Maclean’s on a photographer looking at Little Burgundy as it is now. Nice portraits, but the headline writer goes a step too far. The article is a portrait of part of Black Montreal, which is fine, but not complete. The subhead does say “Black anglophone community”.
The exhibit’s on at the McCord all summer.
Ali Ngarukiye has been sentenced to 19 years for the attempted murder of policeman Sanjay Vig in 2021, a case that became notorious when another man was arrested by mistake and held for a week before being completely exonerated.
Ngarukiye has already been behind bars for four years. He is also serving time for murdering his cellmate André Lapierre during that period.
The REM is down again between Central Station and Panama. TVA asks whether the REM is fit to face winter.
So far that seems to be a question that answers itself.
Betteridge’s law of headlines
Flying under the radar of the tariff crisis is the announcement that Quebec is starting the creation of an east‑end tram running from the green line and the (extension of) the blue line out past Repentigny.
meh
Why meh? Your understanding of public transit is very in depth, so I would love to hear why you are unimpressed and what you would have liked to have seen instead.
Ian, I’ll refer you to my comment below: “a suburban tramway, mostly not grade-separated, that will cost more per kilometre than most rich countries pay for urban metros. Imagine what we could build if we could get metros for the cost of Spain, Italy, France, Scandinavia, Japan, etc.” Also the last projections I saw for the tramway were trip times no faster or slower than the buses we have today. Sure, trams can be nicer, but $19 billion (with a B) to go slower through the oil refineries than we do today?
Cost is a huge concern, especially given it’s only a suburban tram. The second is the whole network setup – it’s basically two lines, joined together at the end of the green line. I doubt there will be many people who will be able to make a trip on just this line – most people will have to transfer at least once (to the green line), or twice. I think most of the trips that would use this line will be very long, and will involve one or two transfers.
I am not sure this is the most effective way to spend the next 19 billion in public transit money. The REM “only” cost 8 Billion, and is arguably much more useful (fairly fast, connecting through downtown, multiple branches etc.). I wasn’t too happy about REM 2.0 because it was only going to downtown barely, and had a very strong suburban focus, with much less regional network building. This tram cuts any downtown connection, and is mostly suburban.
I think it would be easy to figure out more useful projects to spend 18 Billion on (examples: pink line, a more urban tram network, high frequency electric regional rail).
That said, it’s difficult to say what a better project could be out East. The desire to build out there is political, not primarily a transportation necessity. But if one wants to accept the “need” to build a some “structuring” network out there, what would it be?
I guess that’s the question. The REM is meant to drive development but the purpose of this tram seems less obvious, besides the political aspect of serving the “French” east end of the island.
The coming of the U.S. tariffs is Tuesday’s only story. La Presse has a dossier plus a piece on immediate impacts to our daily lives. Le Devoir also looks at how things will change. 24Hres asked and answered the simple question what tariffs are.
The Gazette’s Andy Riga considers how the U.S. president’s volatility is provoking instability in Quebec, and news of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs is also coming.
I’ve seen a report that U.S. products are being removed from SAQ shelves.
Looks like we are now forced toward
the opportunities of a localized no growth, sustainable economy.
I suppose if you’re looking for a silver lining, this global trade war will probably lead to a slowing of the growth in carbon emissions.
There are basically zero waits for commercial vehicles in both directions at all major US and Canadian border crossings. I don’t know if this is normal, I usually only look at the passenger column, but still.
The Atlanta Fed has a prediction algorithm for the current quarter GDP growth in the US, called GDPNow. A month ago, it was over 2%. Now it’s at -2.8%.
And there is some non-US local news in La Presse: Quebec is giving the go-ahead for the East End transit project: a suburban tramway, mostly not grade-separated, that will cost more per kilometre than most rich countries pay for urban metros. Imagine what we could build if we could get metros for the cost of Spain, Italy, France, Scandinavia, Japan, etc.
Thanks for the good news about GDP growth Nicholas ! Let’s hope this is the end of free trade and all it’s malign societal effects.
Good news for solarpunk I guess. I hope Lufa starts growing more tomatoes 😀
>this global trade war will probably lead to a slowing of the growth in carbon emissions
That is *far* from certain.
I’m no free market fundamentalist, but markets are often efficient. If now we decouple our economy from the proximate USA, we’ll end up transporting our imports/exports from farther distances, we’ll end up making goods here that could have been made more efficiently there (and vice versa), etc. It could all add up to more energy consumed than before.
Funny how no one seems to remember that tariffs were exactly how the US started the great depression.
Can we just accept and start working within the idea that “Trump is intentionally crashing the economy”. It’s very intentional. This isn’t 5D chess he’s playing.
You mean economic warfare? Scary considering the likes of Oleg Deripaska having made inroads into PPP contracts in Canada ( ie transport in Ontario, and mining in northern Quebec) in recent times.
@chris yes, but you can’t turn the economy on a dime – in the interim phase, economic contraction should, theoretically I guess, lead to lower emissions. If Trump is hellbent on destroying the world (if he isn’t, he should consider it, he’s a natural) then those reductions could be much longer lasting
@Ephraim everybody except Trump and his acolytes remembers
Honestly, he may be setting us up for a better future in the long term, if we don’t rely on the US and we start to charge more for our raw materials. Diversifying our economy can’t really be a bad thing. And opening up ourselves to other trading partners isn’t necessarily bad. And since spending money on the border obviously had no value to the equation, maybe we shouldn’t bother spending that money.
Also, I question if we should put in place a replacement for the GST that is only on services (Value Added Service Tax… VAST), so that we can tax services that are imported. I mean, why shouldn’t services that are imported be taxed? A tariff on services.In fact, we could have a lower rate for services provided in Canada and a higher rate for imported services. So 5% on domestic services that are wholly within Canada and 10% on services that are not 100% Canadian. And require that all data be securely stored in Canada under Canadian privacy laws to have the lower rate.
This absolutely could be a good thing (though with a lot of pain along the way for sure) as structurally diversifying our economy and investing internally could result in a strong country. Unfortunately, the Liberals are so lacking in imagination and beholden to corporate interests that I would not bet on them once again totally fumbling the ball. I predict a bunch of reactive, short-term moves that do nothing to fundamentally rebolster the middle class plus a ton of bail out money that will create other problems down the road. I really hope I am wrong. They had a mandate for real change already and did almost nothing except when the NDP forced them to.
Reply