The lobby of Concordia’s Hall Building was full of pro-Palestinian demonstrators Thursday; there was graffiti at UdeM and student walkouts across Quebec.
Updates from November, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
More on how city council voted this week to end all water fluoridation. CTV cites Maja Vodanovic saying “We were looking at putting fluoride everywhere or removing it everywhere. We have to be coherent, so we chose to remove it like the rest of Quebec” which makes no sense.
(Do I have to turn off commenting on this topic too?)
Adding Isabelle Hachey’s column on the subject Friday.
MarcG
MarcG
Gonna start a rumour in conspirituality circles that vitamin C rots your guts.
MarcG
Is there something stopping freedom-lovers from going down to the St-Lawrence and filling up a bucket of delicious natural drinking water?
Also, who’s paying this Coelho guy’s bills? He seems mentally unstable but maybe that’s part of the act (a la George W Bush)? Here’s a good article about Russian influence on Canadian media.
You might need to close the comments just to keep me from ranting here.
Joey
Shame on Projet Montreal.
Mozai
“But they don’t fluoridate the water in France!” because in France they add fluoride to table salt.
MarcG
Gazette article subtitled “Five reasons behind the city’s rationale, and how experts evaluate them.” It sounds a bit like Maja Vodanovic has drunk some of RFK Jr’s kool-aid.
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Kate
Northvolt AB is under creditor protection, putting nearly half a billion dollars of Quebec public funds at risk. This is out there despite headlines like Quebec gives rosy economic update.
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Kate
A regular reader emailed me with this question, and says I can pose it to the blog:
Back in the day – I want to say it stopped being a thing maybe 20 years ago – but back in the day in Quebec grocery stores, particularly the big chains (Metro, Super C, Steinbergs etc), did they not all have big bins of individually wrapped candies, generally up at the front or in the ‘en vrac’ sections?
I feel like both the en vrac section and those bins of candies were once ubiquitous and then disappeared completely.
What I’m trying to figure out is who was making those candies and whether they went out of business. My guess is they were a Quebec business, because I can’t remember ever seeing them elsewhere. There were hard shelled soft centred fruit flavoured ones I can’t find anywhere. But they also had various mints and caramels too. I don’t recall chocolates, and I know they also sold lozenges that deceptively looked like the other candies. My grandmother kept an assortment of these assorted candies in candy dishes throughout the house. They were also, I recall, the ‘poor man’s Halloween candy.’
I’m sure I didn’t dream all this up, I’d pay good money to have some of those candies again. I’m convinced a business must have gone under in the late-90s or early oughts and that explains the demise of this once ubiquitous feature of local supermarkets.
I told him I don’t remember this, but maybe someone here does?
Ephraim
I think they were Kerr’s. The last one to have them was Super C before COVID.
Josh
I seem to remember the same thing existing when I grew up in Ontario. Bulk Barn was a thing when I was young there and I think it still is, and I think the other major chains had bulk sections, including some national brand candies (like Hershey’s Kisses for example, or individually-wrapped caramels), as well as stuff like chocolate-coated nuts and various stuff like that.
Maybe over time these sections just became less profitable for the chains? Maybe in some instances (like in the case of the nuts) allergies did them in?
EmilyG
They have Bulk Barns here in Montreal. I live near one.
jeather
I remember them too; they also existed in American grocery stores. No idea what the brand was
Ian
There’s one at Marché Centrale.
Kevin
Dare made a lot of those candies, as did Kraft. I last saw them at Loblaws at St Jacques pre-Covid.
JP
I remember seeing this. My clearest recollection is from the md-to-late 90s.at Steinberg/Metro in Rockland’s (what’s now Pharmaprix I think). It was right after the produce section in the back. I remember one of the staff once thought I was stealing (I wasn’t) and my mom defended me saying I would never do that. In any case, I remember the displays being pretty colorful! Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about the specific brands.
Ian
Kresge’s used to have somethign similar, but that’s been a while. Sadly the old Steinberg’s sign is being taken down. The Pharmaprix had a fire and the pharmacy has been in the parking lot across the street in a trailer for a few months while the old building gets renovated.
dhomas
These definitely existed. I remember they used to have a coin slot so you could pay 10¢ for a single candy to eat while you shopped. Worked on the honour system. I don’t remember the brand or specific candy, though. I can’t seem to find a picture of it, either.
Marc
You’re thinking of Trebor Pick ‘n Mix candies. They appeared around 1970 and were made by the Allan candy co. at their plant in Granby, licensing the Trebor brand from its British parent (which I think was Bassett’s). In 2010, Allan changed the brand to Saybon and they were quietly discontinued a few years later citing sagging sales. Allan was acquired by Hershey’s in 2015. They were sold by weight and you would simply pull a produce bag off the roll and fill up as desired. And as dhomas mentioned, the display had a metal coin box asking for a dime if you wanted to get just one. Kerr’s and Dare had similar things but they were more common in Ontario.
If you’re a Gen-X baby as I am, these candies were likely a fixture at your grandparents’ place. Both my maternal British and de-souche Québecoise paternal grandmothers always had them in the candy dish on the coffee table. I bought a small mix bag for myself every month right up till they vanished. Amazing how supermarket bulk candy can rekindle many memories.
Simon
I remember those very well, they were my first shoplifting experience, at a Metro grocery store around age 10 (so 1990-ish). Those that I remember best were a hard white mint ball with red streaks along the sides, wrapped with a transparent plastic twisted at both ends in classic cartoon-style candy shape.
And yes my grandparents had a dish of them on the coffee table 🙂
dwgs
When my kids (now 18 and 22) were young I would give them each a dime or a quarter to put in the box at Loblaws / Provigo and tell them they couldn’t take more than three each. Can’t remember when they disappeared but it must have been in the last eight years or I would have heard about it.
Nicholas
Lest anyone think these cheap candies were only targeted at some income groups, the Steinberg’s in Westmount had them, though I believe they got rid of them around the time it became a Metro in the early 90s or so. They took up probably 10-15 linear feet in the produce section. (To be fair, Westmount was much more diverse income-wise back then, and that store served a lot of workers at lunch; there are lots of smaller homes, and before they were bought up by the top of the income distribution there were a decent amount of residents living in poverty. I have a friend living across from the library who’s paying about $800 a month for a 1-1/2 today, and a friend who’s a real estate agent said in October 1995 you could buy a mansion at the top of Westmount for $250,000.)
Josh, as EmilyG says, there are Bulk Barns around Montreal, though most are in the suburbs. The one in the Faubourg, next to Guy, is a must-stop whenever I’m in the area.
Thanks for all the info, all, especially Marc.
Joey
You couldn’t find a more perfect example of an outlier than the sale price of a Westmount mansion in October 1995.
Nicholas
If only my allowance money was enough to buy real estate rather than candy, I’d be rich now. Decent chance we’ll have another referendum in the next five years.
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Kate
Le Devoir puts these elements of the city budget story together: the police budget will be going up in 2025, but the city is also giving a tax break to nonprofit groups.
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Kate
Several alleged car thieves rammed a police car in NDG and fled, but were then arrested in Montreal North. Nobody got hurt.
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Kate
Quebec is to give out a financial update Thursday and La Presse already knows there will be millions of dollars for transit commissions.
The federal government has also announced what’s described here as “a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season” which is odd because there’s just about a month till Christmas. Many of the spared items are intended for families with kids. Some of us will also get a $250 bonus cheque next spring.
Blork
That “GST vacation” will be a welcome break for many, but what a nightmare for retailers. They’ll have to re-jig their payment systems for hundreds, maybe thousands of products, but only for two months after which they have to re-jig them back.
For example, no GST on beer, wine, or spirits under 7% ABV. So grocery stores and deps can’t just put in “no GST on beer.” They have to find all the beers that have more than 7% alcohol and mark them as exceptions (plenty of IPAs are over 7%).
There’s also a big breakdown of what kinds of printed books and periodicals are covered, which is a bit head-spinning to look at. And the children’s toys; not ALL toys, just some toys.
Not that I’m complaining (it’s not my problem), but you can guarantee there will be complaints from retailers, particularly the smaller ones that might not have very robust inventory systems.
OTOH it’s nice that restaurant meals and “prepared meals” from retailers are covered, and lots of stuff for children, from diapers all the way up to car seats.
Full list is here: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2024/11/more-money-in-your-pocket-a-tax-break-for-all-canadians.html
jeather
The list of what is or isn’t a book makes sense, but I’m fascinated that board games are included only if they are aimed at 14 or younger, while all puzzles and video game systems are included.
Curious why newspapers and books are included but not magazines.
I wonder if Quebec will do the same.
(As a rule, I support lowering sales taxes which are regressive and increasing progressive income taxes, though I’m unconvinced by this obvious stunt)
Uatu
Ok lemme get this straight… Quebec is giving out 2 billion, yet the healthcare network has to cut 1 billion? Wtf?
walkerp
Wow, that list is wild!
I think retailers are going to be pretty enthusiastic about this as will restaurant owners. It will drive a lot of business, I bet.Joey
@Blork big stores that sell lots of these items will have robust pricing management systems in place and the providers of these systems will probably do most of the heavy lifting. Smaller stores that only sell some of them might have to do some manual adjustments, but even then we’re not talking days of work. My heart refuses to bleed for retailers who get to sell Xmas toys at a 5% discount paid for by the public purse.
Jim Strankinga
I’m with Blork here about the difficulties for retailers, big or small ones, one way or another, it’ll cost money or labor to make complex temporary adjustments, which will be charged back to consumers at some point. Trudeau playing Santa Claus on the taxpayers cost sounds desperate.
DeWolf
@Blork, It’s no tax on beer, wine and cider of any abv – and RTD cocktails under 7%. No spirits included.
Blork
@DeWolf, right you are. I read too quickly.
Nicholas
If only there was a way to pay people money, in rough proportion to the amount of sales tax they paid, calculated every quarter, direct deposited by the government into your bank account, and targeted to the people with low or middle incomes, all done with low overhead and without distorting the market by picking which goods do and don’t get a special discount. Too bad that no government has figured this out.
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Kate
Mayors in the West Island have revealed that one reason the city discontinued fluoridation for their towns was a petition created by a far‑right extremist.*
Ray Coelho came up on the blog last year about a different petition, on which regular reader Kevin alerted us to this report on Coelho’s politics. At that time, thomas linked to the fluoride petition, too.
It gives me chills that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is already exerting an influence on health matters here. Attachons nos tuques!
*The Gazette’s Leora Schertzer spells his name Coehlo, but it’s a Portuguese name spelled Coelho.
MarcG
TIL that most of Montreal’s drinking water is not fluoridated!? The vote on whether or not to remove it from the Pointe-Claire and Dorval plants is said to be today – did it pass?
Regarding the direction of public health, we already capitulated to misinformation when we let the trucker convoy win the war on Covid prevention.
Kate
Jean Drapeau was dead set against fluoridation, and successive city hall administrations have, as far as I’m aware, never made any moves to change that.
MarcG
But yeah this Trump admin is going to accelerate our decline no doubt. Here’s his possible FDA pick calling that the virus that killed nearly 170 Canadians per day in late January 2021 a “common cold”, and the possible head of NIH arguing against vaccinating children.
Steve
“petition created by a far right extremist”
How about you don’t for force fluoride down people throats?
Cause you sound like an EXTREMIST!Kevin
Steve
Fluoride in the amount in drinking water doesn’t make anyone sick — it improves your teeth and saves our society massive amounts of pain and cash.Stop listening to the people who want you to be scared of everything.
rob
Dihydrogen Monoxide is much more dangerous than Floride. I can`t believe we haven`t petitioned the city to remove that as well.
Steve
How about we make a law that force everyone to brush their teeth. Is that extremist?
With toothpaste that has fluoride. OMG I feel like an extremistJoey
With all that dihydrogen monoxide, it’s no wonder the city’s infrastructure is in such bad shape.
Kate
According to Wikipedia, 42 of the 50 largest U.S. cities had water fluoridation. Toronto fluoridates its water, according to a mention in Water fluoridation by country.
This is not “extreme” it’s just a public health measure.
Let’s come back in four years and see how many U.S. cities are still doing it in 2029.
Steve
Oh I have a good idea how about we inject fluoride in candy so it negates itself
I’m a genius!
I wouldn’t have to do my job as a parent to not give shit to eat to my kids and I could watch more Netflix and be on my phone.walkerp
LOL @ “Steve” and his “freedom”.
Steve
I notice that most of my neighbors have SUV’s I think I should do the same.
You bring good arguments.Steve
walkerp
Did you say LOL to Freedom? Lol indeed
What’s MY Freedom?
Do you know the definition of freedom?MarcG
The beauty of a public health intervention like fluoridation is that it’s invisible to users and *distributed equally*, like car airbags, HVAC filtration/ventilation in public buildings, chlorination of drinking water, hot water tank temperature regulators, etc. I think that part of the libertarian problem with public health interventions is that they provide benefits to people without money. They want the poor to choke and for the wealthy to purchase individual-sized solutions. Can’t afford dental care? Go fuck yourself.
Steve
MarcG
I agree with the majority of what you’re saying. But imposing fluoride to everybody is like putting on a helmet to go for a walk just in case I get hit by a car.
The reel problem is education about oral hygiene and especially nutrition.
And that has nothing to do with your social class.
I’m not libertarianMarcG
Hi Steve. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to give a personal reply to your concerns, but here’s an article that may address some of them: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-fluoride-debate.
jeather
No, putting fluoride in water is like adding vitamins A & D to milk, or iodine to salt.
Steve
OMG again that’s like putting a Band-Aid over a problem instead of fixing it.
Kevin
Well-run societies do a bazillion things all the time that benefit the majority of people or even a minority of people by sharing the load.
The alternative is a place where police leave you alone if you bribe them, firefighters check if you’ve paid your vig before putting out flames, or children not getting an education.
No individual has capacity to investigate every issue all the time and pretending that we do is completely naïve.Who gets hurt by fluoridating water? The answer is nobody.
Who gets hurt by removing it? Kids.Steve
From MarcG link
“Different approaches to assessing health risk. Europe, for example, uses a precautionary hazard approach. If a study shows a substance can be toxic, they aim to eliminate the hazard completely. A risk approach, which the United States uses, begins with identifying a hazard but takes it one step further by assessing the probability of the exposure doing harm. This approach requires more data, time, and multidisciplinary expertise at one table to determine risk assessments and, thus, policy. Neither approach is necessarily wrong, but it can lead to contradictory actions.”Steve
From Google AI
• Fluoridation status
98% of Western European countries do not fluoridate their water, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland.• Reasons for not fluoridating
Some reasons for not fluoridating include technical, legal, financial, and political reasons. Others say that fluoride is the only chemical added to drinking water for the purpose of medication, and that there is no obvious advantage to water fluoridation over topical application.• Tooth decay
Despite not fluoridating their water, tooth decay rates in Europe have declined as much as in the United States over the past 50 years.Steve
My point is stop being lazy and look for the easy and quick solution.
Cause most of the time that comes with non-related complications down the line.
Gastric bypass or Ozempic is not the solution if you want to lose weight.Anyways that’s it for me
Peacejeather
Those stats come from an anti-fluoridation website, and note that the rates may have declined different amounts but still be very different — if the actual rates of tooth decay were similar, they would have included it.
Nathaniel
There’s a long history of right-wing conspiracists decrying fluoride, which is safe and effective at preventing tooth decay. Here’s a good post about the cranks https://sethcotlar.substack.com/p/those-funny-fluoride-fighters-were
Chris
>…that the virus that killed nearly 170 Canadians per day in late January 2021 a “common cold”,
MarcG, can I ask: have you ever had covid? Of course it can be serious, fatal even, and many absolutely downplay(ed) it too much; but you seem to do the opposite, upplaying (is that a word?) it too much. Amongst the vaccinated and/or previously-infected, it’s pretty darn close to a common cold at this point, when you have it for the nth time.
dhomas
@Chris: “Amongst the vaccinated and/or previously-infected, it’s pretty darn close to a common cold at this point”. That’s the thing, some of these people are against vaccination. If we get another, different virus, will these government agencies run by anti-vaxxers just let it run rampant because it’s “just a (different) cold”? Will they have dismantled the programs in place that can produce vaccinations quickly? Arguably, one of the (only?) good things Trump did as POTUS was get Operation Warp Speed off the ground, which produced a COVID vaccine relatively quickly, by vaccination standards. Ironically, it’s something could never really take credit for, since a large portion of his base are anti-vaccination.
Also, please don’t feed the troll. Mr. “fluoride is bad because reasons” is saying a whole bunch of nothing. Words with absolutely no meaning. “putting on a helmet to go for a walk just in case I get hit by a car”. I would use the example that we “force” people to put on seatbelts for their own good, but this guy is probably against seatbelts, too. Dangit, I just caught myself doing it (feeding the troll)!
MarcG
I’m hesitant to repeat points I’ve made a million times here but since you ask:
“With each SARS-CoV-2 reinfection, the risk of developing [Long Covid] is cumulative. That means two infections carry a greater risk than one infection and the risk after three infections is larger than after two infections.” – Office of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada September 2024.
The acute symptoms of an illness aren’t a good measurement of their potential long term impact on your health. For example, “Early HIV symptoms can feel like a bad case of the flu or COVID-19 and usually occur a few weeks after infection. These symptoms of acute HIV are the body’s natural response to HIV infection. Symptoms usually disappear within one to four weeks; therefore, they are often mistaken for a case of the flu.”
jeather
Unless you get long Covid, or other lingering issues from Covid. According to a recent report, about 1/6 Canadians who have had Covid report lingering symptoms, half of whom say it sometimes, often or always affects their daily activities (the other half say never or rarely). The numbers are still unclear, but now we’re at about 3% of Canadians with symptoms that often or always affect their activities (1/6 have symptoms * 1/4 have often or always * 4/5 have been infected = 1/30)
The people I know with it get yearly boosters and have found the symptoms increase on reinfection.
H. John
@Chris. I must admit I thought of you when read a recent article called “Calm-mongering”.
I’ve found T. Ryan Gregory, professor of evolutionary biology in Canada, a useful source to follow.
One of his co-authored postings is called Calm-mongering:
A few quotes from the article:
“Calm-mongering often promotes a false sense of security, a “moral calm” that hinders risk mitigation by clouding our judgement with dubious reassurances.”
“This defeatist conclusion is a direct result of consistently underestimating risks and delaying responses to crucial developments. (If you spend your time debating the existence of a risk rather than mitigating it, suprisingly enough, the risk doesn’t get mitigated!).”
“Five years in, the virus is evolving more rapidly than ever before, and most people can expect to get infected at least once a year if they take no precautions. Long COVID is a serious health risk, and everyone is vulnerable to it. Every new variant creates the possibility for new, unanticipated threats. The pandemic is far from over.”
“Lulling the public into a false sense of security about an ongoing pandemic is an irresponsible approach to public health. In an emergent crisis, the public deserves to know the truth about potential risks. Calm-mongering is a dangerous tactic, and the virus is its only beneficiary.”MarcG
Also, since it apparently wasn’t clear, my point in saying that Makary called Covid a “common cold” right at the beginning of the deadliest Covid wave so far was to illustrate how wrong he was, and instead of being held accountable for contributing to those deaths, he’s en route to lead the FDA. The world is truly upside down.
GE
Steve says people shouldn’t “be lazy and look for the easy and quick solution,” yet posts “information” from Google AI. Well well.
Joey
@dhomas Congress and industry began the COVID vaccine response, almost immediately. Trump only declared it Warp Speed and took the credit months later. And now’s he’s disavowed it completely.
I can’t tell if politicians have no balls and are going to let these weasles drag us back to the dark ages or if they’re happy to use it as an excuse to cut more funding to public services.