Urbania with five easy ways to get killed on a bicycle.
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Kate
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Kate
The long-awaited city pound was finally inaugurated on Friday, although it has been in operation since January. A veterinarian on staff is quoted as saying they will keep animals while trying either to return them to their owners, or euthanizing them. There isn’t anything about animal adoptions.
CTV’s report mentions pet adoption in passing, so that’s good.
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Kate
Carney’s Liberals are pondering privatizing airports. What would that do for us? Notice the slickness of Finance Minister François‑Philippe Champagne saying “it’s about modernizing how Canada views its public assets.” If private ownership is viewed through a neoliberal eye as modernizing, maybe. That’s not a given.
Champagne and Carney talk persuasively about “making sure that Canadians get the full value of these federal assets” but it’s smoke and mirrors because once something is sold, it’s sold. Some money goes into a few pockets and the asset no longer belongs to Canadians. It can be sold to forces outside our borders and controlled for corporate profit, not for the benefit of its users.
How is this equivalent to modernization?
Nicholas
The argument is that private owners are more likely to invest in upgrades, which is empirically true worldwide, as governments tend to skimp, as who wants to invest money in airports when it could go to health care? And it’s also empirically true that private ownership leads to more flights and more passengers. In particular, upgrades that increase revenue: things that bring in more flights, more passengers, more restaurants, more lounges, better transfers. Sometimes this is more utilitarian infrastructure like more gates, sometimes it is things that make the experience nicer so people spend more money or prefer connecting here. But they tend to be more ruthlessly focused on ROI than governments, who might care more about a golf course. That’s all modernization.
The trade-off is fees tend to go up a fair bit, as the extra revenue from the sources above is often not enough, and they aren’t constrained. You could also argue that flights are bad, and we should be building a fast train to Montreal, but we may not even end up doing that, building it to Laval instead.
As for finances, the pockets that the money goes into is the Treasury, which can help bring down the debt, which is high. I’ve also seen people suggesting Canadian pension funds could buy the airports, as they already own some airports overseas, which alleviates the private concern for some, though I think that’s too cute by half, just look at the REM. And if you’re worried about a future sale, you can ban foreign ownership, something Canada loves doing, including in aviation. You would get less money for it though. You can also regulate fees if you want, among other things.
I don’t have many opinions on whether this is a good idea or not; I’m just answering the question on how it leads to modernization.
PatrickC
Changi airport, considered the best in the world, is owned by the government of Singapore. It’s a question of political will.
Tim S.
“The argument is that private owners are more likely to invest in upgrades, which is empirically true worldwide,”
A few years ago I asked a colleague in the UK for his thoughts on the railway privatizations there. He said “Well, the trains don’t run on time anymore, but you can get a nice cappuccino.”
Upgrades that bring in revenue are not necessarily upgrades that fulfill the actual purpose of the thing in question.
bob
Privatization is a mechanism for people close to the government to suck the juice out of a public asset, and leave us with the skins. A pure form of legislated corruption. Fees go up, service erodes, because they are only interested in profit.
Canada does not ban foreign ownership at all. They sold the wheat board to Saudis and Americans. The Canadian Pacific is merged with a US company and run out of Kansas. The largest shareholder in the Canadian National is Bill Gates. Air Canada’s largest shareholder is Black Rock. And even when a company is partly, even mostly, owned by nominally “Canadian” entities, it is effectively owned by some collection of equity funds, asset management funds, trusts, etc. run by global neoliberals who are as loyal to Canada as the Westons and Irvings.
jeather
Elbows up!
Tim
@bob, you hit the nail on the head. The entire country has been sold right out from underneath us. The only national beer left is Moosehead. You bought a Molson, Labatt or Sleeman product: that money is going to the US, Belgium/Brazil or Japan respectively.
R T
I’m extremely ambivalent about airport privatizion, but UK railway privatisation was very successful in increasing ridership, especially during off-peak periods through cheaper tickets; the train operating companies did not control the tracks or the major stations, and the attempt to privatise the tracks was undone quickly, so most concerns about investment level are due to the government. (The trains themselves got a lot nicer!)
“Canada does not ban foreign ownership at all.” is simply a false statement as a matter of fact. Foreigners aren’t even allowed to acquire controlling stakes in bookshops. (When it was still considered a bookshop, Amazon had no physical presence Canada, hiring Canada Post to do all their logistics as a workaround.) Foreigners can’t control Canadian airlines. Canada does allow foreign ownership of coffee shops, but required that Tim Hortons maintain a separate, Canadian-controlled board, lest cruellers be unduly Brazilian influenced. BlackRock does not have any of its own money invested in Air Canada; the BlackRock funds that have shares in Air Canada are owned by the fund holders, many if not most of whom are Canadian. (Moreover, the largest shareholder in Air Canada is RBC, again on behalf of its fund holders, almost all of whom are Canadian.) Oh, and CPKC? Headquartered in and run out of Calgary, not Kansas.
Joey
There’s a reason the Liberal Party of Canada grabbed a bunch of erstwhile Conservative Party voters the instant Carney replaced Trudeau as party leader.
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Kate
The Guardian has a strong piece on Angine de Poitrine.
EmilyG
I enjoyed that article. Thank you!
Kate
Do you like the music, Emily? I queued some up on Youtube but it hits me the same as very cerebral jazz does, i.e. I can admire the intellect but it doesn’t grab me.
EmilyG
I love the music and can appreciate some of the way it’s constructed, the harmonies and rhythms and such. I like their use of microtones and unusual time signatures, and the masterful use of the looper pedal. Though I’ve studied music and I’m a musician myself. But I think a lot of people like the overall sound.
MarcG
Their sound reminds me of Okara from Ottawa.
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Kate
The Walrus has a report on the last batch of fortune cookies from Wing’s Noodles. Walrus may impede you with a paywall, so here’s an archive link too.
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Kate
Weekend notes from Le Devoir, CityCrunch, the Gazette, Journal de Montréal, CultMTL.Weekend driving issues et en anglais.
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Kate
A plan to turn McGill College Avenue into a pedestrian square, first announced in 2018, has been put on hold by SMF.
Tim S.
That’s really frustrating. I keep looking for signs of progress on this every time I’m downtown. Guess I’ll give up now.
Joey
I’m a little surprised SMF didn’t canvas her business pals and get those with a significant downtown presence around McGill College to kick in enough money to finish the project or manage it in perpetuity (or for at least for a long stretch). I was also surprised to learn the plan includes an urban pond…
DeWolf
The design that won the competition isn’t great. It was very of its moment — bring nature into the city, which is a great idea, but not in the heart of downtown in a spot where you want an open view towards McGill and the mountain.
Hopefully there will be a redesign, but my instinct is that SMF would rather just axe this whole project and keep McGill College as it is. When a mayor is worried most of all about the cost of collecting garbage in a new downtown square (?!) and not making sure it’s a nice public space that everyone can enjoy, you can’t expect any big vision or ambitions.
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Kate
Emergency rooms at some hospitals are less crowded during Canadiens playoff matches.
CBC has a brief info video on how to watch the matches of not only the Canadiens, but other teams from the city. Between streaming platforms and sports channels, a serious fan needs to have several subscriptions.
Longtime Canadiens barber Ménick talks about hockey fever.
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Kate
Quebec is putting more millions into its rent supplement program, which sounds benevolent in a sense, but if the government does this instead of enforcing limits on rent increases (as the old Régie du logement used to do, at least up to a point), isn’t this just another means of moving public funds into private hands?
R T
In the absence of additional housing construction, yes, it’s a transfer to landlords overall.
There are other winners and losers. Some eligible tenants benefit, but most tenants just see their rent bid up, while if you’re not a renter, it may or may not increase your property value but it definitely increases your taxes.
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Kate
City blue collar workers have elected a new president just as the union tries to negotiate a new contract.
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Kate
Healthcare workers have been issued a list of things not to say to patients about the impending digital health record system.
Chris
How sad that all this data will be going to the USA.
Mozai
If they’re not allowed to say “the system is down” can they sing it? https://youtu.be/JwZwkk7q25I
Tim
@Chris: While the company is US based, this CBC article states that the data will be stored in Montreal with backups in Toronto (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-digital-records-9.7186436). The problem is that this no longer guarantees digital sovereignity, given that the US government can compell American companies to share data that is stored outside of the United States.
Consolidating from more than 400 different software products is totally worthwhile. The biggest question is can they execute on this successfully?
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Kate
A body was found Thursday morning by the Back River near Gouin and Saint‑Jean. There’s no identification yet, but mention is made of the teenager who fell through the ice nearby in March and whose body was not found at the time.
Friday it was confirmed that the body was indeed Hassoun Choui, a student at nearby Cégep Gérald‑Godin, who fell through the ice March 26.
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Kate
Sona Lakhoyan Olivier, MNA for Chomedey, is being turfed from the Quebec Liberal Party and fined $8,000 after findings that she contravened the National Assembly code of ethics by using her office’s resources for partisan purposes during Pablo Rodriguez’s leadership campaign.
Too late for Rodriguez, though.
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Kate
Montreal is one of four cities that will host final Olympic qualifiers for the Summer Games in Los Angeles, June 1‑4, 2028. The others are Tokyo, Shanghai and Orlando, Florida.
La Presse guy thinks this is a big deal.
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Kate
For the Walrus, Brendan Kelly writes about one of the the Canadiens’ high‑profile fans.
The Journal looks at how some French immigrants are becoming fans of the team.
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