French media platform Konbini has produced a map of Montreal spots à visiter that may result in a few confused tourists this summer.
Updates from May, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The downtown commercial association, Montréal centre-ville, was planning to pay $50,000 for street cleanup services, but the budget has been topped up by an extra $150,000 by Ville‑Marie borough, keen on keeping the area looking nice.
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Kate
CTV has a profile of Ljubica Milicevic, the woman killed on the weekend by a falling branch.
Derek
But I suppose enquiring minds would like to know how the tree’s doing?
Kate
Derek, having a branch drop off a tree is not like having a vehicle plow directly into it.
Ian
As Mel Brooks pointed out, comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die, tragedy is when I cut my little finger.
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Kate
Tuberculosis and syphilis are on the rise in Montreal, half the TB cases found in people not covered by the RAMQ.
I would hope that when contagious diseases like TB are detected, we don’t care about coverage and make sure those people are treated, but the articles don’t say.
jeather
Treatment for regular TB is quite inexpensive (mean 804/patient for patients in ON/BC/QC), for various forms of drug resistance it goes to 20k and for multi drug resistant, 120k. The problem is that treatment of the first kind requires months of minimum weekly appointments, and failure to follow up leads to drug resistance. But it’s quite treatable if you can manage the follow through — the problem is how hard that is for many people (for good reasons).
(A book about TB just came out and the author’s been interviewed on many of my podcasts; numbers are from this study.)
Kate
Thank you, jeather.
Nicholas
To become a permanent resident you have to have a medical, which includes a chest x-ray for TB. Temporary residents don’t get this. So making it harder for people to get PR, as we love doing here, means fewer people coming from places where TB is endemic are getting tested, and so bigger chances for sickness and spread.
Joey
All Quebeckers are required by law to have comprehensive prescription drug coverage. If you can’t get it from your or your spouse’s/parents’ employer (or some other organization, like a student union or a professional organization), you are automatically enrolled in the RAMQ drug coverage plan, with your premium collected via your income tax submission. So, in theory, all Quebeckers should have drug coverage for TB, though the out-of-pocket expenses, i.e., the co-pay, won’t be zero (though any costs in excess of about $100 a month are covered entirely by the province). And, as always, drugs prescribed and administered by hospitals are free of charge.
Interestingly, the obligation to have drug coverage – and the eligibility for the provincial drug plan – applies to all individuals residing in Quebec on a permanent basis. My understanding is that TB circulates more often abroad and in Northern Canada. It looks like refugees are indeed eligible for RAMQ drug coverage, as would those living in Northern Quebec, so I’m not sure why the proportion of patients without coverage has jumped from 9% to 48% – I would suspect that these are individuals who are eligible (even required) to participate in the drug plan but, for whatever reason, don’t. That would make it a problem of public drug plan policy *administration*, not of the policy itself, right? Dr. Drouin suggests the problem may be inadequate private insurance for international students, which sounds plausible and is a ‘problem’ the CAQ is hellbent on solving by reducing international post-secondary enrolment in Quebec.
Kevin
I don’t know who counts it, if any, but I know several doctors who have patients who repeatedly need to reapply for RAMQ coverage because they are out of the country for too long and their coverage expires.
CE
I left the country for four years and didn’t have RAMQ coverage for six months because they make you wait for some reason before you can reapply. I was supposed to get private insurance but took the chance so was completely and entirely uninsured for those 6 months.
Ephraim
@Nicholas – Yes and they don’t generally know the difference between TB and TB vaccinations. If you have been vaxed for TB, you show up as TB positive, so you need to get a chest X-Ray to prove that you don’t have TB. We know someone who had trouble with that… and their Doctor fielded the question from the government… repeatedly!
SMD
The regional public health director is calling for TB care to be covered for all: « La Dre Drouin croit que le Québec devrait mettre en place un programme universel de traitement et de suivi de la tuberculose. Elle fait valoir que l’Ontario, la Colombie-Britannique, l’Alberta et le Manitoba assurent une « couverture complète » aux personnes sans assurance médicale. » https://lp.ca/jsX677
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Kate
The remuneration of Marie-Claude Léonard, top boss of the STM, rose by 6.5% from 2023 to 2024. Its unions are not happy.
jeather
Executives should have total compensation increases limited to the union salary increase where that exists.
Kate
They may be getting around that idea with “bonuses”.
jeather
That’s why I said total compensation. (This does allow stock option games, of course.)
max
Wild numbers. It’s not just the rise. But the overall amount. One thing that’s never discussed in these articles is the market distorting impact on these kinds of salaries. People with these salaries are buying up all the assets, and making the market contort around them with the centripetal force of their purchasing power.
I read a research paper at Institute for New Economic Thinking about how the central banks raise of interest rates failed to curtail spending because it was driven mostly by such a small group of super high income individuals that the interest rates didnt impact them. And if it were increase enough to reach them, it would tank the rest of the economy.
These dynamics are going to generate some crazy politics…
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Kate
A storefront on Nuns’ Island was set on fire early Monday. Notice how both TVA and CTV refrain from naming it, but show it in photos.
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Kate
It’s mind-boggling to read the reasons why it can cost a million dollars to replace a traffic light at an intersection. Even the study done before anything is changed “keeps three or four employees busy for two to three months.”
Nicholas
I’ve seen huge maintenance costs for traffic lights too, and not just in Quebec. One of the advantages of roundabouts: other than occasional landscaping, if you choose to landscape it, there’s no ongoing costs, no power outages.
DeWolf
There are also a lot of small streets around Montreal that have unnecessary traffic lights. I’m thinking of de Gaspé in Little Italy, for instance, or Henri-Julien on the lower Plateau. I assume these date from the days when traffic engineers identified side streets as traffic corridors that could provide relief to major arteries like St-Denis, but now that we’re in the era of traffic calming, it really doesn’t make sense to have these lights.
There’s precedent for getting rid of them: there used to be a traffic light at Esplanade and Bernard (because Esplanade was designated as a traffic funnel at some point in the past) which was replaced by a four-way stop about 20 years ago.
DeWolf
(Actually, looking at Google Street View I can see that the Bernard/Esplanade lights were still there in 2009, but by 2011 they were deactivated and replaced by a four-way stop, and by 2014 they had been removed. I guess these things take a long time.)
Kate
When I first lived in Villeray, 2005, there were no traffic lights on Jarry between St‑Laurent and St‑Denis. Some drivers picked up speed getting from one to the other. There’s a grade school just off Jarry on the block between de Gaspé and Casgrain, and I think that’s where the first lights went up, and it seemed like good sense. There’s also a crossing guard three times a day during the school year.
Then they added another set of lights a block east, at Henri‑Julien, and another set another block east, at Drolet. These blocks are short! I think most people around here would agree that we don’t need one or both of those sets, but there they are, and with little kids going to that school – and high school kids walking to and from the metro – it would be hard to gather arguments against them.
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Kate
TVA’s Enquête group discovered that Soraya Martinez Ferrada, head of Ensemble and aspiring mayor, has been charging tenants illegal deposits as a landlord.
The idea that this was a requirement that used to be usual and had innocently been imposed is so bogus. Rental deposits didn’t become illegal last year. They’ve been illegal for decades in Quebec.
Later, Martinez Ferrada continued to maintain that she’s the mairesse du logement – whatever that means.
Ian
Well I guess it’s hardly more cynical than the CAQ with France-Élaine Duranceau but who needs it.
I once again say that anyone running for election in the municipal government shoudl have to disclose if they are landlords. It indicates a basic conflict of interest.
Joey
She claims that it she simply made a mistake “in good faith”; La Presse tacitly approves of her rebuttal (https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2025-05-12/depot-illegal-aux-locataires/soraya-martinez-ferrada-plaide-une-erreur-de-bonne-foi.php). How exactly is illegally collecting thousands of dollars from your tenant a “good faith” error – it’s not like this was done in service of some noble project, it was *literally* a cash grab.
Tim S.
I assume that the real estate agent whom she blames for the error has lost their license for such a blatant violation of the law, yes?
Ian 08:11 on 2025-05-13 Permalink
My guess is that AI was probably used instead of research.
MarcG 08:18 on 2025-05-13 Permalink
It looks like they were shamed into removing the map image from IG. I gave a quick scan of the other slides and they seemed like decent recommendations.