Not an April Fool: now you’re moving your car for street cleaning rather than snow removal. Otherwise you can be ticketed.
Updates from March, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Canada Post plans to proceed to end home delivery to save money.
MarcG
“Modernizing”. I don’t understand how this is going to work in a city of triplexes like Montreal, won’t they need to install community boxes at the end of every block?
jeather
I assume areas with triplexes will be delayed the longest, and eventually they will just reduce it to once or twice weekly instead.
roberto
As Canada Post continues to shift away from home delivery, it highlights a growing gap. It’s easy to assume everyone is connected these days, but a significant number of people still don’t have reliable access to computers or the internet. Moving services online has clear benefits, but it also risks leaving behind those who simply can’t afford the added cost of staying connected—especially as the cost of living continues to rise. For many, losing home mail delivery isn’t just an inconvenience; it removes a critical, accessible way to receive important information and stay connected to essential services.
Kevin
MarcG
I did the math when this was proposed during the Harper era, and worked out that NDG would need about 20 metres of boxes every block, which is enough to cover the front of 3 buildings.The people who propose community boxes think Canada only has two types of housing: detached houses and apartment buildings.
jeather
Roberto, was that edited with AI?
Even in places with no home service, they have an accommodation for weekly lettermail/daily packages if you require it, though I do not know what proof they request.
Mark
I still think a way forward with this is to split CP in two. Urban Canada Post that has to modernize and try to stat afloat, and rural/remote Canada Post that is seen as an essential service for smaller communities. No one will ever make any money sending packages to Pond Inlet, Blanc Sablon, etc.
My suggestion doesn’t address the important point that Roberto raises above, and I am aware that “modernize” in this context means competing against gig-economy low wage couriers, dragging the working conditions of thousands of carriers down. But it seems like we’ve decided that postal delivery has to be profitable. Maybe some of it can, but we’re still the second largest and least densely populated countries in the world. I don’t know what percentage of CP’s losses can be attributed to the fact that we need to reach those smaller communities, but shifting the narrative from ” a business losing money ” to “providing an essential service” could help.
SMD
@Mark, and once you make that essential shift in perspective you can realize that postal banking would be an excellent essential service for Canada’s many remote communities, that aren’t served by financial institutions but all have a post office.
Ricardo
It almost inhumane to still have home delivery and I say this from mail carrier perspective. Have you seen how hard these people work for what, 24$/hr? FREEZING cold, insane heat, lugging giant bags of mostly useless material? I spoke with my carrier and asked her how many kms she does in day. That day 29! as they were short staffed, normally 20kms. Pretty sure 98% of us can walk to the box. Let’s find solution for that 2%.
Nicholas
100% of Quebec households have access to high-speed Internet, and over 96% of Canadians do, and 9 in 10 of those who don’t are in rural areas (which have already lost home delivery). The goal is 100% by 2030. There is also still dial up, cell-phone based Internet and satellite. There are programs for low income people, and libraries, and so on. Not that zero people are affected, but it is such a small problem that we can focus on subsidies rather than design our postal system around it.
Nevertheless I do think home delivery may still make sense for very dense areas where space is at a premium. Maybe delivery should just be on the ground floor of plexes. But another way to do this is reduce delivery to a few times a week.
Kate
I live in a classic row triplex on a block of duplexes and triplexes, and there’s no room around these streets to install community boxes. I’d be fine with getting mail twice or even once a week instead.
Joey
Think of every baby boomer you know, now imagine how their cognitive ability might change in the next few years, now imagine that the only way to access all of their important documentation (tax forms, healthcare paperwork, insurance documents) is via some online account for which they were never particularly good at safeguarding. Suddenly home delivery of important documents doesn’t seem so easily replaceable.
Chris
>100% of Quebec households have access to high-speed Internet
lol, only if you consider 50 Mbit/s “high speed”. Not.
jeather
Yeah, I just don’t see how areas where each street is a row of triplexes will work. No one wants to give up their parks for community boxes, the sidewalks are too narrow to put anything on, there’s not a lot of space in front of buildings, and surely staffing enough Canada Post locations would cost more than home delivery. Apartments are fine, they get delivery to the mail room, and areas with a lot of single family homes might be ok depending on lot size, but I can’t see how they can compromise in urban areas except by doing less frequent deliveries.
azrhey
I’d also vote for delivery once or twice a week. As is I barely check my mail once a week. and I am trying to figure a situation when someone really needs their mail every day of the week. Specially lately where a letter from Hopital Notre Dame can take up to two weeks to arrive in VSL as it did for me last month. ( WHY they insist on sending me paper mail for my appointments when they already sent an SMS is a question for another post )
Chris
I’d also vote for delivery once a week in dense neighbourhoods. But jeather: there is place to put those community boxes if they insist: we can remove on-street car parking spaces.
jeather
If you think losing park space would be unpopular . . .
But also, wouldn’t that block most first floor windows?
jeather
Ok I know this is on p2 and therefore gone but according to the Toronto Star:
While there’s an upfront cost to buying and installing community mailboxes, it costs $157 a year per household to deliver to them, according to Canada Post. For the 24 per cent of Canadian households still receiving home delivery, the cost is $279 per household.This is — a lot less than I imagined.
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Kate
An 18-year-old woman was strangled to death Tuesday afternoon in St‑Michel, and a 20‑year‑old man was arrested and has been charged with murder.
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Kate
Stephen Lewis has died at 88, two days after his son Avi Lewis became leader of the NDP.
maggie rose
Charlie Angus wrote movingly about his memories of Stephen and had me shedding a few tears in a short tribute on CBC. https://bsky.app/profile/charlieangus104.bsky.social/post/3mieryci3lk2c
Ian
It makes the timing of Mulcair’s sniping article in the Gazette seem rather petty.
Chris
That timing is almost certainly coincidental. Mulcair wrote something about the NDP election, and it’s only reasonable to expect it to take a day or so to write and release and come out when it did.
Ian Rogers
That he acknowledged the death of Stephen Lewis in the same article makes me say that no, he knew precisely what he was doing.
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Kate
A woman was killed Tuesday when she was hit by a train on the tracks under the Van Horne overpass. The item recalls a similar fatality in 2022. A lot of people cross the tracks in that area.
As I wrote last time, I find it odd that someone can be killed at that location because the trains on those tracks are hauling freight, the view in both directions is unimpeded, and someone with full senses can hear and even feel the train approaching. But I must be wrong on some of these points if two young women can be killed by trains on that section of track.
Adding later: the Mon Mile End mailing list says the train was backing up. I didn’t see that information anywhere else.
Blork
Very sad news.
I’ve read numerous accounts of people getting hit by trains over the years (for a while it was a topic of discussion on photography web sites after some photographers in the U.S. were killed and injured that way a decade or so ago). I’ve read about cases where people were photographing the tracks or doing selfies, or even “glamour” shots, etc. and boom, hit by a train. It defies logic, but it happens frequently.
Aside from photographers, apparently one of the problems is people walking while wearing headphones or earbuds and not paying attention to their surroundings. People often underestimate the risk of walking over train tracks, especially if it’s something they do frequently.
Another thing that happens is when there are two tracks and a train is going one way on one track and aother train is approaching going the other way on the other track. The pedestrian waits for the train closest to them to pass and then darts across, right into the path of the train coming from the other direction. It sounds like a one-in-a-million but apparently it happens more often than you’d think.
I’ve also read some accounts of how an approaching train can be less noisy than you’d imagine. I read that a few years ago and I don’t have a link, but it was a real eye opener.
In the case of the trains going under the VH viaduct, they go awfully slow, so you’d think none of the above applies, but I suppose that’s not the case.
Chris
Another ghastly possibility is suicide. RIP regardless.
roberto
A major issue is that people tend to underestimate a train’s distance and speed due to poor depth perception. Trains are much larger than most people realize, which can seriously distort our instinctive judgment of how fast they’re moving and how far away they are. Really sad news.
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Kate
Quebec and Ottawa cannot agree on the financing of public transit. Ottawa is prepared to hand out billions of dollars, but Quebec is sulking and not accepting any of it.
Also Tuesday, Le Devoir reports that a federal initiative to build more housing – offering cities plans for pre‑designed dense residential buildings – is being ignored by Quebec.
jeather
Historically it’s because the federal government asks for some oversight and Quebec refuses.
Joey
Big word count for a piece that doesn’t even try to explain what the specific issue might be…
Kate
jeather, I know, but it’s so frustrating to watch this happening over and over. Of course if the feds hand over $2 billion they’re going to want some accounts back, and they’re going to want to make sure that it is spent on public transit, not on whatever random things the CAQ thinks could save some of its National Assembly seats in the election later this year.
Joey
This isn’t like, say, childcare or pharmacare or student aid, where Quebec can credibly tell Ottawa that it already has a comprehensive program in place and so an opt-out-with-compensation makes both political and technocratic sense – if Ottawa is developing a new prescription drug coverage program and Quebec already has a very mature one, it makes no sense for Quebec to shoehorn its existing program into an emerging federal model, it should just get the money and, hopefully, make some commitment to augment its program. Cases like this one, though, are really just about funding and not about some citizen-facing program. The crux here seems to be that Quebec won’t access ‘its share’ of this program unless that amount covers a much larger share of Quebec priority projects, like the QC City tramway. I get that Quebec can usually (legitimately) tell Ottawa to take a hike when the feds start stepping on Quebec’s toes, but this is a case where they could pull a Mr. Plow and tell the feds they’ll take the money but won’t plow the driveway. I miss the old Quebec leaders of all political stripes who never forgot that getting something from Ottawa in exchange for nothing is better than getting nothing in exchange for getting to throw a hissy fit.
Kate
Joey, your final sentence there is going on the calendar quotations list for next year.
Chris
It’s a nice quote, but the “in exchange for nothing” part is probably wrong; like jeather was saying, Ottawa usually wants something in return. (Don’t get the wrong, the CAQ is still being stupid here.)
Joey
@Chris in many cases, the expectations from Ottawa can be burdensome (especially when the federal initiative is a new program). But in this case we’re literally talking about a fund – submit project details and get money for it. What exactly is Quebec expected to give up here in exchange other than the phone possibility of Ottawa having offered more money to begin with?
Chris
They give up the freedom to not have to submit details to anyone, to be fully free to spend it how they want, without any signoff from above. (From their perspective, not my personal one.)
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Kate
Superior Court has ordained that Gilbert Rozon must pay $880,000 divided among eight women who accuse him of sexual assault and misconduct. A ninth woman who also accused him is excluded.
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Kate
It’s freezing rain again as March grinds out its last gloomy day.
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Kate
A video from last year – posted by the driver himself – shows him showering a policewoman with insults at a traffic stop. We have no laws against insulting police (although most people wouldn’t do it because of consequences) and it’s now being asked if we should.
I see why people might think it a good idea, considering the video, but do we really want to make it an arrestable offence to call a cop an asshole?
Tim S.
I think it should be a minor offence to call anyone the things that were said in the video. Jail? Not the first time, but fine or community service, sure. I’ve said before, we really lack a level of enforcement for sub-criminal disruptive behaviour. I have a theory about the decline in religion, but don’t want to trigger people.
Also, I think police should have the powers to suspend a licence for 24 hours for anyone not in a fit state to drive. Yes, it could be misused, but it’s crazy that that guy was free to drive away and take out his frustrations on the next driver/cyclist/pedestrian.
Blork
My first reflex is to say no. But then I’m thinking… what would the feeling be if, instead of a cop, it were a nurse or a shop clerk at the recieving end of that tirade? We’d all be outraged at the perp and would be gunning for him.
But still…
Maybe there’s a line that can be drawn between simply insulting the person (cop, nurse, whatever) and being actually combative, if only verbally. The former is just a person speaking their mind, while the latter could easily tip into assault.
But where is that line? And you can be sure that some cops would see that line as very flexible and could potentially tackle and arrest someone for simply issuing a heavy sigh, which the cop could then legitimately say was a verbal threat.
Kate
Would the response to the video be different if the cop had been male? But then, would the driver have felt safe to unleash a tirade like that if the cop had been a man?
I have no answers. I wish people had better manners.
Nicholas
A few things. First, a law that you can’t say mean things to cops is perhaps one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. I invite everyone to think through the obvious natural consequences of this.
Second, I’m dismayed by the continual push to punish people with the power of the state for things they say. Again, it’s worth thinking through where this always leads.
Third, the way to deal with disgusting people like this is public shame, and one way to facilitate that is for the journalist to name this asshole. The person posted it on Facebook because they thought it made him look good, so disabuse him of that notion: go to his work, go to his neighbours, make this story the top hit whenever someone googled him; make him suffer the social consequences of his words. That will hurt him way more than a fine, and stop this kind of behaviour.
Fourth, listening to the video it certainly sounds like without this tirade many people would be asking why cops are pulling over a black guy for something so minor as window tinting, how it could escalate into a shooting and we might see a discrimination lawsuit.
Fifth, good on the cop for not reacting, and it’s nice to see they are stopping people for illegally tinted windows. But it sounds they let the guy drive off? If your car is not street legal then it should be impounded and towed away until fixed.
Lastly, we have a strong culture of no verbal abuse to customer service workers here, and generally the punishment is to no longer let the customer interact with them (kick them out of the building or off the phone and make them do everything in writing, and cite them for tresspass if they come back). Ot course that’s not applicable here, the man wants to leave. But sometimes when you have the monopoly on violence people will say hurtful things to you, but that’s the tradeoff, and this cop handled it well: finish the detention, serve the penalty, don’t retaliate against them for their speech and get out of there.
Ephraim
If the police want respect, they need to earn respect by doing their job in a respectful way. That means that unless absolutely necessary, they don’t violate the law… not even crossing a street against the light or putting their lights on to go through a red light.
j2
We should not, it would be weaponized immediately. But I’m okay with the hate crime being examined as a possibility as long as they are independent and aware of the slipper slope involved. If the officer had a bodycam at least we could hear the other side of the invective.
And I’m so sick of illegal tinting. I couldn’t tell you whether the car in question was legal or not, but driver visibility (ie seeing the driver) is a safety issue and should be fined as much as possible. Either rip it off in place or require an inspection afterwards. And maybe a re-inspection periodically.
Chris
Canada already has too many limits on free speech, thumbs down on this idea.
Tim S.
That the community has a responsibility to curb public insults is not a radical notion. Calling someone a whore is slander, and historically has been punished, sometimes by enforcing a public apology. There are other options here than a heavy-handed state intervention.
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Kate
The family of the man missing in the Back River, and fellow students at Gérald‑Godin CEGEP, held a demonstration Monday to press for a renewed water search for Hassoun Choui, 18, who fell through the ice last Thursday. Police say they are searching the shoreline.
The situation is reminding me of the disappearance of Ariel Kouakou. Police believe that boy fell through the ice in the same river off Ahuntsic in mid‑March 2018, but his body was never found.
Nicholas
Water searches are dangerous, we’ve already lost some first responders trying to save people. It’s been a week, this young man is tragically not coming home. Sometimes you don’t recover a body, and that’s distressing, but let’s not create another tragedy.
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Kate
The city’s unionized professionals are holding a one‑day strike Monday, protesting the city’s unwillingness to negotiate better terms.
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Kate
The river ferries, which had been getting gradually more popular over recent years, have not received any funding from Quebec as the deadline grows closer for the ARTM to work out a budget.
Nicholas
Half a million passengers for $12 million is about $20 a passenger. Buses are usually in the range of a dollar or two, a bit more in more suburban or rural regions. It’s a nice trip, but for the same price we could run somewhere like 100,000 extra hours of buses, nearly 7,000 hours a day during the same summer season. Maybe it’s worth it for the tunnel replacement route, but this just seems difficult to justify, as ferries often are, being slow and expensive.
Kate
Any idea whether there’s tourism value?
Nicholas
They were fairly empty when I took them (twice), and most trips seem to replace other trips by transit, that are just nicer but slower. They do go to some of the islands, so there is some tourism value, but I don’t feel that’s worth it, to me. I was actually planning a trip around using the Contrecœur to Lavaltrie one to do a loop, as well as the Ile Perot to Châteauguay one, but both were not running last year.
Another annoying thing is it’s not integrated into the transit fares unless you have a longer duration pass, so the friction reduces the incentive to use it unless you really value being on a boat, or you commute. So just overall it’s not going to serve too many trips.
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Kate
Rima Hassan, a member of the European Parliament of Palestinian origin, has been denied permission to enter Canada and come to Montreal for two conferences. The Gazette calls her a far‑left politician; she says she will participate in the conferences online.
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Kate
Radio-Canada profiles the Lyall, the place of last resort at the Douglas for deeply disturbed kids between 6 and 12 who are not safely placed in regular classrooms.
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Kate
Flights to Canadian destinations are expected to be cheaper from St‑Hubert airport when it opens its passenger business this June.
CE
Is there a public transit connection to the airport? If I have to take a taxi all the way out to St-Hubert, it might cancel out the savings.
Nicholas
Yes, the RTL 428 serves YHU about every half hour. I also expect it’ll start cheaper to attract business and then be about the same.
Ephraim
Just checked, the AIF for YHU is $35, while YUL is $40. YMX is still $15… too bad there aren’t any flights from there. YYZ is $37 or just $8 when connecting. YVR is $25. Still we are still getting hosed.
Nicholas
Are we getting hosed? Airports in Canada are non-profits that are required to operate without public subsidy. If they don’t charge AIFs they’ll just raise landing fees charged to airlines, who will pass the costs onto us in higher ticket prices. As someone who flies more than average, I think it’s more fair that passengers pay rather than taxpayers who fly less. Unless you think they should cut expenses, but they also have expansion plans due to increased passengers, plus all the traffic circulation, parking and the REM.
GC
A bit closer for me than YUL, so it looks like a cheaper taxi ride. Can’t wait for another option. While there is some appeal in a large airport for a long layover, I’ll always take a smaller one for departure/arrival. Everything just takes less time!
Blork
Regarding public transit, I think it’s a safe bet that if this thing flies (ha!) then more bus options from the Longueuil Metro station will be added. It should also be mentioned that the mythical yellow line expansion (which will likely never happen) could easily connect to the MET airport.
Also: it would not be difficult to extend the REM from its current terminus just past the Dix/30 to run north-east along the 30 all the way to the Prominades St-Bruno and then a quick deke to the left and right to the airport. This would not only connect the REM to another shopping mall, it would provide quick communiting access to all those people who currently drive in from St-Bruno, Carignan, Chambly, St-Hubert, etc. Most importantly, it would connect YUL and MET via public transit. Imagine that.
The other thing to remember is that the MET airport isn’t so much about giving Montrealers a slightly cheaper way to get to Toronto; it’s about giving the hundreds of thousands of people who live on the south shore and the Monteregie a way to get to Toronto (etc.) without having to line up to cross a bridge and without having them clog up the 20 and 40 on their way to YUL.
I wish it were opening sooner. I’m going to Toronto at the end of May, and getting from chez moi to YUL will probably take longer than getting from YUL to YTZ, whereas it will take me less than 15 minutes to get to MET.
Bert
To whom would / they charge an AIF (Airport Improvement Fee?) out of YMX? Do FedEX, Puro, Cargolux, UPS pilots pay a fee? Do Nolinor run passenger charters out of Mirabel? Heck, maybe there is still a fee for the former Cartierville / St-Laurent Canadair field?
It’s not like there is a YMX terminal to improve any more.
Nicholas
There is of course already a train line that goes right near the St Hubert airport, and there could be a short shuttle bus or they could spend a few million to run the train there on a branch or on a short detour. But of course there’s no love for our commuter rail lines, so they’ll all be counted as trains per day rather than trains per hour.
Blork
Nicholas, neither of those options are likely to happen. Bear in mind this is a small airport designed primarily to service people on the south shore (although they are marketing it as a Montreal airport), so the amount of users coming by rail, even if there were shuttles from the nearest commuter rail station (about 3.5 km from the terminal), would probably be counted in dozens per day not hundreds or thousands, so that just wouldn’t be economically feasible.
BTW, Porter’s web site says there will be a shuttle service from the Longueuil Metro called the “METbus.” https://www.flyporter.com/en_ca/met_mtl
Ephraim
I’m not against paying an AIF… but to have one of the highest AIF in all of Canada, even higher than YYZ and YVR begs the question of how badly the airport is being run. They are spending $10 over 10 years to upgrade the airport, but are they publishing. They don’t publish a line-item full transparent budget, they do drop a few annual reports.
But if you pull out some statistics, highest paid official is making over $570K which is 5X the median salary of the other ADM employees. And in 2024 they shared a bonus pool of $1.2M but we don’t really know his total compensation.
Officially the AIF must be reinvested in the airport. In 2025 they spent $582.8M on gates and $113.7M on the rail link. And they are somehow going to be spending $1000M per year for 10 years? Officially none of the AIF can be used for salaries… but it leaves more to spend from the other side. YUL has one of the highest fees in Canada and it has consistently been one of the highest fees in Canada. Maybe that high fee should come with a LOT of transparency… especially in a province known for corruption?
Nicholas
Blork, you could build a station closer, and you could build it for cheap (no one here seems capable, but elsewhere people do). But it only makes sense if you have trains every 30 minutes. If so people from Montreal would use it. And then you’d also get people taking buses to the train. If that line got any love it’d also go to St Hyacinth, and maybe even Drummondville or Sherbrooke.
Ephraim, I agree there should be more transparency on their budget, and items should be proactively published online, something I’ve seen municipalities do. The feds could change the rules anytime.
But the airport does have a lot of construction in their stretegic plan, including a new international jetty. And it makes sense the YUL has one of the highest fees in Canada, given it is one of the largest airports in Canada. Not much growth going on at Fredericton.
Ephraim
@Nicholas, traffic is comparable to YYZ or YVR, which both have cheaper fees. And $1B a year for the next 10 years… that’s a LOT of money and a lot of room for corruption. That’s 20% to 30% more than the cost of the Metro extension. Almost double the cost of building the new Champlain bridge (in today’s dollars.)
That’s $10 BILLION at $1B per year for the next 10 years.
Blork
Nicholas, the closest you could build it would be 1km from the terminal, and it would involve expropriating some land for passage between the station and the terminal, building a station, creating the awkwardness of having a station between the St-Hubert station and the St-Bruno station (which are already not very far apart). Plus it would add complications to the track which is shared-use with regular passenger trains and freight trains, etc.
All that might be worthwhile if it were disgorging hundreds of passengers a day to MET, but it wouldn’t be. It’s a small airport that (AFAIK) is serviced by a single airline.
Ephraim 14:14 on 2026-04-01 Permalink
They came by to clean today right on time.
Kate 10:02 on 2026-04-02 Permalink
So did mine on Thursday morning. Street’s beginning to look a lot better – now all they have to do is vacuum up all the gravel left on the sidewalk.
Ian 12:04 on 2026-04-02 Permalink
In my neighbourhood they usually just let the gravel wash into the drain then vacuum out the drains
CE 21:33 on 2026-04-02 Permalink
On my street it usually sits around on the sidewalk until about June then a machine comes by to shoot the gravel off with water. Last year is sped by so quickly that almost all the gravel was left behind.