The reliably right-wing Institut économique de Montréal suggests cutting bus drivers’ pay to help tackle the transit deficit.
The IEDM must enjoy strikes.
The reliably right-wing Institut économique de Montréal suggests cutting bus drivers’ pay to help tackle the transit deficit.
The IEDM must enjoy strikes.
A homeless camp on a piece of land belonging to the transport ministry near Lantic Sugar has been spared eviction. TVA says this camp is the biggest one in Montreal.
They have been there even longer than we’ve been waiting for that big, big discussion about police funding.
Bishop’s, Concordia and McGill are offering to make sure 40% of their graduates are able to speak French, in return for a rollback of the planned tuition hike.
Legault et cie must be giggling at watching the anglos grovel.
Update: The CAQ have turned down the offer. Oh, they are loving this.
Maybe. But the idea itself isn’t bad. If undergraduate me had gone as an exchange student to Spain, I would have at least intended to learn Spanish.
I can’t imagine there’s anything preventing the government from requiring the universities to setup large French departments and requiring non-French speakers from being required to take X number of credits. Or French proficiency exams prior to graduation.
I’d support that. Teach students from out of province French and make them employable in Quebec.
But the CAQ won’t do that or anything similar. Because they’re not actually concerned with protecting French. They’re concerned with getting votes.
It’s a great idea. The anglo universities should bend over backwards to get their out-of-province students to learn French. Who doesn’t benefit from learning a new language, especially one that is essential to where they are currently living?
But as PO said, the CAQ doesn’t actually care about French. They care about a very specific cultural idea of Quebec.
I guess having a French exit exam as a hoop for funding would never come back to bite anyone in the ass or be interpreted as an opportunity to impose further “requirements”.
That said, I am sure that the universities realize that the CAQ will never g for it so it might actually be a clever move to prove bad faith… except that as DeWolf points out, it was never really about speaking French, but rather, being French, which you cannot simply learn.
“Moins d’une personne sur deux (46,8 %) au Québec est susceptible de démontrer la maîtrise de compétences en littératie la rendant capable de lire en vue d’apprendre, de comprendre, d’agir ou d’intervenir en toute autonomie. En 2003, 51,1 % des répondants se trouvaient à ce niveau.”
https://fondationalphabetisation.org/lanalphabetisme/les-enquetes-et-statistiques/
This is not a society that respects education.
It should also be added that when you’re in an intensive programme, fully focused on your subject of study, sacrificing your personal life to complete your work, one doesn’t have time/bandwidth to accept even the ‘gen ed’ classes unis sometimes throw at international students, NEVERMIND acquire a whole new language.
That level of scholastic dedication might be unknown to such policy-makers, idk.
As I’ve mentioned, my sister spent the last part of her nursing qualification mostly studying French and worrying about the French test, rather than acquiring more nursing knowledge and skills. So must most people in the program. The test is rigorous even if you grew up speaking some amount of French.
I have one friend here that came from BC. She trained to be an oncology nurse in the Quebec system, and literally the only thing standing in her way from starting work was the French exam.
She ended up teaching nursing at CEGEP instead, still lives here, and is contributing member of society in a specialized field in high demand.
Of course if her tuition had been double she probably wouldn’t have come here.
I wonder if this problem will sort itself out. I read (I think it was Alex Usher who had the numbers) that the net migration of Quebec university students (i.e., the number of non-QC Canadians who study here minus the number of Quebecers who study elsewhere in Canada) is basically zero; if other provinces eventually hike tuition for QC students, we might wind up with more QC students studying in-province, effectively mitigating the impact, at leas from an enrolment perspective (lots of ifs to deal with, etc.).
The proposal from the English universities was good marketing, but it doesn’t stand up to too much scrutiny – it amounts to ‘pay us loads to do some French-language instruction’… Anyway, Legault was never going to seriously consider it…
@Joey
I don’t think the problem is net migration of student populations between the provinces. It’s about putting up walls.
@anton sorry, you’re right, I meant the narrow problem of hit to Concordia and McGill’s finances – walls work two ways, right? Meaning that, when the dust sadly settles there may be an equivalent number of Quebecers who have little choice but to study here, generating revenue for these two universities.
Stockholm syndrome by “leaders” of these universities.
@joey
Yes, walls end up working both ways. Even if technically set up to block movement primarily in one direction.
Not that it really matters, but the extent to which the three English universities pre-emptively patted themselves on the back for this offer is a little excessive, no? An ‘unprecedented’ offer = we finally acknowledge that maybe we should offer broad-based (compulsory?) French-language instruction to our non-Francophone students. Seems far from a historic proposal, no?
Degrees may require that a student takes some credits in another domain but it is always up to the student to decide the area of study. University is not high school. One example is that engineering degrees may require students to take a couple of courses in the arts. I cannot think of any other university initiative that would be so prescriptive as to require a student to take French courses in order to get a degree in an unrelated domain. I think that it is fair to call it unprecedented, historic and an olive branch. One which Legault had no intention at all of accepting.
I would think with the number of Quebec students studying at English universities, the number of students who can speak French is probably at least 40%. Most people I knew at Concordia had at least a cursory knowledge of French.
@Tim, I was looking to do a masters degree in Iceland and one of the requirements for international students was that they had to take Icelandic classes while studying (the program was offered in English).
You got me @CE. 🙂 I guess, it’s not unprecedented…
Quebec has set up deadlines for public transit to be fully electrified, but the commissions face cutting down their services to deal with their deficits. It seems unlikely they can afford to meet that deadline without deep cuts in service.
One bus every hour, but at least it’s electric!
My kid was stuck in Lasalle this evening waiting for a bus that was over a half hour late so I just drove down from the Plateau to pick her up.
As I’ve said before, if the system isn’t reliable, nobody will rely on it.
Maybe this is a problem we can solve with clowns.
Ian, do you own that car, or did you use communauto? If you could *rely* on transit, you wouldn’t need to own a car, would you?
Hoo boy Chris, you sure are clever. What a smart, good boy. Do you feel better now?
Anyway, I’ll feed the trolls against my better instincts…
I’d love to not own a car. I made it to the age of 45 before I even got a driver’s license. I specifically bought one because I live downtown and started work in Ste Anne, as I work in a location-specific role. For the first three years I took transit, even winter night classes ending at 10:30 and morning classes at 8:30. I would get home no earlier than 12:30 and would have to get up at 5:30 because transit is slow even when it comes on time. Did you know the bus can only go 90 on the highway? Now add construction, snow, etc. Even better, consider that the 211 buses are some of the most poorly maintained buses in the network, may have doors that don’t properly seal and even sometimes windows that don’t entirely close.
I would have taken the train except that its schedule is predicated on 9 to 5 workers heading downtown in the morning and out west at night so I would have had to hang around an extra couple of hours every day, and take the bus anyway after 5:30. The REM, when it finally opens, has all its stations that are west of St Jean north of the 40. Most of the schools and towns are south of the 20. The REM will not help us there.
Anyway, in the end I was spending up to 4-5 hours a day on transit and my back started going out on those hard 211 seats. Driving, I spend 2 – 2.5 hours on the road tops.
But yeah, let’s say I didn’t have a car –
I did have a communauto membership for years though, and the thing is it’s still cars on the road making up for the fact that public transit isn’t reliable. If I had to go pick up my kid in Lasalle of course I would have taken communauto.
If you seriously think that the reason transit is bad in the city is becasue people have cars, you are dreaming in technicolour. Go the SW where far fewer people have cars and guess what, transit is even worse than downtown. Out in the on-island burbs I can almost see your point but as I’ve mentioned before even Baie-d’Urfé has a higher population density than Sherbrooke so if we figure out how to get west of Dorval in under an hour from downtown it’s not a density issue. People buy cars because they can’t get around effectively otherwise.
If there was effective, reliable transit, people would have fewer cars. It’s not complicated.
@Ian the driver: “If there was effective, reliable transit, people would have fewer cars. It’s not complicated.”
So let’s double the price of cars and parking, and plow all the money into effective, reliable transit! Yay, we’re all saved!
(Now it gets complicated as suburbanites only really care about their own bottom line on a day-to-day basis)
Let’s be real here, public transit is underfunded, yes, not because of a lack of money. It’s political will.
I refer you to the SPVM budget, for example.
If the government was to take your advice, qatzi, it would probably get plowed back into new cruisers for the cops.
Yes, Ian. It’s *underfunded*, but this has absolutely nothing to do with *not having money allocated to it.*
Let me just burn all my dictionaries and I’ll be right back…
Those aren’t the words I used, but if you can’t discern the difference, maybe you should burn your dictionaries. They aren’t doing you much good. Of course the governement could afford to fund public transit, even now. They jsut don’t want to. This particular correlation is one of your ridiculous hobbyhorses, that you see it as a matter of dictionaries is telling.
If you want to play at semantics, whatever. I’m done feeding the trolls for today.
>Hoo boy Chris, you sure are clever. What a smart, good boy. Do you feel better now?
Yowzers. Why the hostility? Putting that aside… (maybe you mistook my question marks for rhetorical flourish, when I was actually just asking a question).
Thanks for your lengthy reply all the same. So, since you own a car, you are *already* not relying on transit (“to rely”: “to be dependent for support, help, or supply.”) That’s not a dig on you, just a statement of fact. Many others are in your boat.
“As I’ve said before, if the system isn’t reliable, nobody will rely on it.” Exactly. But the deficits and funding cuts discussed in the article won’t make the system unreliable, _it already is_, and has always been. It’s *already* unreliable, and as we can all see with our eyes, people have bought cars because of this fact. If the populace could rely on transit, many fewer people would choose to buy cars. But our transit is not reliable in speed, frequency, schedule, comfort, ergonomics, etc., as your examples illustrate. If it was even halfway reliable, you could probably settle for a communauto membership, but as it’s not even that, you’re willing to spend substantial money on your own vehicle. And once people own a vehicle, they’ll use transit even less. And the cycle continues.
My apologies, Chris – I did mistake your tone.
We appear to be on the same page.
So hostility is necessary when one is not „on the same page“
No, but when we take one anothers’ tone as hostile, it is only reasonable to respond in kind.
Are you trying to pick a fight, Anton?
Last week, the Journal tried to stir up some interest in a claim that the OCPM was spending too much money too freely. This week, Ensemble leaps on this with little cries of glee, demanding the resignation of executive committee chairman Dominique Ollivier for her expenses when she led the OCPM.
Update: The mayor is now saying there should be an investigation into the OCPM. But so is Denis Coderre.
It almost sounds like they all agree on something.
A woman collapsed on the train during the REM stoppage last week and it took 25 minutes for an ambulance to reach her. The train was stopped near Panama station in Brossard.
Responders said they couldn’t reach the train. That isn’t surprising, given that the tracks don’t have an access road.
Also, I wonder how long it takes to get an ambulance to any ordinary street location in Brossard.
I don’t know how you can fix this unless you have an auxiliary power source that would enable a train to reach the next station rather than stopping on the tracks.
Yeah they really need to get emergency power to the next station. Imagine if they were stuck on the bridge.
Also ambulances are pretty quick in Brossard. Probably 15-20min. max. They usually are already at Charles lemoyne and speed down taschereau
There should at least be some kind of tow line in place, this seems like a grave oversight.
How long would it take to get paramedics to someone on a metro that was stuck between stations? That feels like the most appropriate comparison to make.
The longest tunnel distance between two stations is 2,5 km between Berri-UQAM and Jean-Drapeau.
Peel to McGill is only 297 metres.
It’s not really the same thing regardless as this is brand new infrastructure that should be built according to current accessibility standards, not those of 1966.
The article clearly says a “problème informatique” so having auxiliary power for the train would make no difference.
@Ian : I can assure you that everything was built according to current accessibility standards. There are accesses all along the track (and on the Champlain bridge) – not just in stations. In your opinion what is missing that is required by current accessibility standards.
How long do you think it would take for ambulance technicians to reach a person inside a stopped STM metro train that is between two stations?
This was an unfortunate worst-case situation where the train was immobilized. Normally the train would be able to reach the next station and then services could be provided much more easily.
I’d say being able to disembark or access the train in case of emergency counts as an accessibility issue, lol.
Rising homelessness in town is eroding indigenous services as resources are directed to a more general public.
The Common Front, on strike Monday morning, plans three more strike days later this month.
That said it’s worth noting that as of the 23rd the FAE is set to be on an unlimited general strike so it’s fairly likely the entire Front Commun will follow suit.
Nicholas 20:56 on 2023-11-06 Permalink
Definitely the best way to deal with the bus driver shortage is to cut salaries during an incredibly strong labour market. Please give me money to run a think tank.
Ian 22:25 on 2023-11-06 Permalink
I bet if you just killed them all you would save a TON of money. Pay me now, please.
It really is kind of insane that they can put this nonsense out and expect anyone to take it seriously.
DisgruntledGoat 02:39 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
Right wing think tank suggests people behave in an unrealistic way so that study can be cited by right wing politicians
jeather 08:36 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
Well, if they paid less, there would be a lot fewer bus drivers, and the buses would be driven less, so there’d be a lot less maintenance, and less gas used.
steph 12:53 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
These guys are bananas. Why cut salaries when we should just be upgrading to driverless buses. The pilot project on St-Hubert was a huge success. The invoice is in the mail, thank you very much.
Kate 13:15 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
steph, was the St-Hubert bus a success? I have friends on St‑André, where the bus circulated back, and that wasn’t their impression.
steph 14:38 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
I’m pretty sure a think tank would know better than your friends. /s
Uatu 18:24 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
Fire the think tank staff and replace them with ChatGPT.
Orr 10:29 on 2023-11-08 Permalink
Considering bus drivers have to work 2 morning and afternoon partial shifts between 6 am and 6 pm every dayfor rush hours, missing family meals every day, that deserves a premium. But 100K? That seems like a lot of premium.
I hate the MEI tho, that’s not debatable. Anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-citizen, anti-democracy, pro-poverty voice of the ultrawealthy.