Updates from February, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 20:26 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

    This editorial by Brian Myles does the best job I’ve seen of assessing the long‑awaited report from the Gallant commission on what went so wrong with SAAQclic.

    It seems to still be unclear who knew what when – how long Karl Malenfant was able to truly keep the premier, his finance minister and his transport minister in the dark, and how much Legault knew and chose to keep from the public till it was impossible to keep under wraps any longer. Legault continues to hold that his government did not know.

    Some of this is bound to end up in court.

    Tuesday, the Gazette’s Allison Hanes writes a column taking the report’s meaning is to exonerate the elected officials, but that ignores the looming fact that the politicians washed their hands of the need to keep an eye on a project of that size. Claiming that they were lied to for so long and so completely doesn’t hold up well as a testament to their intelligence or sense of responsibility for public funds.

     

    • Kate 19:50 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

      The issue whether Quebec’s government can hold back redistribution of Quebec’s electoral map will be heard by the Supreme Court. Montreal is to lose one riding, in the eastern tip of the island, where two ridings were to be blended into one – unless the changes can be rolled back.

      (Thanks to H. John for letting me know the Supreme Court had decided to hear the case.)

       

      • Kate 19:27 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

        Two troubled brothers in Montreal North were given a light sentence of house arrest this week, closing the bizarre case of the men who lived with the cadaver of the Inuk girlfriend of one of them in their apartment for months (second link is from 2023).

        I’m assuming in cases like this that a social worker will be sent to check in on these men, but who knows whether there’s the resources.

         

        • Kate 19:19 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

          Both these brief items say Google Maps is sending drivers to the wrong place if they ask for Trudeau airport – but not where they end up. Bain Colonial, maybe?

           

          • CE 10:51 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            When driving on the 20 to the airport, the highway signs switch back and forth when they indicate Trudeau or Mirabel airports. I wonder how many people have just looked for the airplane symbol and have turned off toward Mirabel and missed their flights at Trudeau.

          • Joey 11:05 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            TVA says they wind up at the fire service office at the airport… Uber also loves to send drivers down snow-filled and ice-covered back alleys to avoid spending 15 seconds waiting for a red light to change, especially when the alley is actually closed at the supposed exit point… to think cabbies used to have to know where everything was.

          • MarcG 11:13 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            Interesting to reflect back and see how GPS driving directions were early AI destroyers of knowledge.

          • Ian 11:57 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            Yes and no, using Waze has shown me some really good routes I would never have considered. It’s also really handy if there’s been an accident or roadwork up ahead that you can detour to avoid. FWIW Waze did get bought out by Googel but maintained its live user input so is a lot more accurate.

          • MarcG 12:47 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            Thinking about the increasingly frequent phenomenon of making conversation with someone who has an interest in a subject and you want to hear what they have to say about it… and they suggest that you just look it up on the internet. A literally dehumanizing enterprise. (Or maybe people are just fucking exhausted).

            On the other side of the map-apps-are-useful ledger, I have to fight with them to not send me over the tracks in St-Henri because as far as I can tell they don’t consider the train schedules and I could end up rotting there for 20 minutes, and the other day there was a backup on the 20 and it directed a bunch of us to an offramp, only to send us right back on again after properly clogging up the local overpass, presumably in order to shave a few seconds off the total trip time.

          • Kate 14:13 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            No app completely compensates for knowledge of the situation on the ground.

          • Joey 14:50 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            @Kate no, but these algorithms are supposed to learn, right? Like you’d expect that after the Nth driver did not complete the route because the alley is closed at one end, the algorithm would adjust and conclude that the route is never going to work. Same for railway crossings – a true learning machine should be able to anticipate the likelihood that a train is coming. I wish these apps would allow you to designate a preferred route for regular trips and only suggest alternatives if the ETA is more than, say, 5% shorter.

          • MarcG 15:28 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            Not only do they not learn on their own but it can be frustratingly difficult to get changes made manually. When visiting Parc national du Lac-Témiscouata a few years ago, Google maps told me that the drive to a trailhead would be 20 minutes or so – it turns out the map had detected a bushwacking trail which wasn’t actually a road and it ended up taking way, way longer, especially because I trusted the directions and wasted a bunch of time circling around trying to find it. I told the park staff and they said they’re aware of the problem and have repeatedly asked Google to fix it. I just looked now and they’ve fixed *that* problem, but it now directs you down a different non-car-friendly-path which seems to be some sort of logging road. I wonder if the person I spoke to at the park has any hair left.

          • SMD 16:08 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            @MarcG I was there this summer and ran into the same issue. They now have a sign saying “Don’t trust Google Maps, this is not an entrance” at the trailhead.

          • Ian 16:10 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            Waze updates baased on user inputs, Google maps doesn’t. Given the random closures brought on by construction sites in this city, I find Google maps pretty much useless a lot of the time.

          • vasi 17:11 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            When heading to the airport, I’ve learned to ask for “Departures” rather than things like “Air Canada” or “YUL”. Somehow that always seems to send me to the right place, rather than some ridiculous route

          • CE 19:16 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            Whatever Uber drivers use for their GPS often sends them up alleys for some reason. Do the drivers have to follow the routes exactly as their GPS tells them? I can imagine them risking being accused of taking a passenger for a ride if they don’t.

            I remember hearing a story on CBC radio about how a large portion of the human brain is dedicated to navigation. Relying on GPS to navigate is causing us to use much less of that brain capacity and it can start to atrophy. I’ve heard that taxi drivers and others who have to navigate space a lot have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s. I stopped using GPS when driving after I realized that I had no idea how to get Joilette after driving there about eight times for work. Now I use a map and figure out my routes in advance and put it on a sticky note on the dashboard. Since I’ve put the map in my head already, I find I don’t even really need it. The strange thing is that despite GPS navigation only being mainstream for maybe a decade in a half, people think it’s completely insane that I travel without it. I’ve had people actually get mad at me about it and challenge me on my ability to get somewhere. It’s weird. I also find people now have a very low tolerance for getting lost, if I miss an exit or am not 100% sure about where I am or where I need to turn off, it seems to cause some people a lot of anxiety. I know one person who lives in Laval and she uses her GPS to get to the grocery store that she goes to a couple times a week. She said that she doesn’t know how to get there without it.

          • MarcG 20:29 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            Exactly. Now do that with every single problem that life throws at us and we’re in for a good time. Whatever part of our brains Covid doesn’t eat AI is primed to finish off.

          • Ian 21:48 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            That’s one way to look at it, but another is that having alternate routes proposed actually forces you to consider the validity between routes based on your won knowledge – so to be more actively engaged in your assisted direction-finding, and be more adaptable. For instance, I can get up past the decarie interchange and on my way top the west island in a couple of specific ways that most people don’t even consider, which I know because I car pool as a driver.

            That’s jsut everyday stuff. When I’m going somewhere I’ve never been before, jsut looking at a paper map doesn’t tell me much except where the official roads are.

            In any case, assisted maps aren’t the same as using chatgpt (lol) and hey, lots of people used to think maps were for chumps (like my grandpa who constantly got lost)

          • MarcG 09:09 on 2026-02-18 Permalink

            Using assistive tech mindfully buffers against its lobe-melting capacity but that’s not how the majority are engaging with it. (In case it’s not obvious, I’m not saying I’m immune to this, see my experience at Témiscouata above). Another non-map anecdote: My wife teaches a language and many people assume that you can put words into Google translate or ChatGPT and copy/paste whatever it barfs out, then when corrected have a very hard time accepting that it isn’t that easy.

          • CE 09:34 on 2026-02-18 Permalink

            I’m not against the tech, I use Google Maps all the time and think it’s a pretty good product (especially Street View). I use it to map out routes and it can figure out some good ones that I hadn’t considered before (I live on a street that is specifically designed to be difficult to access and just this week discovered a much more convenient route to access it from a taxi’s GPS). What I don’t want to do is have to blindly rely on it for all my navigation. I don’t think it’s healthy and it really cripples you if the tech is not available for some reason.

            One other thing that we’ve lost because of this technology is asking people on the street for directions. It very rarely happens anymore and is almost always older people. When asking an actual resident, you’re possibly going to get a much more interesting and human response than what Google’s algorithm can provide. It was also a way to interact with locals while in a new place. I know it’s not a big deal but feels like one of a thousand cuts to human interaction.

            @MarcG, I’ve had that same issue around ChatGPT, some people just can’t accept that it might have given them incorrect information. There are people who seem to think it’s some kind of all-knowing oracle.

          • Joey 15:18 on 2026-02-18 Permalink

            Waze is very useful for routes you take often because it updates traffic data in real-time (given that so many drivers use it, the data is pretty good). Sure, I know the four basic ways to get to the airport from my house and I have my preferred route (which isn’t always the quickest – routing apps IMO overemphasize ‘shortest arrival’ at the expense of ‘most pleasant ride,’ ‘fewest annoying/dangerous stretches’ and ‘shortest distance’), but only Waza knows which route is going to be ideal at this particular moment.

            @Ian at one point the city made a big deal of sharing construction data so that routing apps could incorporate closure and detour info but I suspect that fell apart (hard to believe even the city knows what’s going on anymore).

            @CE I was taking an uber from the Bell Centre to Mile End last summer around 10:30PM. Uber had the driver go up MacTavish to Pine and then up Parc. Except it didn’t know that the McTavish/Pine intersection was closed due to an Alouettes game. The driver and I came up with a game plan (head west and go over Remembrance/Camillien-Houde), but when he started in that direction the Uber routing kicked in and decided he should go down Peel and take Sherbrooke east to Parc – according to Waze, that would’ve been about 15 minutes longer than going over the mountain, probably even longer since lots of traffic was being dumped into downtown due to the closure. The driver agreed to stick with our plan, which wound up being fairly quick, but explained that he might get dinged by Uber for abandoning the route. I was just grateful that the guy knew what I meant by ‘go over the mountain’ and didn’t refuse…

          • JP 00:10 on 2026-02-19 Permalink

            Just came across this story and while it’s not about Montreal, it seems pertinent to this discussion thread.

            https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/nyregion/peace-bridge-immigration.html

            “Part of the reason for drivers’ errors seems to be their reliance on mapping apps, which have occasionally sent unaware motorists across the bridge. It was a phenomenon that The Times experienced last year, when a request for directions to a restaurant in Buffalo resulted in a trip across the international border. The Times’s journalists were told by a Canadian border agent that these inadvertent crossings happen “at least 20 times a day.”

        • Kate 19:10 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

          The city is going to fix potholes even if it means sacrificing other things it planned to do. In this piece, SMF blames Projet for having paid for bulb‑outs rather than repairing streets.

           

          • patatrio 21:31 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

            That image of sideshow bob surrounded by rakes spring to mind.

          • Ian 16:11 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

            The thig about SMF’s assessment is that the bulbouts came out of sidewalk budgets, which is a different envelope. City budgets are kind of a shell game, TBH.

        • Kate 13:06 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

          Temperatures may be more clement but they bring a risk of freezing rain starting Monday night.

           

          • Kate 13:03 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

            Last month in Cornwall, a jilted lover (age 81) shot at his ex‑girlfriend (80) and her new lover (83), wounding the girlfriend and killing her new man. No charges mentioned yet.

             

            • Blork 15:05 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

              No charges because the shooter then shot himself (fatally).

            • Kate 19:17 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

              Of course not. Thank you.

          • Kate 10:33 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

            Le Devoir profiles groups that introduce newcomers to outdoor winter activities, such as by cross‑country skiing in Jeanne‑Mance Park.

             

            • Kate 10:12 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

              The Centre Compassion, which opened in 1999 to provide cannabis products for therapeutic reasons, has closed up shop, Marc-Boris St-Maurice saying there’s no more need now that the stuff is legal.

               

              • Kate 10:08 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

                CTV asks why Family Day, a stat holiday in some other provinces, is not observed in Quebec. It’s being debated on reddit, but although some cite François Legault’s concern for productivity, surely nobody really thinks a single day off would dent Quebec’s GDP. Legault doesn’t want us to have a long weekend between New Year and Easter because it’s Lent, and we have to suffer deprivation in Lent. Even Jews and Muslims and atheists. Especially atheists.

                 

                • jeather 10:18 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  I still stand by my statement that I would vote for any party that promises a new stat day or two.

                • Daisy 10:59 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  Lent doesn’t begin until Wednesday.

                • Josh 11:16 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  Lots of Quebec gets January 2nd off. I always sort of assumed that was the other part of this equation.

                • Uatu 11:48 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  It’s a stat holiday at the MUHC

                • jeather 12:26 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  Jan 2 is optional and a business can take it away at any time, a stat holiday is not. Quebec is among the lower half of stat holidays.

                • Bert 14:05 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  Quebec has 8 official statutory holidays: https://www.cnesst.gouv.qc.ca/en/working-conditions/leave/statutory-holidays/list-paid-statutory-holidays

                  Anything else is either employer free-bee, part of a union or other employment contract, or falls under federally mandated and regulated industries such as railways, banks, etc.

                • Kate 14:16 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  Daisy, I think there’s an ingrained sense that people are supposed to keep their nose to the grindstone till Easter, whether it falls on March 22 or April 25. It’s April 5 this year, splitting the difference.

                • Daisy 15:36 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  If so it has nothing to do with Lent. There is a strong tradition of pre-Lent merry-making (Carnival, Mardi gras, etc.).

                • Kate 19:17 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  But no days off!

                • Ian 21:31 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  I’m kind of surprised Montreal doesn’t do Mardi Gras.

                • Kate 23:37 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  A Mardi Gras here would be a winter carnival. There used to be a winter carnival here in the 19th century – there’s a famous photo of an ice palace on Place d’Armes, for example – but why Quebec City carried on with theirs, and we did not, I’ve never found out.

                  An amateur historian who posts to Facebook is promising a book about its history so maybe then I will know why.

                  In a way, the High Lights Festival is a sort of attempt to revive festivities this time of year, I suppose.

                  I find that The Main blog has a recent piece about ice palaces here, but it’s partly closed to non‑members.

                • CE 10:58 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

                  The modern Quebec City carnaval was a purely commercial scheme to bring people to the old city in the 1950s (I assume as people were fleeing to the suburbs).

                  From their website:

                  En 1954, dans une perspective de développement économique de la Vieille Capitale, un groupe de gens d’affaires relance la fête et choisit Bonhomme comme représentant de l’événement. La première édition du Carnaval d’hiver de Québec a lieu en 1955. Le Carnaval devient alors une manifestation incontournable pour la population de Québec et le moteur de l’activité touristique hivernale dans la ville. Aujourd’hui, le Carnaval de Québec est sans contredit un événement hivernal d’envergure et demeure une locomotive de la vie hivernale québécoise.

                  https://carnaval.qc.ca/le-carnaval/a-propos-du-carnaval/

                • VAZKEN BALOUZIAN 12:14 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

                  There should be a stat holiday every month. the fact that there’s long stretches of time without one are CRIMINAL

                • Nicholas 13:31 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

                  When asked if Quebec would make Indigenous Peoples Day a holiday, Legault said “we need more productivity.” “We are not in favour of adding statutory holidays for any reason whatsoever in Quebec,” Legault said. “We have, proportionately, already a lot,” he added, falsely.

              • Kate 10:05 on 2026-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

                CBC’s really pushing the idea of involving Montreal in a new Olympic bid. Some Olympic honcho is quoted as saying “hosting the games can be […] transformative for the host communities.” Yes, you can spend decades paying for them with public money – that’s transformative, all right.

                Montreal does not need another rats’ nest of Olympic involvement to put it on the map. It’s already on the map.

                 

                • Joey 10:20 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  Isn’t the most likely scenario that the IOC rotates among a small group of ‘permanent’ Olympic hosts (think dictatorships looking to sportswash or locales that are uniquely suited for the games, like Alpine cities)?

                • Jim 11:36 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  Exactly, Joey. Canada can manage this with support from our newly refreshed China connection.

                • Kate 20:29 on 2026-02-16 Permalink

                  Joey, you’d think so, but enough cities are still willing to bid on big sports events like the Olympics and the World Cup that the dance goes on.

                  Jim, I think that was sarcastic. But maybe not.

                • Andrew 15:58 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

                  Someone posted some pictures of the infrastructure from the Turin games rotting away from 20 years ago. Which is insane when you realize that Turin and Milan are way closer than Milan and Cortina.

                • Kate 18:43 on 2026-02-22 Permalink

                  Andrew, I’ve previously linked these pieces about abandoned Olympic venues and about the trouble Athens has had with its stadium roof.

                  People manage to forget that when you spend a lot of money to build these fantastic sports palaces, you need to think not just about the opening day deadline, but about who will want to use the facility in the future, and how you’ll afford maintenance and repair. The Olympics count on this memory lapse (as does FIFA and other big sports events that move around).

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