What TVA insists on calling the fiasco des terrasses won’t be able to happen again, as operational changes mean that a single fire prevention officer won’t be able to shut things down unilaterally.
Makes me wonder exactly what did go down that day, but it’s got to be something that nobody wants entering the world of editorial cartoons and snarky bloggers.
The SPVM has been handling security at Trudeau airport, but as of next year, it will be the Sûreté du Québec doing the job. They made an offer the airport couldn’t refuse.
The city already knew that the water main that broke on August 16 was in poor shape, because it had been mentioned in an inspection report in 2018. But before we leap to negligence: the city has to prioritize where it puts its maintenance budget.
Yes of course, planted bulb-outs on residential streets don’t just build themselves.
/s
You’d have to build 7,462 bulb-outs before you reach the city’s annual budget for repairing and replacing water infrastructure.
And of course the workers that can build bulb-outs have all the necessary skills and training to just switch to pipe work.
Often the bulb-outs are built while the city is conducting water infrastructure work on the street.
@DeWolf well that’s ok because the maintenance on that one that blew was $0, pretty sure an inspection would have cost less than building a bulb-out but please do feel free to correct me.
@Chris, nobody suggested the same workers be used but I suppose it would be bette rthan nothign which is what was done
Priorities, priorities. If the city can’t figure out its budgetary allocations, maybe it’s a problem we can solve with clowns.
I think the city is capable of walking and chewing gum. If all the money were put into making absolutely sure nothing ever goes wrong, they’d spend all their time inspecting and never getting anything else done. Regarding this water main, the previous inspection found deterioration, but not to the point where they were worried about a catastrophic breach. They were wrong and I’m sure lessons have been learned (I hope so at least).
Why are budget dilemmas always put in terms of choose [good thing] or [good thing]? Why not in terms of choose [good thing] or [list of forty bad things]?
The priority is for the city to look good for rich euro trash Grand Prix fans. If not then heads will roll. Also clowns.
Man, the clown joke is getting old
And yet, here we are, spending money on clowns and planters while the city simultaneously blows up and collapses. Next you’ll complain that you’re tired of orange traffic cones.
@CE I imagine you’re right, but a catastrophic failure is one heck of a lesson. I would have hoped that after that dike failure in Sainte-Marthe-sur-Lac (I know, not the city of Montreal’s fault) and that AirBnB fire in Old Montreal that there might be something more approaching an abundance of caution around inspections but then again, who are we kidding. Just look at Cazelais.
So the city inspected it in 2018, determined it needed maintenance and added it to the extremely long list of water infrastructure that needs to be fixed. I can only guess that it wasn’t very high on the list because it was built in 1985, so water mains built in 1885 that needed maintenance took priority.
The city’s annual maintenance deficit for water infrastructure is $900 million. It is currently spending more than $500 million per year on repairs, which is twice what was budgeted 10 or 15 years ago. I’m not really sure what Ian’s point is other than being snarky.
Given the immense damage such a break would cause I would counter-guess that it should be prioritized over other water infrastructure if it was deemed in need of further inspection.
We’re talking a catastrophic and cascading failure that led to a boil water advisory all the way out to Mercier, causing as yet untold hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions worth of damage to public and private property, making the city liable for legal action on many fronts based on negligence that is at this point a matter of public record.
I’ll try to be clearer in my snark. I thought the point was obvious, but I guess not.
That AirBNB fire in Old Montreal gets my blood boiling. I really thought that would’ve been a bigger deal news story in the long term than it was and potentially even affect tourism. I feel so angry for the loved ones of those who died from that.
The city has many issues and areas in need of improvement; I think it’s pretty easy and petty to snipe from afar about this water main burst. It’s happening all over Canada (there was a boil water advisory in Calgary for 8 weeks earlier this summer, major highways closed due to landslides in B.C. last summer, flooding on Ontario highways, the list goes on and on). Nobody could have predicted that this one main was going to blow when it did. Who knows how many other sections were given priority and were repaired that may also have blown? The city has put a lot of resources into upgrading the sewers and aqueducts in recent years. Recently work on our street was done in a timely manner and with excellent communications throughout. I was pleasantly surprised. I believe a real effort at improvement is being made.
And yeah, the clown joke is washed.
“Nobody could have predicted”
“it had been mentioned in an inspection report in 2018”
Nobody could have predicted it except that someone did, in a recorded inspection, with 6 years advance notice from when the main catastrophically blew, taking out several connectors with it. Also worth mentioning, Alberta is not comparable as it doesn’t even have income tax, their budgetary/ infra issues are for entirely different reasons.
I think the mistake many are making is looking at maintenance like triage in a hospital. You need to think like an urban engineer. The point is not to see what is the most severe problem, but also – and of maybe even greater importance – the impact a failure will cause. All lives are of equal value but a blowout that shuts down the bottom half of the city is clearly more of a priority than, say, a local main blowing somewhere.
To draw a parallel, let’s say you are inspecting a house. If you see that the roof is leaking but your support beams are undermined it is more important to secure the support beams first as the whole building will collapse if that’s not taken care of first, even though both issues will completely compromise structural integrity rapidly if left unrepaired. If the doors also ned to be fixed that can be taken care of after the other two jobs even though having doors that close is important too, and having the interior open to the elements will also compromise structural integrity. I hope that analogy makes sense because there seems to be a very basic sorting error being shared throughout this conversation thread.
@Ian, do you have *any* evidence that the City did not do *exactly* what you are describing?
The McIntyre reservoir failure was a wakeup call for the city and because of that 150,000 people only had to deal with a boil-water notice instead of having no water at all.
However we have a lot of shitty infrastructure and not enough people trained in fixing it.
So yeah, it’s a nuisance when officials spend years delaying necessary work (bikeshedding) because it’s on a scale they can understand..
@Joey The obvious proof is that inspection was made 6 years earlier, the danger noted, and the equipment failure occured anyhow. That’s clear documented proof right there. If you are suggesting that the city is incapable of correctly conducting risk assessment, that’s a whole other issue. Maybe they were hoping it wouldn’t blow. Maybe they were hoping the problem would solve itself – not with clowns of course, there is nothing less funny than clowns.
Risk of failure isn`t the same as imminent danger. As noted in the article, 35 cables were broken, below the 44 limit. Failure rates genearlly follow a bath-tub curb. Maybe the 35 broken cables were broken the first year after installation and it had been steady in the last 20+ years. IMHO not enough technical informaion has been shared to jump to conclusions.
Your roof analogy isn`t appropriate. The shingles on my roof are good for 20 years. 5 years later, upon inspection, there`s no leaks, but there`s some wear – I`m not redoing my roof anytime soon.
Moreover, as you may have noticed there are one or two other urgent infrastructure construction projects happening…
The impending federal byelection in LaSalle‑Émard‑Verdun has a record 92 candidates, more than any other in our history. CTV goes on to explain that 79 are from the Longest Ballot Committee, a group protesting Canada’s voting system. The vote is on September 16.
I agree with their ends but am unsure if the means are effective. Very glad that’s not my riding.
Evidence would show that nothing has been effective in reforming our voting system, which tells me that any and all approaches should be on the table. Diversity of tactics!
jeather, you and I have both worked as scrutineers. The sheer hassle caused by a ballot like that would make the job much more difficult, both in explaining the situation to voters, and counting ballots at the end. I don’t suppose they’ve considered this, or else they just don’t care.
Yes, I did one municipal one where I had to write down all the candidates for maybe 5 posts, I can’t imagine the misery of prepping the forms for this ballot, more than anything else. (Imagine doing it for CDN-NDG.) A meter long ballot! You would need so many boxes to fit them all. And I think it’s fixed pay even if you are there until 3 am counting.
I hope the workers take note of how many voters simply walk away from the shitshow of trying to find their preferred candidate on the ballot.
If I were a legitimate candidate I’d be furious that the election was being turned into a stunt.
The reason this is feasible is that the Supreme Court ruled the deposit was unconstitutional. (You used to have to pay $1,000, and got it back if you got 10% of the vote.) Now all you need to get on the ballot is 100 signatures, plus some paperwork. There are various ways to make this harder to become a candidate, but that no party has proposed such a change means it’s not going to happen.
Jeather, the feds pay by the hour, and will be very understanding given the long ballot. Since 2021, they also pay overtime at 8 hours. Municipal and provincial pay a flat rate that gives each position the pay rate times a certain amount of time (usually an hour after polls close).
Thanks for the heads-up on this. That’s my riding. I pity the election workers.
Ah, thanks, I did not remember the differences in how they paid.
JaneyB please vote in this election and tell me what the ballot looks like, how many boxes are on the tables, anything at all about the process. I’m so curious.
Should it be harder to be a candidate? All those people (or their agents) had to round up 100 citizen signatures. If you think this is stupid, then don’t sign, but I am actually am encouraged that so many people are willing to let their fellow citizens take a shot at running.
I would assume that if you’re willing to sign for 1 candidate for the Longest Ballot Party you’re willing to sign for 5 or so — more than that would get annoying. But that really reduces signatures needed.
@Tim S., isn’t the most likely outcome that the federal government (either via legislation or some kind of directive) increases the barriers to becoming a candidate if these stunts continue? Hard to imagine Elections Canada will head into a national election with potentially dozens of candidates in each riding. @Nicholas referred to an SCC decision eliminating the deposit, so it would hardly be a walk in the park, but I would imagine the odds of this kind of thing continuing are smaller than the odds of Canada abandoning first-past-the-post.
I express no opinion on how easy it should be to run, just explaining why it is this way when it wasn’t before. If I were running a hundred people as a protest campaign I would gather a few dozen voters and all the petitions and just have them line up and sign them sequentially. Do this a few times and you could be done in an hour. In past cases of this most people did not live anywhere close to the riding, so you really just need a hundred people across the country willing to put their names down to run each time, and a dozen volunteers to help collect signatures. Again, not saying there should be a residency requirement (I personally hate them), but there isn’t, and it won’t change because tons of MPs live outside their riding too.
Joey, one saving grace for the general election is that no person may appear on the ballot in more than one riding on the same election day. These groups always concentrate on one riding to have maximum media impact, but to get 100 people on the ballot in every riding you’d need over 30,000 candidates, and 3 million signatures, plus all the other paperwork, all in 15 days. If they had that kind of organization they’d probably be able to get some people actually elected!
@jeather – I’ll definitely be voting. I’m also now curious what the ballot will look like. I’ll let everyone know. 🙂
JaneyB: As I was told, voters are not supposed to take a photo of their ballot or the mark they put on it, BUT, since nobody is allowed to watch you as you’re marking your ballot, they can’t stop you.
One person can sign for 100 different candidates. The Longest Ballot Committee only needs 101 organized members in each riding to put 100 people on the ballot. I’ll sign for you, and you sign for me… x100.
Weekend driving notes are coming earlier and earlier in the week.
An Amber Alert woke a lot of people around 4 am after a five‑year‑old was abducted in Brossard.
CBC radio news said at noon that the kid was found safe in a Toronto suburb.
Reply