Unionized workers riled up about Bill 89, meant to limit strikes and lockouts, showed up at an event where labour minister Jean Boulet was to speak, so that his speech was cancelled and he fled.
Updates from March, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Local notes on the new federal cabinet: Mélanie Joly (Ahuntsic‑Cartierville) who was at Foreign Affairs is now Foreign Affairs and International Development; Steven Guilbeault (Laurier–Sainte‑Marie), who hung around for ages waiting for the environment portfolio, which he finally landed in 2021, has been moved to Canadian Culture and Identity, Parks Canada Minister and Quebec Lieutenant; Rachel Bendayan (Outremont) is now Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister.
Marc Miller (Ville-Marie–Le Sud-Ouest–Île-des-Sœurs) has no portfolio in the new cabinet.
walkerp
Was Bendayan in the cabinet before?
Chris
Yes, but only since the December 20 shuffle.
walkerp
ah, thanks. Interesting, I wonder if she is actually getting clout or if they are only temporarily elevating her for the election because her riding is secure?
Kate
Bendayan was made minister of Official Languages in December. Interestingly, there’s no minister of Official Languages in Carney’s cabinet, which is making some people unhappy.
walkerp
Lots of red flags with Carney already, but I think we have to take a breath before the freaking out about this cabinet. It’s an election cabinet and if the Liberals manage to retain power, everyone is saying the cabinet will be remade again. It makes sense, because the don’t know what kind of mandate they have.
Tim S.
Agreed walkerp. It’ll be interesting to see if opinion on Carney shifts in the next few weeks. I suspect there’s going to be a “spin the wheel” effect as everyone changes their mind multiple times about which candidate they dislike the least and who knows where we end up on election day. There’s still hope for Elizabeth May! In the meantime there’s not much to say about the cabinet except no change in the important posts.
Kate
There’s still hope for Elizabeth May
Yes, she could split the vote so that the Tories win.
Carney is not perfect. Does that mean we need to vote for the Greens or the NDP so that we get 4 years of Pierre Poilievre?
Chris
May seems to me a quite decent MP personally, I’d probably vote for her if I was in her riding. But her party is useless, alas.
>…which is making some people unhappy.
The craziest complaints I’ve been seeing are headlines like “Carney gives up on gender parity”. The cabinet is 46% women! wtaf! This mindset of thinking it needs be exactly 50% is infuriating, and the backlash against it has been plain to see and growing for years now, and will probably deliver us PP as PM.
Tim S.
Kate, I point you to the US, where, if you don’t like Trump, the alternative is…Chuck Schumer. The great thing about a multiparty democracy is that when a party inevitably runs out of new ideas – and this happens, it’s just a natural cycle of how humans are – there’s someone else to pick up the slack. It’s precisely because I don’t like Poilievre that I’m glad our only alternative is NOT a banker with zero political experience. It’s possible that Carney will turn out to be a great choice: it’s equally possibly he’ll turn out to be completely unsuitable. In that case, we have options. How is this a bad thing?
MarcG
Regarding vote-splitting/strategic voting, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it, maybe someone here can help me understand. If the idea is to elect non-Cons, and the Cons have zero chance of winning in my riding, is my NDP vote really splitting anything? Do the Cons even have a chance in hell in any Montreal riding?
Kate
The Conservatives came second in some west end ridings last time. Not close, but second –Mount Royal, Pierrefonds‑Dollard and Lac Saint‑Louis for example.
And don’t forget, the Bloc was a spinoff from the Tories, so their politics are not to the left either.
nau
@MarcG Vote splitting is a riding-level issue. In our riding, the Cons will place a distant 4th at best. There is zero chance that voting NDP in our riding could somehow result in a Con being elected here. If you are also concerned to keep the BQ candidate from winning, then you have to decide during the election campaign who seems best placed to defeat them. Given the tight 3-way BQ/Lib/NDP race here last time, that may be difficult to determine as good riding-level polling is non-existent.
MarcG
Thanks for confirming. I guess my confusion comes from the sentiments we often hear as in Kate’s comment above “Carney is not perfect. Does that mean we need to vote for the Greens or the NDP so that we get 4 years of Pierre Poilievre?” which seem to imply that the only anti-Conservative vote is Liberal, or that we vote for the Prime Minister.
MarcG
Looks like the Bloc guy who won Verdun in the by-election last fall is a real turd (the ourcommons.ca site is actually pretty amazing, you can watch every comment your MP makes in Parliament and review their voting record). I guess the reason he won was because Trudeau Bad. If the Libs float a candidate with a spine I might vote for them for the first time in my life.
nau
The Bloq guy also won in a byelection, which tend to give non-standard results. Previously, the Bloq only won in this area (the riding boundaries were different then) when the sponsorship scandal made Liberal corruption too obvious. They then lost to the Jack Layton effect, whose passing reverted it back to the Liberals. Unless Carney campaigns so poorly that he pulls the Libs back down to recent Trudeau levels of support, I would expect the Libs will come out on top here. The wildcard this election may be the question of what resurgent Canadian nationalism does to the Bloq vote. Does it drive it up or down, and if down, where does it go?
Kate
MarcG, I’m not thinking so much of riding-level votes, as the attitudes everyone espouses or counters on social media.
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Kate
There’s a smog warning Friday morning. Try not to breathe too deeply.
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Kate
Villa Maria school – the only high school with a metro station named for it – may be evicted from its longtime premises (1854!) with nowhere to go after 2030, as the Congrégation de Notre‑Dame wants to sell the school’s extensive grounds for big money.
Nicholas
Replacing a single-sex, religious tax-exempt school with huge direct subsidies and next to a metro with lots of apartments seems like a win. Just tell Legault it’s Muslim.
jeather
I have no opinion about the school’s continued existence, but it’s co-ed. I am not particularly fond of a religious organization which has had years of property tax exemptions getting to sell free and clear, though.
Kate
Villa Maria only started gradually introducing boys in 2016. It was girls only for almost all its history.
I wonder what the CND wants all that money for. The average age of their members is something like 90.
SMD
According to the article, part of the congregation’s decision to sell is because they no longer want to subsidize a private school. The spokesperson says they would use part of the proceeds to give educational grants:
« Après la vente du domaine, les sœurs ont l’intention de conserver une partie de l’argent pour assurer leur subsistance et de verser les profits de la transaction dans un fonds pour aider des élèves québécois moins nantis à payer leurs études. « Nous avons eu une évolution dans notre conscience sociale et nous voulons être partenaires de ceux qui n’ont pas été favorisés par la vie », dit sœur Francine. »
Kate
I wonder. Quo bono?
Tim S.
As jeather said, I don’t think the CND gets to decide this alone. They have a pretty prime piece of real estate for many years on the understanding that they provide a public good (based on the people I know who’ve attended, it seems to have been reasonably accessible to the “moins nantis” already), and there’s a public interest in ensuring that this continues in some form or other. We can’t let this become another Marianopolis.
Kate
How do you mean, another Marianopolis? If you look at the site in Google maps as terrain, the grounds are contiguous.
Tim S.
The old Marianopolis site on Cote des Neiges, which used to be informally open and was a useful shortcut down the mountain, is now a gated condo complex. Similarly the Villa grounds are informally open – we spent a lot of time there early in the pandemic, though we did encounter one grumpy nun – and it would be really awful it if got fully privatized and turned into yet another high-end gated development.
Kate
Enclosure! Thank you, Tim S.
We should chip in for lawyers to defend right of way.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CultMTL, CityCrunch and La Presse.
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Kate
A man was stabbed during a fight in Hochelaga late Thursday and died later in hospital. It’s the city’s fifth homicide this year.
SMD 23:14 on 2025-03-14 Permalink
Good.