The SQ has raided a Montreal business that created false documents: passports, birth certificates, drivers’ licences, health cards and so forth, although how these items work when everything’s always checked against a database is unclear.
This story rang a bell. A year ago, a man was sentenced to 14 months for running a similar ID‑faking business downtown. Here’s La Presse’s version of that story and TVA reporting that he only served a quarter of his sentence.
Following from a recent story about the buyer of a duplex finding she can’t move in, now she can, at least into the ground‑floor flat, in September.
At least the tribunal was able to discriminate based on immigration status! (They have a visa for two years and the owner can apply for PR for her parents and then an indefinite open work permit until that’s decided.)
In case we thought brush fires were something that only happens in the north, there were fires near the St‑Hubert airport Monday, luckily not damaging anything of great value – yet.
Michael Hendricks, who campaigned for gay rights for a long time before finally being able to legally marry his longtime partner René Leboeuf in 2004, has died.
In the Fugues interview referenced in the CBC article Kate linked to, Michael is quoted as saying “De plus, les jeunes générations ne connaissent pas l’histoire de nos luttes.”
In an article published after Michael’s death (also Fugues) they write “et les deux hommes obtiendront gain de cause devant la Cour suprême du Canada.” (https://www.fugues.com/2026/07/19/deces-de-michael-hendricks-1941-2026-un-pionnier-de-nos-communautes-vient-de-nous-quitter/)
That ,of course, is wrong. Michael & Réné’s case only went as far as the Quebec Court of Appeal.
Same-sex advocates had won their cases in B.C., Ontario, and Quebec appeal courts. Rather than appealing any of the three cases to the SCC, the Chretien government sent a Reference asking 3 (later 4) questions.
Here’s the Reference explained by political science professor Peter Hogg:
https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/4/4/712/640266
When the SCC replied that the federal government could legislate same-sex marriage, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-38, “An Act respecting certain aspects of legal capacity for marriage for civil purposes”; and, they made it a free vote.
A number of Liberals voted against same-sex marriage recognition, including Montreal MP Francis Scarpaleggia (currently Speaker of the House of Commons).
Like Michael, I think we need to remember our history. He certainly was at the centre of a great deal of it.
When I first started posting, Kate explained that there was already a John and I would have to differentiate it.
I immediately thought of H. John. Although I’ve written my name like that since high school, only one person always called me H. John in person. That was Michael.
H. John, I wondered whether Scarpaleggia’s Wikipedia page would cover his views on same‑sex marriage, and it says “Scarpaleggia today supports same-sex marriage” citing this Globe & Mail piece from 2019: “Liberal MPs Francis Scarpaleggia, Lawrence MacAulay and Rodger Cuzner, who voted against same-sex marriage in 2005, all said they now support it.”
Too little too late?
At no point prior to the Chretien government’s choice to send the Reference to the SCC had the Liberal Party of Canada at any policy convention voted in favour of same sex-marriage. Party conferences invariably voted against it – year after year.
I suppose your question “Too little too late?” leads to a larger debate about human rights and leadership expected from elected officials. There had been three major appeal court decisions in the most populous provinces of Canada explaining why this was a basic human right that should be respected.
As long as Canadians only have rights as long as legislatures allow them (thanks to the notwithstanding clause), then the fact that someone might change their mind later on doesn’t really cheer me up.
When Paul Martin ran for the leadership of the Party, I asked him during one of his presentations whether or not he supported it; and, secondly why most people thought his opponent Sheila Copps seemed to have taken a clearer stance (in favour) on the issue. He didn’t answer the second question, and he responded that if the SCC ruled in its favour, then he would support it. Immediately after the event his leadership team approached me and said they would have to work on his answer.
Even with the Reference, the Chretien government tried, belatedly, to wash their hands of the issue.
As Peter Hogg explains in his essay the fourth question, added late to the Reference, was an attempt to take the issue out of politicians hands and leave it entirely to (aka blame) the courts:
“The fourth question in the reference asked whether the opposite-sex requirement for marriage was consistent with the Charter of Rights. That, of course, was the very question the Court would have had to decide if the decisions in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec been appealed up to the Supreme Court. However, none of the cases advanced to the Supreme Court for a ruling that would be binding throughout the country.”
and
“In the reference, the Court refused to answer the fourth question. The Court’s reasoning is neither clear nor persuasive, but I think the main reason, albeit unarticulated, was a desire to make Parliament play a role in the legalization of same-sex marriage. If Parliament acted, it could not be claimed that such a controversial project was entirely driven by judges. This had been a consistent theme of the political opposition to same-sex marriage, reflected in parliamentary debate as well as in the wider public debate. It was a theme that exposed the Court itself to the criticism that it was too active in making rulings that could not pass muster in a democratic legislature.”
In response to La Presse’s weekend dossier on empty storefronts on our commercial streets, the head of the SDC organization and a Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman are interviewed here but neither presents any bright ideas. The city had already ruled out imposing an extra tax on commercial spaces held empty and SMF is seemingly not interested in changing that policy.
The article points out that Rimouski, Salaberry‑de‑Valleyfield, Ste‑Agathe‑des‑Monts and Pincourt have imposed such taxes, but come on. How big are their downtowns? Let’s look at what cities of comparable size and status are doing if they’re afflicted by a similar issue.
“We tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”
No one better put me in charge of anything, because I would double property taxes ( residential & commercial ) after 12 months of vacancies , and double every 12 months after that.
Either that, or after , say 3 years of vacancy you forfeit ownership of the property and it becomes public, municipal property, that they can either use it or sell it for profit.
I’ve no time to read the 2 articles, but I opened them both and the word “Amazon” does not appear. At least among people I know, no one wants to shop in a physical store. What they want might not be in stock, might be expensive, etc. They’d rather just tap on their phone and wait a couple days for it to arrive on their doorstep. Taxing local businesses won’t fix that.
also no mention of tbe change in household size, the conversion of plexes into single family homes and the loss of density as a result . especially in places like the plateau, rosemont and villeray.
Chris, that had crossed my mind, yes. I order trivial stuff all the time, rather than spend an entire afternoon trudging through stores looking for some specific doodad I want. (I had to do this recently – it’s too tedious to tell in detail, but I ordered a thing, and I was short several whizmos to hold it together, and all told I visited 3 hardware stores looking for the whizmos, and finally was sold some whizmos that were slightly the wrong size by a man who insisted they would be fine. [Voice‑over: “They were not fine.”])
On the other hand, it was nice to get out of the house, and hardware stores always have other things you didn’t know you needed till you go there and look around, and the people at the Azores hardware store are really nice. So all told, not wasted time, but if I’d been able to click on “Whizmos, 3/16″, packet of 12, $4.99” I would happily have done so.
azrhey, please run for office, I will vote for you.
I shop locally (and usually physically) whenever I can, and only go online when there is no other option.
Shopping locally keeps your money here, it keeps expertise here, and it’s just good long-term policy unless you want to live in a hellhole.
There is no point shopping online and voluntarily contributing to your self-exploitation by adding to the wealth of shareholders living in a far-off land who couldn’t care less if you’re living in a neighbourhood with high crime and eyesores.
My experience shopping online has been whizmos that were not fine, gewgaws that were not gewgaws, and foobars that don’t arrive at all. At least in the shops I can tell if it’s fine, if it is what it says it is, and if it’s actually there. What’s bugging me is how often the shop isn’t there, or the shelves are empty, or the staff are absent (physically or mentally), and these weren’t problems I had ten years ago. Saying “physical stores can’t afford to do the job they used to when online mail-order gets all the money” seems false when the online mail-order can’t do the job either.
Mozai, at least with hardware stores belonging to chains (and they mostly do) you can usually use their website to check whether they have something in stock. This has worked for me.
Kevin, I take your point, and I do shop for some things locally, but I plead not driving when it comes to ordering some things rather than trying to track them down by foot and public transit. I also feel that my time has some value.
An item on the cost of equipping kids for back‑to‑school echoes a sign I saw in the Jean Coutu window on the weekend, as if summer is already drawing to a close.
Not only are there school supplies in stores, I’ve seen Halloween items already earlier this month in some home-goods stores (Homesense, Simons.)
When I was a kid, we only got school supplies lists at the beginning of the new school year in late August.
When my kids were in elementary school, we got lists before June 23. And we once bought all the supplies a few days after that.
I also used to get my supplies list when I got back to school. Now my friends get them earlier (which is good, as they’re far more specific than mine was), but every now and then they change the list during the summer.
Mohamed Bekkali, who recorded himself insulting a policewoman via his car window, is facing charges for other loosely defined videos insulting the police that he’s posted to social media.
To clarify it seems he can’t be criminally charged for most insults (which are usually opinions), or abusive language, but only for false statements that he also knows are false and that are intended to defame. They also have to be very serious cases and low value comments, among other things mentioned in the leading court opinion. Anything that is true, or is an opinion so can’t be false (“you’re a loser”), doesn’t count.
Anyway, this asshole whose opinion no one respected and whose videos probably had tens of views now got blown up and spread around by the media, politicians, the police, the police unions and others, and could go to jail for six years for making cops sad, good job everyone!
So is ACAB a criminal statement now?
Finally, a driver who reveals the thought process behind the behaviors drivers exhibit every day.
Ian, remember they’re trying to criminalize insulting the police. You could be fined for ACAB if a law like that comes to pass.
Oh I know, I was just pointing out the ridiculousness of it.
It’s no better than claiming antifa is terrorism.
A 50-year-old pedestrian was killed on Sherbrooke East near Viau, Sunday night. Reports stress that he was not crossing at an intersection. CBC describes the incident as a “collision between the pedestrian and car” – did the pedestrian collide with the car?
(TVA’s Info Patrouille section is full of fatal car accidents Monday morning. It’s the construction holiday hecatomb again.)
La Presse has a two-parter Monday asking if there are too many squirrels in the city. Bit of a silly‑season piece, since it even gets into eating them.
There’s a stall at Jean-Talon market that sells a plant they claim will deter squirrels. I don’t know what its scientific name is, or whether it works, but – disappointingly – the writer doesn’t list it among the methods of squirrel deterrence in the second piece.
I tried that plant when I lived across from a large park and had squirrels ripping the screens off the door to get inside. It didn’t work, I saw them walk right past the plants a few times.
We got that plant as well. The squirrels don’t eat it but they still ravage everything around it.
My squirrels dug the plant out of the pot and threw the soil all over the deck. They didn’t eat it though.
Sorry, I’m laughing now. They are bad dudes!
I got one of those plants once and saw a squirrel burying its head inside as if it was savouring a particularly challenging bouquet of aromas.
In our garden, it’s the ground hogs we have to contend with.
I remember one summer when my partner was waiting for days for the first tomato to ripen on the vine perfectly. When he was ready to pick it, he saw that a squirrel had already plucked it and taken only one bite of it and left it on the ground for him to find.
My friends in Vieux St‑Laurent have had to entrench chicken wire barriers to block the groundhogs from excavating under their house!
As cute as they can be, they are a pain! I had one this year come in through our corniche (which it damaged, and it is VERY expensive to repair).
The botanical gardens recommends plants that are less interesting for squirrels, but there is nothing that will repel them.
I bought a spray, out of desperation as another squirrel had also damaged our patio last year, and that seems to be working so far in keeping them away from the patio.
https://m.espacepourlavie.ca/5-astuces-pour-proteger-votre-jardin-des-ecureuils
I’m OK with the squirrels, we got to watch a family grow up outside our dining room window this spring.
The raccoons that leave their rather large “droppings” on our deck, though….
Those prisons people build with chickenwire aren’t for fun, a physical barrier is really the only method that works. Many a gardener’s heart has been broken by birds and squirrels.
There are too many squirrels! At least around me.
They’ve been in my roof, they eat my windowsill, they eat the window screen, they chew the posts that hold up the balcony, they’ve been in the walls, they’ve destroyed my neighbour’s balcony. Cost thousands to renovate, capture some, trim nearby branches, etc. All the while, some other neighbour is constantly leaving peanuts around (which is against bylaws to feed wild animals, not that this has swayed him).
If they didn’t have cute tails and we used the word “rat” instead, people would see them for what they are.
Chris, I encourage you to Google squirrelgate Westmount. You won’t be disappointed.
I’m disappointed. One guy got a $50 fine. I guess at least the precedent is there that one mustn’t feed them.
The people on my block have collectively spent at least $30k on repairs from squirrel damage. Just last week someone’s heat pump line was chewed through. But every day this other neighbour walks around with his backpack of peanuts dropping them on both public and private property. Talking to him has not worked. I guess maybe I’ll have to be a Karen and rat him out, though I’ve no idea how to go about that.
Chris, it’s so much more. After the guy refused to stop the local public security did a stake out, with a telephoto lens and iirc an undercover car. The busybody then went to every council meeting for months and wrote a song about it. The local paper had uncountably many articles and letters about it. People talked about it all over town; I imagine the lost productivity, both public and private, given the average income in Westmount, was at least in the hundreds of thousands.
La Presse shows supporters of Spain’s soccer team celebrating the World Cup win while Argentina’s fans mourn.
Le Devoir also has the story as does the Gazette.
I heard some honking early in the evening. Honquing? (Google translate tells me it’s bocinazos.)
Students from the suspended Collège supérieur de Montréal held another protest Sunday over their abruptly truncated courses.
I noticed an odd report by Le Devoir:
“L’ouverture d’un nouveau collège privé à Sherbrooke soulève de «sérieuses questions»
“L’établissement a les mêmes propriétaires que deux écoles forcées de fermer leurs portes.”
“The Quebec education ministry did not provide details as to why it had not renewed the permits.”
Explained a few lines above:
“Her immigration status in Quebec is tied to her school, and her study permit is set to expire at the end of August.”
How does the second line answer the first? She has a study permit until the end of August and the school to which her visa is linked lost its permit to operate.
Wouldn’t it be that her permit is linked to the school which no longer is recognized as a school which can be linked to a permit.
But that doesn’t explain why the government did not renew the school’s permits. And obviously she didn’t expect to need hers renewed or changed, so she made no request yet, and i can’t imagine anyone thinks the government would proactively renew or change all of the permits for the affected students.
Oh my god. Seriously? They want these people gone. They want the mechanism that got them here gone.
The mechanism is not “close two random private colleges with a few hundred students each”. They fixed a lot of the “oh no we have international students” by changing the permanent residence pathway. There is a reason these two specific schools lost their permits — someone said faking their stage hours — and it has not yet been made public. Even if they’re looking for a reason, they actually need to find one before they close the schools.
@jeather “two specific schools” It seems it’s now four schools:
Oh now I’m even more curious — the first two schools were related, but the other two don’t seem to be. That said they both were very clearly at risk based on their last permit renewals (Herzing, Veritas). Odd that this year’s publication isn’t yet out.
It’s been a quiet week on the editorial cartoon front. Côté, and now Godin, are in summer reruns.
Chapleau wishes us a happy construction holiday, but he also shows us Pete Hegseth measuring the testosterone level of the American soldier. Godin shows us the biggest bandit of our time.
Ygreck finds the Quebec party leaders pestering him like wasps, and Godin brings flies around another party reference.
Finally we get a soccer joke, this one from Chapleau, and Godin nods back to the Olympics and our ubiquitous orange road barriers.
CBC talks to athletes who boycotted the Montreal Olympics – mostly from African countries which withdrew over the participation of New Zealand because its rugby team was doing a tour of apartheid South Africa.
Radio-Canada recalls a forgotten incident in which a Russian fencer was disqualified because his sword was equipped with a banned device.
They also tell the story of how the technology for testing sports doping was being developed at the time; the World Anti-Doping Agency is still headquartered in Montreal.
I spotted a piece about how Princess Anne competed in the equestrian event in the Games. It’s one of those trivia questions: who was the only woman athlete not gender‑tested that year? (It was already sufficiently established that Anne was a woman.)
The Journal looks at how the Games awoke interest in a variety of sports that hadn’t previously been much practised in Quebec.
La Presse is posting an Olympics archive story every day till August.
La Presse has a three-parter this weekend on the damage done by the presence of so many empty and abandoned storefronts on our commercial streets.
A census of Ste‑Catherine, St‑Laurent, St‑Denis, Mont‑Royal, Parc, Papineau, St‑Hubert and Notre‑Dame found 423 vacant storefronts over 35 km of street. Journalists spoke to ten merchants trying to keep their businesses alive while the neighbourhood falls moribund around them.
A HEC professor tries to explain why these buildings are left empty.
A factor not even mentioned is that most of these dead storefronts have apartments upstairs, which are presumably equally uninhabited and probably uninhabitable, which must add to the housing crisis.
Another point: is this happening to other cities? Has anyone found a solution?
A lot of it is speculation.
One thing these articles don’t address is that property managers with a very large portfolio treat losses as an opportunity for tax deductions. A tqx deductions also hides profit, which is sometimes a valuable thing in the property game. Everyone goes on “oh we nobody wants to let a property take a loss” well, yes they do if they are trying to offset profits. What’s more, it is totally worth their while to hold out for a chain store for a year or two instead of letting a bunch of local scenesters open a cafe or whatever.
Many cities have a reverse occupancy tax, ie, if you have a building that stands empty, you have to pay extra tax on top of the property tax. Montreal won’t do it because they are scared of property developer lawyers, or at least that’s what former PM people said.
For places that are empty simply because of absentee landlords, that is a whole other thing – but the majority of empty stores and apartments in Montreal are not because of an absentee landlord,
Downtown condos, now that’s another situation yet again… and foreign investment has totally been pumping up that Ponzi scheme for years.
How (the heck) can a tax deduction for an unused asset be greater than the income from using the asset? That sounds like an arithmetic error even city hall isnt dumb enough to make. On top of that, theres an expense in property tax that must be paid regardless of if the property is occupied. Not saying you’re wrong its that I’m confused.
Basically, property speculation is a waiting game where you hold out as long as you can for the best tenants or buyers you can possibly attract. Timing is important too but that’s another thing. Here are a few reasons why letting a property stand empty might be a good tactic , though there are more – and keep in mind I don’t agree with this cynical approach to property management. Keep in mind that all of these can backfire, but that’s why it’s called speculation.
1. Property tax is calculated on assessments not just sale price, so if you have a run-down abandoned building it will usually have a lower tax rate than an occupied building.
2.Minimum maintenance costs on an empty building are lower than on an occupied building.
3. Writeoffs reduce your taxable income, ie, it’s a deduction against your before-tax profits. An empty property only costs you basic maintenance and property tax, ideally it costs you less than you save in taxes on the profitable properties in your portfolio. Many businesses support charities for this same reason.
4. If you rent out your property to a low-rent tenant it makes it harder to rent adjacent or similar properties to “good” tenants. Hold out for the best tenant as long as you can. This is why Shiller-Lavy bought up as much of Saint Viateur as they could, for instance.
5, a) If you let an undesirable property stand empty long enough it will start to collapse so it is easier to get demolition permits – you see most often see this with old factories and apartment buildings, and b) an empty lot is more attractive to some kinds of commercial development than refurbishing an existing property. This is what happened with the Seville, for instance.
It’s basically the same idea as renoviction – yes, you lose all your tenants and have to put money into an empty building – but with the hope that your new tenants will pay way more. In the meantime you can write off your costs against your overall business, lowering your tax bill. If you time it right, you dramatically increase your overall income at he cost of a couple of years of lower profit. Screw it up, and well, you can wait for it to be an empty lot as property values go up over time, and resell the land to a developer.
To expand on Ian’s list, renting out a property and managing it takes time. If you value your time at say, $100/hour and managing an occupied property costs you an extra 10 hours of work a month, that’s $12,000 a year you’re out. if the tax (and other) savings are equal to the money you lose on rent, you’re going to lose $12,000 per year just in the time you spend managing the property.
We’re facing an air quality warning as 950 fires burn across Canada.
It’s better for now
Chris 10:04 on 2026-07-21 Permalink
Everything is absolutely not always checked against a database, especially not immediately.
Kate 11:06 on 2026-07-21 Permalink
If you’re stopped by police and asked for your licence, don’t they immediately check to see if you have outstanding fines or other problems? Wouldn’t work if the licence is fake.
Likewise with our new health records, they’d want to look up your RAMQ number, I would imagine.
Nicholas 11:18 on 2026-07-21 Permalink
Well local police will at most only have Quebec databases. For RAMQ if you want to get health care that is more likely to be checked in the database, so presumably you’d want to use someone else’s real info with a fake photo, as surely not everyone checks that, but it is riskier.
Chris 22:48 on 2026-07-21 Permalink
Kate, one doesn’t only show id to the government. bars don’t do database lookups for example and neither do lots of websites or companies.
CE 08:42 on 2026-07-22 Permalink
Some bars will scan your ID card to make sure it’s real. I’m not sure what kind of database they have access to but it seems to give them some sort of information.