I’m beginning to sense a trend in support of law and order in advance of the November election. The Journal reports that police say they don’t have enough technical equipment to fight crime. TVA has a headline about a daycare in Chinatown that wants to move somewhere else – fast – because of homelessness and drugs in the area.
The downtown SDC is promoting a view that workers don’t feel safe – La Presse numbering it as three out of four, while the Journal says it’s one out of two, while emphasizing that if workers stay away, $1.6 billion could be lost. Looking for the source of this number in the headline, I find that it’s stated below that “Le centre-ville génère 1,6 G$ annuellement, soit 23% du budget municipal.” SDX honcho Glenn Castanheira is all over these stories.
With the election impending, though, everyone’s going to have their hand in the pot. Firefighters too are grouching about having to work with unsatisfactory equipment.
Nicholas 18:30 on 2025-09-09 Permalink
I’ve been noted for saying that businesses like to blame their failure on anything but themselves. Unrelated: “The Journal reports that police say they don’t have enough technical equipment to fight crime.”
Ian 20:08 on 2025-09-09 Permalink
Even more police budget is obviously the solution to all of Montreal’s ills /s
H. John 22:04 on 2025-09-09 Permalink
The issue is not just local, it’s Canada wide.
The CBC’s Front Burner did a program yesterday called “Does Canada have a violent crime problem?”
Broken into two parts, first law Professor Irwin Waller who writes about what does and doesn’t work talks about how to deal with the problem; and, then Scott Reid, former Liberal insider, and now political commentator, talks about how the issue likely caused Carney to lose a possible majority.
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/209-front-burner/episode/16168231-does-canada-have-a-violent-crime-problem
Waller has written extensively on what works. And, like Ian, he says the answer isn’t more policing. Here are four of his articles for The Conversation:
https://theconversation.com/profiles/irvin-waller-1350897/articles
steph 22:36 on 2025-09-09 Permalink
The money that’s not being spent down town is being spent elsewhere. We’ve had this discussion before about Dix30 & Carrefour Laval becoming more attractive. St-Denis and St-Catherine aren’t what they used to be for many reasons.
GC 08:25 on 2025-09-10 Permalink
The police have plenty of money. More than other, similar-sized cities, as we’ve discussed here. If they aren’t spending it effectively, in the right places, then they should sort that out themselves internally.
Ephraim 09:01 on 2025-09-10 Permalink
When it comes to the police we need to really reform the system because there are two types of policing and we need to think strategically about it.
1. Physical policing (and social services) – This is the part that needs manpower. These are the people who show up at your door, who randomly select you for a ticket or who walk a beat so you know that they sometimes actually care. All the other functions related to this need rationalization. Truthfully, PDF forms and virtual shredders, so you can report a bicycle stolen, a robbery or anything else that they can do nothing about.
2. Police intelligence – This is the part that should move from the city police to the provincial police and be concentrated. This include all the intelligence units, murder, computer crimes, etc. Basically where the skills need to be concentrated. Have one set of expertise concentrated with all the needed resources and connections. They can process DNA, process blood spatter, follow Internet trails, etc. You don’t need to have a detective in St-Louis-de-Ha-Ha, you need to be able to send someone from a central office who is trained.
Ian 10:20 on 2025-09-10 Permalink
As GC points out they already have all the funding they need and then some. If Education and Health are somehow expected to pull rabbits out of their collective ass to adjust for a billion dollars’ worth of cuts, surely the cops can read the room and quit whining for more cash infusions to prop up their corrupt and grotesquely inefficient “system”.
Joey 12:42 on 2025-09-12 Permalink
The David Simon series We Own This City is a greta eye-opener into the world of police corruption. Based on real stories from Baltimore (again), it shows how the cops tasked with investigating drug dealers would collect overtime to capture the gangsters, steal and sell the drugs, and rinse repeat.