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.
The city’s unionized professionals are holding a one‑day strike Monday, protesting the city’s unwillingness to negotiate better terms.
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.
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.
Any idea whether there’s tourism value?
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.
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.
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.
Flights to Canadian destinations are expected to be cheaper from St‑Hubert airport when it opens its passenger business this June.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
@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.
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.
Any thoughts on Avi Lewis as the new NDP leader?
Could be they have found a way to have even less than 6 seats.
I don’t disagree with him on policies but I’ll have to wait to see if he’s actually capable as a politician. I did like his dig at Mulcair; I like his wife (the good Naomi).
I’m also very amused at the number of articles I saw headlined something like “Brother of Heated Rivalry casting director voted in as leader of Canada’s leftist party”.
jeather, yes, I was thinking this gets the NDP not just a new leader, but one with a very smart partner as part of the deal. I wonder how many party members elected him because of her.
I haven’t seen the headlines you describe, but what could be more Canadian than a longtime political family being linked to a popular piece of entertainment?
Oh, I think those were American entertainment stuff, which is fair enough. I am just impressed they’re being linked to Canadian entertainment instead of American.
I don’t think he’s campaigning to be PM, I think he’s trying to change the discussion, which is probably fair enough. I am a little unimpressed that he refuses to try to get a seat, though since they’re no longer an official party I guess it doesn’t matter.
In a weird way it seems like he may not have been the establishment choice, which I think was far more interested in MacPherson. Jeremy Appel noted that the new NDP executive also appears to be the anti-establishment choice as well.
56% of the vote on a ranked ballot makes me think the choice was clear on the convention hall floor (i.e. no second round of voting). So NDP voters got the person and team they wanted, not the party elite.
That’s usually a good thing.
Appel notes as well that the other candidates got most of their cash from a few large donations, whereas Lewis got many small donations. That’s a grassroots candidate with genuine pull. He pulled in more money than (I believe) all other candidates combined.
The statements issued by SK NDP and AB NDP are out of this world silly – like not even living on planet Earth levels of absurdity. The SK NDP claimed in their letter that the oil and gas sector employs 900,000 people nationwide.
The latest figures indicate 128,000 – and falling.
Nenshi says there’s a bright future in oil and gas – there are literally no indicators of either being the case.
The provincial NDPs are basically rebranded Liberal parties. The more they move towards the centre, the lower their chances of winning. And then they’ll blame Lewis for ‘damaging the brand’ when they lose.
Lewis is a breath of fresh air: a committed environmentalist who understands climate isn’t ideology, and the impacts will be economic first and foremost.
We need to get off oil and gas because it’s destroying our economy. It’s already destroyed our democracy. We are not a sovereign nation. You literally can’t even vote against Big Oil in AB and SK right now.
My hope is Lewis gobbles up all the Green votes, and attracts Liberals who understand that Trudeau’s green policies didn’t go far enough.
I spent a brief amount of time with him at an event back in the ’90s and came away impressed, seemed like a very decent guy whose heart was in the right place.
That’s my dude, I grew up watching Avi on the New Music. Here’s hoping that they can get people thinking about collective solutions to the problems were facing rather than more fear and division.
(and pipelines and austerity and)
I’m cautiously hopeful. Lewis seems to want to steer the party back to its leftist/socialist leanings since Layton shifted the NDP towards the centre. It worked at the time mostly due to Layton’s likeability and charisma but obvs not for the leaders that followed!
And it’s great to hear Lewis earned his leadership role via grassroots support. His environmental/activist background is a plus for me, though don’t know if this means the Green Party may become less relevant.
Will Lewis be able to appeal to and/or connect with the average Canadian? With the average Quebecer? I hear his French is competent so that’s a positive. Lewis seems to have a lot of things going for him, but we’ve yet to see how he performs as a politician. Whatever happens, I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in the public eye.
I don’t know the ins and outs of all the candidates but I do know that when Avi was announced leader my shoulders relaxed and my politics-nerd self breathed a sigh of relief. Like she did when Zohran in NYC won, and when Zack Polanski became Green leader in the UK (with the added bonus of the recent win by Hannah Spencer in a riding held by Labour since 1931). Very similar vibe. I’m old enough to remember Lewis co-hosting Counterspin on CBC (1998-2004). Too bad those haven’t been released on YouTube. That changed a few conversations that we don’t seem to have any more in this country.
Shame that Canada doesn’t seem to see the Greens as more than just environmentalists. The European history of that party is wildly interesting & varied in its ideology. But then, we have the NDP, which shares values, etc. with other left politics in history, but is unique. Maybe they should meld, but what would they be called?
I still have a saved email that Jack Layton sent me personally in 2010 in response to a question I asked him about seniors. It wasn’t a cut and paste reply, but a lengthy piece of writing that meant a lot to me at a difficult time back then. So I have a soft spot for the party. The vibes are rather human. I know Avi didn’t mention Jack last night, but I didn’t read much into that. Crikey if my dad and my grandfather were both transformational politicians, for the better, I would crow a bit about them too at such a time.
I hope he’ll be able to counter Carney’s reflexive tendency to protect banks and investors. Nora Loreto’s been looking into all the cuts the federal government has been making, which are not widely discussed. Maybe Lewis can shine more of a light on those.
Honestly I’m relieved the party seems to be waking up to the fact that centrism is a mistake. I look forward to having a real leftist to vote for.
@chris tell it to Tom Mulcair, lol
I was heartened to hear Chantal Hébert on Radio-Can this morning, praising his improved French.
I’m excited by all the people who are excited by him and think he has a genuine chance to shape the national conversation. He does have a steep learning curve when it comes to winning over people who don’t already agree with him. Liberal supporters were already all over social media yesterday, trying to take over any thread with any positivity about him (and then complaining that people were being mean to Mark Carney. On Avi Lewis threads. Sigh). Internally, the real trick will be to not get into drama with the provincial parties, while still quietly maintaining connections with the staffers and volunteers. And not assuming that anyone who’s ever actually won anything is ‘The Establishment.’
As for a seat, I would be very surprised if he didn’t run in a possible upcoming by-election in Beaches-East York in Toronto.
Final point: I have very high hopes for Tanille Johnston in future. Probably the most genuinely thoughtful and determined of the leadership candidates.
Agreed on Tanille Johnston, the support for her was really refreshing, especially as her chances were initially dismissed.
I forgot Avi Lewis was that Avi Lewis the VJ, seeing that old footage is great. I totally didn’t recognize him and I used to watch Much religiously. He needs better glasses haha : D
Overall, despite the (inevitable) provincial infighting, I do think that this ushers in a new era of optimism and progressiveness, with room for a lot of different voices. I am glad we are moving past the centrism of Mulcair – to Singh, and hope we have moved past the sophomoric “holier than thou” McDonough era. If the NDP can really reinvent themselves as a party there is a very large unsatisfied demographic that is not comfortable with the rightward drift of the Overton Window.
Ian, tell what to Mulcair? You know he got the 2nd most seats ever for the NDP, right? Yes, he lost a bunch vs Layton, but Layton seems to have been an outlier, judging against those that came both before and after him.
I guess it depends what you think a political party is for. Is it for having parliamentary power, like forming government, or official opposition, or having committee presence? If so, I doubt Lewis will do well. We shall see.
Clearly this blog is full of Dippers, but as you have seen from every election ever, most Canadians are not with you. Remember to peer outside your bubbles sometimes.
Ah, I touched a nerve I see. Good.
My main point in taunting you is that you are not a progressive, and will never be.
Kate asked “Any thoughts on Avi Lewis as the new NDP leader?”
Your brainworms could have cooked out anything but effectively your response was “Any thoughts on the NDP?”
Why bother? If you think “dippers” are so contemptible, well, who cares what you think of their leader?
In terms of Mulcair, he squandered Layton’s legacy, the strongest support the NDP had seen nationally ever, by being such an obvious neoliberal centrist that he foolishly cmapigned right of Trudeau. He lliterally tried to out-liberal the Liberals. That should have been a rookie mistake, but as we can see now, Mulcair dislikes the NDP and has always thought the NDP should be all about the economy and jobs, and that progressive politics are a liability. He wishes he was clever or connected enough to work with Carney, but showed very quickly that he lacks vision and his only talent was as a local MP.
I don’t think Mulcair could have picked up where Layton left off. Purely as a personality he’s too different. But although by now I can’t cite specific instances, I respected Mulcair for how he countered Harper at various moments.
Fifteen years later and we are still treating the 2011 election as if it were not one giant outlier… The NDP vote in Quebec increased from 12.2% in 2008 to 42.9%! The bloc dropped 15 points! With the same leader! This is weird. A lot has been said about what a unique and magical unicorn Jack Layton was but by 2011 he was a known quantity (he had been NDP leader since 2003). I’ve always thought that after nearly 15 years Quebeckers were bored/fed up with Gilles Duceppe by 2011 and found the principal alternatives – Harper and Ignatieff (who, unlike Dion in 2008, had no connection to the province) – to be completely unappealing.
IMO comparing Mulcair’s or Singh’s (and soon Lewis’s) electoral performances to 2011 doesn’t tell you all that much – the fact that the NDP managed to turn 43% of the Quebec vote into 79% of Quebec seats says a lot more about Canadian elections than the circumstances of the party or its leader.
Joey, I’d almost managed to forget about Ignatieff, and you’re right, Ignatieff created the electoral vacuum that the NDP filled for that one election.
Air Canada has announced CEO Michael Rousseau will retire later this year.
Should have sprung for Duolingo Plus.
I’m beginning to suspect the only workers who really could be effectively replaced by AI are CEOs.
Nicholas 10:16 on 2026-03-31 Permalink
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.