Quebec’s intention to replace the anglophone school boards with service centres was stymied Wednesday by a Superior Court ruling that they can’t do that because it would violate certain minority rights. It’s not mentioned here whether Quebec will appeal the issue to the Supreme Court.
Updates from August, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Illegal listings with fake registration numbers continue to rise on the Airbnb site. Quebec’s law comes into effect next month – but who will be enforcing it?
jeather
Right now Airbnb seems to argue — not unfairly — that they can’t futz around with validating pdf documents and that they want a usable electronic system to validate registration numbers. But if/when they get that, no doubt there will be another excuse.
That said I do think it would be a good idea for someone to use the government tools to check until such time as the law comes into effect and the database/API is usable. After that, well, if the database is available to citizens, I have zero doubt there will be a lot of journalists and activists checking. Is that ideal? No.
Kate
I could be persuaded to volunteer a couple of hours a week to checking these listings and sending in reports on any that look shady. If a few dozen people did this…
Ephraim
The government issued PDF files. The PDF files are signed, I just think they aren’t properly signed, yet. But AirBnB obviously hasn’t yet killed enough people in Quebec, they are still fighting it with all their being, rather than sitting down and working out a way to do it all legally. Though, to be honest, maybe that should be a completely public database, showing address to licence number, without the name of the owner
DisgruntledGoat
Unfortunately enforcement is really lagging behind, if it’s even happening.
The Corporation de l’industrie touristique du Québec issues the certificates, and Revenu Quebec is tasked with any enforcement that relies on a member of the public reporting it. Your report probably gets printed out somewhere in the olympic village towers and goes into a file to be looked at for 5 minutes by an overworked auditor 6-12 months later.
There is a complete failure at the borough level to do anything, and why would they because higher property values and real estate development benefit them. And there is a complete failure at the provincial bureaucracy level.
Ephraim
As of September, the OTA will be responsible for not having their ducks in order. AirBnB is fighting because it wants it all in an API. Expedia is just asking for a copy of the PDF from the ministry to protect themselves. AirBnB is essentially hoping that by pushing back it will push back implementation. It will be much harder to fake a number when you have to send in a signed PDF file from the government. Not just enter a number.
CE
It would be helpful to be able to look up a CITQ number on some sort of database and see if it corresponds to a listing on Airbnb. There’s a unit in my building that I’m pretty sure is not registered and is being used to host big groups (and some of the rooms in the basement don’t have windows). I’m afraid that what happened in Old Montreal is going to happen again in my building. There’s a CITQ number on the listing but is it legit or not? Who knows, it’s impossible to search. I even asked a friend who works for Airbnb how I can see if it’s a legal listing and I was told that there’s no way to check and that in Quebec, Airbnb doesn’t validate the registration numbers (they do, however, validate them in jurisdictions where they’re required to do so).
Does anyone know why is the province is so keen to let Airbnb (a foreign company) do whatever they want despite the safety issues, the effect on the housing market, the lost tax revenues, the negative effect on the hotel industry, etc, etc? It truly makes no sense.
MarcG
CE: You used to be able to enter the CITQ number on the bonjourquebec.com website and it would show you the company listing it was associated with, if any. However 1) It currently seems to either be broken or they removed this functionality, and 2) When I did this and found that the company info didn’t match the Airbnb listing info, I wrote to the CITQ and told them as much and never got a response.
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Kate
Is it just me, or is the weather feeling prematurely Septemberish for August?
Blork
Not just you. It was 14 when I went to bed last night. I wore a hoodie on my walk in the park yesterday.
jeather
I wouldn’t mind slightly warmer days but these cool nights are delightful.
Tofu va Vohu
I saw one sugar maple in Parc Mont Royal yesterday with a few leaves starting to turn. It’s probably diseased or otherwise damaged, but it startled me.
Sara
Some of the young trees on Saint-Hubert are turning.
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Kate
Two men were stabbed in separate incidents in Chinatown, one on Tuesday night, the other on Wednesday morning. This follows recent reports of concerns from Chinatown merchants that the area is becoming unsafe.
Ian
To be fair there’s always been a pretty big contingent of homelessness there, beggars on Gauchetiere, hangouts on the St-Urbain benches, and people sleeping on the south side of Viger … this isn’t a “new” problem by any stretch.
I used to walk over to St Larry to catch the bus from my glass office tower job on Beaver Hall when I worked downtown and it was pretty heartbreaking every single day.
Kate
True enough. Guys have camped on that thin grassy strip facing the Chinatown Holiday Inn on and off for years.
Blork
The difference could be the number of homeless now in that area, and/or the cohort. As in, maybe the rougher-edged ones didn’t used to spend much time there and now they’re moving in and possibly replacing the usual folks.
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Kate
Justin Trudeau has announced his separation from his wife. I wonder whether this will have any effect on his hopes for re‑election.
jeather
My bet is you’ve got cause and effect backwards there.
Kate
You mean that his intention to campaign for re-election may have brought an end to his marriage?
jeather
No, I think that they decided that he can’t win or that he won’t run so now is the time.
Ephraim
Honestly, I think they have been separated for a long time, they just didn’t announce it publicly.
Kate
It never crossed my mind to think about it. Now I think he seems to be following in his father’s footsteps, even though his wife has apparently been a much more level‑headed person than his mother.
Sim
@Kate, everything he does is to emulate his father. Like using the emergency measures act…
Ian
Drapeau & Bourassa begged Trudeau Sr. to do so. The nationalist narrative blaming Trudeau is a misdirection intended to disguise how little popular support they actually had in Quebec.
Kate
Sim, the War Measures Act and the Emergencies Act are not the same, and were not invoked for similar reasons. I don’t think it’s a parallel that can be fairly drawn.
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Kate
Patrick Lagacé is always worth reading, but especially when he’s mad. And he’s mad about a drunken driver whose error in traffic killed a woman on a Montreal street back in May. As Lagacé explains, Vi Trung Ngo owns a garage, and was driving a client’s car, presumably without permission. And he didn’t have a licence.
The accused driver was in court this week, and was released by the judge and told not to drive, even though he has a history of not giving a damn – as Lagacé says, “c’est un type qui se contre-crisse d’autrui.” Lagacé goes so far as to suggest that a judge who makes a choice like this undermines the public’s trust in justice.
Blork
An important point for those who are reading too fast and see this as “he got away with it.” He’s been released pending his trial. So there will still be a trial; it’s not like he’s just walking away scott-free. (But still; if there was ever a case for detaining someone awaiting trial you’d think this would be it…)
Kate
Thanks for adding the clarification. I was going to write “released on bail” but no mention was made of bail, so I kind of passed over it.
jeather
I don’t disagree with anything but the horrors about driving without his license on him seemed overblown, compared to the actual dangerous driving he did on a lot of other fronts — driving while very drunk, texting while driving, going through red lights.
It looks like he never had his license taken from him (though he should have; not that it would have stopped him, one thinks), so it was driving without his license, but not driving unlicensed. (I admit I have occasionally done as much, either accidentally when I didn’t realise I forgot my wallet — once because I took my license out to scan it then forgot it in the scanner — or to move my car for snow clearance.)
bumper carz
This article contributes to the misinformation that alcohol is usually a factor in fatal car collisions.But this is false: cars are the problem, not alcohol. In reality, 80-90% of fatal car collisions happen without alcohol being a factor:
“De 2008 à 2018, la proportion du nombre de décès causés par l’alcool au volant est passée de 19,6 % à 9,9 %,”
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2021-05-02/l-alcool-est-de-moins-en-moins-en-cause-dans-les-accidents-mortels.php
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Kate
Josée Legault drew the Montreal is bad straw Wednesday, dumping the problems at the feet of Valérie Plante.
Ian
To be fair the city admin are a pile of buck-passers & glad-handers.
Not like it was different under, say, Coderre – which is not meant as an excuse.
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Kate
The REM was down for an hour on Wednesday morning, in both directions. Says here it was a computer issue and the had to reboot everything. Radio‑Canada headines it bluntly three outages in three days.
Ian
The king is dead; long live the king.
Uatu
If anyone is interested, here’s a video from an out of town transit vlogger that I saw Monday morning at Panama station during the breakdown so you can see what was going on from an outsiders perspective.
It’s very entertaining and unlike the other transit vloggers he wasn’t officially invited by the REM so he and his buddies have unbiased critiques of the stations and the system. The others I’ve seen have all been gushing train enthusiasts.
MarcG
Thanks for that link, Uatu. The video style annoys me because I’m old but it’s very interesting to see their perspective.
Robert H
I’m old too, but I’m also a transit geek, and I enjoy the Miles in Transit videos and their often amusing but also informative critiques of systems in different cities. Their coverage of Boston’s Green Line Extension (GLX) opening last year was equally fun and enlightening. I love their enthusiasm, but they are not uncritical, they are observant because they have seen different systems in different cities and they are good at spotting errors, raising questions and suggesting improvements in a rather antic-manic young guys having fun style. The GLX in Boston (where I lived many years) received just as much coverage as the REM has in Montreal despite not being as ambitious or extensive: only about 6 and 1/2 kilometres along an existing surface right of way, no tunneling. I’ve ridden public transport in various cities, and they always reveal a lot about the places they were built. It will be interesting to see how the REM weaves itself into the physical and mental landscape of Montreal.
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