Minister of higher education Pascale Déry insists she has the right to intervene directly in course contents, which she has done recently at Vanier and at Dawson colleges. Both incidents involved course contents bearing on Palestine.
Updates from February, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Soraya Martinez Ferrada has been crowned as leader of Ensemble Montréal.
Steve Faguy on Bluesky: “Projet Montréal’s opponent in the next municipal election will be led by a former Liberal MP. Again.”
Ian
It’s kind of interesting, there used to be a kind of implied parallel between QS and Projet / Ensemble and PLQ … but since QS has gone openly ethnonationalist, not so much.
Joey
@Ian I think it’s more, why would Projet attach its successful image to QS, which, like the federal NDP, can’t help but stagnate.
Nicholas
Is Ensemble a real party? It was just a shell for Coderre, and it is so listless that none of its borough mayors or anyone else related to it, or literally anyone, even people who didn’t live in Montreal (remember that guy?) wanted to lead it, such that they needed a second round to get even one candidate.
What do they believe? Is it just *not* Projet? I went to their Program page to find out, where I found an excerpt from Coderre’s book, repeated references to what the “Coderre-Gelly administration” will do, and this (emphasis mine):
Ensemble Montréal knows that the full development of the city depends on its mayor’s understanding of what makes the city vibrate. He must embody it, as well as his administration, in order to allow the city to use all the levers that are accessible to it in its role as the driving force of the entire Quebec region.
The election is 8 months from tomorrow. Is this a party that looks ready to do anything? If you were the federal or provincial Liberals, would you tie your party to it?
Kate
Thanks for digging up that quotation, Nicholas! It’s such an admission that Ensemble doesn’t have even the most basic principles that unify the party or give it any cohesion.
In practice, it’s basically anti-Projet, as you point out. So it has hopes of getting votes from anyone displeased with Projet’s actions – and who also votes. Most Montrealers don’t vote in municipal elections.
Orr
Outremont dead last in snow clearing from the big blizzard. Ensemble mayor Laurent Desbiens can take credit for that exceptional result.
Nicholas
Orr, to be fair, Outremont is now done, while Ville Saint-Laurent is last at around 80%; they even have some streets that aren’t even scheduled for clearing yet. In the past I’ve noticed that MHM is often last, but this time it’s not even close. I don’t think which party controls each borough has much correlation with who finishes first, but I agree that this time the worst borough by far is an EM stronghold, who’s only ever had a single person as borough mayor.
Kate, I completely agree with you, it’s basically anti-Projet. I should just add that I don’t think that is good: parties govern best when there is competition, when they have to show results. Even if you like Projet, having a competent opposition helps Projet stay on their game. And to be fair to Soraya, she was “elected” one day ago, the website won’t be updated with her plan and ideas. But it’s clear that since Coderre left they have been rudderless, their news page is sad, and the only thing unifying them is opposing Projet, especially on anything they do that hurts cars or raises taxes. I’m not sure that’s a sustainable coalition, for an election or governing.
Kate
I agree that it would be better for Projet if they had real opposition – some form of constructive criticism at least. But journalists never pose the questions they should ask when an Ensemble person carps at something Projet is proposing to do: “What would your party do differently, and why?” or “Where would your party get the money, if Projet can’t?”
There’s still time for an entirely new party to arise before the November election, although I don’t know what setting it would come from. I haven’t seen any online noise from people keen on making a play, but I’ve seen too many pieces about how so few are interested in holding municipal office in Quebec these days, given the torrent of abuse politicians attract via social media.
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Kate
Le Devoir’s Jeanne Corriveau went along with a snowblower operator to see what the job is like and happened on a philosophical driver.
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Kate
Bernard Drainville is vowing to strengthen and enlarge Quebec’s secularism laws, after a report on “uneven” obedience to existing secularism rules in some schools. Horrors, “students were allowed to pray on school grounds” and teachers converse among themselves in languages other than French, even in front of students!! (What the latter claim has to do with secularism isn’t made clear.)
Daycare supervisors and other school staff may soon be subject to Drainville’s ukase.
H. John
@Kate “teachers converse among themselves in languages other than French”
This is a clear reference to the original Bedford Report from last June. In that school, 80% of their students do not have French as a first language, and don’t speak French at home. The report covered the issue of providing a French atmosphere for their students in common areas like hallways. On a broader scale, the issue had already been raised by management as an inclusion issue effecting not only students but other professors who didn’t speak Arab. This lead to a petition on employees right of expression, and the union was clear that the language used by teachers in their break-room, or in any common area was none of the employers business.
This morning on 98.5FM Patrick Lagacé interviewed Bernard Drainville about the latest report and his concerns:
jeather
Wouldn’t want to see prayer in a secular school like École Saint-Enfant-Jésus.
DavidH
My first thoughts about the language thing was they forgot laïcité is supposed to be the cautionnable front for their xenophobia and they are just exposing it for what it is.
BUT, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, those teachers were reciting latin religious texts in a pre-Vatican II manner? Could it be?
mare
I was surprised to see a large 3-metre tall cross on the outside wall of a neighbourhood primary school. Impossible to miss, slightly above eye level. The school doesn’t even have a religious name (École Madeleine-de-Verchères) and as far as I can tell from their web pages on the CSSDM website aren’t a Catholic school. But apparently the cross isn’t a religious symbol, just tradition. Laïcité is just other-ism.
Nicholas
mare, the school down the street from me has a cross above the entrance too, and doesn’t have a religious name either. But maybe the rule is you can’t have religion in the school, but it’s fine outside of it.
walkerp
The name is a historical artifact. Saint-enfant Jesus (or “Baby Jesus” as we anglophone parents call it) is definitely secular on the inside.
jeather
I thought we cared very deeply about visible religion in schools, like veils and jewelry, and not what they meant in the hearts of the teachers or if it actually had an effect on their teaching.
Kate
The school crosses would be left over from when it was the Montreal Catholic School Commission. Confessional public schools ended here in 1998 on which the CSSDM took over most of the Catholic commission’s buildings, crosses and all. I doubt there are any crucifixes left inside the buildings, as there certainly were when I went to school.
jeather
Some of the school crosses are carved into the building which — fine, whatever, I see the argument to leave it be. But some are removable, and school names could be changed, but neither happen, because it’s not laicite at all, it’s hiding only non-Catholic religions.
JP
Whatever school is now housed at 1995 rue Victor Dore also has crosses at the door…
Having said that, I do find the idea of teachers speaking other languages in classrooms or hallways, a little off putting. I don’t think it has to be malicious but it can feel like maybe your teachers might be talking about you or your classmates.Andrew Aitken
I still believe the most egregiously non-secular school in the CSSDM is the Petit Chanters de Mont-Royal. Every single student is learning catholic hymns in school and singing them every Sunday in the Oratory.
Meezly
Laicité had its place in the separation of Church and State in France, but many human rights orgs have observed over the past decades how laicité has been weaponized against Muslim communities. It’s a thing. I believe in secularism but laicité has been co-opted and often seems like code for xenophobia though well-meaning intellectuals would deny this. Quebec is merely taking its cues from France.
Kate
JP, looking at that school on Streeview, it’s obvious that those crosses are not part of the structure or the façade, and could very easily be removed.
Meezly, I think you’re onto something. And Quebec was dominated by the Catholic church more recently than France, which adds an extra twist.
Uatu
I’d rather QC take it’s cues from France regarding access to the medical system especially GPs.
Ian
Well, careful what you wish for – France may have ditched the rule of the Church but their secularism is largely informed by a hatred for Jews and more recently, Muslims, even more intense than that on display here – the Vichy government & Algerian war of Independence come to mind.
Kevin
Of course the crosses should come down, just like how an earlier generation forced schools to mortar over engraved words like ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ /s
Meezly
It’s not me who’s onto something, I’m just reading stuff put forth by sociologists, historians, human rights activists and the like.
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Kate
Weekend notes – in addition to spring break notes below, it’s Nuit Blanche weekend and the metro will be open all night – from CultMTL, CityCrunch, La Presse, CTV.
Also the road closures as usual.
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Kate
Some notes on free things to do during spring break; more spring break from Time Out; more from La Presse; more from CTV;l some highlights of the High Lights festival; the metro will be open all night for Nuit Blanche, Saturday night to Sunday morning.
Spring break is listed as from March 3‑7 this year at the EMSB and CSSDM.
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Kate
As the ground ices up, Urgences‑Santé has been receiving a deluge of emergency calls from people who have slipped and fallen.
We have a weather alert: about 10 to 15 cm of snow from Friday evening until Saturday afternoon.
The dusting we’ve been getting Thursday is welcome, because the remaining snow from earlier in the month had mostly turned into a nasty gray brown sludge.
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Kate
Quebec intends to force Blainville to sell 70 hectares of delicate wetlands to U.S. firm Stablex so they can use it to bury toxic waste. All mayors in the CMM are against this.
Nicholas
“Il s’agit d’une négation par Québec du principe de l’autonomie municipale qui établit que les municipalités sont responsables de l’aménagement de leur territoire, s’est indignée Mme Poulin. Un principe pourtant reconnu par tous les partis représentés à l’Assemblée nationale, a-t-elle rappelé.”
Principle of municipal autonomy? From the province that deinstituted hundreds of municipalities, vanishing into thin air at the stroke of a pen? We can argue whether municipalities should have more autonomy from the province, but let’s not pretend that they have anything other than exactly what the province gives them, and can take away at any moment.
Also, I remember a news site that, whenever it talked about a specific property, would make a custom Google Map showing exactly where it is. I wish more did this.
Andrew Aitken
The google map and satellite view are actually fascinating. The area was an explosives and munitions factory in WW2 and turned into a training camp after, which was then divided up into the toxic waste dump, a Transport Canada test track, and maybe different explosive storage for a mining company? There’s all sorts of weird shapes in the wilderness. Is this a moat? https://maps.app.goo.gl/sK5hr1TXKngrrhad6
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Kate
When cops targeted Hells and related groups in 2018, they seized a lot of jackets with gang patches, even from people they didn’t eventually charge. Did they have the right to do so, and to hang onto the jackets afterwards? It’s up in court although a date for the hearing hasn’t been set.
I’d go see an exhibit of these jackets if they held one.
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Kate
The brotherhood of general practitioners here is calling for the abolition of the PREM system that strictly allocates where doctors can practise, and which they say is deterring promising people from entering the profession at all.
jeather
I’m willing to vote for any party that offers an end to the PREM and another stat holiday or two at this point.
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Kate
This year, after the heavy snowfall and delayed pickups, the post‑snow garbage cleanup will be worse than usual.
mare
The garbage pickup firm ‘forgot’ to pickup about 30% of the garbage bags on my block yesterday. Intact bags, put there *after* the snow removal, and black ones so they were clearly visible. As far as I can tell, they took and emptied all garbage cans, just left behind a lot of bags.
I don’t know how garbage removal companies are paid, but having twice as much garbage will take much more time, during pickup and the increased number of trips to the garbage dump, which is probably far away.
Joey
I am hoping that there are clauses in the contracts that penalize contractors who leave garbage behind – in my experience, a call to 311 usually sorts that out fast. I think they just add it to another truck’s route. On our street the recycling, which is supposed to be picked up by Thursday night, is still out there. Not to much additional lingering garbage from the snowstorms.
Ian
Our recycling usually gets picked up Thursday – the compost trucks came around, but the recycling wasn’t picked up until Friday. Which is odd because the other side of the street has their pickup Wednesday and it all got picked up as usual. I know Ricova (who has the contract in my area) gets paid per route, not according to hours worked, so even if they were running late I don’t see why they skipped certain blocks. There was no obvious pattern, either.
I also noticed that none of the recycling in my area was gettting picked up in recycling trucks either, just regualr garbage compactor style trucks, all of it mashed together. Pretty sure it was all going straight to landfill.
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Kate
A man was subjected to a fatal beating Wednesday afternoon in St‑Lambert, and there’s been an arrest.
(This happened only a step from a murder in January. No indication of any connection.)
Blork
For those wondering how such a thing can happen in genteel and noise-averse Saint-Lambert, the location is only nominally Saint-Lambert. Roll the body across the street and it would be in Vieux-Longueuil (which is to say, the new Vieux-Longueuil, not to be confused with the old Vieux-Longueuil). Roll it 20 feet down the street and it would be in Lemoyne, a sleepy and grim borough of Longueuil which is not quite as sleepy and grim as nearby Greenfield Park. #south-shore-geography-lesson
Kate
Is Greenfield Park sleepy and grim? The name is so pretty. I’ve never been there.
I’ve also wondered how it goes on being called that and not Le Parc des Champs Verts.
(Why is there a new Vieux-Longueuil?)
MarcG
Agree that area is pretty rough and the traffic is often terrible so I’m going to put my money on road rage.
DeWolf
I’ve been to Greenfield Park a few times and it seems nice enough to me?
@Kate It’s one of those boroughs that has managed to maintain bilingual status, although it’s only about 30% anglo these days.
Daisy
The “new Vieux-Longueuil” is the part of Longueuil that was Longueuil before the merger. As opposed to the “old Vieux-Longueuil” which is the older part of Longueuil and was called that before the merger.
Blork
Greenfield Park is mostly sleepy, but there are a few corners that are on the grungy side, and one entire border is Tachereau Blvd, so I always see it as grim.
Elaborating on Daisy’s reply:
Before the merger there was Longueuil, and the old village part was Vieux-Longueuil.
After the merger, Longueuil, St-Hubert, Greenfield Park, and St-Lambert (briefly) were incorporated into the larger new city. The larger new city was called “Longueuil,” which begged the question of what do you call the former “Longueuil” which is now just a borough of the larger “Longueuil.”
The answer: call the entire borough “Vieux Longueuil” as a borough of Longueuil. But that begged the question of “what do you call the old village of Longueuil that used to be referred to as “Vieux Longueuil?”
As far as I can tell that has never been answered, beyond ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Blork
Google Maps unhelpfully calls it “Old Longueuil” (within “Le Vieux Longueuil”).
Tim S.
Nice and grimy neighbourhoods exist in kind of a chequerboard pattern in that part of the South Shore. As Blork and DeWolf said, most of Greenfield Park is fine, with some cute cottages that I suspect predate the post war suburban boom, but mixed in along Taschereau and the railway are some industrial sectors, and scattered everywhere are remnants of when the area used to be kind of a slum. Mixed in with all that are pretty basic postwar constructions, and now more modern stuff.
Uatu
Brossard it’s by section – i.e.- B section= middle class, S section=$$$$$.
Robert H
Kate, Blork, I find that Greater Montreal is riddled with geographical and toponymical oddities. I have had a hard enough time sorting out places known by English names even in French and vice-versa, or where one quartier begins and another ends. After reading everyone’s comments, my head is wobbling if not spinning. You could all write a book!
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Kate
As noted last week, the city is opening a French-language office to help the city apply the latest version of the language law, commonly called Bill 96.
Tangentially, currently under discussion is Bill 84, the aspirational legislation which the anglo QCGN says aims to “establish French as […] the only language Quebecers should use if they are to be considered full participants of society.”
Mozai
I wonder if the St.Patrick’s Day parade will be outlawed.
Kate
You don’t have to outlaw things, but you can cut or reduce funding for events that don’t fit your ideal of a culturally pure society.
JP
Lots of dog whistling too: “You mention people arrived here centuries ago. We are very aware of this.” So the only Anglos and “others” who deserve consideration are only those who arrived “centuries ago”? Not to mention, what about the Peoples who have beem here for millenia? Maybe we need to be learning more of their culture, language and history That’s where it all really falls apart for me….
Kate
I would’ve thought that having been here for centuries is a more serious problem. Some of my ancestors showed up here during the Famine (1840s) and I’m still here and still not integrated into francophone culture, after all these years. That’s much more dubious than someone who came here last year.
bob
JP – By the time of the Conquest, the population of what is now Quebec had been slightly French and mostly indigenous for about 150 years. It has been _265_ years since Quebec became British, then Canadian.
Ethnic nationalism imposes arbitrary expiration dates on who countries belong to. For Quebecois nationalists, the “original” inhabitants of Quebec date from 1608 to 1759, period. And everyone else? Well, as Frank “I’m not a racist” Legault says, “It’s important that we don’t put all cultures on the same level”.
Kate – I think what you are thinking of as “francophone culture” is mostly an invention of 20th c. nationalism, a kind of folk culture more literary than real, and in recent decades increasingly tainted with racism, white supremacy, and such. The real culture of Quebec, at least of Montreal, was a big stew of cultures, with elements from dozens of places and peoples. Quebec nationalists has been trying to erase that reality for decades, to the point of chipping English off of the buildings.
Joey
And yet being a Quebecer – even an anglo Quebecer – gives you some buffer to the rest of the North American monolith, no? Just ask Iggy Azalea…
Kate
It does, Joey. Which is weird but true.
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Kate
UQAM is asking for millions to revive the Quartier latin by adding more residential units, enlarging the university’s sports facilities, and generally improving the tone of the area.
David S
Sure, because UQAM is so good with their budget? They were at the origin of the ilot voyageur fiasco: https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2013/07/05/lilot-voyageur-un-gachis-couteux
Kate
True, but that was some years ago and different people are in charge there now.
Joey
Given that Quebec *today* announced plans to cut international enrolment (and even more next year), it seems ludicrous that we would delegate neighbourhood development to a university. Obviously UQAM is an anchor in the area, but there’s really no reason why they should be driving redevelopment. *Especially* since the UQ network is ultimately controlled by the province. It’s almost a guarantee that this will end very badly.
Kate
Maybe they’re finding something else for UQAM to do. The CAQ doesn’t care much about education, even in French. Property values, that’s more interesting for them.
dwgs
As an employee of a large local university I sure as s@*t wouldn’t trust a similar institution to take on a major property development.
Kate
McGill’s been doing property development around its campus for years, dwgs. It’s doing it now to the old Royal Vic.
dwgs
The New Vic project dates from 2015 and according to McGill’s timeline construction will be finished in 2028. I will eat my toque if it’s actually occupied before 2030 at the earliest.
Wilson Hall, at the corner of University and Milton, has been unoccupied and scheduled for either a massive overhaul or demolition for at least 15 years with absolutely no activity whatsoever.
I could go on…Kate
I didn’t realize Wilson Hall was empty. The nursing school used to have its offices there, which I know because I used to lay out and typeset a journal they produced. I used to meet with the editors there. The building was solid but dark and gloomy inside. I didn’t even know they had moved out.
bob
Joey – But think of the pork! The barrel is going to be huge!
David S
Wilson Hall also housed the school of Social work. It was still open 15 years ago (I was working there at that time). It closed down in 2017 for major renovations, but I had not realized that it was still closed. It is located in «Secteur de valeur patrimoniale exceptionnelle Campus McGill» so it will probably still take years before its done due to all sorts of restrictions.
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Kate
Quebec is putting a cap on the number of foreign students, with particular interest in strangling the commercial colleges that structure programs to allow newcomers to establish residency.
More on this later from La Presse, where it’s reported that CEGEPs and universities here are not happy, while the CAQ promises to further reduce the permitted numbers in years to come.
The Gazette also reports on university displeasure with the reductions.
Nicholas
It’s great that people come to Quebec to study, fall in love with us, and stay and help us grow (not just the economy, but culture, etc). These commercial colleges, where people sign up for a degree, rarely if ever go to class, use their study permit to work as much as possible, and then transition to PR, that’s not good. I hope trying to stamp down the latter won’t hurt the former, but I’m not optimistic.
Tim S.
I agree with Nicholas here and would add that with the crazy cuts being made down south, this is also a good time for us to recruit a lot of talent. I hope we don’t waste that opportunity with short-sighted cuts of our own.
Kate
But they wouldn’t speak French, Tim S.
Tim S.
I know, I know. But they might, I dunno, develop vaccines.
Joey
Unlike in 2016, when many Canadian universities responded to Trump’s Muslim ban by making all sorts of outlandish promises (we’ll accept anyone whose offer of admission to an Ivy is in jeopardy, etc.), there’s hardly a peep from our higher educations sector about recruiting top talent either in or ostensibly headed for the U.S. I assume this a function of (a) the housing crisis, (b) the general lack of ambition around making our economy stronger/more resilient/more research-based, and (c) the inflation-based general sense of hopelessness.
McGill, UofT, UBC, UofA, etc., could recruit entire departments and labs, if they had the funding and the physical capacity to do so – but we’ve turned our HiEd system into almost purely a consumer good – which is why the bulk of HiEd policymaking in the last 20 years has been around ‘affordability’ – and not ‘excellence’ or even ‘access’… Just a total own goal.
Kate
Joey, I could not agree more. We’ve come to rely on the U.S. for too much, and we can see that their science (including medicine) is going to go down the drain. But our universities have been turned into business schools and anything that doesn’t turn an immediate buck is scorned as a luxury.
bob
Putting a cap on international students has nothing more to do with the profitable scam schools than banning hijabs has to do with secularism. McGill especially is a problem for nationalists because it is at the same time so good and so English. To a fragile ego that is intolerable.
jeather 19:24 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
Freedom for professors to say the n word in class but no further?
Ian 10:10 on 2025-03-01 Permalink
Interesting that most of these complaints about course content are
coming via CIJA, … and Déry used to work for them. Even the FNEEQ (the
CEGEP union, one step below the CSN) has called that relationship out.
As the linked article says, “On indique également que le Centre
consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CIJA) – sur lequel
la ministre a siégé de 2016 à 2022 – avait tenté d’intervenir dans le
contenu du même cours.”
Here’s some more detailed explanation –
“An article in Le Devoir reveals that Quebec Minister of Higher
Education (ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur du Québec) Pascale
Déry, conducted an investigation into Montreal’s Dawson and Vanier
CEGEPs under the influence of pro-Israel groups, CIJA and CIJA (Centre
for Israel and Jewish Affairs). According to the article, the CIJA
website claims to have influenced Ms. Déry, with the help of CIJA, to
launch the investigation. The article in Le Devoir quotes the CIJA
website: “We are pleased with this decision and will continue to
engage directly with the Minister and the institutions throughout the
process,” CIJA also wrote on its Facebook page in an English-language
post.
The article in Le Devoir further states: “A member of the Sephardic
community, Minister Déry sat on the CIJA board of directors from
2016 to 2022”. On February 4, the Fédération nationale des
enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN) sent her a
letter in which it denounced the “political instrumentalization of the
administrative investigation process” that the minister is allegedly
using at Dawson and Vanier colleges, as well as the “appearance of a
conflict of interest” in which she places herself because of her past
involvement with CIJA.”
(my bold)
https://paju.org/paju-demands-the-resignation-of-quebec-minister-pascale-dery/