Updates from November, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 21:33 on 2023-11-05 Permalink | Reply  

    More than 400,000 public sector workers will be on strike Monday – at least in the morning.

    It’s not clear to me what use it is for teachers to strike from midnight until 10:30 am but that’s what most elementary and high school teachers are doing. CEGEP teachers are striking till noon.

    Above: some of the many strike banners decorating a Villeray elementary school.

     
    • Bert 07:56 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      Any strike during the day will basically cancel the entire school day and thus probably affecting working parents. In some cases it is not teachers themselves that are striking but support workers, which comes out to basically the same.

    • Tim S. 08:51 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      Just as an aside, but until now the CBC articles about the strike have been published on the local news section, and comments have been quite supportive, I guess because people here get what’s going on and would like their teachers and nurses to be paid properly (also, the MNAs giving themselves 30% is quite a sticking point). Today’s article was published under national news, and boy, those comments….I hope some of them are coming from Russian trolls, but I suspect a good number are real.

    • qatzelok 09:53 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      The number of “Quebec should separate, equalization payments bums, we don’t need them!” comments on EVERY CBC article about any kind of event that takes place in Quebec… are shameful and show lack of tolerance and education.

      The volume of these spammy ad hom attacks on Quebec makes the comments practically unreadable, and it demonstrates that CBC has no policy regarding racism against French Canadians and their institutions.

    • CE 10:11 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to the CBC News comments?

    • Chris 10:32 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to internet comments generally? 🙂

      (this blog notwithstanding)

    • Meezly 10:33 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      Exactly what Bert said. They want to minimize the impact on students and parents. There are lots of support services that start their shifts during the wee hours, ie. catering services, bus drivers…

    • jeather 10:35 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      The CAQ really screwed themselves over with that 30% raise. Which is good, in that everyone else deserves a raise too, but that was just so incredibly wrong-footed.

      The metro was empty this morning.

    • Kevin 10:38 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      @Tim S.
      I suspect most of those comments are coming from paid posters and/or are part of a organized campaign even if somewhat loosely organized. They definitely are not coming from quote-unquote real people.

      People with a bone to pick (or being paid to pick a bone) can easily create dozens of accounts to promote their viewpoint, and it doesn’t take much internal digging to find the proof.

      Finding a manager or executive who cares enough to realize it’s a problem is another matter.

    • Joey 10:50 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      If the strike ends midday and classes/services resume, do the workers get partially paid?

    • Chris 11:01 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      >I suspect most of those comments are coming from paid posters

      “those” comments? Meaning the ones you disagree with? How about the ones you agree with?

    • Kevin 11:47 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      Chris
      I don’t mind you inflicting this bullshit on yourself, but stop doing it to others.

    • Bert 12:11 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      At least for schools, I didn’t intend my comment to mean that it was to minimize the impact but rather the opposite. Are schools going to do half days? Run busses for noon? The strike will have impacted parents just like a full-day thing. Minimal strike to get the day canceled

    • Kevin 12:15 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      Bert
      Most schools affected in the Montreal area were planning half-days for today with classes starting at 11 or after lunch.

    • Mitch 13:02 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      Has there been any announcements about whether today’s strike will be impacting pharmacy services? As fate would have it, I have my Covid booster scheduled for later this afternoon at a Jean Coutu.

    • Tim S. 13:25 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      @Joey: Yes.

      Kevin: I’m sure that’s true for many, many of the comments, but enough of them correspond to real-world opinions that I wonder.

    • dhomas 21:03 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      As far as I can tell, the reason for the partial day strike is exactly because the teachers still get paid for part of the day while having nearly the same effect as a full day strike. My kids’ classes were nearly empty today.

    • Ian 22:19 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

      qatzi? Is this you?

      “it demonstrates that CBC has no policy regarding racism against French Canadians and their institutions.”

      It’s not that long ago you would have called anyone referring to the Québecois as “French Canadians” as “Westmount Rhodesians”. Have you been having us on this whole time?

    • Chris 10:41 on 2023-11-07 Permalink

      Kevin, what are you on about? What am I “inflicting” on anyone? I’m saying: it’s alas common these days for people to be intolerant of different opinions, and accuse those that disagree of being trolls, bots, Russian disinformation, etc., etc. You have surmised, without evidence given, that the anti-union posts that Tim S. saw are “definitely are not coming from quote-unquote real people”. Why are you surmising that? Are you sure it’s not your biases? Have you considered that many people are genuinely against unions?
      40% of Canadians think unions are too powerful. Those people write internet comments too. I’m saying: if you’re going to surmise that many comments about subject X are ‘paid posters of an organized campaign’, then I hope you at least surmise the same when you see many comments about subject Y too. Regardless of whether you are for or against X or Y. Because, frankly, your comment that I originally replied to came off as “I’m pro-union, I’m right, others are wrong, contrary comments are therefore not from real people”. Perhaps that’s not what you meant, but that’s what I saw.

    • Kevin 12:04 on 2023-11-07 Permalink

      Chris
      Stop playing your game of taking offence and deliberately interpreting everything incorrectly. It’s extremely evident when you quote half a sentence and misattribute intentions to a partial clause, and ridiculous that you’ve spun up a strawman based on the word “those,” instead of *reading the rest of my post*.

      Stop looking for reasons to be upset and start looking for more understanding.

    • Chris 00:13 on 2023-11-08 Permalink

      Kevin, I’ve not taken any offence and I’m not upset. I read your posts fully too.

      >Stop looking for reasons to be upset and start looking for more understanding.

      OK, help me with the understanding then. I’d still love to know why you’re so sure that posts against the union action are “definitely not coming from quote-unquote real people”. Why is that more likely than it just being some of the roughly half of Canadians that are not too fond of unions?

  • Kate 10:00 on 2023-11-05 Permalink | Reply  

    The new Maison Radio-Canada was vandalized with red paint during Saturday’s pro‑Palestine demonstration. It has since been cleaned up.

     
    • Kate 09:38 on 2023-11-05 Permalink | Reply  

      La Presse has an explainer about the transit funding issue: how public transit ended up with such deep deficits and what can be done about it.

       
      • Kate 09:21 on 2023-11-05 Permalink | Reply  

        Hydro-Quebec wants to construct a central on the same block as the Grande Bibliothèque.

        This is a surprisingly interesting piece, because it reveals how the fabric of the city comes about. Hydro’s old brutalist central up the hill is decrepit, so they wanted part of the old Voyageur terminus land to build a new, bigger facility. But the city owns that land and wants it for social housing. So Hydro has made a deal with the BAnQ for the lot facing Ontario, giving the BAnQ enough cash to get started – finally – with a project to refurbish the old Saint‑Sulpice library into a shrine to Quebec music.

         
        • DeWolf 11:34 on 2023-11-05 Permalink

          Huh. Definitely interesting!

          HQ says it won’t just build a featureless box at such a prominent corner, so I hope they have an architectural competition to come up with something interesting.

          And the old central is pretty interesting. I wonder if there’s anything that can be done with that structure after it’s decommissioned. Imagine going to a show in a building that looks like that…

        • Ian 11:59 on 2023-11-05 Permalink

          It’s called an RFP (request for proposals), every big project has it. It literally is a competition to see whose proposal wins. There’s a point system and everything.

          Whenever you see a big ugly public building they chose that specific design on purpose, from many others.

        • Kate 12:57 on 2023-11-05 Permalink

          Are they obliged to choose the cheapest? Or will it depend on whose nephew is in the running?

        • Orr 16:04 on 2023-11-05 Permalink

          The decrepit building uphill of the Banq is what we call “the spaceship has landed” building.
          Always wondered what would eventually go into that vacant lot, hope it is worthy.

        • Kate 18:10 on 2023-11-05 Permalink

          I took one of the tours they offered when the big library opened. At that point they planned to add more art pieces to the garden directly north of the building, and it was implied that the garden might eventually stretch up to Ontario. But it never has.

        • DeWolf 18:29 on 2023-11-05 Permalink

          @Ian I’m talking about an international design competition like what the Holocaust Museum and Phi Centre had, not just a tendering process.

        • CE 10:12 on 2023-11-06 Permalink

          I always hoped that piece of land would be used to expand the library. I haven’t used it much since I finished university but it was always close to bursting, especially during the school year.

      • Kate 09:12 on 2023-11-05 Permalink | Reply  

        A young man was shot early Sunday in Rivière‑des‑Prairies. No arrests have been made.

         
        c
        Compose new post
        j
        Next post/Next comment
        k
        Previous post/Previous comment
        r
        Reply
        e
        Edit
        o
        Show/Hide comments
        t
        Go to top
        l
        Go to login
        h
        Show/Hide help
        shift + esc
        Cancel