Thirty-eight people died on Quebec roads over the construction holiday, the worst record in ten years.
Updates from August, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Urbania’s Salomé Maari talks to several people involved in the nightlife scene, and also to Plateau councillor Marie Plourde, about the new noise laws and what they mean. Plourde prevaricates and never explains the city’s logic – why, after promising to make changes to support the local scene, they’ve proposed a new law bringing heavier fines for noise.
Ian
This has been Plourde’s modus operandi for years. Lots of white knighting, handwringing, excuses, and ultimately, inaction. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t know why elected officials bother saying anythign at all if they don’t paln to do something to effect positive change. I care about their works, not the condition of their souls.
walkerp
I just do not get it. How is this even an issue? How do these Complaining Karens have any clout? is it developer pressure?
Ian
For a party that’s upposedly pro-business PM doesn’t seem to be doing a lot for the nightlife business.
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Kate
A father and son who got shot a year ago when police opened fire on a suspect near their DDO home are suing the SPVM and the city for $6.5 million. Houssam Abdallah, who moved to protect his son, was shot six times and can no longer work, drive or walk unaided. Son Abdel‑Rahman was also shot and suffers consequences.
Bizarrely, after shooting the two men who were not part of the firefight, cops handcuffed them and delayed medical help for an hour.
Ian
There is nothing about this that doesn’t sound absolutely like what the cops would do in this situation. THAT is the bigger problem.
I hope these guys get a big settlement but WTF
bob
Neat. So our public money can go to that, while the morons who wantonly shot members of the public are still cops, and still dangerous incompetents who carry loaded pistols around town.
>> “We would also like to emphasize that the SPVM takes any allegations made against it very seriously and at all times respects the fundamental rights of all concerned,” an SPVM spokesperson wrote in an email.
The hell they do. Nothing brings more disrepute on the SPVM than itself. Disgusting.
Meezly
“Quebec’s Crown prosecution office announced in June it would not lay charges against Montreal police officers in the case, following an investigation by the province’s police watchdog.”
Disgusting indeed. There probably was no official apology issued from the SPVM either. The budget for that department and the salaries of the cops involved should go towards their legal defence.
Anonymous
Don’t worry, Plante never got around to that “big, big conversation” about the police budget but I’m sure Rabouin or whoever else is the next mayor will be totally on top of it.
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Kate
François Pelletier, who murdered Romane Bonnier in the street in 2021, was sentenced to life in prison on Monday – 25 years minimum before any parole.
After making their victim statements, her family left court before Pelletier made a final statement from the dock.
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Kate
There have been several thefts of cryptocurrency around town, a messy business which involves forcing people to transfer their coins under duress.
Tim S.
As another commentator once said, if you don’t like the state’s currency, you shouldn’t claim its protection.
Chris
Nonsense. How about if it don’t like my state’s banknotes and pay with a private company’s plastic card? Am I still allowed the state’s protection then?
Tim S.
Credit cards are still denominated in state currency.
CE
You’re still using the state’s currency with a credit card. A better comparison would be barter. If you give three sheep to someone in exchange for a pig and the pig is not given, you can go to the state to enforce the trade. None of the state’s currency has been exchanged but there is still a legal trade. In this case, you could think of cryptocurrencies as a form of barter. Even if it’s worthless to you, cryptocurrency is worth something to those who hold it just like a pig is worth something to someone who owns a pig. Stealing crypto from someone who believes it to hold value is not much different from stealing someone’s pig.
Tim S.
I was wondering about that comparison CE. I guess an important difference is that in your example, there are physical objects which can be theoretically traced and recovered, whereas cryptocurrency is, as I understand it, specifically designed with the opposite idea, to avoid state supervision and taxation etc.
Joey
@CE except crypto has no inherent value – at the end of the day, you can eat the pig. All crypto seems to be good for that cannot be accomplished via cash or financial products backed by/denominated in cash (e.g., credit cards) is (a) paying for illegal stuff, (b) rent-seeking/speculation, and (c) undermining state control of the money supply and, therefore, state influence on the economy. The enthusiasm with which American politicians, particularly MAGA Republicans (but also way too many Dems), have embraced crypto kinda says it all, no?
@Tim the thieves don’t need to have a philosophical POV on monetary theory to recognize that stealing crypto is particularly lucrative; once stolen, it’s effectively untraceable, and there’s likely little need to launder it the way you would, say, a huge influx of cash (though, as you can imagine, my practical experience with cryptocurrency is zero). The victims, OTOH, could be accused of undermining state governance, but odds are they’re just taken up with the latest fad.
Chris
Of course you’re still using the state’s currency with a credit card. CE’s analogy is indeed better, but the point is that everyone gets the state’s protection even if they’re doing something dumb that we don’t like. Like how we sill give free health care to smokers.
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Kate
CP story Monday about the proliferation of rats is on most media platforms, garnished with statements from the “opposition” as headlined in Le Devoir.
Chris
Rat are squirrels with uglier tails. Yet so many of us freak out about the former, but feed the latter! My local park is full of people deliberately feeding the squirrels and pigeons, oblivious that the piles they leave are rat food too.
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Kate
TVA lists ten buildings the city owns, which are standing vacant and falling into gradual ruin. The city owns 78 such buildings. TVA also points out that if the city wants to build social housing, in some cases it would cost less to demolish and rebuild than to renovate.
Chris 22:51 on 2025-08-04 Permalink
Contrast with Helsinki, with zero deaths in a full year.
MtlWeb 07:13 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
Zero deaths….that is impressive…..0.05 BAC
MarcG 08:12 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
Comparing a province with many highways to a city (with half the streets at 30km/hr) isn’t fair. Finland reports 10 deaths for June, 2025 and 76 for the year so far.
Chris 08:26 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
The comparison is fair, though of course not to be taken directly. It’s fair because we *choose* to have many highways, higher BAC, higher speed limits, etc.
MarcG 09:43 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
I agree strongly that we can do more to reduce harm on the road and elsewhere. The island of Montreal had 36 road deaths in 2024.
Ian 09:48 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
Chris, how do you propose people get around outside the city if not for highways?
Worth noting, Finnish highways have a speed limit of 120 km/h, which is lowered to 100 in winter.
Daisy 10:43 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
Train perhaps. I have been very impressed how easy it is to get around Germany by train, with many stops a day even in many quite small towns. When there are good train options, more people choose to take them, even if they own a car.
Ian 12:07 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
Ah yes, the famous extensive network of farm country trains of rural Quebec
SMD 12:50 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
Yes! Imagine if so many of them, like the P’tit train du Nord, had not been consolidated and shut down for lack of profitability after the highways opened. They were a real lifeline for rural folks, and served people going for day trips in the country as well.
Nicholas 15:14 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
There actually was an extensive network of farm country trains in rural Quebec. Go to ORM and zoom in and close enough in you’ll see the brown dashed lines, which are all former lines. They were all over! You could run connecting buses to stations and time them to arrive just before the hourly or every other hourly train left, and to leave just after the train arrives. Rural transit, done smartly, can work very well in a modern context: Switzerland has a policy that every village, no matter how small, gets some transit, and often that’s in mountain towns that have windy roads to access; much of Quebec is flat, and homes line a rang, which makes transit service much easier with flag stops.
You can also do bike+train, as the Netherlands does, which extends the range of people who can get to the station on their own.
I’m not saying cars will never be useful in Quebec, that they can all be replaced. But there are solutions to move a lot of people to alternatives, and we’re barely even trying.
Ian 18:51 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
Were.
There were train lines all over all the other provinces, too. With the consolidation of rail lines and increased reliance on trucking for intermodal, that died out. Most of those old lines are no longer usable, many have been torn up, It is very much a wassted and lost opportunity.
That said even back then there were highways, and there was no door-to-door train access except for industry and agriculture.15-20 miles between remote stations was the standard. In remote northern areas even into the 80s you could arrange to be dropped off at specific locations or have depot deliveries. It was definitely far more extensive extensive and there were many pleasure destinations subaidized by commercial routes.
Now, given our current situation, how do you propose people get around outside the cities and medium size towns without using highways? Remember, we are having trouble getting commuter trains working well just in Montreal. Now think about Ste Veronique or Granby.
Ian 18:54 on 2025-08-05 Permalink
As to comparing this to travel in Europe, you can bicycle from Calais to Rotterdam in 14 hours. Just sayin’.
MarcG 07:16 on 2025-08-06 Permalink
There’s tons of evidence of Covid’s ability to damage the brain and at least one study observing a correlation with increased car accidents.
Chris 09:44 on 2025-08-06 Permalink
Yes Ian, “were”. Our society made (and continues to make) these choices favouring cars, and therefore we live the consequences.
>Now, given our current situation, how do you propose people get around outside the cities and medium size towns without using highways?
The point is that we can change our decisions and (slowly, to be sure) move things in another direction.
The Netherlands used to be a car paradise like here, but in the 80s they pivoted, and now, decades later, the difference is notable. We could do the same. Better late than never.
Wow MarcG, you really seem to have covid permanently on the mind, for everything and always.
Kate 19:17 on 2025-08-06 Permalink
MarcG is thinking like an epidemiologist, Chris. There are social factors that aren’t obvious till pointed out, like lead in gasoline leading to a drop in general intelligence in the U.S.
Covid may be a factor in increased car accidents, but I’m afraid it would be difficult to separate it out from the presence of phones and other screens distracting the attention of drivers.
Ian 23:17 on 2025-08-06 Permalink
Chris, the Netherlands has never had to deal with the geography of distance in the same way as Quebec does. I would have thought that aspect of my point was obvious, but I guess not. Never in the history of Quebec, even before cars, has it been as convenient to get around as it is in the Netherlands – nor will it ever be. Elevation, weather, terrain, etc aside, we are simply at an entirely different scale – and never had, and never will have an extensive train network all throughout rurtal Quebec like exists in the Nether lands.
I’m beginning to suspect that some of you never leave the city or even know anyone who grew up in the country.
CE 08:37 on 2025-08-07 Permalink
I grew up in the country and due to the geography and density of rural areas in Canada, it would be impossible for my parents to take a bus into town like I saw rural people be able to do in South America (where you can get almost anywhere by bus). However, growing up, I would have loved to have been able to get a drive into town and then take the train to a city to see a movie or do some shopping like my parents and their parents were able to do. I remember seeing VIA trains stop at the train station in my town but by the time I was a teenager, they had all stopped and I was stuck. It wouldn’t be impossible to have at least that level of public transportation again but we’re now so focused on getting around by car that we’re not even providing the bare minimum of transit anymore.
Tim S. 08:57 on 2025-08-07 Permalink
As others have said, I don’t want Netherlands-level public transit, just 1950s Quebec level.
Ian 11:22 on 2025-08-07 Permalink
@CE a similar thing happened in Ontario with the trains but then the GO system picked up in the early 00s and now you can take the commuter train fron St. Catharines to Barrie to Hamilton to Toronto to Oshawa etc. We also used to have rural bus routes serviced by Greyhound but when they went out of business that all stopped, too. Of course that was only town to town and infrequent, and certainly not out in the actually rural areas.
Ian 01:42 on 2025-08-08 Permalink
FWIW I just drove 9.5 hours from the rural, unserviced area of Ontario I grew up in.
Back in the “good days” of bus service I would have had to get a lift into town (45 miunutes) on the day the bus ran (one day a week), catch the bus to Guelph, then take the bus from Guelph to Toronto (if I made it on time or I would have to stay in Guelph overnight) then catch the bus or train from Toronto to Montreal. I t was substqntially faster to take ride with a chicken truck down to just north of Toronto then hitch-hike to Montreal. That was the 80s.
Also worth noting, when I was a kid the only fruit we saw in grocery stores after the fall until the early summer was apples. I remember the first time I saw strawberries in winter; I was 19. That’s all trucking.