Updates from May, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 22:39 on 2012/05/19 Permalink | Reply  

  The SPVM outline how they plan to implement Bill 78 as another demo takes place in the downtown streets. According to Radio-Canada police mention that wearing the red square is not, for the moment, considered a provocation in and of itself.

  CLASSE is adapting its web presence to skirt around the requirements of the new law.

  Radio-Canada estimates tonight’s crowd at around 3000 whereas Occupy Montreal says 7000 on Facebook. Following #ggi and #manifencours indicates tonight’s demo is close to the edge right now – tear gas and arrests. Fires have also been set.

  Alex L, Fred, Kate, and 1 other are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Hamza 05:02 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Though I am by no means a fan or even an admirer of arcade fire they wore red squares last night in a performance

  • Kate 09:44 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Yes, it’s been all over Twitter and the media.

  • Fred 13:37 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    I think artists of any kind (musicians, actors, etc) should try not to get political – they end up looking stupid in most cases.

  • Alex L 13:45 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    @Fred
    In your opinion. I think the lack of political investment is essentially why we end up with cuckoo politicians like the liberals and a democracy in ruins. Thumbs up, Arcade Fire.

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• 09:42 on 2012/05/19 Permalink | Reply  

  A CROP poll shows massive public support for Jean Charest’s Bill 78.

  They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

  Josh, ant6n, Kate, and 10 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Anto 10:48 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    I’m taking a little comfort in the fact the poll was started Thursday, before the details of the law were released to the public.

  • Maggie_T 11:08 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    They who are in fact clueless still deserve the right to express their self-righteousness and moral certainty in spite of their lack of a clue.

  • ac 14:07 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    Yea I’m conflicted about this Bill. It doesn’t really take away our right to protest, petition government etc. All we have to do is provide an itinerary 8 h in advance; now if you want to hold a successful demo, I hope you started organising more than 8 h in advance! you wanna get people to know you’re holding this thing. I don’t know, doesn’t seem like that’s a big problem to me. With respect to the fines; I agree with em, hell it’s not fair to limit some kid’s ability to go school – that’s insane.

  • St-Henri 17:59 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    It looks like the police are going to be selective with their implementation of the laws (mask law too) and only go after the real trouble makers. Walk softly and carry a big stick.

  • ant6n 20:14 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    @MaggieT
    Are you saying the students are clueless, or the ones who voted in this CROP poll?

    @St-Henri
    Are you saying that selective enforcement of laws is a good thing?

  • Kevin 20:54 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

  • St-Henri 20:56 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    @ant6n That’s too general a question to answer. In the following specific cases I am happy that the police use discretion; (1) The SVPM are going to selectively enforce the mask law tonight and not arrest mask wearers who are demonstrating peacefully. (2) When the police don’t bother a family having a picnic with wine or beer in a public park (3) When someone walks past the cops on Ste-Catherine street smoking a joint and is left alone. How about you, what do you think?

  • Chris 21:10 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    ant6n, selective enforcement of laws is the only way. There just aren’t enough cops or hours in the day otherwise. Maggie_T, yes, but if you google it, you’ll see it’s a famous quote.

  • ant6n 22:42 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    I think one should avoid laws that inherently need selective enforcement to be practical. There are some laws that police offers let slip every once in a while, but this is a law that’s always unenforced unless the police officer decides (s)he doesn’t like you or what you are doing. Also, selective enforcement may mean only certain groups may be targeted, which is bad.

  • Stefan 04:49 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    i did not find the question asked in the poll anywhere.
    ask people if they want that a small sub-group of the population, which does not include them, pays part of the public debt and they will say yes.
    but ask them if they want to live in a country where everybody should have the same chance to get an education and they’ll say yes as well …

  • Raoul 07:22 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Hopefully enough people will defy the law – i say clog up the judicial system and let it grind to a halt – make enforcement more expensive that the increases are worth- they wont have any choice but to strike it down.

  • ant6n 09:15 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    @Raoul
    Isn’t the student strike getting more expensive than what tuition increases would bring in? Must be a matter of pride for Charest to have his way.

  • Kate 10:49 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Seems to me laws are always selectively applied. That’s where profiling comes in – if you’re a young black guy, something you do automatically looks more suspicious to the cops than the same thing done by a middle-aged white guy (and I mean perfectly normal things, like driving a nice car).

  • Josh 15:46 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    By that logic, ant6n, anyone who dislikes a law should just round up everyone who is like-minded to protest, clog the streets and sometimes break laws. Is that how we settle issues in our society? With a street-fight until you get what you want?

  • Kate 17:27 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    There are various ways to protest laws that are perceived as unjust – slow, expensive court challenges, electoral change, and popular demonstration are all means that have all worked and are legal means in democracies – more or less.

    The vast majority of the protesters in our case have been peaceful and are carrying out a kind of protest which is sanctioned and used worldwide. The fact that a small number of casseurs have broken laws does not invalidate the logic of the majority of the demonstrators.

  • Kevin 17:56 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    @St-Henri
    #2 is legal in my hood.

  • Kate 19:17 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Picnic drinks are a good example of ad hoc interpretation police can make. On paper, you’re allowed to have beer and wine in Montreal parks if you’re eating. So if you’re a family group, people of different ages, having an alfresco lunch in the park with a few beers or a bottle of wine, the cops will almost certainly leave you be. If you’re a group of teenagers with a two-four and a couple of bags of chips you may be in for a different dénouement.

  • Ian 19:39 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Technically the drinking with a picnic lunch rule only applies if you are actually seated at a picnic-style table that is city furniture. That narrows the “appropriate” places for picnicking considerably. The again, I have never had a cop say boo about having some wine while picknicking with my family and I am sure a group of teens even will all kinds of food at a proper picnic bench might well get moved along if they cracked a couple of quart beers in a park.

  • ant6n 23:27 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    @Kate
    Assuming that a black person is more likely to have stolen a car is not really “selective enforcement”; I’d call it racial profiling. Because any time the police knows that somebody stole a car, they will enforce the law (I hope so, at least).

    The issue of selective enforcement is more that police will know that there is an infraction going on, and deciding whether they will enforce the law are not. Many times laws may be enforced selectively; but loi78 is such that it _has_ to be enforced selectively; even if the police wanted to always enforce it, it would be completely impractical. Leaving some discretion for police or judges may be reasonable. But for a law which cannot be enforced, this discretion just becomes arbitrary, really hurting the principle that law should treat people equally.

    (Note that in the hypothetical case of the black vs white person stealing or not stealing the car, the initial suspicion may not be equal, but the proof and sentencing, i.e. the application of law, is still approximately equal).

  • Kate 16:24 on 2012/05/21 Permalink

    @ant6n: OK, I take your point.

  • Josh 19:10 on 2012/05/21 Permalink

    I don’t know if you were addressing me, Kate (I never seem to know actually), but your response doesn’t really address my point. ant6n’s logic, taken to its conclusion, argues that because the protesters have caused such a financial headache (on top of all the other headaches) for government, and since the money expended from public coffers is probably now greater than what they would make from the tuition increases, that they should just give up on the law.

    That seems to be what ant6n is arguing, isn’t it? Maybe I’m wrong and someone can correct me.

    Well anyway, ant6n’s argument is about tactics pure and simple. If some other protesters at some other time, run roughshod over some piece of democratically-enacted legislation that you cherish, I won’t have any sympathy.

    Would all the people who favour the protests taking place refuse to condemn these very same tactics, if, say anti-abortion protesters employed them? You can agree or disagree with the movement, that’s one thing, but what I see over and over again in the comments here is people refusing to disagree with the thuggish tactics used by those on the side they support.

  • Josh 19:23 on 2012/05/21 Permalink

    I guess I don’t understand why it’s so hard for the student leaders to say, “We condemn violence of any kind. If any of our members are causing violence, we urge them to stop.” It seems to be really hard for scores of normally level-headed people who support them, too. If I am to negotiate with people, it’s going to be really hard for me to sit down with them until they refuse to condemn the violence some of their supporters are causing.

    What is so hard about that? Yes, I know it’s not *only* students and their supporters who are causing violence, but why not try being the adults in the room about it?

  • Kate 20:02 on 2012/05/21 Permalink

    Josh: I was addressing ant6n. People here have been using at-signs with names but they’re meaningless on this site. One of these days this site design will change and we’ll have threaded discussion stuff, but for the moment we’ll have to make do.

  • ant6n 21:43 on 2012/05/21 Permalink

    @Josh
    I think the point taken was about the problem enacting legislation that can only selectively enforced.

    The point I tried to make earlier saying that the whole student strike movement/protests have potentially been more expensive than the actual increases (from a government point of view) was again a response to Raoul. (S)he claimed that we should grind the judicial system to a halt to protest this law. I’m saying that since Charest doesn’t seem to be concerned with total costs when it comes to tuition strikes and doesn’t “negotiate with terrorists”; it would seem unlikely that grinding the judicial system would result in the government rethinking loi78.

    Regarding students not condemning violence – they have.

  • Josh 11:45 on 2012/05/22 Permalink

    Has CLASSE condemned it and urged its members not to participate? When and where?

• 09:40 on 2012/05/19 Permalink | Reply  

  Some may remember the “reportage choc” in the Journal a few summers ago that alleged that some of the city’s swimming pools were veritable plague spots, bringing about early and, in some cases, lengthy closures.

  Later, the man who had carried out the tests was shown not to be an accredited chemist at all and he was sued by the Order of Chemists. But now he’s won as a court has ruled that even though he isn’t a chemist, he can legally do a chemist’s work – including returning to the inspection of swimming pools.

  Feels like something’s missing in this report, but I’m not sure what it is.

  Kate, Jean-Francois, and Raoul are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Raoul 07:06 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    The worst ive heard/seen is a pic on failqc from a public pool that had a sign saying “closed because of fecal incident” (roughly translated from french) – even in places like candiac where you expect people and their kids to know better – they still took the pool/showers for a giant toilet.

    Filling a peice of tarp with water might be very “Red & Green show” but at least you know its just water :P

  • Kate 10:40 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Raoul, that has nothing to do with this story. In 2006 claims were made that the city’s outdoor pools were dangerously contaminated and there was a big scare, but doubts were later cast on the credibility of the guy who did the study. This present story is about the resulting court case being decided in his favour. The actual state of the pools was later declared safe (and no story ever came out about illnesses caused by pool water) so I suspect this was a Journal scare story that blew up out of proportion.

  • Raoul 15:48 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    all right whatever, go on debating with yourself then.

  • Kate 17:23 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Raoul, if you make irrelevant comments, what do you expect?

  • Jean-Francois 14:00 on 2012/05/21 Permalink

    Petite nuance. L’Ordre des chimistes du Québec tente de faire croire que pour être chimiste, il faut être membre de leur ordre. C’est faux.

    Selon l’Ordre, on peut très bien avoir un Ph.D. en chimie et ne pas être un chimiste simplement parce qu’on ne paie pas sa cotisation annuelle. Tout ça pour dire qu’il ne faut pas conclure que M. Pekovic (ou ses employés) n’est pas un chimiste – et donc n’avait pas les qualifications requises – simplement parce qu’il n’est pas membre de l’Ordre. Tout ce qu’on peut conclure c’est qu’il ne paie pas de cotisation.

  • Kate 16:25 on 2012/05/21 Permalink

    OK, merci pour la clarification.

• 09:33 on 2012/05/19 Permalink | Reply  

  The Gazette looks at the At Home/Chez Soi program that has experimented with giving homeless people a place to live first, then helping them cope with other problems. The program has worked for many of them, although there’s a dispiriting coda into a description of how many of them feel isolated and aimless sitting alone at home. It’s fair to guess these are people without a lot of inner resources or much taste for the kind of minor personal plans that can fill a day – read a book, go for a walk, plant a few flowers, buy food for supper later.

  But the big question is floated by without much comment. The program ends in March next year. Then what? How would you feel if you knew you had shelter and a comfy place to sleep now, but at some point next winter you’re probably going to be turfed back out onto the street? One major thing missing from these lives is continuity of support, and it’s the one thing we never give them.

  Kate, ant6n, and Raoul are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Raoul 07:15 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    the best way to stay out of trouble is to not depend on gov’t programs at all. I learned that the hard way when provincial HR sent me to see all these advisors and councillors over a six week period and told me they could help me go to school – so i get all my ducks in a row, applied and got accepted – and a month letter i get a letter from HRD saying im not eligible anymore because ive been shacked up for a year. (as if my boyfriend working at tim hortons 20-25hrs can afford to cover everything…).

    anyways… gov’t programs: tremendous waste of time. But at least the social workers all got their cut.

  • ant6n 09:24 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    @Raoul
    I personally believe in government programs. But their eligibility requirements should always be as simple as practically possible. The result would be a small government with little bureaucracy, less waste, less abuse. Low tuition is such a program (vs a complicated bursary system). Basic income/minimum guaranteed income is a first tax bracket would be another, which could also supplant welfare and student support as a way for the very poor to pay for some basic necessities.
    These very small, targeted programs, like the one described above, make sense to me nevertheless.

  • Kate 09:57 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Raoul, what do you do about people who simply can’t function well in our society? There are clearly always going to be some people to whom you can’t just say “OK, shape up and get to work” and magically turn them into useful little workers – who helps them? Or do you actually feel nobody should help them and they should be left to die?

    I suspect a lot of people think they should be left to die, but haven’t the cojones to admit it out loud.

• 09:07 on 2012/05/19 Permalink | Reply  

  Writer Taras Grescoe on Montreal’s transit problems and the risks from government not putting enough money into extending and improving the public transit system.

  Also this week, Quel Avenir continued the contrast of Montreal and Ottawa in transit matters, looking at bike racks on buses (something that the STM is trying on just two bus lines so far) and Ottawa’s successful bus rapid transit system.

  Josh, Kate, ant6n, and 2 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Marc 10:10 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    I don’t get why the STM is opposed to the bike racks. Until last week, *every* other transit system I’ve seen in Canada and the US has the bike racks. I was in St John’s, NL last week and they didn’t have the bike racks. That was a first.

  • Kate 23:34 on 2012/05/19 Permalink

    I’ve never seen them in action. Can they slow down a bus’s progress as people attach bikes, detach them, have to get other folks’ bikes down to access theirs, etc.?

  • Josh 04:36 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    They absolutely can, Kate. It can range from, I would say, 20 seconds to a minute to load or unload a bike.

  • Clément 06:24 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    They have them on buses in Edmonton and, right in front of the MEC store, there is a “practice” bike rack. One can use it to familiarize themselves with the operations of the rack without the pressure of not wanting to delay the bus. Since we don’t have them in Montréal, I used it myself to practice. It is somewhat intimidating at first, but once you understand, it’s incredibly simple. 20 seconds, tops.

    BTW, 20 seconds is a lot longer than the time that gets wasted when people get off the bus using the front door instead of the rear door, while new passengers are trying to get in. The front door is for boarding, the rear door for exiting. So simple, yet…

    As to why the bus drivers are against the bike racks, they were also against the OPUS card and before that, they were against the CAM… Change…

  • ant6n 09:37 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    Well, there are a lot of bus lines that have a lot of ridership, more than most North American cities (basically the 10-minute network). These should probably have all-door boarding. Putting bike racks on those may result in delays, no? Have you ever seen bike racks on articulated buses? Either way, they could implement racks on a subset of the lines that aren’t very busy.

  • Kate 10:43 on 2012/05/20 Permalink

    I wonder how safe the racks are for bike ownership. I mean, what’s stopping someone making off with your nice new bike instead of their old beater?

  • Josh 12:01 on 2012/05/22 Permalink

    I only see the things used in the small city where I live. Here, I can report that many people take longer than 20 seconds fiddling with them when they get on and when they get off. And no one walks off with anyone else’s bike because the bus is never so crowded that it would be easy to. These might both be products of a small-town bus system though.