t chosen because he was a white man,” and suing McGill — in my own opinion, it seems that he might’ve further damaged his own career and image that way.
It’s sad for me to see this happen to a friend. But knowing that he’s always been a little arrogant, shown racist tendencies, and never seemed to care much about optics, I wonder now if something like this whole story might’ve been likely to happen sooner or later.
jeather
Blork, I understand the story is that he is suing McGill, but “guy is suing McGill, here’s a recap of what he claims” is not the entire story if he’s claiming that the other person is unqualified and her qualifications are easily available to be confirmed (as are his).
steph
are they unionized?
H. John
@steph No tenured or tenure track faculty at McGill are currently unionized.
That said, the faculty members of the Faculty of Law have applied for certification.
Meezly
“The media’s only job is to report the story.” That’s a very naive way of looking at it, Blork. You should know well enough that the media always has a bias, and they are favouring this guy because the oppressed white man gets the clicks.
Kate
Course lecturers at McGill, on the other hand, are unionized.
Blork
Meezly, I understand that. I was responding to the “why are the media even reporting this?” questions, which implies the people asking that think the media is reporting the “he didn’t get the job” angle. That’s not a story.
But the fact that he’s suing McGill is a real thing, and it’s a story, so the media’s job is to report on it. HOW they report on it is a whole other conversation.
EG
For what it’s worth,
Jonathan Dagenais is saying on his Facebook page,“Because it seems that some article headlines tends to go for a kind of clickbait or sensational titles…
I never claimed, at any point, that ‘I lost promotion to less qualified candidate’…!? I was being told many times that I was strongly and unanimously recommended (twice) by the search committee, that’s not the same thing at all.”
CE
They don’t have report on someone suing McGill, people sue organizations all the time and we never hear about it. I imagine there are numerous lawsuits against large universities at any one time. Let the McGill Daily or a trade magazine for musicians cover this story. It’s only being considered newsworthy by major media outlets for the stupid reasons Kate mentioned above.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CityCrunch, Metro, CultMTL, Sarah’s Weekend List.
Saturday is also the Fête du croissant.
shawn
The bibliothèque Maisonneuve has been officially reopened after what looks like a major expansion and the mayor has a Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/MTL.ValeriePlante/posts/pfbid0gwczB5Tyvq52mgXU56a4EXzRPd817RSsiKrYDwHd2nQcKpVFnhWyD1hknLCU3ui6l
Kate
Nice! That really might be worth a look. I hope they’ve got rid of all that gamboge shelving that made the interior look kind of jaundiced and dreary.
One of the things this city has done well since the millennium is new libraries. The library near Rosemont metro is good, and the Boisé library in St‑Laurent is outstanding. I haven’t seen the new Benny library yet but the photos were promising.
dhomas
Thanks for the heads-up, Shawn! I might pass by with the kids later today. I’ve also updated Google Maps to reflect the reopening.
Kate
dhomas, the city page still has “fermeture temporaire” on it. The library may have been completed and a formal reopening held but it still may not be open to ordinary users at the moment. Better call and check.
Update: I saw a Facebook post about a sort of street festival being held to celebrate the reopening.
shawn
Oh god. Be aware that fighter jets will again be flying loudly over Montreal this evening at 7 and again 7:10 pm for the Als home opener. Sorry about this. Why they have to do it twice (or once) is beyond me but the team was named after the fighter squadron and not the bird.
dhomas
@Kate: That city page says the reopening was today, June 10th, at 10h. I attached a screenshot to my Google maps edit. We didn’t end up making it this week. Probably next weekend.
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Kate
The city is adding land to the parc-nature des Sources although this piece immediately notes that some of the desired land still belongs to the federal government or to private owners.
shawn
Ottawa putting money into a protected area on our north shore: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1986663/ottawa-protection-especes-mille-iles-montreal
Kate
Yes. I had added that story to the Enviro Montreal twitter feed.
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Kate
A relatively recent accident detection feature on mobile phones is making pocket calls to 911 far more prevalent, accounting for half the 911 calls in some parts of Quebec. It sounds like some phones are now equipped with accelerometer alerts like the ones issued to elderly people to cope with possible falls.
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Kate
Reports of crime of all kinds – homicides, sex crimes, fraud, car thefts – were up in 2022 although I don’t know whether an overall figure of a 14% increase is worthy of the “explodes” in the TVA headline.
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Kate
A new mobile service is offering homeless people help with filing their taxes, since they can’t aspire to getting housing without having done so.
I admit it never crossed my mind that this was a need, but I guess it’s better if someone helps with it.
CE
Also, considering how low a homeless person’t income would be, filing taxes is going to mean a return which would likely help them out.
Ephraim
The Canadian Government is working on a project to automatically file taxes for most people because they want to use the tax system to provide more help to the disadvantaged via the tax system
jeather
I assume there’s some reason we haven’t, when most other western countries except the US (which might be coming around on this after a million articles about it) offer automatic filing for regular people with non-complicated taxes.
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