It isn’t good news. For the first time, more than half of Quebecers can converse in English. Census numbers from 2021 say that 51.7% of us can sling the old langue de Shakespeare and that means some stinging opinion pieces will be coming in the Journal, and probably Le Devoir – in more academic language, followed by promises from the CAQ to do something about it.
The Journal is already on it; Joseph Facal already diagnoses Laval with galloping anglicization, an inevitably fatal disease.
Some SPVM police have been wearing a “thin blue line” patch since Black Lives Matter has been a thing. There’s a vague promise here to deal with it when the police chief hands down some ruling on uniform standards.
Can we bring back the clown pants? They were actually better than their dark coloured uniforms… more welcoming and less threatening
TVA says bluntly that Mayor Plante is wrong about what the city spends on Amazon and that, although she claims they only spent a small amount in a defined period, they’re frittering around a grand a day.
So Montreal spends 0.005% of their budget at Amazon? So that’s like if a household earning $100,000 a year spent…$5 a year at Amazon?
I was thinking that. It’s not a big amount, spread over all of the city’s workers, and probably a cheaper and more ready way for them to get small items they need than writing up a requisition and having to get it approved by an entire bureaucracy.
I understand the political imperative to shop local: Plante set it as a goal for herself, and the opposition (and TVA/JdM) are happy enough to skewer her for it. But the requisition process is always a pain in large organizations, and the fewer suppliers and bills you have, the better. Most of the large sellers in computer, hardware, etc. are American anyway. Also I’m imagining the JdM story now: city spends 20% more buying local products available for less on Amazon!
A McGill student has figured out how to recharge an Opus card using a phone, and made an app to do it. The ARTM had just agreed to pay millions to a French firm to do the same thing. Alex Lai has withdrawn his app at their request.
I understand why a young hacker might be challenged to figure out how Opus works, but why is the ARTM spending money to figure out its own technology?
A government organization, like the ARTM, giving out a contract worth millions to a large French firm to create an app that could be created by one person, hmm… quel choquant! :-O
These kind of apps need to be extremely hacker safe and should work correctly 100% of the time (or throw an error). Even if it gives free rides 0.001% of the time, and that’s still a lot of money lost. And likely will be abused so it becomes more than 0.001% The developing is expensive, but the testing even more. Millions more? I’ve no idea.
(I know the Dutch transport card, used for all modes of public transport in the entire country, was hacked. https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/ov-chip-card/ )
@Meezly
Rule 1 for understanding Quebec: if it wasn’t developed here or in France, nobody has ever thought about it and it doesn’t exist.
There’s developing and deploying the tech (which probably pre-dates the Opus card), which the McGill student figured out pretty quickly, and there’s the ongoing management of the sales servers, which will generate significant, long-lasting revenue for the selected firm. This is so not my area of expertise, but it seems that the ARTM or STM would be better off figuring that end out on its own so as not to be in the hock to some external firm forever.
Bear in mind that ARTM is not a tech company, it’s a transportation company. I don’t know how extensive their IT and development departments are, but I’m guessing they’re not specialized on app development.
As others have suggested, there’s more to it than hacking out an app. There needs to be quality assurance, testing, hacker-proofing, and then on-going maintenance and updates of both the app and the servers and payment systems that lie behind it (although the payment system is likely third-party).
All that to say, it’s usually more efficient to outsource it to experts than to try to manage it yourself when this kind of app development is not your specialty.
There’s an alternate history here, where they develop it themselves, and it turns out to be buggy and not very user friendly, and gets hacked, and two years from now we’re all shaking our heads and thinking “what a bunch of idiots; why didn’t they outsourced it?”
Three years ago, ARTM launched a trial program called “Recharge OPUS.” This was an app for iPhones, made available through Apple’s TestFlight, and it was designed by a local firm. I tried out this app and found it quite unstable. On two occasions, after several attempts to recharge my Opus card using the app, the metro entrance reader failed to read my card correctly, and would wipe the card clean. Given that the program was discontinued shortly afterward, I suspect others might have had similar reliability issues.
Some very good points made. Still, it makes me wonder… one, whether the cost is over-inflated (I finally looked at the article and 1.13M isn’t a terribly huge amount BUT this contract stipulates that royalties must be paid on each of the approximately seven million annual transactions). It’s very possible to create a stable and secure phone app with a small team within a reasonable amount of time, say two developers and a QA.
And two, whether there’s an “oh my uncle in France is CEO of this tech firm” situation, as I’m sure there are tech companies within Quebec and Canada that won’t demand royalties on each transaction made on the app!
The company with the contract is a spin-off of the company that designed the specifications behind the technology that OPUS uses, founded by the guy who invented chip cards (like not just for transit, but everything: bank cards, employee cards, etc.). They’re definitely not a two-bit operation.
Why can I pay with my phone all over Europe, but can’t here.
Anjou has closed one of its public pools prematurely because of the alleged presence of a gang in the area.
Public security minister François Bonnardel went on patrol with SPVM police downtown ostensibly to get a look at the problems in the area.
Ted Rutland has some pointed criticism about this lark, starting with “The idea the strip facing Emilie-Gamelin is boarded up due to unhoused people is the most oft-repeated lie of the last six months. Most of the block is boarded up because Mondev bought it, evicted the tenants, and is now reworking its plans in light of higher interest rates.”
It’s always interesting to see the homeless blamed for their own existence as if they are a cause, not a symptom of society’s failings. Classic cop logic, too.
I walked through the area yesterday and while the people yelling at clouds are annoying, they are mostly harmless.
Having not one but two areas where people can grab golf clubs for a round of mini putt next to boarded up buildings and people begging struck me as being incredibly harsh.
Shots were fired Monday evening at a crowded car in Tétreaultville, but nobody was hurt.
Ephraim 19:24 on 2023-08-22 Permalink
Except that being unilingual means you will be poor… so for the sake of taxes, more people should be bilingual. Irony….
jeather 09:33 on 2023-08-23 Permalink
Unsurprising but definitely not going to help with xenophobia: 66,6% des immigrants au Québec peuvent soutenir une conversation en anglais contre 48,9 % des personnes nées ici
Bob 12:03 on 2023-08-23 Permalink
A much higher percentage of French people can speak English. French as in the people of France – 57%. Most of Europe is at about that level, and look at their cultures – all destroyed! Their economies – in ruins! Their peoples – wandering silently through the land, looking for their lost souls!
Michael 15:22 on 2023-08-23 Permalink
Progress. The day will come when 100% of households can speak english in Quebec.
Kate 19:07 on 2023-08-23 Permalink
Michael, you think you’re being a clever right-wing troll, but it’s tedious.