Updates from May, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • 19:04 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    I’ve just Storified up some tweets talking about the chaos in Victoriaville where demonstrators and the SQ are squaring off. No actual news stories yet.

     

    • Jason67 21:50 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      I can hear protest rowdiness from my apartment (near Rosemont metro)…

    • Raoul 07:54 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      These “masked men who threw rocks at police” who are they? people denounce violence but i never read about anyone trying to stop it, the fact that no one ever id’s them is also strange, are they students? under-covers? trade unionists? if they are students youd think some of the associations would put their football teams to good use by having them maintain order in the crowd before police charge it. Then again if publicity is goal then you want police to charge the crowd, though i dont really believe in soliciting pity as a bargaining tactic.

    • Kate 15:45 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      Raoul, the point about masked men is that we don’t know who they are. The “black bloc” theory talks about people who materialize to maximize havoc during any kind of public disturbance. So they could be such freelance anarchists who just have an urge to tear down when any opportunity presents itself.

      They could be agents provocateurs – that’s not a crazy theory, as some of the more violent casseurs during the G20 riots in Toronto were shown to be wearing boots and other equipment identical to police issue, so we know this happens (see RCMP barn burners, for more historical detail).

      Yes, the men in black could also be particularly angry students. But the fact that they’re always men makes me wonder. The real studenty protesters are about equally distributed as to gender.

  • 13:16 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    The transport ministry has unveiled final plans for the Turcot rebuild, tagged now as a $3-billion project.

     

    • Steph 13:41 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      So what they really mean now is $6-billion.

    • Kate 13:44 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Let’s hope it stops there.

    • Steph 13:52 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Would it be too difficult to include a clause in the construction contracts on a final price? And they could also include clauses for deadlines which can be punishable by fines. I’m not a layer but it seems a little too obvious that they leave these things out.

    • William 14:03 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Pics or it didn’t happen

    • William 14:03 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Oh here they are. Very snazzy. http://www.turcot.gouv.qc.ca/Pages/default.aspx

    • Kate 14:26 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Steph, binding guarantees like that would limit how much the big mob-controlled construction firms could suck out of the public coffers. You have to give them a chance to profit!

    • mdblog 17:46 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Now THIS is a waste of money; or at least a very inefficient way of investing it. Where are the protesters when we need them? Oh yeah, they’re fighting against tuition increases.

    • ant6n 17:51 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      @mdblog
      Well, one reason people fight against tuition increases is that they believe that the story that Quebec is broke and has to flip ever penny twice before spending it is a myth – illustrated by wasteful projects such as Turcot.

    • Steph 18:40 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      At what point can we fine/jail the government for being complicit in wasting public money?

    • qatzelok 22:30 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Not only is the government NOT investing in free university for all, it’s not investing much in mass transit either. The message is: you will have no choice but to drive a car because we aren’t spending anything on trains/tramways/new metro lines (unless it’s to get strategic votes in Laval or Mascouche).

    • Kate 15:31 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      Alas, it’s true. They’re saying $3 billion for the new Turcot which everyone knows will be $6 to $8 billion by the time all the bills are in. Meanwhile they fund a conference for transit users to dream up new ways of raising money to support public transit.

  • 10:58 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    All four student groups (CLASSE, FECQ, FEUQ and TACEQ, the last of which hasn’t yet figured much) are to meet with the government Friday at 4:30 in Quebec City, while their groups go to Victoriaville to heckle the Liberal Party annual meeting that was displaced there to avoid heckling in Montreal. Victoriaville is bracing itself for the party.

     

  • 10:47 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    Paul Wells interviews Justin Trudeau; Yves Boisvert interviews Lucien Bouchard.

     

  • 10:40 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    It’s a PDF news release: the STM has named a new director general to replace Yves Devin, who had handed in his resignation as of this year. Carl Desrosiers has been working for the transit agency since 1984.

     

  • 10:37 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    It’s a story today that the Gazette’s Anne Sutherland made disparaging remarks on Twitter Thursday night in response to images of the stripped-down student protesters, people pointing out it wasn’t a beauty contest and her snark was out of line. OpenFile just noted that the Gazette has posted a policy file governing how its writers should behave on social media.

     

    • HL 16:56 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Disparaging remarks?
      You have got to be kidding?
      But of course not. To be kidding, one must have a sense of humour; something sorely lacking among students throwing these temper tantrums.

      Heads up to the idiots insulted by Sutherland’s very entertaining tweets: if you don’t want people to comment on your grotesque physique, KEEP YOUR CLOTHES ON.

    • Kate 18:16 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      She made disparaging remarks. Whether you think she ought to have done this while working for a major media outlet is your lookout, but there’s no denying the evidence that she did.

    • Julia 12:04 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      seems like she apologized on twitter and then deactivated her twitter account — http://twitter.com/sutherlandanne

    • Kate 16:19 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      That’s a bit extreme. I don’t know what her employers demanded, but a working journalist needs a Twitter account. All she had to do was acknowledge she’d been silly. There wasn’t even anyone she had to personally apologize to.

  • 10:02 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    Park Ex landlord Claudio di Giambattista had a fourth building condemned as unfit for human habitation this week, while borough mayor Anie Samson is quoted as saying she can’t find a way to get rid of a man who repeatedly neglects his properties even while a tenants’ group pleads for better treatment by the city. The tenants of the building on Ball Street have to clear out on short notice and find somewhere else to live.

     

    • Raoul 12:19 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Im glad theyre doing *something* but it still falls short. Apart from the fact i keep reading about this guy in the media over the years, there doesnt seem to be a law to prevent slumlord for buying more properties to let them also fall into disrepair. You cant take a car on the road thats falling apart. City bylaws should be just as strict with landowners that let their properties become eyesores and health hazards.

    • Kate 14:09 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      There may be no legal mechanism for declaring someone ineligible to own property, and even if there is, there are bound to be loopholes where a guy can use a family sockpuppet or numbered company to do it. I’m pretty sure this came up in earlier stories about bad landlords around town – it’s often done for tax purposes too.

    • Kevin 10:03 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      Since the public curator can evict people from their homes, leaving them homeless, and sell off the building, maybe that person needs to deal with slumlords instead.

    • Kate 10:59 on 2012/05/06 Permalink

      The public curator‘s meant to assist people with no family or other appointed helpers manage their affairs when they’re too old or otherwise disabled to do so themselves. (Whether they do this job properly is another matter.) That’s pretty far from managing rental issues. The Régie du logement is the outfit that should be looking into this.

  • 09:55 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    The Toronto Star has something of a dossier today on the SNC-Lavalin scandal, which I’m glancing at because they’re so dominant in Montreal. Starting with a timeline that sketches the engineering firm’s entanglement with the Gaddafi family in Libya, there’s responses from critics and analysts (and of course business angles as their stock value drops and investors ponder whether this is a time to buy in). The company’s SEO says an RCMP investigation will turn up other stuff and its chairman also talks about cleaning house in an attempt to keep clients and investors happy.

     

    • walkerp 11:26 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Here lies a bed of scumbags. We should send those behind the decision-making here to Libya…

  • 09:32 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    This has to be one of the nuttiest ideas on the board: building an elevated train shuttle to the airport when we already have track that goes 95% of the way there.

     

    • Steve Quilliam 09:49 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Building an elevated train shuttle is obviously a bad idea and hopefully they won’t spend a dime for any type of study on this matter but at the same time it shows how difficult and complicated it seems to be when dealing with the CP and/or CN. It reminds me of the situation north of the Mile End where no one can cross the tracks to reach métro Rosemont. These people don’t seem to be open on finding solutions although it’s hard to say what they think because we hardly ever hear from them.

    • Mathieu 11:23 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      It wouldn’t be so complicated if they were to use the Westmount sub. (Mtl-W to Lucien-L’allier). AMT has an agreement with CP to have exclusive passenger service there. They could just build an elevated track from Lucien L’Allier to Gare Centrale if they need so much to be connected to this station. There again it would be exclusive.

    • Faiz 11:26 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      ADM can spend any amount of money they want, but there is no way they are getting any funding for this. Even the $200 million previously promised is now suspect.

      Train de l’ouest is a rational project that has reasonably good political support, especially for an incoming election. It’s as near certain a project can get in Quebec. While this is them striking out on their own, what response are they expecting??

    • ant6n 11:47 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      The connection from Lucien L’Allier to Gare Centrale is relatively unimportant. What would really be cool would be a new metro station in Westmount, connecting between the AMT line and the green line. This would enable a one-transfer ride from the airport to anywhere the green line reaches, and a one-transfer ride to anywhere the orange line reaches (via Vendome).

    • Raoul 12:20 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Silly, everyone knows the future is in gondolas.

    • Kate 18:30 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Westmount will never allow that kind of construction, @anton. There are no metro stations inside Westmount – no hospitals either.

      The problem isn’t the hop from Lucien-l’Allier to Central Station, it’s the hop from Dorval Circle to the airport. You really want an airport train to go right to the airport, not drop you 2 km from it and make you take a shuttle. But I don’t think that should justify running an entire new set of elevated tracks – especially for such a poor province as we’re supposed to be.

    • ant6n 20:25 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Well, there’s already a station shell somewhere around the airport (under the airport Marriott?). Also, a simple people mover or even a moving walkway could connect to the station at Dorval. It seems the major reason ADM stopped working with the AMT on a joint-project is the downtown connectivity. Basically according to some survey of airport passengers, gare centrale sounds like a better terminus than Lucien l”Allier. This all ignores that the most important connectivity any airport shuttle should have is with the existing metro network, and naturally somwhere downtown – that’s what the 747 accomplishes very well, btw.

      A green line/AMT station doesn’t have to actually be in Westmount very much, it could mostly be constructed in St Henri: map. The bigger issue is whether the green line is on too steep a slope there which would disallow adding a station without having to redo the hole section between Atwater and Lionel Groulx.

      (btw, the STM published their new full system map and downtown map; finally emphasizing those 10 minute buses. What do you think about the new map, being a graphic designer n’all?)

    • ant6n 20:29 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      (actually never mind, they still keep emphasizing those 400/’express’ buses over the 10-minute buses)

    • qatzelok 09:22 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      What’s funny is that the Turcot – a multi-billion dollar elevated spaghetti junction – is being sold as logical, when it would ALSO be a lot less expensive to simply build more on-ground connections to the West End/West Island. But we’ve been sold on the idea that highways need to be in the sky.

    • Kevin 10:05 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      I don’t understand why we can’t have both a better Turcot AND a real train link to the west island, with a spur to the airport.

      It’s all madness.

  • 08:44 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    New City Gas in Griffintown is to host a posh conference called C2-MTL, taking place later this month and vaunting speakers like Arianna Huffington, Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Eisner. (Some articles have implied that the building was sold, but I’m told by a reliable source that it still belongs to its longtime owners, although it appears to be under flash renovation to make it suitable for this conference thing.)

     

    • Shauna 14:40 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      the NCG was not sold and is still owned by Harvey Lev

    • Kate 14:58 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Yes, that’s what I said above.

    • harvey lev 09:44 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      hi, i must correct you. The buildings belong to me. There are 7 buildings on the property. 3 large and 4 small. The renovations to 1 of the large buildings, built around 1850, have been ongoing for this project for the last 14 months and not “flash”. This building will have a capacity of approx 3,000 for events. It opens as the host site for the 4 day C2 event starting may 22, 2012. ,

      You can see the schedule on the C2 web-site. There are other events on the calendar of new city gas. For info regarding culture in Griffintown consult http://www.corridorculturel.co

    • firedup 10:17 on 2012/05/05 Permalink

      the ncg has been under renovation for almost a year. The C2- Mtl is the first event taking place at this venue. With C2 or without C2 this renovation was going to happen and will breathe new life into this building and in turn open the building to the appreciation of the public.

    • Kate 11:00 on 2012/05/06 Permalink

      Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Lev.

  • 08:23 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    The STM may take over the management of Bixi, although it’s by no means a done deal yet.

     

  • 00:28 on 2012/05/04 Permalink | Reply  

    Students were out for the tenth evening running Thursday evening in scanties and panties. (That La Presse link also has video.)

     

    • Ian 05:40 on 2012/05/04 Permalink

      Well, I saw at least one person I know in that la Presse video…

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