La Presse’s city reporter Émilie Côté talks to the people promoting the Black Rock park.
Updates from April, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Exo wants to diversify from running trains and get into real estate development.
Nicholas
Exo already has twice as many bus riders as it has train riders. And in some places transit agencies do pretty well with real estate, developing density near stations, which creates housing or commercial with an appetite for generating transit trips. Though after the REM, maybe a transit agency building real estate will go better than a real estate company building transit.
roberto
Why is it soo difficult to accept that public transit doesn’t have to be profitable? Don’t we have other branches of government better suited for real estate development?
Nicholas
It’s not that it has to make a profit; most systems outside of East Asia don’t. But if it doesn’t, government has to fill the gap, and our current governments, at all three levels, of widely varying political stripes, seem unwilling to do so, because voters are unwilling to make it a priority over other spending or taxes or higher fares.
dhomas
I’m of two minds on this. If done right, the proceeds from the real estate could go to better fund transit via additional frequency, more buses/trains, or even more infrastructure. But transit should remain the main focus. That is to say, building out transit where there is a need and where there is a sufficient population to use it already.
The flip side to this is if it becomes a real estate venture that happens to do transit, like Nicholas hinted at above. They could build out new stations to places with no density but where they have already bought land. It would likely lead to more sprawl and goes counter to what public transit should be, IMO.
Ian
This is precisely what the REM is attempting north of the 40.
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Kate
April isn’t even over yet and I’m suddenly finding links to summer activities. It’s almost as if the media were holding their breath till after the election. Free summer events, a new bungee jump in the Old Port, praise for a cute village a short distance from town. These have all popped up suddenly Tuesday.
Dancing in the morning is also a thing. By daylight!
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Kate
Pierre Ny St-Amand, who drove his bus into a Laval daycare in 2023, killing two kids and injuring others, has been found not criminally responsible by the judge, in response to the prosecution and defense both proposing this outcome.
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Kate
Been updating the list of MPs on the island of Montreal, which is all red Tuesday morning except for the Bloc’s hold on La Pointe‑de‑l’Île and Alexandre Boulerice keeping Rosemont–La‑Petite‑Patrie orange.
A few items from the Gazette’s slate of winners and losers: the Liberals took LaSalle‑Émard‑Verdun back after a surprise Bloc win in a byelection last September, also shutting out the NDP’s Craig Sauvé.
Carlos Leitão, who was MNA for a West Island provincial riding and Quebec’s finance minister with the Couillard government, has won a seat in Laval. He probably has ambitions for a ministerial position in Ottawa.
Marc Miller, immigration minister under Justin Trudeau but given no portfolio in Mark Carney’s short‑lived pre‑election cabinet, is back in Ville‑Marie‑Le Sud‑Ouest‑Île‑des‑Soeurs.
La Presse looked at some of the new faces in Montreal ridings.
Meezly
I was surprised the Green Party placed Jonathan Pedneault in the same riding as popular Liberal incumbent Rachel Bendayan, instead of a more strategic riding. Was it hubris? Bendayan won by a landslide (no surprise). The other major candidates had similar amount of votes, but Pedneault had the least votes. The Conservative candidate came in a distant second, and like his leader, he had the weakest qualifications (his major achievement was being a camp counsellor) compared to his competitors. Now Pedneault is resigning as co-leader.
Maybe it’s another sign the Green Party isn’t ready for prime time. But it also goes to show that most people won’t read up on their candidates and will just vote according to ideological beliefs.
Kate
I think of myself as moderately environmentally conscious but it would never cross my mind to vote Green. Maybe they’re not a single‑issue party but they feel that way to me.
I want the major parties to take the environment seriously: voting Green feels like doing things the wrong way around.
Ian
TBH I thought that too up until fiarly recently, but got curious after seeing on a vote compass that they are very close to the NDP but a bit more left. I read up on their policies and yes, they are environmentalists, but they also have a very well-developed social and fiscal policy. In most regards they are very similar to the NDP but without the weird urge to become centrist to somehow attract Liberal voters or bitter former party-apparat turds like Mulcair scuttling them in the polls.
That said, I did find it very weird to put Pedneault in a riding that was clearly in the bag for the Liberals. Not like it would have worked out better for him anywhere else in Montreal.
Tim S.
Like the NDP, the Greens usually win only when they run local candidates who have more personal appeal than the party brand. From what I know of Pedneault, he deserved a better shot, but to break through he has to commit to a riding for longer than 6 weeks. He made a good impression during the by-election in NDG in 2023, he might have had a better shot if he had committed to just working the neighbourhood for the past two years. It takes a huge amount of work and some luck to breakthrough as an underdog, but it’s not impossible.
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