Patrick Lagacé and Toula Drimonis both weigh in on the solidarity shown among Montrealers enduring an historic snowstorm.
A Globe and Mail journalist writes with awe about the efficiency of Montreal’s snow removal crew, but someone ought to tell him that citing Josh Freed multiple times won’t recommend his piece to Montreal’s anglos.
Philippe Sabourin explains how the city works out street priorities for snow removal, and why some boroughs are quicker to clear than others.
It’s said that few people watched the debate among the Projet Montréal leadership candidates because it was held on Thursday at the same time as the Four Nations hockey final. Le Devoir sums it up, but given that this is Projet and everyone has similar positions on housing, homelessness, transit and so on, it seems likely that party members will be choosing a leader based on charisma and vibe and not on policy, because there will be only the most subtle differences in their priorities.
Le Devoir also calls Montreal ungovernable and the mayoralty a thankless task. Marco Fortier also tells us that Soraya Martinez Ferrada is on her way to coronation as new chief of Ensemble, no other plausible candidate having raised a hand, while reminding us that there’s still time for some new party to emerge to challenge Projet in November.
Ungovernable is pretty rich given Montreal’s democratic tradition is well-respected and recognized internationally, not to mention for having considerable citizen engagement at the municipal level, including a sophisticated multi-party municipal legislative arm with parties distinct from larger political machines.
Moreover, and quite unlike other major Nation American cities, Montreal has found a ‘sweet spot’ between urban and subsurban dominance, with a powerful executive and central government balanced with a fair degree of autonomy for suburban boroughs.
And all of this is occurring within a framework of regional government where the mayor works together with agglomeration partners, coorinating broad land-use strategies, arguably North America’s best public transit system, metropolitan police and fire services, as well as water treatment.
And topping it all off, it’s a city of 1.8 million people – massive for a single city govt in North American terms – and the province hates us for who we are, so we basically get the shaft from one upper level of govt.
Ungovernable? C’mon.
The author makes some good points assessing the current political and economic context, as well as a major structural issue – namely, that the province treats it like dirt, and it lacks the resources to allow its mayors to deliver on the desires of the population. For all the reasons you mentioned, Montreal is well structured – but the antagonism from Quebec City makes it impossible for its mayors to govern the way it’s citizens would like. And, more to the point, the article isn’t about structures or governance or democratic engagement, it’s about inadequate resources.
You’re right on this, Joey.
I don’t know enough about the legal relationship of other cities to their state or province or other administrative subdivision to know whether Montreal is stuck with a particularly unfavourable deal. And do cities which exist under only one level of national government have it easier or harder than those, like ours, which exist under a subdivisional government?
Is Montreal’s situation different under Quebec’s civil code than cities are in other provinces? I have my doubts here, because city mergers were forced on Ontario towns in much the same way they were on Quebec towns, around the same time, but the details may differ.
My impression is that Quebec put Montreal under a kind of tutelage in response to the fiasco of funding the Olympics, and has never let go. But I don’t know how true that is – whether the legal framework changed, or just the attitude.
And of course the phenomenon of hinterlands fearing and distrusting the big city isn’t unique to us, so that’s another thing.
All Canadian cities share the same fundamental problem as Montreal, because municipalities are creatures of the provinces. I’d argue that Toronto has it much worse than Montreal, because its relationship with the Ford government is antagonistic to the point that Ford has actively meddled in municipal politics in a way few Quebec governments have: unilaterally reducing the size of city council, arbitrarily removing very popular bike paths, etc.
Another example: now that Calgary consistently elects left-wing mayors, the conservative provincial government can’t help but use their powers to meddle in public transit and other areas.
Relative to Montreal’s chronic conflicts with a hostile provincial government, I wonder if the same dynamic exists in, say, Manitoba? Winnipeg dominates that province to a greater extent than any other Canadian city dominates its jurisdiction. No other city in the country contains more than half of its province’s population within its municipal boundary (excluding it’s suburbs) while also being the seat of its provincial government and biggest university. In Manitoba, it has no rival. Even Toronto has to coexist with Ottawa.
CBC has a nice piece on Leonora King, who died at the end of 2024, for whom there’s to be a memorial on Saturday.
I never knew Leonora well, but even in the small amount of interaction we had, her energy and her compassion were apparent. She was a dynamo of community activism, and her death is a loss to Park Ex. She was only 42.
I did a double take when I saw her name, as the famed Canadian missionary and physician of the same name died a century ago: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/leonora-howard-king
I wonder if it’s just coincidence or if the latter Leonora King was named in tribute to the former.
Pierre Ny St-Amand, who drove his Laval city bus into a daycare two years ago, killing two children and injuring others, will not have a jury trial. The Crown and the defence are both agreed that he was probably not criminally responsible, so there will be a trial before a judge, laying out the facts and hearing from psychiatrists and victims’ families.
More news video from Radio-Canada: the police college in Nicolet has a mockup metro train and station where potential metro security agents are trained. Mentioned in passing is that they hire actors to perform as troubled or troublesome people, but they don’t tell us where those folks get their training.
I’d been wondering about the state of the city’s snow dumps right now. CBC’s got a brief video about the mass quantity of snow and how long it will take to melt.
24Hres talks about the volume of snow the city’s dealing with.
Reply