Updates from May, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 17:06 on 2025-05-28 Permalink | Reply  

    As we recall, Donald Trump insisted that Canada spend a lot of money on stopping drugs at the border. So Canada now has a Fentanyl czar (the phrase is used in this story) and did a massive swoop at some undefined recent moment.

    “There were 2,600 seizures. Of those, 67.5 per cent were illegal narcotics coming to Canada from the U.S., while 17.5 per cent were going to the U.S. […] A total of 116 fentanyl shipments were seized, including 1.73 kilograms intercepted in British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta. Of these seizures, 1.44 kilograms were destined for the United States.”

    They also seized 0.19 kilograms of heroin.

    Here’s the White House page on drugs coming over the Canadian border: “There is also a growing presence of Mexican cartels operating fentanyl and nitazene synthesis labs in Canada…”

     

    • Ian 00:39 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

      There’s no pleasing some people. That said, Wall Street has already figured out the TACO strategy. Trump is losing credibility all over.

    • roberto 10:06 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

      Trump has claimed that since drug seizures increased under Biden, this indicates a larger amount of drugs entered the United States. He argued that if more drugs are being intercepted, it must mean even more are getting through. (And when Trumps administration seizes drugs, a different logic applies.)

      You just can’t win with the orange clown.

    • Blork 11:53 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

      The NYT had an article yesterday about a strong MAGA town in Missouri where the residents are shocked that a beloved member of their community — a woman from Hong Kong who has been waitressing in the town’s diner for 20 years — has been detained and will likely be deported despite her having a family and children born in the US. Apparently the sentiment is shifting, with many townsfolk saying things like “we wanted them to deport gang members and drug dealers, not moms in our community.” Welcome to the tsunami of bullshit that you voted for.

      I feel like this sort of thing is happening all over. Even Elon Musk has defected, but that’s a different story.

      Is MAGA crumbling? Maybe. I hope so.

    • Ian 17:41 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

      I was hoping Musk would get a Night of Long Knives treatment but this works, too.

  • Kate 17:01 on 2025-05-28 Permalink | Reply  

    Friday night is the Tour la Nuit and Sunday is the Tour de l’Île. CTV’s headline “Montrealers asked to clear streets for major cycling event” is a tad bizarre. Nobody west of Pie‑IX will even know they’re happening.

    Also the coda “Millions are expected to participate in the two events” is odd. Thousands do.

    Thursday, Radio-Canada estimates 40,000 cyclists for the main Tour. And the CTV article I linked Wednesday has amended “millions” to “thousands”…

     

    • Kate 13:44 on 2025-05-28 Permalink | Reply  

      The REM will close for six weeks this summer, starting July 5, and will be running on reduced hours till then, including no weekend service. There will be buses instead.

       

      • Ian 00:25 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

        LOL what? If this isn’;t a poster child for the failure of PPP I don’t know what is.

      • dwgs 07:58 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

        Maybe we should have opted for the monorail.

      • dhomas 09:09 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

        I mean, the monorail put Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook on the map!

      • Kevin 09:33 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

        This was announced months ago, maybe even before snow fell. It’s part of hooking up the tracks under the mountain.

      • Ian 16:39 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

        Ah well that explains why the entire network has to be shut down, of course. Since it was planned there is no way this will affect existing commuters or the opening of the western line.

        Since we’ve been quoting the Simpsons around here lately I can’t help but think of the monorail episode.

        Marge: But Main Street’s still all cracked and broken…
        Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!

      • Uatu 07:20 on 2025-05-30 Permalink

        I wish they would just return my rush hour express bus in the interim. Taking a bus to a train station to take another crowded bus and paying 196$ for it makes you feel like a loser

    • Kate 09:48 on 2025-05-28 Permalink | Reply  

      A citizen committee in the Milton-Parc area is begging all levels of government to work together to provide housing and services for the homeless who congregate in the area.

       

      • Ephraim 11:07 on 2025-05-28 Permalink

        Anyone want to take bets that every time someone suggest building for them in Milton Parc, we are going to see the same people be NIMBY to stop it?

      • saintlaurent 11:20 on 2025-05-28 Permalink

        Le Comité citoyen de Milton-Parc supplie tous les paliers de gouvernement de travailler ensemble pour offrir des logements et des services aux sans-abri…à Montréal-Est.

      • CE 12:04 on 2025-05-28 Permalink

        “In addition to calling for a better dispersion of services for the unhoused, wider sidewalks and more trees along Parc Avenue, the group wants the city to expropriate the empty lot and building at south-east area of the intersection to build social housing, with the needs of the area’s Inuit in mind.”

      • Joey 12:31 on 2025-05-28 Permalink

        My kingdom for a comment system that forces you to read the linked article before posting…

      • Ephraim 13:46 on 2025-05-28 Permalink

        The corner where they are all camped out. I still bet that if the city could expropriate there will be people fighting it tooth and nail. Why? Because they already fight the church that’s there that helps them. Like https://www.montrealgazette.com/news/article210312.html and there are many more.

      • Kate 13:47 on 2025-05-28 Permalink

        I’m sorry, Joey. What have I missed this time?

      • Joey 15:19 on 2025-05-28 Permalink

        My (admittedly facetious) point was that the article clearly stated that this committee recommended building cheap housing on-site for this specific population (CE quoted) – and yet the first two comments argue that the committee must be a bunch of hypocrites because surely they want to send these folks elsewhere. Why comment on a new item that directly contradicts the assumption at the root of your comment?

        (Obviously none of this is on you, Kate – you even made it fairly clear in your summary that the group in question wants government to act on behalf of the unhoused population in MIlton-Parc.)

      • saintlaurent 08:27 on 2025-05-29 Permalink

        The committee is undoubtedly comprised of a number of well-intentioned, passionate and committed residents of Milton-Parc. If you read the biographies and look at the calendar of events on the committee’s website, this is not in dispute (although at least one of the very earnest biographies verges on self-parody, a Plateau version of Portlandia). And yes, I acknowledge that this committee is the very group who propose the social housing to be built at the corner of Parc and Milton.

        However, I imagine that there is a much larger number of less-engaged residents and homeowners in the Milton-Parc neighbourhood who will become significantly more engaged – on the opposite side of this issue – when they are faced with the prospect of building social housing for the population that congregates at the corner of Parc and Milton, on that very same corner. They will, of course, be noisy and NIMBY and, in that vein, will earnestly and sincerely say that services be provided and housing built…somewhere else. They just don’t have a formal committee. Yet.

    • Kate 09:10 on 2025-05-28 Permalink | Reply  

      Residential construction workers are now on an indefinite strike.

       

    • Kate 09:07 on 2025-05-28 Permalink | Reply  

      A hot and humid summer is in the long‑term forecast for Quebec, with more powerful storms than we’ve been generally used to.

      La Presse talked to Emmanuel Kamal, the teenager who was crushed under a tree that fell on Grande Allée in Ahuntsic during the storm on April 29. He’s still hospitalized and faces lengthy rehabilitation.

       

      • Orr 11:58 on 2025-05-30 Permalink

        I don’t recall in the past that almost every (early-) summer day in southern Quebec had an afternoon thunderstorm but it seems that is the new normal. Perhaps the dedicated weather-watchers will correct me on this, but it seems like it has been the pattern recently.
        The heating up of the atmosphere is actually “more energy in the atmosphere” and that energy has to go somewhere. (this is how the university-professor climate scientist living in my building explained it to me.)

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