Montrealers of Syrian origin held a celebration at Square Victoria over the end of the Assad regime in their homeland.
Updates from December, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Nothing in the city toponymy directory comes up if you search for Lemco or Van Ginkel, but Blanche Lemco and her husband Sandy Van Ginkel did so much to save Montreal from itself in the 1950s and 1960s. The Ville‑Marie autoroute is no prize, but if instead it had been an elevated highway like the Met, cutting across the city along the path of St‑Antoine or even St‑Paul Street, imagine the ghastliness. Some of their other interventions are mentioned in the article, too.
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Kate
It’s a guaranteed heartstring tugging story that a visiting family had their car stolen with their dog still in it but two items popped out as I read this:
- 156 cars have been stolen so far this year from Fairview.
- A husky/chihuahua mix? How?
In any case, there’s no mention whether the dog was chipped, which you’d think relevant.
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Kate
A Lubavitcher photographer’s views of Montreal are not the ones most people would take.
Condé Nast Traveller suggests the best things to do in Montreal, discouragingly described in the lede as “one of Canada’s most vibrant cities.”
Ian
Some different locations, not so much different views. Nice shots, though.
I wonder which cities in Canada Condé Nast finds more vibrant. Moose Jaw, maybe?
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Kate
Experts agree that Montreal doesn’t have enough handicapped parking.
Ephraim
In other news, snow is cold and wet….
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Kate
La Presse looks at Quebec’s austerity measures in health care, education, public transit and other categories – and why it’s done now, to keep the deficit from growing. Sting in the coda here: Quebec had a surplus when the CAQ first came to power in 2018.
Joey
This is a good start, but it doesn’t get at the real fear – I’m definitely out of my depth here, but my impression is the government is worried that if it can’t show it has a handle on its deficit, the ratings agencies will downgrade Quebec and the cost of our interest payments will go up, which will edge out even more necessary spending. It feels like we are avoiding a more difficult conversation – what level of spending can we reasonably afford, and how do we allocate those dollars?
Meezly
The CAQ gave themselves a 30% salary boost a couple of years ago. That must’ve contributed to the deficit!
Tim S.
I would phrase it a bit differently – are we willing to pay the necessary taxes to get the services we want? A quick look at various comparison tables suggest that Quebec is among the highest taxed jurisdictions in Canada – different tables break it down differently – but I’m sure we also have more public services. So yeah, if we want those services we should pay for them. If not, not.
Kate
We’ve always known we’re among the highest taxed people in North America, but we’ve usually been able to get services in return. The problem will be if we’re still highly taxed, but then have to pay again if we want timely health care or quality education.
Ian
Well you don’t need to look far to see waste even in these times of austerity.
The Montreal police 2025 budget: $824M … and they were 50 million over in 2024. In 2023 alone the budget was increased 63 million. The cops of course want even more increases becaue they are in a “recruitment crisis”.
I wonder how many more services we could have if instead of policing poverty the city invested in housing and social services…
That’s just Montreal, of course, but nicely illustrates how things work all the way up. Similar misdirections and excesses exist at every level. For instance, how much do you think was spent in total to ban hijabs so far, and now Legault is worried about people even speaking Arabic in public? Now, how many hijab-wearing nurses left Quebec in th midst of a nurse shortage?
I wonder how many more services we could have if instead of policing ethnicity the province invested in education and healthcare…
su
Would it be helpful to nationalise some of our mineral resources (such as lithium) which are currently being extracted at a lucrative pace under the auspices of ” La Grande Alliance” ?
Uatu
My department had a meeting last week about the crazy budget cuts coming our way. It doesn’t look good and I have no idea where they’re going to cut even more.That’s also on top of upcoming retirements and staff on sick leave. We’re already spending lots on overtime because of lack of staff too. It’s okay though because I know that though our hard work and sacrifice we will help pay for the 7 billion dollars invested in the Northvolt battery plant and the imaginary batteries it produces. (Okay, maybe I’m just a little bitter lol)
Kate
Is it generally understood that the Northvolt debacle is why Pierre Fitzgibbon bolted from politics?
Ephraim
Austerity doesn’t work! Austerity fails because cutting public spending slows growth, and increases inequality. It weakens essential services, while failing to significantly reduce debt as lower growth leads to lower tax revenues. Instead of recovery, it prolongs economic stagnation.
Basically, instead of focusing on cutting bad expenses and increasing efficiency, they essentially cut the growth in GDP which in turn brings in less taxes and then more belt tightening. The UK did this repeatedly under the Tories and it’s disastrous.
vasi
Has anyone done any analysis on why we have such a deficit? I mean _analysis_ here, not punditry please. The budget is public, and we should be able to tell which departments are spending more, what govt. revenue looks like, etc.
H. John
I’ve always found the writings of Luc Godbout, La Chaire de recherche en fiscalité et en finances publiques de l’École de gestion de l’Université de Sherbrooke, to be a useful for understanding Quebec public finances:
The Quebec Budget: Time for alarm or calm? – Luc Godbout, U of Sherbrooke
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2024/quebec-budget-deficit/
and,
Where has the last five years’ growth in Quebec’s tax revenues come from?
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/january-2024/do-quebec-taxes-really-keep-going-up/
At the bottom of his article he provides a link to “Bilan de la fiscalité au Québec – Édition 2024”
While the complete document is in French, the Highlights (about 10 pages) are available in English.
https://cffp.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/bilan-de-la-fiscalite-au-quebec-edition-2024/
The Bilan is issued each year and the new version covering 2024 is coming out Jan 9th, 2025.
Tim S.
Thanks H. John. The decrease is gas tax revenue is particularly interesting. Is it too soon to start mileage taxing on EVs?
Ian
It’s like when everyone quit smoking and the province no longer got a buck a pack from 3/4 of the population every day.
Mileage tax is coming, for sure. Taxing gas-powered cars is a big source of income, and despite the urbanist tropes, roads aren’t going away since evrything is delivered by car, truck, and van now – municiplal services like police & fire and ambulances that need roads notwithstanding. That golden goose has to evolve with the times.
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Kate
Valérie Plante says she dislikes the nastiness in politics in a Radio‑Canada interview.
Ian
Well firing Alex Norris would have been a good start but I guess that’s not what she meant.
Chris
Firing someone elected (multiple times)? No thanks. Clearly you don’t like him, but the electors disagree.
Ian
Well they fired Sue Montgomery, it’s not impossible. But hey, I know nobody is going to fire the last of the old guard regardless of what an abusive jerk he behaves like. That said, Milton Parc would elect a dog in a pirate hat if Projet Montreal ran one as their candidate.
Mark 10:06 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
This is going to be interesting. 13 years of civil war, 50 years of one party, father/son rule, gone in a week.
There is no blueprint for any form of functional government or security here, and that’s concerning. BTS ( the group supposedly in charge) has no real experience running a country, although they have been running things locally in regions of the country under their control.
The thing is, Syria went through a lot of governments between the end of ww2 and when Assad father over. Not defending those regimes on any account, but there was stability and relative economic growth during that time, food on the table, etc. That all changed during the war, but power vacuums can be very risky.
Kate 10:17 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
Agreed. It’s clear why people are happy, but we’ve seen it happen too often that a revolution is followed by a new brand of dictatorship.
Ephraim 10:41 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
I always loved reading the results of Syrian elections. You always wondered how close they could get to a 100% turnout… in 1991, just 58201 people didn’t turn out to vote, leaving a 99.14% turnout rate.
Mark 10:54 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
Russia, Iran and Hizbollah were clearly keeping Assad afloat, the concern now is this huge hole in the region, and a ton of regional actors vying for control and influence, Israel, Turkey, the Kurds, other groups in Syria, let alone regional powers, etc.
Anyway, thanks for letting us share Kate, my family is originally from Syria, and we’ve tried helping as many refugees as possible since the start of the war, so this hits home, but we’re a bit far from Montreal on this one now, so I’ll end it here.
walkerp 11:49 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
Lots of uncertainty for the future, but we can pause for the moment and just be happy (or whatever emotion there is after so much agony) for the people of Syria, of whom we have quite a few here in Montreal. I know it is dangerous to say it couldn’t get worse but Assad’s regime was pretty much at the top (or bottom) of the worst list. The stories of the prisoners coming out of Sednaya prison are mind-blowing.
The Syrian “civil” war was also a big factor in pushing immigration pressures on Europe and here, so if stability returns (and already refugees that were stuck in Turkey are flowing back to Syria), we may see some of the pressure coming down. All quite interesting.
Mark 12:06 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
Yeah there is definete relief, and some early encouraging signs from the leader of HTS ( not BTS like I wrote on my earlier post, the Korean boy band isn’t moonlighting in Syria). They claim to have cut ties with Al-Qaeda, want to build a new country for all Syrians, whether that’s true or not, Al least it’s a start and better than the official word of the Taliban for instance.
H. John 15:00 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
@Mark. The Montreal & Canada wide connection to this story is that refugee claims in Canada right now are averaging 7 years before the process starts. There are many Syrian refugee claimants who will now be in limbo.
Most European countries (including the UK and Germany) have stopped processing asylum claims for Syrians.
I would expect Canada will do the same.
Kate 15:03 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
H. John, that seems hasty. Shouldn’t they at least have some confidence in the stability of a new regime before they start sending people back?
H. John 16:02 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
@Kate Only a few European politicians have talked about “sending people back” while others have said they would be ready to assist those who want to voluntarily return.
Canada staying true to its principles has said nothing so far.
The problem with continuing to hear claims in Canada, during this uncertain period, is that we could see people rejected by the Board which is an administrative body with rules that leave very little leeway.
If a claimant has filed a claim based on a genuine fear of persecution in his or her country (the risk must be personal not generalized), and the claim they filed used the Assad regime as the basis for that fear, they have a real problem.
Appeals of Board decisions are made to the Federal Court of Canada which has this week warned of major backlogs in major cities:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-courts-immigration-filings-1.7402924
Chris 20:31 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
Mark, “gone in a week”? It took 13 years of civil war, not one week.
Mark 21:53 on 2024-12-09 Permalink
Chris obviously this is 13 years, even more, in the making. But usually, there is a bit more linear progression. Rebels take control of a territory, administer it, move forward, etc. This happened quite a bit during the war, but had been several years of standstill in Syria.
The “gone in a week” refers to how quickly cities that were under Assad control ( Aleppo, Homs) fell to the HTS. None of this would have happened without the war preceding it, but even Damascus stayed under regime control during those 13 years, so the speed with which this unfolded is surprising many.