The basic issues of the Turcot project are neatly outlined in what seems to be an ongoing feature in La Presse.
Updates from May, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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As widely presaged in local media this week, the Impact are to join Major League Soccer as of 2012.
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A big Rotary convention is coming to the Palais des Congrès next month, which, in addition to the Grand Prix, is expected to make June a big month for the tourism take. (I like the sarcasm here: “un «enrobage à l’européenne», ce qui inclut la possibilité, par exemple, de boire un verre de vin sur une terrasse rue Crescent.”) The Palais is also vaunting a series of major conferences it has nailed down over the next few years, these things being planned, it seems, as much as six years in advance.
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So this morning I spot a headline on Radio-Canada: Ville de Montréal : Un fonctionnaire accusé de fraude, and I’m like OK, is this yet another new story of bad behaviour in local government, or the elaboration of some story I’ve already blogged about?
I don’t recall a time when all three levels of government were so transparently corrupt and untrustworthy as they are now. City Hall is already under the loupe of the police, but can we trust the police? (Granted, it’s the SQ that’s investigating City Hall, not the city police. We are in a time, my friends, when the SQ is our main bulwark against corruption.)
Jean Charest has sacked one minister over dodgy ethics and is inquiring into the questionable funding of another – and that’s just recent stories.
Harper, don’t get me started, has just pulled the funding from women’s groups which had had the temerity to criticize his administration, while as prestigious a medical publication as the Lancet is making the same criticism of his hypocrisy in refusing to help fund access to safe abortion as part of his supposed support of the G8′s maternal health care plan for poorer countries.
And that’s just one of dozens of charges I could list against the Harper government, but federal politics is not the focus of this blog. Shutting up criticism is a sufficient snapshot of the heavy-handed methods of the Harper administration to be going on with.
The key problem seems to be that anyone who gets into power forgets that there are rules, guidelines and expectations to keep in mind before getting your head down into that trough and sucking down as much of the sweet sweet swill as you can before you’re caught. The amazing thing is that so many politicians – on every level, from minor city fonctionnaires up to members of the cabinet – manage to sustain a belief that nobody will notice.
And every instance builds public cynicism. Every instance is a nail in the coffin of public respect for democracy.
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The city’s adding 50 km more cycle paths this year including a north-south axis on northern Lajeunesse to connect to the Laval bike path system, and additions to the Montreal network in LaSalle, M-H-M and Villeray. (A comment on the Radio-Canada site points out that $10M is a high price tag for what’s described as lines painted on asphalt.)
Andy Riga has the official documents on his blog, but in Scribd format. If I want to actually read the content, I have these choices: I can fiddle about with the tiny magnifier icons; if I want to download the documents, I have to sign up for a Scribd account; fullscreen takes over my entire monitor; print wastes paper (and I don’t have a printer). Also for some reason the map is super low rez – why are they (the city or the Gazette, either way) not using Google Maps for this purpose?
I know I occasionally kvetch about the delivery of info via PDF, but Scribd makes PDF seem like bliss. Here’s a clue: put as few gimmicks as possible between the user and the content.