It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Tuesday’s high broke a record and Wednesday looks likely to do the same. After that, the temperature will plunge fast on Wednesday evening, but it will only stay chilly for Leap Day.
Updates from February, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Two teenagers have been arrested and are facing many charges after a series of muggings in the metro. Their victims were also teenagers. Item doesn’t say which stations they were infesting.
Tux
Teens mugging teens? If I had to guess, Villa Maria
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Kate
The English school boards will be closing for the eclipse on April 8 but the man who runs the Planetarium thinks kids should stay in school where their teachers can make it into an educational experience.
Update: Seems like it’s turning into a general ped day.
Another update: A science teaching organization is condemning all this caution, saying that schools are missing out on a terrific educational opportunity.
H. John
I liked the article that Philippe Mercure wrote in La Presse at the end of January.
He ended with:
“On peut parler d’une éclipse partielle au ministère de l’Éducation du Québec.”
bob
It is good to be reminded sometimes that our schools are run by idiots.
dhomas
We had an annular solar eclipse when I was in high school in 1994. My teachers took the opportunity to teach us how to build a pinhole projector. I was kinda hoping they would do that for my kids, but it’s fine. We’ll make it a family activity.
Joey
The CSSDM has also made April 8 a ped day. They claim that they will be circulating glasses to students in advance…
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Kate
The Juste pour rire festival is in serious financial difficulties.
MarcG
Waiting for Ian to say his line…
Josh
I was at JFL Vancouver this past weekend and can report full theatres. Lots of sellouts, sure seemed like.
Kate
There was a clown in the news this morning – a guy who worked as a clown on the South Shore has been accused of sexually assaulting girls in the 1990s.
Ian
Wll that’s a twofer.
I was under the impression that JFL has been struggling for some time, with vague rumblings about mismanagement…
But yes, not to disappoint:
Maybe this is a problem we can solve with clowns?dhomas
It’s got to be mismanagement. They are as popular as ever and tickets for the most popular shows sell out quite quickly. It’s hard to get official attendance numbers, but online sources state 1.5 to 2 million people come for JFL every year.
For the 40th anniversary, Canada.ca stated about 1.5 million:
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2022/07/the-full-format-version-of-the-just-for-laughs-festival-returns-for-its-40th-edition.htmlIn 2023, the JFL website stated over 2 million spectators:
https://www.hahaha.com/en/press/just-laughs-montreal-2023They also sell recordings of their shows and produce other materials that are exported worldwide like “Just For Laughs Gags”. Since briefly being owned by Howie Mandel and some Americans, they sold to Bell Canada and Evenko, so they remain eligible for government subsidies of about $10M (https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/bell-evenko-buy-majority-stake-in-just-for-laughs-report).
I can’t imagine how they could NOT be making money, other than some form of mismanagement or flat-out embezzlement.
Also, when Ian said it was a twofer, I was expecting clowns and “a big, big conversation” about defunding the police! 😀
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Kate
A man convicted of several horrible attacks on young women in Montreal last year will be jailed for three years then sent back to Morocco and barred from entering Canada again.
Another man who stabbed his neighbour dead over a dispute about dog poo in DDO in 2011 has been granted parole.
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Kate
Foreign investments fell 23% in greater Montreal in 2023.
Can someone give me a three-sentence explanation why it’s important to have foreign money invested here, as opposed to local money? We’re not a poor country. But I realize there may be subtleties I’m not getting.
Michael
GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports
So the more foreign investment there is, the more it boosts GDP.
If you want a real life example of foreign money “building” a country, look no further than China that used FDI and Exports to build its economy into #2 globally.
Kate
So why are these foreigners not investing in their own countries? What I’m not getting is why money has to cross a border to have value.
Blork
Isn’t it a bit like why do we have to work or run a business to get other people’s money instead of just circulating our own money from left hand to right hand?
Those foreigners will invest where ever they see an opportunity for a good return on the investment. For example, real estate in China is in the toilet right now, so if you want to invest in real estate you look elsewhere.
Chris
>why it’s important to have foreign money invested here, as opposed to local money?
They are not mutually exclusive. But more importantly, the former is of course much larger as Montreal is a tiny fraction of global population.
>So why are these foreigners not investing in their own countries?
They invest everywhere, for diversification of risk. But seems their mix is now less here.
Blork
It’s a while since I watched this, and I don’t remember how much it touches on this specific topic, but this 30-minute YouTube video is essentially a 4-year degree in economics distilled into one entertaining and informative tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0&t=200s
Jim Strankinga
Foreign investment is good for many reasons; it reduces local economic risk and it increases GDP, and can stimulate job creation and technology transfer. It also attracts more investors and boosts the local market’s international reputation.
It offers a broader economic boost than circulating the same money domestically. In Dutch we would say ‘ Niet alle eieren in één mand leggen’ (not putting all your eggs in one basket)
Ian
We have that exact same expression in English, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. It originally comes from Don Quixote by Cervantes so I’m sure it’s a stock phrase in most European languages at the very least.
Anyhow, there are negatives to foreign investment to be sure but diversification is the main advantage. It’s kind of the principle of global multinationalism. It becomes dangerous when the investors & business interests from one specific region own so much of something that it squeezes out locals, or if the foreign economy crashes and they all pull out at once, crashing the local economy. That’s why it’s important to have diversity amongst investors too, so if for instance the US decides to enact protectionist laws and US companies & investors pull out of Quebec, we have enough investment & business from European and Asian markets to offset it.
On a related note, I was listening to CBC this mornignn and apparently the new labelling laws under 96 are making a lot of American and even Canadian manufacturers nervous, but for European and Asian invesors it’s not such a big deal, I’d imagine. We might see some new brands on the shelves in the next few years. I can figure out how to use a stove with just pictograms but apparently some people find it all very alarming. Small appliance manufacturers in particular are in a tizzy about the new labelling requirements. Car manufacturers are also being told they have to have all the labelling in the car in French, too. If this makes market space for those <13k Chinese electric vehicles, I'm all for it.
Ian
DeWolf
The consumer labelling outcry that we’re seeing in the anglo media these days is a bit perplexing. It reminds me of the old chestnut about bilingual cereal boxes. There’s an assumption that everywhere in the world, all appliances have only English, and yet in Europe and Asia manufacturers seem to be able to tailor their products to the local languages.
Incidentally my Black and Decker toaster oven is perfectly bilingual.
MarcG
I bought a new microwave a few years ago and it came with 2 stickers to put over the buttons – one English, one French.
Blork
Apparently stickers aren’t good enough; the item must be available in French with its original embossed buttons and labels.
I think the anger is over the fact that if such labelling isn’t available then it will be illegal to sell the item here, even online.
There are plenty of products made in the US, for example, that do not have multilingual embossed buttons because they’re made primarily for the US market. They’re sold here with stickers for the safety instructions. The idea that people anywhere in Canada can buy those toaster ovens or dishwashers or specialized keyboards, etc., EXCEPT PEOPLE IN QUEBEC is sort of outrageous and it feels very authoritarian. The idea that the government won’t allow me to order something online to be shipped to my house because it doesn’t like the labels? That I can’t download the beta version of a new software program because it isn’t 100% translated to French? FFS! I don’t think there are any other places in the world with such restrictions.
The net result will be fewer products available, less choice to the consumer, and higher prices. It’s not the same as the cereal box complaint at all.
Joey
I still occasionally run into a commercial website that will load everywhere in Canada except Quebec because the corporation decided that it would be too complicated to run an entirely French-only operation just to sell to our market. Crate & Barrel comes to mind, though I gather they’ve finally decided to offer a French option.
Uatu
Time to start a black market! Pssst over here…. wanna buy a toaster oven? Just don’t tell anyone where you got it, capice? Lol
Kate
We all have to suffer to protect French.
Ian
Many of my Hassidic neighbours have Israeli-made fridges and stoves that work on timers so they can skirt the rules around turning things on and off during Shabbos. They do not have French labels, of course.
There is celarly already some kind of provision for imports for personal use … I feel like this will affect retailers more thn anyone.I am pretty sure small appliance manufacturers won’t be lying awake at night over losing a market of 8.18 million total population out of a total North American market of 380,315,79. Like, would it even be worth it for them to bother? Or is Roberge really that high off his own fumes? Maybe he has shares in a Québecois houeshold appliance manufacturing consortium? I complain that it makes no sense but then again sense isn’t what’s on the menu with the CAQ.
carswell
@Joey US furniture retailer West Elm has one store in Quebec, in Griffintown. They also have a large, constantly changing catalogue that would cost a fortune to have and keep translated, a cost out of proportion to their small volume of sales in the province and possibly in Canada. So not only is West Elm’s Canadian website not viewable by people using Quebec-based servers, personnel in the Griffintown store suggest going to the US site, noting down the name and number of the model you’re interested in and then calling the store to inquire if it can be ordered in Canada and with which options and at what price.
Joey
@Ian I think most stoves come with a Sabbath mode built in (maybe ‘a lot of,’ not ‘most’).
@carswell this is actually a good use case for AI, assuming the onus is to have a more-or-less up-to-date French-language website (and not one that is, you know, grammatically correct)
dhomas
Canadian Appliance Source has pretty much every appliance available in Canada. Out of 700 ranges available, 403 of them have a Sabbath Mode. If the hassids are importing their ranges from Israel, there must be a different reason.
Ian
Maybe they’re getting a deal on the fridge/ stove combo? I dunno. I guess I could ask around, many of the Hassidic men on my street are quite happy to explain that kind of thing if asked, and are usually just surprised anyone who isn’t Hassidic would be interested to know.
jeather
Yeah, I know a lot of people who have that option because it just came with the appliance — for fridges too, where it turns off any timed defrost, ice makers and lights. (I don’t think I do but I’m not sure.) I do think that a Sabbath mode for an oven is scary — that’s the point of a crockpot.
I wonder what the rules are for induction cooktops.
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