The CSDM plans to raze and rebuild the École Baril, on rue Adam in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, which in these photos is clearly boarded up and long disused.
I have to wonder what kind of neglect led to buildings – quite a handsome, century-old school building in this case – becoming so riddled with mould that the only thing to do is nuke them from orbit and start again from scratch.
Onetime city hall honcho Serge Pourreaux testified Thursday that city hall culture, dominated by Frank Zampino, sank a key report made in 2004 explaining why project costs were so much higher in Montreal than elsewhere. This is the “secret” report Michael Applebaum has mentioned and that Radio-Canada emphasizes was not so secret after all.
The city’s ex director general Claude Léger began his turn at the CEIC Thursday saying he was powerless to act in a city hall dominated by Frank Zampino. Léger continues his testimony on March 11, because the CEIC’s taking a break.
MUHC stories: Arthur Porter says he’s too sick to come to Canada to respond to questioning; former Porter sidekick Yanai Elbaz was charged and released on bail; a cloud hangs over the MUHC superhospital project that won’t be dispelled until the picture of what happened here is made clear. Here’s a list of the five people embroiled in this scandal.
What I wonder is, in all these affairs of corruption: what becomes of the public’s money that disappeared in various scams and scandals? Can any of it be recouped and put back into the pot for the public good? Or is it all hands-washed let’s-put-it-behind-us, never mind that some of these guys will be sunning themselves at ease for the rest of their lives on their ill-gotten gains?
Considering that several witnesses have admitted their cash grabs and no charges have been laid, I’m going to go all Kreskin and suggest that not a single dime will be run back into the public pot.
Was there ever any doubt whatsoever that this would happen with the superhospital project? They may as well start the investigation into corruption allegations on the new Champlaign Bridge project before the first shovel full of dirt is turned.
@Kate: I think rather that people have upper and lower limits on their corruptibility, perhaps associated with risk. Too little and its not worth while: too much and you begin to think that the stakes are too big, it would be too dangerous to accept. Perhaps I should tell Mme. Charbonneau about my insight.
They should halt the construction until the mess is cleaned up.
France Charbonneau finally dismissed Robert Marcil at the CEIC, asking if he was an imbecile. The inquiry has been using an interesting technique: if someone won’t answer honestly, you keep firing questions until the shape of what they’re avoiding and denying becomes clear.
Is anyone encouraging Madame Charbonneau to run for mayor or premiere or anything at all? It would be nice to have one honest politician to calibrate all the rest against. It would also be nice to have a mayor that let the term imbecile fly once in a while.
One the other hand, if there is only one honest person, then maybe that person should be a judge.
There are plenty of honest people in politics. The problem is in a system that forces political parties to rely on private money. Refusing to take part in it is like refusing to take drugs at the Tour de France: good for you but, you won’t finish in the top 3. And accepting to take part in it effectively binds your hands when you witness the kind of situations described at the Commission Charbonneau.
We shouldn’t have a party system at the municipal level. The only reason we do is because we have about 5 or 6 times more municipal politicians than we need.
@Kevin
baseless claims…
@Anto – I don’t think there are a whole lot of honest people at city hall (if any). The corruption was so out in the open and common knowledge that it appears there was nobody left that it needed to be hidden from. I also haven’t seen any indication that all of this dirty money was being funneled into political campaigns.
@ Anto: ” The problem is in a system that forces political parties to rely on private money. ”
Yes, and guess who ensured that we have this system? Private money, starting with the banksters. They feel more comfortable with a “democratic process” they can rig. Likewise, it is private money that has floated the idea that “we have too municipal politicians.” Private money wants there to be less hands to bribe and less people to potentially squeal. And their media has compared Montreal to such municipal success stories as Detroit (rather than European cities) to “prove” their point.
@qatzelok: That’s what I think as well. And the prevalent cynicism where “every politician is corrupt” only makes the situation worse.
Maybe it’s more true to say that most people are corruptible. Most people have a price. How do we find the ones whose principles hold regardless of flattery and generous bribes?
You make it hard to receive bribes. You make giving or receiving bribes actually punishable quickly. You run things openly.
I would make bribes punishable under several statues including undeclared income and corrupt officials laws. Basically they are required to pay the taxes on the bribes and since it’s tax money even bankruptcy won’t help you, it’s always collectible.
Maybe the deeper problem is income inequality. If incomes were far more equal, there’d be less people with extra cash for bribes, and less desperate people willing to hurt their peers for cash.
I don’t think politicians are usually on the lower half of the income inequality curve. But less income inequality would be good, even if it didn’t affect bribery at all.
@Ant6n
Wait to support the corrupt status quo!
The province can function with 125 MNAs for a population of less than 8 million.
The city of Montreal, with a population of 1.7 million, has about 120 councillors when you roll in the boroughs.
The city of London — 100 councillors
NYC – 51 councillors
Toronto – still bigger than Montreal – gets by with 44
Calgary – about 2/3 the size of Montreal — has 14 councillors.
Now if councillors were actually doing something useful it might be possible to argue their numbers are not excessive — but it is hideously obvious that having lots of people sitting around at City Hall have done sweet f all.
Claude Benoît, who directed the Société du Vieux-Port until questions about her personal expenses got too numerous, is being given quite a nice golden handshake as she leaves and the post itself is abolished.
Andy Riga visits the worksite under the Champlain bridge and explains for us all the work going into holding it up for the time being.
Police themselves are demonstrating Thursday morning to keep an experimental work schedule they liked, but that was rolled back by management. Who polices this demo? And is anyone going to chime in with “idle, entitled loafers wanting something for nothing” type remarks?
I’m certain that the demo will go on without any incident since It would probably be very difficult to set up any agent provocateur amongst them. :P
And if they do riot, what would be the punishment, time off with pay?
Was the protest instantaneously declared illegal?
And is anyone going to chime in with “idle, entitled loafers wanting something for nothing” type remarks?
Sure. They are agitating for a 3 day workweek. Whom would even have the balls to ask for such a thing other than unionized municipal employees? They are quite literally asking for something for nothing. I wonder if they will start wearing their pouting pants again if they don’t get what they want.
What they are asking for is actually worse than what the students are asking for but if you want to compare protest style, let’s tally up the property damage and the number of people caught with molotov cocktails at the police demo.
If some of the cops start a bonfire in the middle of the street, will the “few bad apples” argument apply to themm as well?
I have trouble imagining that police can be effective if they work that long a shift. (But switching it to four long shifts/three days off seems more reasonable.)
The government should plant some fake police in there to start a bit of trouble like the cops usually do. Later, it would be revealed in a youtube video where the one throwing bricks was wearing skinny black hipster dancer shoes instead of police issue boots.
Alanah Heffez ponders the few physical relics of Expo 67 left around the islands.
A big conference is being held Thursday and Friday to discuss the direction of Greater Montreal between now and 2031.
How come I wasn’t invited?
Hey, how come I wasn’t invited??
Jack, Kate, I think you have to live in Quebec City to decide the direction of Montreal. To paraphrase Bowser and Blue, c’est la faute du provinciale!
Its pretty weird. I tried to look up their programme on two well-separated occasions on their site and could not get through. Rather poor management.
24h had a look at our metro stations and took notes on the various kinds of deterioration apparent to the eye.
I thought 24 wasn’t allowed inside the metro stations anymore…
24h is the paper they allow inside the stations. Metro was excluded.
Foufounes Électriques is marking 30 years since it opened in 1983.
played a number of gigs there, always a good time.
First went in ’86, it’s come a long way from the shooting gallery days. Not all for the better. :D
I played gigs there in its previous incarnation, Les Clochards Celestes; of course it goes back long before that… Pal’s Show Bar…
A man who was once associate director general of the MUHC has been arrested and there’s a warrant out for the arrest of Arthur T. Porter and three other associates. The Globe and Mail reminds us that Porter was also appointed by Stephen Harper to sit on the Security Intelligence Review Committee from 2008 to 2011. Sidelights on Porter from a colleague in the Gazette.
Harper is good at appointing quality senators too. :(
Kevin 08:48 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
Becoming maitres chez nous is hard! /sarcasm
Churchy McGee 09:16 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
Let it fall into disrepair – demolition via neglect, and then you can justify (sorta) building something new at a far higher price.
This is how things work in Québec – no forward thinking, at least not in regards to the built environment.
The politicians let our infrastructure fall into disrepair to feed the construction industry, itself thoroughly corrupt and integrated into various political camps at different levels. It’s perverse, but the politicians have managed to secure, for themselves, endless reasons to exist (i.e. campaigning Team A will finally fix what Team B didn’t care to think about), while the taxpaying citizens get stuck with a Groundhog Day-esque farce where we’re doomed to repeat endlessly.
And we say ‘things fall apart’ and shrug, like imbeciles.
On one side of town a construction company builds a condominium building, though they build it under the false-pretense it will be a home for the developmentally challenged. Such a designation allows them to bypass various bylaws. They’ve started two weeks ago and have already put up all four walls.
And then they say “project fell through, gov’t couldn’t commit, but hey – have we got a condo for you!”
On the other side of town a municipal lot, once a park, fenced off to the public, technically a construction zone, with the city paying the company responsible for every single Winter day it’s employees aren’t working.
A bridge is proposed – a ten billion dollar bridge – to serve antiquated technologies, without development potential, when another bridge already exists.
The fed hands out money to stimulus-starved municipalities, and all of us overjoyed when the check is over-inflated – we’re getting something at someone else’s loss, aren’t we the chosen people…
A decade to build a bridge – good thing it’s not in danger of collapsing (though that seems to be the reason we’re discussing building a new one in the first place, right?)
And the schools – here, because of our ‘protective segregation’, seven separate school boards serving a single city, some with too many empty buildings, others over-crowded to the point it’s actually denigrating the quality of education. Drop-out rates are highest in the most crowded school board, though you’d think they’d be getting the lion’s share of school taxes, money they could use to hire more teachers, improve services etc.
But could French kids and English kids go to the same school, regardless of school board?
Bien non. That would be too efficient, lower costs, save neighbourhoods and finally serve to eliminate our inherent colonial tribalism.
Too much of a good idea I suppose.
We have all the technology and local intellectual capital to not only successfully handle problems like this, but to take it a step further and mitigate their impact down the line. But as citizens we simply refuse to demand what we’re due, and allow politicians to run this city and province like it was their own personal kick-back machine.
Do this long enough and people become so jaded they stop thinking about the future altogether – we create a situation that forces us to re-assert our individualism, shy away from public services, and seek to make sure we’re taken care of before anyone else. Fewer people start families, fewer still recognize the society they actually live in.
And the city falls apart.
We must be a disingenuous lot, gabbing as we do about how much we love our city and unique culture, how we’d step over our mothers to protect it.
Ours is a culture of thieves, robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Kate 09:40 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
On the other hand, putting on my devil’s-advocate hat, I suppose it’s arguable that attitudes to primary education have changed so much in a century that it’s become difficult to deliver a modern education in those century-old buildings, even if they were in good shape.
Back then, girls and boys were strictly segregated, to the point where in some cases they were educated in entirely separate school buildings. If taught in the same building, there were separate classrooms and they played in separate schoolyards.
Classrooms were rigidly laid out in rows and discipline was strict. My father had a story about his seventh-grade teacher, a Christian Brother, grabbing a boy by the collar and dangling him out of a second-floor window after some impertinence in class.
Now classrooms have to be designed to handle students accustomed to the much higher level of distraction kids need now, with arrangements for disabled kids, transgender kids, wiring for wi-fi devices and electronic teaching aids, and the lot. It probably is cheaper in the long run to construct a new building, with modern ventilation, to answer these needs.
david m 12:09 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
wow, nice comment kevin.
Kevin 13:20 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
I cannot be a nice, polite, silent tete carré ALL the time.
One of the responsibilities that comes with being a member of the majority is accepting needling comments from those you tread on ;)
Ephraim 15:38 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
One word… LEED.
This should be required of new school buildings.
Tux 16:11 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
Screw buildings. Let the internet schoolin’ begin! More and more of us are telecommuting… why not students too? There’s more and more quality education available online too… MIT OpenCourseWare being an excellent example.
Ephraim 16:44 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
Home schooling has some advantages, but it also has disadvantages including the lack of socialization of children.
Kate 18:03 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
Tux, I think your idea overlooks the fact that a large part of what grade school does is babysit kids while their parents work. A kid can’t sit home alone being remote-schooled, there has to be an adult there, at least till until they reach high school age. Unwatched, I probably would’ve wandered off to read a book or else fallen asleep.
TC 20:07 on 2013/03/01 Permalink
@Kate: I disagree that an old building can’t be retrofitted to meet current needs. The university I attended recently completed a renovation of one of its oldest buildings (100 years old). It is wired, more handicapped accessible, and new windows make it more eco-friendly. The layout of classroom desks can be easily changed. Lots of buildings have been updated all over Europe and North America. The most environmentally-friendly building is almost always the current one, since starting from scratch means using new materials and energy to transport them.