It seems there was a press junket Wednesday to the future airport REM station which is said to be 85% complete. La Presse ledes with the reminder that it’s supposed to open in a year’s time; Le Devoir says the work is on time.
Updates from April, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Sami Bebawi, who’s already done time for corruption in connection with the SNC‑Lavalin scandals, is off to prison again with a ten‑year sentence because he refuses to pay a $24.5‑million fine. Bebawi is 79 years old.
Thursday morning, Radio-Canada reports that Bebawi has avoided prison, instead going to a halfway house. The decision was based on a calculation only partially revealed in the article, but seemingly coming down to the fact it was a white collar crime and nobody got shanked.
dwgs
Even if he went to prison and did a full ten years (neither of which would ever happen) it would still be the equivalent of earning 2.45 million dollars a year.
Nicholas
Anyone who loses track of his millions in Dubai can probably afford to pay someone to drive his car, parked in front of the courthouse, back home. Should have taken the metro.
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Kate
Melting snow always reveals some mess, but it’s on a bigger scale around homeless encampments. City workers clean things up, but they revert to being trash dumps almost immediately.
Psychologically, it’s interesting. Do people without homes tend to collect random materials they feel might be useful in their makeshift living situations? But how many people have just as much trash hoarded inside their homes, hidden from view?
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Kate
The city has 13 mobile asphalt melting machines – used for repairing potholes – but seven are out of commission and other related equipment is equally decrepit.
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Kate
A community group in Park Ex held a ceremony at the borough hall to call attention to the death of Manjeet Singh, who became homeless and died of exposure in a park in January, blaming the lack of services in the area.
SMD
Amy Darwish, a coordinator at a housing community group in the neighbourhood, said Singh had been evicted from a cramped housing unit he shared with several others after an argument with a roommate. He ended up outside in the cold.
Darwish says there are no emergency shelters or warming centres in the neighbourhood, which could have saved Singh’s life.
“This was a completely preventable and avoidable death. He didn’t need to die this way. And I think what it highlights is that we really need measures to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” she said.
There is a fundraiser for the family he leaves behind: https://gofund.me/8cdd116f1.
Kate
Thank you, SMD.
Both stories leave me wondering, given he had a wife and kids here, where they’re living and why he wasn’t staying with them. Not that it’s any of my business. I’ll chip in a few bucks.
JP
Kate, the LaPresse article says his wife and kids were still in India, “M. Singh laisse derrière sa femme, ses deux enfants et sa mère âgée, qui se trouve toujours en Inde, mais qui espérait bientôt le rejoindre au Canada.”
Kate
I misunderstood that it was only his mother still in India. Thank you, JP.
Daisy
The verbs are in the singular (trouve, espérait), so I would also assume it refers just to the last mentioned person, the mother.
JP
Oh… hmmm…I guess your understanding makes sense then, Daisy and Kate. I still suspect they’re all in India but the verb tenses used do indicate otherwise.
SMD
Today’s Gazette confirms: “Sharma mentioned that Singh had hoped to eventually reunite with his wife and two young children, who are still in India.”
Kate
Thanks, SMD.
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Kate
Metro cops are asking again for guns and tasers, saying their jobs are getting more hazardous.
Ephraim
You know how we could tell if that is true…. wearing bodycams 😀
Nicholas 22:28 on 2026-04-08 Permalink
Every time there’s a story like this about some big project there should be a list of past similar project opening time predictions and then actual. Could even make a graph.