The Mouvement Québec français is slamming Valérie Plante for not doing enough to protect French. She has even dared to support Concordia and McGill against the CAQ tuition hikes for out‑of‑province students.
Update: No less than the rector of UdeM says the tuition hike harms Montreal.
A protest was held downtown Saturday to mark the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some Ukrainians said nice things about their welcome in Quebec, but that may be coming to an end soon for those who haven’t learned French fast enough.
Ethnonationalist policymaking may just be taken for granted in Quebec, but never lose sight of its heartless and inhumane implementations. This just makes it so explicit.
Apparently when the CAQ reduced the French proficiency requirements from 4 to 2 years, they got a lot of criticism as to how unrealistic that was. They adopted a “let’s see” approach. Now there is proof that their requirements are completely unrealistic.
Once again, people have to fight and waste time/energy on an idiotic ideologically-based policy that should have been based on data and practical evidence. I just hope it’ll be another strike against the hopefully waning public opinion of the CAQ.
Ukraine protects its language much more violently than Quebec does. Even to the point of making Russian “non-official” and then bombing Russian-speaking regions.
qatzelok, let’s not play zero-sum here, OK?
Q, the Wikipedia article you cite sounds very similar to the situation in Quebec. I’m not quite sure where you think the difference is.
As for the bombing, well, you’ve had two years to move beyond Russian propoganda and have chosen not to. For everyone else, the Polish Foreign minister explains everything to the UN better than I can:
A very reasoned statement there, Tim S. Thanks.
Weak troll, Q: see remarks above, thanks Tim. Also note the current *elected president* is native russian-language speaker.
Hey Qatzi maybe you can try calling them Slavic Rhodesians next time. /s
Vice Media has stopped publishing on its website and dismissed most of its workers. Cory Doctorow writes a postmortem, evoking its mostly forgotten origins as a “Canadian media success story” – i.e., a free paper produced here in Montreal that you’d only pick up if you couldn’t find a Mirror or a Voir.
I remember vice magazines being sought out. Not at all a 2nd choice to the Mirror or the Hour.
Fun fact: one of the Vice co-founders later founded a fascist terrorist organization (Proud Boys).
steph, it really was a second choice when it started out. You may be remembering a few years later.
@Nicholas that guy was also largely responsible for mainstreaming the first wave Williamsburg hipster look.
I used to love flipping through Vice when I was doing my laundry back in the day. So ridiculous and irreverent and politically incorrect. Making fun of everyone and trashing all the earnest people and whatnot. The kind of stuff that’s fun and silly when it’s underground but seems nasty and dangerous once it’s mainstream.
Yeah same, they used to have a similar vibe to fucknomtl but then they started taking themselves seriously.
Still, not a bad ride for a recovering heroin addict and his ne’er-do-well friends trying to get off welfare.
The initial partners were semi regulars at the bar where I worked in the early days. They were always great fun and good to have around. Never would have guessed the story arc(s) to come.
Doctorow says some of the Vice escapees continue as 404media.
The 15 demerged towns on the island of Montreal think they’re paying an unfair proportion of shared services with Montreal itself. Most of them are wealthier than the city – what do they expect?
I dunno, proportional returns?
Not having the numbers in front of me, whether the demerged towns have more or less money doesn’t seem to be the issue here, it’s about paying 38% of services with only 12% of the population. How are those calculations arrived at? Are the towns expected to pay on the basis of population, tax base, total area, or some combination thereof? What’s the rationale here? It seems simple enough to lay out a table for the demerged towns and if they’re wrong, well tell them to go suck eggs.
One example that immediately comes to mind is Mile End vs Outremont – Outremont has the reputation of being all rich enclaves for the super wealthy but I can tell you for a fact that I could buy a floor of a triplex in Outremont for less than in Mile End, the population density is almost exaclty the same, and it’s mostly Hassidim on my street just like it is one block into Outremont and one bloick into Mile End.
That aside, this seems like another opportunity for that big, big conversation Plante promised about defunding the police. If the demerged towns feel that they pay too much for the cops (and they all have their own cops anyhow) maybe they shouldn’t have to pay a disproportionate amount. It does sound like it’s only fair, at least without seeing a table of how these distributions have been determined…
The CTV journalist made a mistake. Direct quote from Beny Masella: “Nos villes comptent 12 % de la population de l’agglomération de Montréal, mais on assume 18 % des coûts.”
OK well that doesn’t seem like such a big discrepancy, practically a rounding error.
Can we still talk about defunding the police though?
Isn’t that exactly the way it goes for property taxes? If your neighbour’s house is worth more than yours, he’ll pay more taxes for the same services.
Mile End doesn’t have the equivalent of the portion of Outremont south of Côte Ste Catherine – on the realtor website I see three Mile-End properties >$2M. There are 51 in Outremont.
Sure, but I bet the density is a lot lower in the super rich part of Outremon, too. If you look at all of the Plateau you’ll find lots more properties >2m. I was specifically talking about lower Outremont where it’s adjacent to Mile End.
Here it would actually be less expensive to live a block west of Hutchison. There’s even still students in that part of Outremont, students have almost vanished from Mile End.
@Ian – We need a new ways of saying that. How about rebudget the community policing?
Recontextualize our security outputs to cross-leverage our community synergies?
I tend to agree with Ephraim. “Defund the police” is (to me at least) too closely associated with dingalings who think everything would be fine if there were no police at all.
Maybe this is a problem we can solve with robot clowns.
CF Montreal has a new head coach, Laurent Courtois. He’s from France, so no concerns about his language abilities, although he may say “voilà” too often for local tastes.
Du coup je lui souhaite bon courage, voilà quoi.
Zut alors!
Fulford Residence, on Guy Street south of Ste‑Catherine, has been granted heritage status. It’s not clear from this piece who the current owner actually is.
Good!
According to the rôle foncier it’s still owned by the Fulford Residence.
Weirdly, it is also listed as having a construction date of 1937, not 1859, but I’ve seen that kind of thing before. Maybe there were extensive renovations in 1937.
A developer put up a new residential building in Hochelaga with the explicit intention to rent some of the units on Airbnb. It’s against the local laws, but the developer plans to challenge this. A tenant group plans a protest.
Article goes on to say that Revenu Québec has never penalized anyone for running a short‑term rental. The political will just isn’t there for this.
I bet Duranceau even knows people that run some.
I’m not positive I’m capturing the nuance, but I think it says that Revenu Quebec has not yet used its new powers to fine platform operators (eg airbnb) – not that it hasn’t come down on individuals illegally renting their apartments.
Meezly 12:07 on 2024-02-25 Permalink
Plante has very valid reasons for siding with the English universities in Montreal, the primary one is protecting the economic vitality of her city. But no, now they’re trying to paint her as an enemy of the French. Is this any different from the fascist propaganda techniques?
Kate 20:23 on 2024-02-25 Permalink
Plante supports Montreal as it is – polyglot and alive – whereas the CAQ and groups like Mouvement Québec français idealize a monoculture. In that view, Plante is a culture traitor. I don’t know how we can fix this, because these ideas hang around generation after generation.
Ian 14:20 on 2024-02-26 Permalink
MM is one of those groups that sees multiculturalism as an existential threat.
Subscribers to the Great Replacement Theory will never be happy, once they have achieved monoculture they will start going after bloodlines.