Michel Tremblay, who’s been wintering in Florida for years, has sold his house out of disgust at the situation in the U.S.
Updates from July, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Work is proceeding well on the replacement of the roof of the Olympic stadium. Is this news? Isn’t news always about things running late or not happening at all?
walkerp
The one project that nobody needs they actually do efficiently?!
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Kate
This is part of a story that’s been in the news here for years, on and off: the CSSDM is trying to evict two popular education centres that have occupied disused school spaces for 50 years.
The Rover did a good backgrounder on these organizations and the needs they meet, back in 2022.
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Kate
The shortage of affordable housing continues in Montreal according to the CMM.
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Kate
In the doldrums of news, what better to investigate than what it’s like to be named François Legault. Both the first and last name are relatively common in Quebec, so there are a lot of them – but put them together, and there’s a story.
H. John
I actually thought of Josée when I noticed that on a list of Quebec family names by rank Legault is 101.
https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/produit/tableau/the-first-1000-family-names-by-rank-quebec
Kate
I was reminded of a news story from 2022 in which the lawyer for a shooting suspect criticized a statement from François Legault, while being named François Legault himself.
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Kate
A simulated active shooter exercise last November in the east‑end military base resulted in one man being brutalized so badly that a public hearing will be held.
Military police descended on workers on the base – non‑soldiers doing maintenance work – and one man was dragged out and had his clothes, boots and wallet taken away. (It’s mentioned in passing that this man was Black.) He and several others were off work afterwards from panic attacks.
(CP article, edited a little differently in English and French.)
DeWolf
“The employee stresses that he never imagined that he would experience such a situation in a National Defence establishment and that the military police member’s actions reminded him of certain barbaric acts he experienced in Rwanda in 1994.”
Yikes.
Orr
We often have nicknamed Canada’s Department of National Defence as the Department of National Disgrace, for reasons.
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Kate
Manoir Lafontaine is a medium-rise building that faces the park of the same name. A few years ago, it was snatched from the jaws of a well‑known real estate duo to be renovated and become affordable housing, with satisfaction at the time (link from 2023). Tenants that were on the brink of renoviction were to be asked to leave temporarily so upgrades could be made.
So it turns out work has yet to begin and the tenants, many of them elderly, have given up hope that they will ever be able to return to the building where some had lived for decades.
Ephraim
As taxpayers, we’re footing a significant bill for the Manoir Lafontaine renovations. The City of Montreal contributed a $5.6 million non-repayable grant for acquisition and upgrades. The Quebec government chipped in $16.8 million to facilitate the shift to affordable housing. Additional funding includes loans from Desjardins and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), alongside grants from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MAMH). The total renovation budget is approximately $38–$39 million, with $15 million allocated for critical repairs like heating and elevators. For a 93-unit building, this equates to roughly $419,000 per apartment.
Pardon my bluntness, but we could outright purchase apartments for these residents at a lower cost. Currently, 38 condos are listed for sale in the Plateau, ranging from $225,000 to $400,000. This doesn’t even account for available multiplexes. For example, there’s a building listed on Centris (https://www.centris.ca/en/multi-family-properties~for-sale~montreal-le-plateau-mont-royal/20653770) for under $16 million, featuring 16 one-bedroom, 18 two-bedroom, and 40 three-bedroom units. That’s 74 apartments at approximately $216,000 per unit.
This goes back to what I have been saying for a long time, maybe government doesn’t belong in the housing business and maybe instead we should be simply subsidizing those who have the need, based on need. Just the $5.6M and $16.8M is $22.4M and invested at 5% would bring $93K a month in subsidies…. or $1K a month with no loss of equity. Again, we can likely make arrangements with a REIT, who are professionals in running apartment buildings and let them do the maintenance, etc. And pay them the subsidy for these apartments. Even at 3% that’s $600 a month in subsidizes to make an apartment more affordable.
Kate
Ephraim, surely that building listed on Centris already has tenants?
Ephraim
Absolutely, but the point is that apartments are going for well below the cost to renovate this building. The cost to renovate this building is so extreme that you have to ask the question, is this viable at all. The location is great, which is why the building is likely worth more than it should be, with a view of the park. But are we doing justice to these people and to taxpayers.
Finding land and building further out with new insulation, new thermal heating systems, would create apartments with much lower costs to maintain. Instead, we are plowing so much in per apartment that we could just give them condos and save money.
Annette 02:25 on 2025-07-25 Permalink
Good. Fair enough. But what he LOVED about Florida was hanging with his ‘gang’ from Quebec? Man, these OG pequistes…
Dwgs 19:42 on 2025-07-26 Permalink
Meh, you don’t go to Florida for the culture.
Orr 18:42 on 2025-07-27 Permalink
His home was in Key West, not your typical Florida Man or Quebec snowbird territory.