Are there too many tourists in Montreal? Following places like Venice, the question is being asked here.
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Kate
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Kate
The UN report on Canada’s treatment of temporary foreign workers suggests the practice verges on slavery, with wage theft, excessive work hours, limited breaks and physical abuse all part of the picture. But Canada is scurrying to defend itself, immigration minister Marc Miller objecting to the phrase “contemporary slavery” and the Conseil du patronat equally ruffled and annoyed and also upset that the federal government is considering reducing the permitted numbers of these cheap workers.
If this doesn’t seem like a Montreal story, the photo on the CBC shows workers from Guatemala working on an Île Perrot farm, and the one accompanying the Guardian’s report shows Mexicans on a farm in Mirabel. That’s close enough.
H. John
Economics prof. Mike Moffat has a column in the Toronto Star (subscribers only)
(Interpolating to add accessible archive link – K)
In it he explains that while in opposition the Trudeau Liberals strongly opposed deregulation of the programs by the Harper government, with Scott Brisson pointing out that economists were linking “the growth in the number of low-skilled temporary foreign workers under the Conservatives with higher youth unemployment in Canada and wage suppression for Canadian youth?”
Other Moffat quotes from the article:
“On April 4, 2022, a mere 13 days after the Liberals and NDP signed their Supply and Confidence Agreement, the federal government announced arguably the largest deregulation of the Temporary Foreign Worker program in Canadian history.”
“The program’s low-wage stream, which allows employers not in the agricultural industry (they have a separate stream) to bring in workers and pay them wages under the provincial median… was radically transformed.”
“The number of approvals for the low-wage program more than doubled in 2022 alone rising from an estimated 30,000 to more than 80,000. The total number of temporary foreign worker positions approved in all streams rose by 52 per cent in 2022 alone to 227,000.”
“The economists that the Liberals cited in 2014 were right then, and they are right today — deregulation of the low-wage temporary foreign worker stream suppresses wages and increases youth unemployment.”
“The federal government must phase out the non-agricultural low-wage stream of the temporary foreign worker program. The harms it causes to workers far outweigh the benefits to corporations.”
Kate
Profit is the drug. Even those who might have ethics about abusing people will put those ethics on ice when profit is the drug. Even when it makes no sense – when it means undercutting Canadian workers – that concern is handwaved when investor profit is on the line.
Not that Canadian workers are more important than people from elsewhere, but they’re here, and they’re voters, so shitting on them makes no sense politically.
dhomas
Regulation is needed. Even the most ethical employer will not be able to compete with unethical employers selling the same goods/services with a fraction of the labour costs.
Kevin
There is no worker shortage. There is a shortage of people willing to work for wages that don’t allow them to live.
walkerp
The Liberals are just so maddening. They always choose lobbyists and greed when they could actually be improving the country. Thanks for sharing that H. John, it’s a real eye-opener.
jeather
There was a piece in the Globe & Mail (of all papers) that said “Not wanting to pay the going rate for labour is emphatically not the same thing as a shortage of labour.” (The gist and details of the entire piece were much the same as this one.)
I’m not sure why I care at all about benefits to corporations. The savings aren’t going to lowering costs, they’re going to dividends and stock buybacks and CEO pay. Even if those benefits outweighed costs to Canadian workers, so what?
To be clear, I absolutely think the Conservatives would do the same thing. They might undo it, temporarily, if it seems politically positive, but it won’t last long.
H. John
On this morning’s episode of CBC’s Front Burner Armine Yalnizyan, an economist & columnist for the Toronto Star, explained that the increase was made by the federal Liberals based on a request from Quebec (which was having a problem after the covid shut down in the areas of tourism & health care).
The whole episode, titled “Cracks in Canada’s temporary worker program” is worth listening to:
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Kate
The Journal’s Louis-Philippe Messier, whose remit is to report on interesting stories around town, looks at the Maison symphonique’s octobass, the biggest string instrument in the world. It will be played this weekend when the OSM does Verdi’s Requiem.
Blork
That thing is dwarfed by The Big Fiddle in Sydney Nova Scotia. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/world-s-largest-fiddle
Kate
I don’t imagine that one is playable, though.
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Kate
I wonder how often this kind of thing happens here but isn’t reported: Quebec is blocking federal aid to a food bank in Hochelaga because it doesn’t want federal meddling.
Ian
“Mais Chic Resto Pop n’a jamais vu la couleur de cet argent” Such a great expression.
It seems petty to disallow this, but then again, that’s “national” politics chez nous for you.Sue
It isn’t only in Quebec… New Brunswick would prefer to let people die than allow the federal government to meddle in their affairs https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/magazine/canada-brain-disease-dementia.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DU4.gPpm.Csy7UVF3-5iz&smid=url-share
CE
It’s not the same thing at all. In NB, the Irvings and by extension the provincial government they control don’t want a a government commission they can’t control to come to conclusions that would keep them from spraying their forests with toxic substances.
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Kate
Drivers can rejoice: Autoroute 13 is open again for the first time since last week’s flood. But they must temper their joy because it will close again soon.
Ephraim 19:06 on 2024-08-15 Permalink
No. And less this year than last
Major Annoyance 20:29 on 2024-08-15 Permalink
There can never be too many tourists here. It’s largely thanks to them that our governments have the cash to support our “culture as an industry” thing. Without them, ours would be a much less interesting town.
DeWolf 00:09 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
There’s a difference between having tourists around and being overtouristed. The markets are a little too touristy on the weekends. A few specific blocks in Mile End are at risk of being overtouristed, but that’s still pretty specific – it’s certainly not the entire neighbourhood. And of course there’s Old Montreal, but it was engineered to be a tourist destination, ever since the Old Port was redeveloped, so it’s not the same as an ordinary neighbourhood that has been invaded by visitors. Otherwise, the number of tourists around is very tolerable.
Ian 08:31 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
It was very nice of the city to build an outdoor terrasse for Kem Coba and Drogheria on Fairmount, and St Viateur is so gentrified it has a chain café, a Lululemonand only one dep … but TBH I have noticed way fewer tour groups in Mile End over the last couple of years. I don’t know if it’s becasue it’s finally no longer perceived as “cool” or if tourism is changing, but the scooter/ bicycle/ e-bike tours have pretty much vanished – though there are still lots of walking tours.
But yeah like M.A. says, the clowns don’t pay for themselves.
MarcG 08:34 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
I wonder if the pedestrianized streets act like sponge parks for tourists so we don’t notice them as much.
Poutine Pundit 08:41 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
To me, it becomes a problem when historic areas start feeling like a theme park and no longer have shops meeting the needs of its residents: lots of cheap tourist trinket shops selling the same junk, designer popcorn, cool-as-a-moose, take-aways selling sweet portable things lathered in Nutella or dipped in chocolate, cream puffs, etc. This is certainly true of parts of Vieux-Montreal around Place Jacques-Cartier and the eastern edge of rue Saint-Paul, but most parts of Vieux-Montreal are OK and still feel like a real lived-in place, as does 95% of the city. Vieux-Quebec is a bit worse off, comparable to some of the theme park cities in Europe.
Meezly 10:09 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
I thought that Venice might be much smaller than Montreal, and thus, the impact of tourism is more apparent, but it’s 414.6 km² compared to 365.1 km² for the island of Montreal. But why does Venice seem so much smaller?
Joey 10:21 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
@Ian I saw one of those e-bike tours yesterday FWIW (can’t remember where exactly in Mile-End). It also feels like there are a million minivans with Ontario license plates clogging the roads every weekend. And I suppose you could consider the many French ex-pats to be tourists in a certain sense.
CE 10:49 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
Re: Venice, what most people think of as being “Venice” is only a small portion of the city. Cross the bridge and you’re in the newer part of the city where most Venetians live. Venice, according to Google maps, also includes a bunch of islands and a large swamp which would add to its land area.
Re: bike tours, I think there had been an explosion of bike tours in the early 2010s but the novelty of them (here and elsewhere) may have worn off. The first bike tours really focused on Mile End and Little Italy but now the different companies have routes that are spread out all over the city (the one bike tour route I do barely goes north of Rachel). I also think the guides have gotten better at being less disruptive. One bike tour I know of that does go to Mile End has the riders get off their bikes, they’re locked up and the tourists walk around a bit. This generally doesn’t apply to the scooter tours which are an absolute menace for a number of reasons.
@Poutine Pundit, I feel like what you’re describing has more or less happened to Mile End, just with slightly more interesting businesses. St-Viateur is more of a high end food court for tourists and tech workers than a functioning urban street. Fairmount just has a weird vibe around the bagel shop (definitely the area with the highest concentration of ice cream selfies in the city). It can’t all be blamed on tourists but many of those businesses have gamed the algorithm to make themselves “must do” destinations when visiting the city.
DeWolf 10:56 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
@Meezly The central part of Venice is less than 10 km², including a lot of water (of course). That’s a tiny area in which there are 50,000 full-time residents, 21,000 students at the university, who knows how many tourists staying in hotels and Airbnbs — and then there are the day-trippers. Amazingly, despite all of that, there are still corners of Venice that aren’t very touristy and which have a very local feel.
That’s the city centre, but Venice also includes a lot of outlying islands too, many of which are entirely rural, hence the 414.6 km² land area.
Joey 12:13 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
@CE by now hundreds of thousands of tourists probably assume that Montrealers eat gnocchi every day
CE 12:57 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
@Joey, ugh the gnocchi. I don’t know how they did it but that little shop totally and completely inserted itself into the outsiders’ view of what food in Montreal is. It’s not even that good but people come here from places where the local food offering is so lacklustre that it seems amazing to them.
walkerp 13:05 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
Their pasta sauce is good.
CE 13:06 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
It is but would you wait 45 minutes in a line for it?
Ian 13:24 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
To be fair the secret to good gnocchi is to cook it in sauce, not water. Is it “core Montreal” food? Since we can’t have smokers in town any more, smoked meat is kind of questionable… and you can’t get real Jewish deli food in Mile end these days anyway … there’s certainly no lack of genuine article Calabrese immigrants and their descendants in the hood. It’s no less authentic than St Viateur bagel being run by an Italian – which is considerd by many to be de facto “genuine” Montreal food. Of course Fairmount is infinitely superior, especially its matzohs. St V matzohs have the texture of graham crackers, they’re just weird. Then again, flavoured bagels besides poppy/ sesame/ everything are weird so St V has that in their favour.
Blork 14:33 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
Once again, social media has ruined many of the little things that made travelling to other places so much fun. The gnocchi situation is repeated everywhere; once a little thing enjoyed by the locals and the occasional curious traveller, now it’s a thing mostly avoided by locals because of lineups and other sadness while tourists and Instagrammers queue up down the block to “experience” it and to ensure the moment is captured for Insta or TikTok.
The saddest part is that the people ruining everything don’t seem to have any awareness of what they are doing. In the 80s and 90s the undercurrent among travellers was to find something that hadn’t been ruined yet. Does that sentiment even exist anymore? It seems like the dominant thing now is to SEEK OUT the things that have been ruined by tourists because those are obviously the “good” ones and the most Instagrammable. The social media mentality has utterly Borgified travel such that people don’t feel like their experience is legit — or even happened — unless they can prove they have joined the mob. If there are any travellers left who prefer the unsullied, they are very much a silent minority.
Filed under: why we can’t have nice things.
Ian 14:42 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
OK good points, but I sense a solution – making “authentic” tourist traps locals can avoid. maybe even in a totally different part of town, like the assneck of St Henri / Côte St Paul or the industrial stretch of Ste Catherine out by the loading yards or whatever.A great new opportunity for AirBnbs in neighbourhoods people don’t live in, maybe some spillover effect for local economies – we could even “animate” it with clowns!
CE 15:12 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
@Blork, those types of travellers are still around but you don’t notice them because they (more or less) blend in with the crowd; they’re not waiting in line for half an hour to take a selfie with a bagel. Unfortunately, even for those who don’t use social media, we all still live downstream from it so it does impact how we perceive a destination and the attractions we think we should check out.
@Ian, these actually already exist. I don’t think too many locals go to most of the events at the Peel Basin or the Clock Tower Quay. I think they’re all put on by one or two companies and have little connection to the city. Interestingly, these events seem to attract a lot of suburbanites which is why Old Montreal will be absolutely choked with traffic before and after a Color [sic] Run. You could argue that the pirate ship, zip line, shipping container shops, ferris wheel, maze, etc. at the eastern side of the Old Port are part of a tourist complex outside of the city that most locals inhabit.
walkerp 17:56 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
I’ve never waited in line for their pasta sauce. Also, they take their old jars back, for zero packaging.
Ian 20:33 on 2024-08-16 Permalink
@CE good point.
@walkerp yeah the sauce is pretty good for store-bought, for sure. I just wish they would make more effort with providing disposal for the cute little takeout boxes that inevitably overflow the city trashcans, especially now that we are in wasp season.