Montreal City Weblog

Kate 11:01 on 2024-06-10 Permalink Reply  

• Kevin 14:08 on 2024-06-10 Permalink

  This will be fun since every condo building now needs to be inspected every 5 years.

• Ephraim 16:16 on 2024-06-10 Permalink

  Chicken and eggs. If the salaries are high enough, people will want to fill the qualifications.

• Nicholas 18:09 on 2024-06-10 Permalink

  Salaries are not bad, decently middle class (I saw hourly rates in the 30s in Montreal, sometimes the 20s elsewhere). But they are not high.

  They note that only three CEGEPs offer this program: Rosemont College has 24 students, Jonquière has a dozen and Matane has zero. You have to offer courses where people live and preferably can get jobs. How can a depopulating region with few larger buildings that need more inspections with a college with 675 students run a specialized program like this? Sure the view of the river is pretty, but it’s not easy to sell the small college town liberal arts 4-year college experience to technical CEGEP non-residence students in a town four hours past Quebec City. Bas St Laurent has about the population of Montreal’s largest borough, and is just far from other populated areas. Have they tried this in Quebec City or Gatineau or Sherbrooke?

  More importantly, why does this job require a three year program? I looked at Virginia, random state, and it requires a 70 hour course, passing a test, and then ride alongs on 25 inspections with a mentor, salary is $96,000US a year average, no college or community college required. Do we think Virginia buildings are measurably less safe than Quebec? I see lots of other places you can do things like this or apprenticeships. Why would someone spend three years doing this to earn $30/hour?

• Ian 20:09 on 2024-06-10 Permalink

  Considering that a basic office job gets you 30/h & 3 weeks vacation these days it’s not perplexing why people aren’t flocking to become inspectors… or why it’s so easy to buy them off.

• Ephraim 22:41 on 2024-06-10 Permalink

  If you know how to look, you can see which programs are offered where. Sometimes someone will have permission to run a program, but no incentive or money from the government to do it. For example, there may be no authorized school in Montreal and to run the program, they would need to borrow the rights from another school, which may not want to exchange programs.

  This program is listed at https://www.inforoutefpt.org/rechercher/programmes/Inspection%20municipale/ and CEGEP du Vieux Montreal seems to have rights and set up a class for January, but no one took the course, from what I can see.

• Tim S. 08:31 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  There are two consecutive threads here claiming that city officials take bribes. While I’m willing to believe this might happen, I’d like some evidence – even anecdotal – before we just make this a baseline assumption. Corruption is really toxic to a society, we obviously have a bit of a problem with it here in Quebec but unfounded assumptions just create more cynicism and cause us to spiral more.

• CE 09:06 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  This was quite a while ago now but I worked in a restaurant that had a bar in the front. It closed at around 10 but employees and their friends would often stay late to drink and smoke. A cop saw people smoking inside and threatened the restaurant with a ticket. The owner or bartender bribed the cop and no ticket was issued. This was discussed opening amongst staff (although the owner banned smoking inside the bar from that point on).

• dwgs 09:32 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  Tim S. can I assume that you haven’t worked in bars or restos in Montreal? It has been very difficult to get a bar license in Montreal for several decades, you pretty much have to take over a place that already has a license. As a result there are a lot of places with restaurant licenses that pretty much function as bars. Some of those places get fined semi regularly while others never seem to have a problem, it’s quite curious.
  There is a bar close to me that used to be visited regularly by the authorities and was fined for having an illegal terrasse (no license for it) and other alcohol and occupancy issues. A few short years ago the terrasse re-opened and stayed open although there is still no license for it. Also, this place has no cash register, accepts only cash, and has no way of issuing receipts. Things that make you go “Hmmmm”…

• Tim 09:41 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  @kevin: the 5 year inspection is done with private engineering or architecture companies. The inspectors that the city are looking to hire would not be conducting these inspections.

• Ian 09:58 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  @Tim as CE & dwgs point out, all bars and restaurants in Montreal pay bribes and protection. Sometimes protection to more than one racket. You also have to pay off inspectors.

• Tim S. 10:39 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  OK, fair enough. On the other hand, I did once work in a place that would have had no ethical problem whatsoever paying people off, and they were still terrified of the health inspectors, so not every problem can be solved with a wad of cash.

  And, if bribery is so rampant, I find it difficult to imagine that those bars so heavily dependent on the F1 crowd would chose that weekend to make a mistake in what is apparently a commonly understood practice.

  So yeah, there are for sure odd things, I just don’t think anything good comes from immediately going to the most cynical explanation.

• Tim 10:47 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  @Ian: I was responding to @kevin’s initial comment, which I believe was referencing Bill 122 for the RBQ. This law requires facades of buildings to be inspected every 5 years. The engineering reports then have to be filed with the city. I have no idea if there are bribes in this process.

• Ian 12:33 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  My apologies, I meant Tim S.
  There may very well be corruption at that level but I have no experience of it to confirm or deny its plausibility.

• Kevin 14:54 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  Tim
  But can those inspectors take the same course, or are we going to need engineers to do this?

  (I have a vested interest in this since I am 100% owner of a building that has two divided condo units, aka a duplex)

• Tim 16:25 on 2024-06-11 Permalink

  The regulation only applies to buildings of 5 floors or more. You should do a Google search for more details.