Work on extending the metro’s blue line will start Monday at Jean‑Talon and Langelier. Some road closures and bus route adjustments are expected.
Updates from July, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Every now and then the Montreal Economic Institute gets into the news with some new cockamamie right‑wing idea for improving things – like increasing our electricity bills.
Taylor
Isn’t it strange how they have a problem with us consuming an inexpensive renewable energy source but they have no problem with all the expensive non-renewable energy we consume?
Goober
Natural gas would be dirt cheap in Quebec if the Quebec Government allowed fracking.
Orr
MEI has offices in Montreal and in Calgary. So although they do not reveal their funders whose PR objectives they are processing into public opinion, I don’t think there is much doubt it is to make Canada the best place in the world for domestic and foreign oil companies, and if other large corporations want to toss some coin at the MEI, their PR talking-points will also be think-tanked into op-eds and “news” in all the newspapers.
Mitchell
Is this “plan” as absurd as Giguere makes it sound? Charge consumers more so that they can be reimbursed by the government. I admit that I don’t understand economics, but this sounds like a scam.
“The rate increase would also boost Hydro-Québec’s revenues, and by extension, the government’s revenues. With this money, Quebec could finance targeted measures to soften the blow for the less well-off and fund a tax cut that would indirectly offset the rising cost of electricity bills,” added Giguère.
steph
yes Mitchell their suggestion is absurd. Increasing costs of basic needs reverses progressive taxes. We need to tax the rich MORE.
Su
The extractivist sector is going to require MUCH more energy to supply the ten fold increase in mining and processing of elements required to fuel our “Green Transition”. The mines will require an increase in green renewable energy (ie more hydro dams) which can be financed by Hydro Quebec price increases or by privatised hydro development to supply extraction activities directly without Hydro Quebec involvement or an increase in fossil fuels.
MEI represents the private extractivist sector
. Perhaps Michael Sabia who has taken over the helm of HydroQuebec as of today will straighten all of this out.saintjacques
> Charge consumers more so that they can be reimbursed by the government.
You mean, like a carbon tax?
Joey
Or the GST…
Michael
Quebec needs to allow natural gas production. We import $2B worth a year.
Makes no sense.
Kate
Goober, Michael – do you actually not believe that burning hydrocarbons increases greenhouse gas emissions with the ultimate effect of heating the earth?
su
Goober/Michael
The only thing that ever made fracked gas cheap was government subsidies. Without those subsidies the Energy Return on Investment for fracked gas would have made it way too expensive.Ephraim
Increasing our electric bills does nothing but create surpluses which in turn go 50% to the Generations Fund and 50% have to be rebated in rates. Why don’t these idiots know that? You can’t profit excessively on electricity in Quebec
MarcG
A guy on the radio this morning was trying to sell it as a socialist idea, like “rich people spend more on electricity so they’ll be the ones who pay more and all of this new money will trickle down in the form of social programs for everyone”. But the reality is that if you’re low-income and your Hydro bill goes up $10/month that hurts a lot more than if you’re stinking rich and it goes up by $100/month. It’s like parking tickets, for some people it’s just the price of that parking spot, for others it means they’re fucked. If you think increasing taxes for the wealthy is a good idea, just do it.
Michael
Kate,
Natural gas is the cleanest form of hydrocarbons.
We need energy. Either we import it or produce it, we won’t ever be off hydrocarbons in our lifetimes.
Hydro electricity can only produce so much energy until we need to build more dams.
Kate
That’s common sense – and that “common sense” will kill us all.
Ian
Considering how little has been done in QC with wind, solar, and tidally generated electricity we aren’t out of options yet! What are we supposed to do, Michael, retrofit the generating stations for natural gas? Does your car run on natural gas? Your computer? Switching over to natural gas doesn’t make any sense at all. Even nuclear would make more sense than natural gas, and that’s a bad idea, too. Electric is the way to go.
If we go down rabbitholes at this point, time will run out – stay the course. _That_ is common sense – as opposed to sensus communis, which is a very different thing altogether and is often the opposite.
Goober
I didn’t say anything about hydrocarbons.
I merely pointed out that hydroelectricity is made artificially cheaper by the Government, while natural gas is artificially more expensive (also because of the Government).
Ultimately what makes any talk about the environment so dysfunctional in Canada, but especially in Quebec, is that we are a relatively small population spread over a huge landmass that’s frozen for half the year. To live a comfortable life with modern amenities, Canadians have to consume a fair bit of energy. And all forms of energy production have some sort of environmental cost.
It would make much more sense for our dense urban neighbourhoods to have totally separate energy laws from the rest of the province, but frankly our legislation is so centralized and our leaders so ossified that I see this as being highly unlikely.
Lastly, if you want to live a simple, pre-20th century off-the-grid lifestyle in order to reduce your carbon footprint, by all means, go for it. I suspect precious few people will follow you to your cabin in the woods, however.
Chris
MarcG what you said in your last comment is true, but also true of the carbon tax.
nau
No, it is not true of the carbon tax. The carbon tax program has rebates that are paid back to all households where it applies. (None of us get one because it doesn’t apply in Quebec, which has a different carbon pricing policy.) The federal govt claims that 80% of households get more back in rebates than they pay. There’s no way to verify that but in any case if that’s their claim, the point at which one pays more than one gets back should be well above whatever level is considered low income. Note as well that the federal tax credit provides a larger rebate to rural residents, so there are already different “energy laws” for different areas, and goober’s complaint about ossified, centralized gummint is just so much ideological bilge. Franchement, I lean anarchist, but let’s not just make up whatever nonsense appeals to our prejudices.
Chris
nau, yes, it is true of the carbon tax. Maybe we disagree about what the “it” is? Let me reword MarcG’s sentence: “But the reality is that if you’re low-income and your gas bill goes up $10/month that hurts a lot more than if you’re stinking rich and it goes up by $100/month.” This is *why* they have the rebate you mention. This MEI plan _could have a similar rebate system_. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not arguing for or against this MEI plan nor the carbon tax.
nau
Chris, I have applied the principle of interpretive generosity, but I still don’t see how your first comment could have been understood as you commenting on the MEI plan or the “why” of a rebate there. If that was your intent, as much as I’m for brevity, one has to include all the relevant words. Regarding the MEI plan, I didn’t hear the radio broadcast MarcG did, so I can’t comment on how the MEI’s mouthpiece presented it there. In the article, the idea presented is to increase everybody’s hydro bill and use the revenue to offset the impact on the poor and possibly give some unspecified tax cut. These sort of wealthy-donor-serving institutes have promoted changes to the tax codes for the last few decades to increase the wealth of those who already have the most by shifting the tax burden to the middle classes (they would put it on the poor too but Canada still has enough latent decency that doing that too obviously simply won’t fly and even the MEI types have figured that out). Personally, I imagine I’m better off with the current Hydro rates, then with whatever tax cut the MEI and the CAQ would cook up.
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Kate
A man has been arrested following vandalism to a mosque in Montreal North over the weekend.
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Kate
La Presse interviews a woman who’s been living in the same Villeray shoebox house since 1949, at times with half a dozen people sharing the same tiny space.
DeWolf
Cute story. Especially this quote:
“J’aime mieux être sur mon balcon plutôt qu’en arrière dans le jardin. Parce que les fleurs, ça ne parle pas, les humains, oui!”
Robert H
That was indeed pleasant to read. And DeWolf, yes, as that quote implies, she seems like a very sociable person, une vraie vedette du quartier and the sort that every neighborhood should have. Mind you, she’s also the sort of person whom I would have found annoying when I was a kid and thought less about the value of friendly eyes on the street than the possibility that news about what I was up to away from home would get back to my parents. And, she also seems to have created a lively, warm household. I do wish, however, that she had expanded upon her off hand comment about Édith Piaf being “Une emmerdeuse.” Hmmmmmm…
Kate
I miss a couple of my neighbours who used to sit on their front porches, who were usually happy to have a little chat. It’s a younger crowd now and people are too busy to hang around chatting.
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Kate
After a crazy weekend in which 120,000 people wanted to try the REM, it’s now in service as part of many commuters’ day. Some basic facts about the service.
There was a service interruption Monday morning, caused by an unspecified technical issue.
Faiz Imam
I wonder what CDPQs requirements in terms of communication strategy.
They gave decent info about this outage to start, but will we ever find out what happened? Are they required to tell us?
DeWolf
@Faiz it’s in the article:
« Le problème a vraiment été au niveau des aiguillages. Il y a un système qui s’est bloqué », a expliqué après coup le porte-parole du CDPQ Infra, Jean-Vincent Lacroix. Cet appareil, a précisé l’organisation, est celui qui permet à un train de changer de voie. On retrouve plusieurs types d’aiguillages dans les grandes gares et les systèmes de transport comme le REM.
Uatu
What a shitshow. Get on the train then off then on again then off. Nobody knows what’s going on. No sign of attendants who are supposed to answer questions. No info on the platform except vague announcements about service interruption. No info on when it it’ll resume. Everyone emptied out of the station unsure of where to go until someone pointed out that there’s a shuttle bus then a gigantic line formed that twisted back on itself then a twenty minute wait and also you have to make sure you’re heading on the one to downtown and not nuns island. I understand that it’s the first day, but at least have backup buses and staff to answer questions on standby. I had to figure out where to go by just following the crowd. Got to hear people express their frustrations in multiple languages though which was kinda entertaining. Cantonese, Russian, Spanish, French, English, Filipino…
Also heard “I want my bus back” .
There were also reporters and transit vloggers enthusiastically recording everything. This was not a good look for the REM whatever your opinion on it. Got to work 15min. late. Thank goodness I took an earlier bus…. 190$ for this…ughForgetful
Noooooooo! New metro, Same problem. At least the trains are outside. The times I’ve been stuck in the tunnels, train doors locked. I wish there would be a centralized channel managed by the ARTM where all services interruption would be announced. Now STM, exo, RTL, STL and REM all communicate separately.
Kate
Good to have a report from someone on the scene, Uatu. Thanks!
Tim F
Any news report about how the evening rush hour went well? No? We’re just gonna leave everyone with the first impression that it’s a forever broken thing?
Sigh…Kate
Tim F, I’ve had a look at all the usual media sites and found nothing about the evening rush hour. It’s not news when there are no problems!
Joey
@Tim F perhaps you saw that late at night the REM was down, and that the CDPQ did not bother to tweet it. Great first day! Good thing they didn’t bother to keep the buses running in parallel during the “periode de rodage”…
Bert
I wonder if this may have anything to do with the June 16th truck fire that was under the REM overpass on the 15 around the Samuel de Champlain bridge. I drove by there last week and the soot on the overpass is quite substantial.
Google Street View – https://goo.gl/maps/CdX34rXBXL7BWQ6e7
CTV article – https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/structural-concerns-for-rem-after-truck-fire-scorches-underside-of-railway-1.6443735
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Kate
You couldn’t make it up: Quebec is sending clowns to Ukraine.
Meezly
Cuz Life is Beautiful?
Max
Quite a clickbait synopsis to a noble initiative. This guy is doing more than 99% of the folks to help.
Kate
I’m sorry to have offended. It’s only that we have a recurring joke here about how the city and/or Quebec like to throw clowns at any problem.
Ian
Sounds like somebody needs to send in the clowns for certain grumpy posters. Seems to be a few more these days, is it because Xitter is dying?
In any case, Montreal is a city where, when faced with a problem, we always ask, “Is this a problem that can be solved with clowns?”
… and the answer is always “YES”.Mozai
The office of “Clowns Sans Frontières” is here in Plateau district.
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Kate
After a couple of ominously quiet weeks on the arson front, an Amir restaurant on Côte‑des‑Neiges was put to the torch early Monday.
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Kate
Some boroughs have a program to help people create sidewalk gardens and the results are nice.
Siamak Hersini
The program is nice however the upkeep and maintenance of areas which are public are from tax dollars. The areas are therefore not the exclusive property of any participant(s). If a dog urinates on the edge of one and an entitled individual is yelling out of his window at the owner it shows that good intent is not always good policy. Unless the city wishes to extend the project to include fences or a substitute at tax payer expense, people should plant gardens on their own yards.
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