City hall announced this week how it’s distributing $50 million over two years toward easing the homelessness crisis. This was money already promised in the budget.
Reading this piece, my cynicism kicks in. People will be hired and paid and every so often announcements will be made to the press, but two years from now, there will be more tents along Notre‑Dame East than there are today. Anyone want to bet against?
Three men have been arrested and will be charged with murder in the first degree in connection with a fatal shooting at a St‑Léonard car wash in April 2022. As reported at the time.
Christopher Curtis looks into who raises money for Ensemble and his observations are a must‑read.
Excellent work, as always. Canada’s COI laws are a joke to begin with, but at the municipal level it’s evident they wouldn’t even matter.
*conflict of interest
This is so frustrating. Municipal (and I believe provincial) donations are capped at 100$ which is a really nice way of limiting any given person’s influence. It’s one of those laws that makes me super happy to be a Quebecker. But if people can just get registered as solicitors and package donations together, getting credit for the whole amount, that just undoes the whole point of capping donations. Most aggravating thing I’ve learned today.
Tim, that’s just a natural consequence. We allow political party donations. We allow political parties to call up their supporters and ask them for donations. We allow people to volunteer for political parties. We allow political parties to count up how much money each volunteer brought in for the party. And we allow political parties to talk to whomever they choose based on any criteria they want to set. If you accept these five facts, which I think most people do, then this behaviour fits right in that.
There’s absolutely no need for the fourth point – keeping track of how much each volunteer brings in – to be formalized. It sets up an intermediary between donors and political parties, creating opportunities for opaque influencing, and allowing that to happen formally, not just based on guesswork, is a choice, and I support choosing to eliminate it.
If we didn’t formalize it then the parties or volunteers would keep track of it anyway, so they would know, but the public wouldn’t. Seems worse.
The word “volunteer” maybe doesn’t apply so much (at least in the way we might reflexively think of it, like someone who sets up chairs at a meeting), especially when “bag man” is right there…
But the way it’s set up now, it would be hard for the parties to keep track. When I make a donation, there’s a drop-down asking for the name of the sollicitor. Up to today, I haven’t had a problem with that because it’s the candidate themselves who asked me. But take away the drop-down, parties would see the donor but not know why they donated without another round of outreach. Even if they did that, following up with someone a few weeks later and getting them to say, out loud, I only donated because person X told me to, significantly loosens the influence operation
I’m pretty sure we can get rid of this layer and improve democracy.
Getting rid of that layer strikes me as akin to abandoning first‑past‑the‑post elections, in that they’re both changes that bring no benefit to a party in power, so are very difficult to put in place.
Joey, I meant volunteer in the sense that they aren’t getting paid (directly by the party or the donor; yes they feel they’re getting a benefit). Bundler is another term, as they bundle donations.
Tim, I knew some people worked in politics where there were bundlers, not in Quebec. Nothing they did was reported to the public, but let me tell you, everyone who mattered knew, and no one else did. Reporters could find out some things using their contacts, but it was a boring story, so why spend time on it? Occasionally you’ll get it as flavour in a story — “John Smith, a VP for [company] and a big-time bundler for Obama, is up for a possible ambassadorship if the candidate wins,” — but Obama’s people know exactly how much he brought it, while we just have these anecdotes. The bundler will claim the payments internally even if you don’t declare them; they’ll send a list of the people they talked to and cajoled. It may not be as accurate, but it’ll be good enough for their purposes.
I still think we should have pretty strict limits on donations and spending, but I think the best way to do it regardless is make as much public as you can. If done properly it makes it much easier for journalists and the public to track everything. Sunshine really is just better than anything else.
The only thing better than sunshine is to get as much private money out of politics as possible. As you say, everybody knows who attracts money to the big political parties – at worst these are open secrets. Does enabling the rich to have outsized influence lead to better political outcomes? Well, in the thread above we are discussing building shantytowns in the east end, so maybe not…
A woman pedestrian was hit by a car in Longue‑Pointe on May 20 and died two days later. It was only reported on Tuesday.
Another fatal accident occurred in Mercier on Wednesday morning when two cars collided, leaving someone dead in one of the vehicles.
Later, TVA says the man who died in this second item had just stolen the car. Doesn’t sound like it was a police chase, though.
Steven Guilbeault is to announce that he will be leaving politics this summer, having parted ways ethically with the Carney government over plans to build a new oil pipeline.
Guilbeault has been MP for Laurier–Sainte‑Marie since 2019.
I’ll always remember him as the heritage minister who decided it wasn’t a good idea to list the names of suspected Nazi war criminals and collaborators on Ottawa’s Victims of Communism monument, after Canadian Heritage decided to go ahead with the plan despite the historians they hired not having fully vetted the list.
The “Victims of Communism” monument is an indulgence to the right wing extremists, under cover. If they had their way great humanitarians would have statues there, heroes like Franco, Pinochet, Suharto, and Syngman Rhee.
The NDP has a shot at his seat (polls were favourable before the last election), but with the Carney honeymoon extending toward summer it’s a long shot.
As noted below in a comment by DeWolf, St‑Denis won’t be pedestrianized in the Quartier Latin as usual this summer, although there will be a couple of temporary street events. Some merchants are not happy, because they’ve benefited from the vibe of a strolling street.
It won’t be pedestrianized next summer either.
There’s a fun twist: merchants unhappy because their streets aren’t being pedestrianized?
I’ll bet my left arm a number of merchants voted against Project Montreal, who played a key role in the summer pedestrianization of Quartier Latin. The city had partnered with the SDC Quartier Latin and local merchants to launch an economic recovery plan that included seasonal pedestrian-only zones. Hope they’re crying tears of regret.
The merchants on that stretch had one of of heir own running with Craig Sauve (Sergio da Silva, operator of Turbo Haus and Le café Big Trouble, not your typical ‘merchant’ to say the least). Probably the only SDC where votes against Project were steering further left.
This part of St-Denis desperately needs a revamp, so hopefully these two years without pedestrianization can get the conversation started on what needs to change in the future. A St-Paul style revamp would be perfect here. Permanent pedestrianization would make a lot of sense for the blocks between Ontario and Ste-Catherine.
(The block between de Maisonneuve and Ste-Catherine has already been attractively revamped. Just do the same thing for the rest of the street.)
Annette 01:46 on 2026-05-28 Permalink
Hey, that’s not fair! You’re using past performance to predict future results!
Chris 08:32 on 2026-05-28 Permalink
Along Notre‑Dame East specifically? I’ll take that bet. Because usually they shoo the homeless from place to place, so I imagine there will be more generally in 2 years, but less on Notre‑Dame East specifically.
Michail 09:31 on 2026-05-28 Permalink
I wonder how much it would cost to just pay the rent and give a UBI to each unhoused person for two years.
dhomas 10:59 on 2026-05-28 Permalink
@Michail: it most likely would be cost effective to house the homeless on the public dime. There have been studies that show as much. An interesting one with practical results from right here in Montreal can be seen here:
https://douglas.research.mcgill.ca/homechez-soi-project/
Basically, any cost incurred in housing the homeless and giving them proper support is nearly completely offset in other savings in public costs. Between $7.19 and $8.27 cost offsets for every 10$ invested in the program. Costs considered for this study were: hospitalization, shelters, and other types of housing. There might be further cost savings, for example: less costs in policing, mental health services, municipal cleaning, etc.
I’m pretty sure the reason it is not done at large scale is because there might be some public outcry that might sound something like “I pay for my house / rent. Why do these drug addicts get a free pass!” I have had similar conversations with people about food banks, so this kind of objection would most likely continue with housing.
DeWolf 16:43 on 2026-05-28 Permalink
Maybe this is a crazy idea, but if we really can’t provide house affordable housing for everyone who needs it, then maybe we should allow and regulate informal housing as a stopgap measure. In other words, allow people to build their own shelters in designated areas — ideally, partner with an NGO that can provide materials and supplies. Inspect the structures regularly for fire safety. And crucially, provide public facilities like toilets/showers (portable toilet trailers with running water rather than chemical toilets) and space for community gatherings (another set of portable trailers could do the job), with social workers around — the same ones who already visit encampments — to help residents.
This would essentially be a well-regulated shantytown. People could live there for years without endangering their health and safety. In the short term, it would probably cost the same as constantly dismantling encampments, chasing some people away and finding emergency housing for others.
And when governments finally get their act together to provide enough social housing for everyone who needs it, then these makeshift settlements can be phased out.
It would certainly require a change in mindset, but it would also be acknowledging a reality: we already have lots of shantytowns all around Montreal, we just call them encampments because they’re made up of nylon tents instead of wood or metal shacks. But in a way, that’s a lot worse than an actual shantytown where people have reliable shelter and an opportunity to focus on other things than just staying alive.
Kate 16:55 on 2026-05-28 Permalink
DeWolf, already it’s being discussed to provide encampments with toilets and showers, as well as garbage pickups.
The difference between this and shantytowns – so far – is I don’t think many people are having children in the encampments. It’s when a second generation begins to be born that you have a true shantytown.
Kevin 17:29 on 2026-05-28 Permalink
Dhomas
The counter argument is to point out that cops, judges, ER docs and other services are way more expensive.
Joey 09:59 on 2026-05-29 Permalink
@Dhomas there’s a lot that’s logical and sensible about your proposal. But it does kind of feel like it embracing it would basically mean throwing in the towel on the homelessness crisis. If the homeless are ‘contained’ to designated areas and provided a minimum of services, will there be any political will to actually reduce the problem of homelessness? Or will the average Quebec voter figure that this is ‘good enough’?
Tim 14:04 on 2026-05-29 Permalink
It’s not a homelessness crisis: it’s a mental health and drug addiction crisis. Only 27% of homeless people do not have mental health and drug addiction problems.
Source (with nice graphic): https://housing-infrastructure.canada.ca/homelessness-sans-abri/reports-rapports/mental-health-substance-use-sante-mentale-consom-substances-eng.html#toc_5
Kate 19:03 on 2026-05-29 Permalink
It is and it isn’t. If you start life in an unpromising setting – unwanted kid in a step family, or thrown out of DPJ care at eighteen, or just badly treated by people who should never have been parents – and you find yourself with little or no education, unable to find any but the most basic and physical jobs, if any job at all, and forced to live in squalor or on the street, you might not have started out with mental illness, but living like that might turn anyone to drink or drugs as a refuge from their problems, with mental illness as a result. It’s chicken and egg.
MarcG 10:04 on 2026-05-30 Permalink
Lots of rich, powerful people with mental health and substance abuse issues, too.
Kate 09:20 on 2026-06-01 Permalink
Wealthy families can be just as dysfunctional as poor ones.