The bus and metro strike announced for this weekend has been cancelled.
Updates from November, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A judicial recount has confirmed that Mary Deros fair and squarely lost in Park Ex and by 44 votes, not just six. Some other recounts are expected soon.
Nicholas
The official site says there were 10 recounts submitted, 7 have been accepted so far and 4 have been confirmed, same winners as before. The rest will be dealt with next week. The confirmed winners are two for each party: EM borough council in Ile Bizard and city council in Villa Marie and PM city council in both CDN and Park Ex. No word on which other ones were accepted, but my guess is the two Lachine ones where EM one in a squeaker were accepted.
Note that a recount does not have to be accepted, so it could be 7-10 in the end that go to a recount: a judge determines if the person submitting it has pleaded enough things to show the recount has a chance of succeeding using some standard (could be high or low chance, I’m not a lawyer). If you are down by 6 you’re more likely to get it accepted than if down by 300. As well, candidates can have their representatives there on election night and if they think a ballot was miscounted they can make a formal objection that is noted in the poll book. Those objections don’t change the ballot on election night but can help support the judicial request for a recount. Because being a rep is a boring job and campaigns don’t usually pay for it few people do it, but having someone helps protects your rights as a candidate, so they try to put people in districts they think will be close.
patatrio
Let’s see what a lawyer with housing tribunal experience can do about the slumlords and renovictors. End of an era for deros, she’s had quite the ride. Always standing up for the local community and jostling with the political scene of each era. There’s a case to be made that her current iteration of supporters led her astray, getting involved in the facebook fanfare instead of talking to what people are living through right now.
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Kate
Restaurant owners in town (and elsewhere) are being scammed with fake bad Google reviews followed by attempts to extort payments to remove them.
MarcG
If anyone from CTV is reading this, the narrative audio in your videos is only in the left channel and it sounds like crap and makes your brand seem really low-budget! I tried contacting the newsroom via email a while ago but didn’t get a response.
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Kate
The Deux-Montagnes branch of the REM is now open, the Prime Minister, the Premier and the new Mayor all having snipped the ribbon at the same time.
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Kate
Metro notes that with SMF as mayor – she was sworn in on Thursday evening – and Ericka Alneus leading Projet, both parties have women from diverse backgrounds in charge.
DeWolf
It’s good that municipal politics finally reflects Montreal’s diversity — which wasn’t the case for a very long time — and it happened without seeming like such a big deal.
DeWolf
On a similar note, SMF ended her swearing in ceremony with a short speech in Spanish directed at the Latino community, which must be a first at City Hall. Plante spoke Spanish as a second language but I don’t recall her using it in any official capacity in Montreal.
Ian
Yes, it’s intersting that the two women, POC, is not being picked up … but it is very good to see. Even if SFM isn’t progressive, this is progress at the municipal level. Nice to see a woman POC heading up PM, too. Diversity has inherent value, especially given the ethnonationalist tendencies of our provincial politics.
steph
Bonjour-hi-hola. Works for me.
Joey
The La Presse article about her swearing-in yesterday implied at the end that she might invite a councillor from Projet Montreal into her exec committee (I think she responded to a question about it by reminding the reporter that the committee can be made up of councillors from any party, not just Ensemble). If that is the case, I will be impressed again by her political instincts; she has the good sense to enter a mayoral race that she would have a decent shot at winning despite having not real profile or ideas. Since winning she has toned down the heat a bit and abandoned some of the more frustrating/controversial aspects of her platform (bike lane review) and, earned or not, can take some credit for the end of the STM strike that was supposed to run through the end of the month.
The combination of sharp instincts and not much in the way of values or principles can be very lucrative in politics… kidding aside, I think the perspective most of us on the left share (the Airbnb mayor of doom, etc) is maybe a little overheated?
PatrickC
As I commented on election night, the CBC right away described SFM as belonging to a “racialized minority.” I have to say I like the French expression “personne issue de la diversité” better.
Kate
Joey: good points, thank you.
PatrickC: Books have been written on where western society has drawn the line that can be described as “racialized”. Would SMF be deemed racialized in the U.S. because she’s Latina?
I admit I don’t think of her as racialized but I may not have fully developed antennae for this.
Ian
Chilean is Latina, Latina is racialized, POC, visible minority – whatever you wnat to call it. SFM was raised here since 1980 – she and her family were Pinochet refugees.
Blork
I personally hate the term “racialized.” To me it sounds like something that has been foisted upon the person, like “traumatized” or “brutalized.” Or something that implies some kind of transformation, like “radicalized.”
Although one could argue that these folks are JUST PEOPLE and that political forces are slathering this “racialized” identity upon them, as if they were in need of some extra process, like posterizing an image or Martinizing your laundry.
Ian
You could also argue that insisting people are “just people” is a very dominant-culture thing to say, that implies you don’t want to have to think about race and/ or racism in our society.
I’m not saying that this is what you’re saying, but it’s important not ot cross over into “I don’t see colour” territory.Blork
Yeah, I get that, and I’ve always thought the “I don’t see colour” thing is stupid. (See the colour: it’s part of who the person is. Celebrate it even. But don’t judge it.)
It’s the word itself I don’t like, and the way it’s used. It sounds like something’s been smeared on them. It sounds to me like an equivalent to “handicapped,” which is a lessened ability to do something, and we should make accommodations for to allow the handicapped person to live a full and independent/integrated life. But being non-white isn’t a handicap. Or if it is, it’s a societal shortcoming, not a personal/individual thing, so the burden of the label shouldn’t fall on the non-white person, it should fall on society to stop doing whatever it is that makes being non-white a handicap. Maybe starting with avoiding gnarly labels that point the finger at the non-white person as the one who is smeared with something different.
Blork
Reeling it back in a bit: I want to repeat that’s it’s the word I object to, the fact that it’s an adjective, like “sanitized.” It implies something was done to them. It implies that white people are raceless. It sounds like non-white people were “normal” until somebody “racialized” them.
It’s a word thing. A linguistic thing. Why not just call these mayors “non-white” instead of making it sound like they were just fine until somebody applied something racial to them?
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Kate
Weekend notes from Le Devoir, La Presse, CultMTL, Montréal Secret, CityCrunch.Traffic snarls – and, of course, no public transit either day, and plenty of freezing rain…
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