A couple driving along Notre‑Dame East near the bridge was shocked when an SQ agent in a vehicle in front of them pointed his assault rifle at them in traffic.
Updates from February, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
If a new pandemic arises, we should be better prepared this time, with firms capable of providing masks and vaccines nearby. We won’t be able to rely on the United States for healthcare material.
MarcG
This is great, but masks and vaccines don’t do any good unless people use them. We need to be throwing big resources into public health education as well.
Those Medicom’s duckbill N95s are very comfortable.
Chris
>masks and vaccines don’t do any good unless people use them
And usage was quite high in the last pandemic.
maggie rose
I’ve been using Canada Strong N95 masks for a long time. Their breatheTeq ones are very comfy, and truly easier to breathe in than other similar ones. Also come in a nice lavender and a grey, both of which are a nice change from glaring white or black. S, M, L sizes. 10 bucks for Canada Post delivery seems worth it, fitting neatly in my mailbox. Often have sales. Extremely fast delivery too. Their charitable work also makes them very attractive. Their website is even fun to browse, very useful.
MarcG
- Only 81% of Canadians received any doses a Covid-19 vaccine as of June 2024
- There was never effective masking practiced in Montreal. I recall a brief period where there was a trend towards normalization in 2021 but it was killed with the push to accept infection in spring 2022.
- It’s well understood that trust in science has been eroded by disinformation over the past few years and we are in a worse position to respond effectively compared to 2020/21.
- We know that Covid and other viruses are airborne, and that surgical masks provide insufficient protection, yet we continue to promote them as effective PPE.
Chris
“only 81%”?! That’s “quite high” in my books. I struggle to think of other things with such a high level of agreement / conformance.
MarcG
- Indeed, it’s not easy to find something to compare a world-changing event like the pandemic to, so you need to consider the context. Over 3.3 million people had been killed by the virus when the vaccine was made available to us. There were so many dead in NYC that they had refrigerated trailers converted into makeshift morgues and they dug mass graves on Hart Island. Someone offers you a free vaccine that’s proven to reduce your risk of harm and you say no thanks? I’d say “only 81%”.
- On the same Health Canada page I linked above you can see that ~3.9% of Canadians are Covid-vaccinated according to recommendations.
- 95.3% of Canadians wear seatbelts.
- In order to establish herd immunity to measles we need 95% vaccine coverage.
Kevin
MarcG
I could be wrong, but I think the current Covid vaccine recommendations only apply to a small segment of the population (mostly 65 and over, plus some vulnerable populations) and a couple of provinces aren’t reporting date (Quebec, Alberta). By putting in an end date of June 30, and a recommendation that some people get a dose every six months, people won’t be covered by the fall campaign that provinces seem to think is sufficient.MarcG
I guess it depends whose recommendations they’re referring to. In the spring of 2024, the feds recommended the XBB.1.5 vaccine for everybody, whereas Quebec and Ontario’s spring campaigns only mentioned specific groups. So it could be that the very low number is because of that discrepancy, in which case it’s not particularly useful for the purpose of discussing people’s willingness to follow public health advice.
MarcG
Looking at the other stat for “people who have received an XBB.1.5 vaccine”, Ontario recommended this for everyone in the fall of 2023 and only 14.9% got it. Maybe not as dismal as 3.9% but still pretty crap.
Tim S.
“There was never effective masking practiced in Montreal.”
I was here. I don’t think that’s true. I would agree that the quality of masks left something to be desired, but during the height of the pandemic I very rarely saw anyone without one.
Joey
@Tim S. agreed – didn’t Mayor Plante even announce a mask mandate before the province did? Like summer 2020? My hazy memory of the first phase of COVID (i.e., the pre-vaccine period) was that there was tremendous solidarity and an overwhelming willingness on the part of the population to make big sacrifices to stay alive – checking online, I see that Legault’s approval rating was above 60% until fall 2021, and only really dropped starting in summer 2022. By and large, Quebecers were on board.
Generally speaking, my memory is that we were all terrified of getting sick and making others ill. Until a vaccine came around, we were willing to deal with closed schools, queuing to get into stores, masking, etc. Wasn’t Xmas 2020 the one where we were told not to gather? The curfew that followed was perhaps the beginning of the end of that solidarity phase, but I think deep down we were much more willing to accept whatever measures were necessary until the vaccines arrived. Interesting to ponder the fact that the vaccine skepticism/ignorance and misinformation era really only got going once the danger had broadly passed (even if ‘acute’ COVID danger has remained for lots of folks). A lotta tough talk now that we’re basically out of the foxhole.
MarcG
This Léger survey published June 29, 2020 shows 55% of Quebecers wearing masks at the grocery store, 53% at the pharmacy, and 18% on public transit (with slightly higher numbers for urban areas). This was after 2 months of soft encouragement by government officials. In July they started making them mandatory.
I don’t mean to shit on people, my point was simply that we never internalized masking as a society. We used the same old paternal carrot (get “back to normal” sooner) and stick (arrest/ticket) approach, with a small dash of “save grandma/do the right thing”. We didn’t develop a true understanding of what it means for a virus to be airborne and how masks work to block them. So we got a bunch of people wearing surgical masks under their noses and chins and a group of idiots hijacking the conversation and making it about “freedom”. If a new Covid variant or other virus showed up tomorrow and started wrecking us, I’m not sure having a stockpile of masks is going to do us much good without a serious educational campaign behind it. We’ll probably have to resort to lockdowns and mandates again which would be tragically stupid.
CE
From the beginning of the pandemic to whenever the mask mandate started, we were getting so many mixed messages around masks that nobody really knew what to do. One day we would be told they don’t do much, the next that they’re effective. Do homemade masks work? Who knows! Surgical masks? Yes, no, yes, no. We were also told not to use PPE because there was a shortage in hospitals. It was a confusing time. After the mask mandate came into effect, almost everyone was wearing them indoors; it would be very rare to be in a grocery store, office, pharmacy, etc and not see people wearing masks. Even my boss at the time who was a conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxer still made us wear masks at all times while inside the building (and even safety glasses for about a week when we were being told we could get Covid in our eyes). Quebec kept the mandate much longer than almost all other jurisdictions and Quebecers overwhelmingly wore masks when they were required to do so and mostly stoped when they were no longer required.
I suspect we won’t get the same buy-in when the next pandemic rolls around and expecting people to wear them without requiring them is a waste of time because it’s obviously not happening.
Kate
Unless the next pandemic is more horrible and lurid. I recall Bill Binns saying something like “people would be complying if Covid meant you were shitting yourself and passing out in public” and I suspect he was right about that.
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Kate
Some snow gets piled up, and some gets flushed down a snow chute, eventually – after some sanitizing – into the river.
Nicholas 17:43 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
You only point a gun at a person when you are willing, under certain circumstances, willing to shoot them. Even for transporting a mafia boss, a cellphone video is not in and of itself a threat, though it could (even if unlikely) indicate one is coming. Seems like a massive overreaction.
Also just wanted to note that they drove into downtown Montrea from Lanaudière to see an orthodontist. Sure there are specialists, but this kind of thing creates a lot of traffic, and makes it harder for those living in the city to access medical care.
Blork 18:21 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
Uh… that’s insane. And BTW, if you watch the video you see that TWO of the officers leaned out their windows with their rifles; only one is seen to point it, but still.
WTactualF is that about? Not only is it a danger to the people in the car shooting the video, it’s a danger to everyone on that road and in the area. In TV shows we often see shootout scenes from moving vehicles and nobody ever wonders “where do those bullets go? In particular, the ones that miss the target?” I’ll tell you where they go: into the sides of other cars, into houses, through baby prams, into bystanders, etc. etc etc. Dumb-ass “thriller” shows and movies never worry about that, but in real life cops are trained to worry about it, which is why they will only return fire in the most dire of situations.
This was not a dire situation. Of course they didn’t actually shoot, but simply leaning out of a moving vehicle with your rifle in hand is risky. No doubt the “safety” was on, but can we be sure? Shit happens. Accidental discharges happen.
FFS, they better have a good explanation for this. (I’m betting not.)
walkerp 18:36 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
WTactualF indeed. And why are they dressed in military fatigues. Civil rights aside, just the utter lack of professionalism and gun handling skills is shameful. These guys need to be fired. An embarrassment.
Joey 22:24 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
Has anyone ever heard an anecdote about the SQ that painted them in a good light?
Ian 22:50 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
People don’t jsut say ACAB becasue it makes cool knuckle tattoos.
Tim S. 22:58 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
Just to think through the other side, I’m sure that anyone transporting prisoners in Quebec probably remembers that Mom Boucher ordered hits on prison guards, two of whom were transporting prisoners (https://www.montrealgazette.com/news/article219874.html). Just because phones on cameras have become normalized doesn’t mean it’s OK to film whatever the hell you want.
Ian 23:04 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
Ther’s no law against filming cops, though.
Tim S. 23:06 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
And they weren’t arrested.
Ian 23:19 on 2025-02-25 Permalink
Oh well I guess it’s all ok then, who knows what people are making such a fuss about.
roberto 09:23 on 2025-02-26 Permalink
What happened before they started recording? Is spontanious recording normalized now?
I do hope they throw the book at these SQ goons. ACAB.