The UPAC carried out a raid on city hall again on Thursday morning.
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CBC warns that the boil water advisory won’t end before 10 p.m. after water sampling results, but CTV says it will stretch to Friday morning.
There’s been some grumbling that nobody spoke for the executive committee until today – the mayor is sitting shiva for his brother and Christian Dubois, responsible for public security, finally spoke to the media today. Louise Harel has made hay, people are scrambling to buy water – and environmental groups are agitating against PepsiCo profiting by bottling the city’s water as Aquafina – city water which it buys for 10 cents the 100 L is resold for between $3 and $6 the litre. This is one of the must-reads from the advisory.
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qatzelok
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Marc
@ qatzelok: Your discourse is old and tired. You should find something else.
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Mark
Looks like we’re good to go: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2013/05/23/montreal-boil-water-advisory-second-day.html
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Kate
I haven’t read this opinion anywhere yet, but this incident suggests to me that the Atwater plant is something of a bottleneck. It’s not great if 2/3 of the island depends on one filtration plant with no fallbacks.
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Bill_the_Bear
Actually, the rebottling of tap water as Aquafina caused such an uproar in the UK that PepsiCo was forced to withdraw the brand from the market. If only that could happen here!
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Bill Binns
Molsen has been rebottling Montreal water and selling it back to us for 200+ years. Nobody is mad at them.
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Kate
Yes, but arguably Molson makes certain improvements in the water.
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cheese
@Bill_the_Bear, yeah I was living in England when the Aquafina thing went down. Note that Disani is coke’s water brand and it too was found to be regular tap water which has been put thorugh reverse osmosis to clean it up. Reverse osmosis is a genuine method and I see nothing wrong with it, but if you really are going to buy bottled water (which as we know is not a good idea) why pay Coke or Pepsi to for some filtered tap water when alternatives are available.
@kate, I agree with the notion of improvements to the water. Beer was much safer to drink than fresh water for a long time, and it seems that sometimes it still is today.
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A brief piece on Global News indicates a trend toward cheaper public transit solutions like bus lanes, while dreams like extending the metro or building trams may not materialize for years. This La Presse piece has more on the trend.
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Chris
Plenty of money for Turcot and Champlain though!
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qatzelok
The La presse piece is suggests that riding buses is the CHOICE of Quebecois. After trying out tramways that silently glide by silent bike lanes in Paris or Amsterdam, we still prefer to be bumped around on noisy smelly buses. Nothing to do with bribes (or advertising revenue) from car enabling corporations at all.
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Stefan
the choice of collective transport which differ in cost is in function of density times tax revenue.
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David Tighe
I agree with Quatzelok. Buses would be nobodys’ choice if they knew what the alternatives were. They are particularly unpleasant in Montréal as they have few seats and the poor roads give a horrible ride. It is a dead end strategy and contradicts Québecs’ largely imaginary policies to reduce emissions and electrify public transport. Finally few people would forego their comfortable car to be banged around in a bus.
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Kate
I ride buses a fair bit, but I don’t agree with the chorus that they’re horrible. Of course the experience varies, and getting on a bus at the terminus mid-morning, grabbing a single seat and settling in for a nice read is different from boarding an already crowded bus mid-route at rush hour, I grant you. But I’ve never felt I was entitled to anything fancier than this so neither experience makes me feel oppressed.
The simple fact right now is we’re broke, as a society. We can dream about extending the metro and implanting a brand new tram system, but what we can afford is bus lanes. I do not think this choice is dictated by “evil corporations” so much as broke-ass budgeting.
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Bill Binns
@Kate “But I’ve never felt I was entitled to anything fancier than this”
Really? I may feel that way if the bus was free but it’s not free. It’s not even particularly cheap. For some trips, if my wife and I are together, it’s cheaper to take a taxi.
Three bucks should at least entitle you to a place to sit shouldn’t it?
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Stephen
We would be less broke if corruption weren’t so rampant and if we didn’t waste our money on highway interchanges. If tiny cities in France like Montpellier (pop. 250k) or Strasbourh (pop. 440k) can afford multi-line tramways, there is no reason—aside from lack of political will—that the same can’t be done in Montreal.
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Kate
Three bucks should at least entitle you to a place to sit shouldn’t it?
What does that even mean? It’s a big city. Some routes are crowded. I’m entitled to get where I am going, but I’m not entitled to sit down.
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qatzelok
@ Kate: “I’m entitled to get where I am going, but I’m not entitled to sit down.”
Are you suggesting that Rosa Parks was pretentious and high-maintenance?
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Kate
qatzelok, I am tired of your derails. Please go take your meds, or walk around the block a few times.
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ant6n
We’re broke, until we have to spend a couple of billions for highways; highway interchanges; car-centric commuter rail; new car-centric commuter rail stations that are mostly parking lots; or single-purpose airport express trains.
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David Tighe
I agree with Stephen. Although you would not think it when you look around you we are one of the richest societies in the world. Not to be able to afford comfortable public transport is the result of political decisions ranging from incompetent to corrupt and not from lack of money. Thinking we live in the best of all possible worlds is exactly what politicians want us to do.
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ant6n
@Bill
For most people, the decision to take public transit is made at the beginning of the month. Then the marginal cost of a trip is 0. Even if you take transit rarely, the marginal cost of a trip should be 2.45$. And trips where the taxi costs less than 6$ can be walked anyway, for longer trips it gets easier to justify spending even 3$.Your point is kinda moot, because transit doesn’t really exist for people like you.
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Bill Binns
@ant6n – “Your point is kinda moot, because transit doesn’t really exist for people like you.”
What does that mean? I don’t have a car and depend on public transit to get anywhere outside of walking distance from my home. I do have the fantastic good fortune to not have to depend on the SPVM to get me to work every morning. If I did, I would have bought a car a long time ago.
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ant6n
@Bill
I explained already. Nobody cares about how you don’t like transit. -
Bill Binns
ant6n – Pardon me for speaking out of turn on your blog. I forgot that yours is the only voice that matters here on transit issues.
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ant6n
Oh puh-lease. You’re like “I take trips that are so short that cabs are cheaper, but I expect a seat on the bus!” and “I take transit so seldomly that I don’t even have an opus card; If I had to take it more often I’d get a car”, but then you wonder when people tell you that they don’t really relate to your transit experience.
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jeather
The marginal cost of most public transit trips is at best 4.90 per person — you’re going two ways, usually. For more than one or two people that almost always is higher than the marginal cost of taking a car somewhere, and if we take into account time and convenience, a taxi — part of the public transit network — is often cheaper also. People really want to fight this, but for occasional transit users who go in groups, it’s very often more sensible to take a car if you already own one as it ends up to be both cheaper (looking at marginal cost) and faster. I hope that eventually we increase taxes on cars in order to make public transit much, much cheaper.
I’ve been on trams and I’ve been on buses, and I don’t really see the huge difference in customer convenience or comfort that trams offer, and that at the cost of higher installation fees and less freedom to respond to changing usage patterns.
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ant6n
@jeather
If you make a statement about the global costs of taking transit to the users, I think your comparison is unfair when you compare the marginal costs for somebody with a car but without a monthly pass. You can’t really use that to make a reasonable statement that transit is too expensive for what it is. Maybe individual trips are too expensive for certain trips of certain occasional riders who have invested too much into other modes, but transit overall and the cost of tickets shouldn’t be optimized for those kind of trips.I personally don’t have a monthly pass, either, and use single passes. I try to avoid viewing my transit trips in terms of marginal costs. I prefer comparing the total cost of a month of single trip tickets to what I would spend for other modes (like car ownership), or the reduced mobility of bicycling or walking for all trips.
Regarding the overall subject, I really wish there was more investment in railed transit other than certain types of commuter rail. But not out of an argument based on fare costs that goes something like “It costs me three bucks, for that I expect a seat on a train”.
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jeather
I’m saying that we want even people who own cars to use public transit whenever possible. Given this goal, we are looking at marginal costs for those people, and those costs are too high, especially given the general loss of convenience. As a bonus, charging more for cars to subsidize public transit would ALSO help people who do not own cars.
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David Tighe
I think the main issue is not one of cost but rather of quality of service. Buses are only competitive with cars on trips downtown where parking and general hassle is an issue. For most other trips, if you already own a car you may as well just use it. I wish it were different as it is in most European cities. Here we are constrained by an unexpandable metro and political inertia
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Peter McGill
@bill binns
” I do have the fantastic good fortune to not have to depend on the SPVM to get me to work every morning.”Actually that sounds like a kind of a pretty cool way to get to work. You know, sirens to clear the road in front of you and all that I’m-king-of-the-world stuff.
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There’s a brief report of a woman getting injured in the metro on Wednesday in an incident evoking the fatal slip that killed Audrey-Anne Dumont last month: it appears she stepped between two metro cars and fell to the tracks, but details are lacking.
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Ephraim
How long before the coroner suggests that we should install glass walls in front of the metro. They are already starting to install them in Paris.
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Marc
The STM evaluated that and the cost is just too prohibitive. Plus the new trains coming next year have no gap between them.
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Ephraim
Everyone says that, except of course it’s required when you want to automate the lines… and eventually they will want to automate the lines.
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ant6n
The trains are already automatic. The personnel on the train is mostly concerned with opening/closing doors, starting the train, and making sure nothing happens. As a result we only have one personnel on a train, compared to New York or Toronto, which have two (driver+conductor).
Our trains can fit 1500people, they are not like the dinky skytrain or other automatic metros. So going completely automatic is probably not worth it. Oh and btw, Vancouver’s skytrian is running completely automatic trains, and doesn’t have platform doors.
I’d rather they build high-level platforms along more of the AMT trains and electrify, so that they can switch to one-man operation.
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Marc
And even if they wanted to install platform screen doors today it would be stupid because the new trains have three sets of wider doors compared to the four sets on the current trains.
The TTC is installing them at new stations on the Yonge line opening soon, but they already have their new trains running.
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Ephraim
Paris line 1 is fully automating when I was last there. No one on the train anymore, cameras watch the doors.
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Faiz Imam
Or, do the far cheaper and more intelligent solution of having a barrier between cars, like NYC:
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/nyc-mta-subway-cars-2278-2279-15022312.jpg
http://www.newyorkinjurycasesblog.com/uploads/image/subwaygate.jpg
Via @andyriga
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ant6n
I think they should have more ways for the driver to see what’s going on along the platform. Afaik there’s only a single mirror. There should be several cameras, with screens next to the mirror. That’s a cheap solution, too:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3-J5e9gTudI/UQPv9ZsC1eI/AAAAAAAAL-A/1AitUBbiVPw/s1600/Watching.JPG -
Faiz Imam
We know the new cars have multiple cameras, I figure they’ll just wait till those transition in.
It would probably be to much of an expense to retrofit the existing fleet with that equipment.
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ant6n
I’m proposing cameras on the platforms, not in the cars. From within the car, you wouldn’t be able to see whether a train is clear to go.
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Vito Rizzuto has joined a private suburban golf club and La Presse tries to make its operators feel sheepish. Really? Are private businesses under any requirement to refuse the money of someone like this? If I own a café and Mr. Rizzuto comes in and orders an espresso, is it on me to refuse to serve him?
I don’t think so.
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Bill Binns
Well, “private suburban golf clubs” are famous for picking and choosing whom they let in based on morally ambiguous parameters. If this is a club that regularly says no to Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein but lets in a known gangster, the owners deserve to be called out on it.
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jeather
It does look like this particular golf club lets everyone who can afford to join in.
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qatzelok
Our current moral climate tells us that ALL MONEY is good. Even tar-sands money or mafia money.
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Crime numbers were down in Montreal in 2012, including car theft, traditionally one of the city’s specialties.
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Ephraim
Remember that there is no correlation between crime and crime statistics because people don’t rationally report crime and because police often will classify crimes in different ways to skew crime statistics and/or will pressure/suggest to people that there is no point in reporting a specific crime (for example, telling you that there is no point in reporting drug sellers because they can’t do anything about it, so that their stats look better.)
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Kate
I don’t buy that, Ephraim. It’s a stock conservative position to claim there’s a huge submerged iceberg of crime in order to justify building more jails, lengthening sentences and giving police free rein to crack down. Why is it so hard for people to accept that our society really isn’t a hotbed of crime?
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Mark
I would totally believe that there is a disparity between crime and stats, but *no* correlation seems like a stretch.
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Ephraim
@Kate – Go ask any statistics university prof. Crime numbers just aren’t reliable. Too easy to manipulate.
Not saying that there is more or less crime… just saying that the crime isn’t related to crime reported. To give you an idea on how easy it is to manipulate, if $500 worth of bicycles are stolen is that minor crime, major crime, vehicular crime, household crime? And who bothers to report it? If you don’t report it, the crime still occurs.
Banks in Canada don’t usually report on financial crimes…. it’s bad for business. What about civil crime. For example, a clerk at the store takes a $20 bill from you but gives you change as if it was a $10 bill. You complain, they say it was a $10. You call the cops, they laugh at you and no report is taken, did a crime happen, yup. Is it reported? No. Is it in the stats? Nope.
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Faiz Imam
But generally rates of crime reporting are consistent over time. So if reported crime is decreasing we can certainly assume actual rates have also dropped.
Unless MORE people are suddenly not reporting crimes, then we can assume they really have gone down.
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Ephraim
@Faiz – They aren’t consistent and neither is the classification of crimes.
Which reminds me… do we yet have 911 texting, photo messaging and video messaging? Sure is a heck of a lot easier to send a picture to describe the drug addict shooting up in the corner of the park than to try to describe him to the police.
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Ephraim
@Kate – I was thinking about finding you two better examples. We used to be the bank robbery capital of North America. The number of bank robberies in Montreal is severely down. Does it have anything to do with the police at all? Or is it a result of the banks changing their procedures, installing new centralized tellers that can’t be robbed in the same way? How about cars, is the reason that the number of car thefts has gone down to do with the police? Or does it have to do with the value of stolen cars going down? The manufacturers no longer putting in passenger side keys? The VIN number being engraved on parts? Boomerang and other security systems? The insurance companies being more cautious and insisting on certain measures on cars of higher value? So does the actual number of car thefts have anything to do with crime going up and down and the police themselves? (And in this case, the Tory “tough on crime” thing doesn’t work, because no matter how much you punish for the crime, the real way that crime is diminished is to make it economically non-viable, an area where the police are completely ineffective. It’s not like they can force a bank to install centralized tellers or tell car manufacturers how to make stealing a car harder.)
And in the case of reported crime. You are walking on the street and someone asks you politely for money. You say “no”. They then start to yell and verbally harass you. Did you call the police to report it? You are on the metro and some creep puts his hand on your backside. Did you call the police to report it? You are in the Jean Talon market and someone steals you wallet. You call the bank to cancel your cards, did you go to the police station and register the theft? Did the bank insist that you do? Unreported crimes. (Again the Tory “tough on crime thing won’t work if you can’t get people to report the crimes and most people know it’s a waste of their valuable time to bother filling in a LONG and tedious report that the police aren’t interested in and won’t be able to do anything about anyway.)
The CEIC is now investigating crimes, so for how many years have these gone unreported? And how many will in fact be reported? And how many people will actually be indited for their crimes? Of course it will only be those that are caught. How about the de la Concorde overpass, who was charged? Or was it all civil? (In some countries, the engineer would be held accountable criminally in Canada…. not really.)
Then there is the reclassification thing… robbery or home invasion? petty theft or major crime? Murder or “settling of accounts”. How many children were molested, how many are reported? How many men are going to bother to report rape? What percentage of women report rape? How many closet homosexuals are going to report a crime? How many married people who are having extra-marital affairs? How much blackmail? Etc.
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Kate
That’s a lot of examples. In many cases the question would be: what do you expect the police to do? If someone yells and harasses you in the street, what’s the infraction? Police can warn somebody and tell them to move along, but this probably doesn’t get listed under “crime”. Lots of gray-area stuff like this is not socially desirable but is it worth asking for restitution or expecting society to spend money and effort on charging the person or trying to punish them?
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Ephraim
Kate, it’s harassment (verbal). But the point is that it’s subjective and few people actually bother to spend the time to make the complaint and the police will often pressure you not to. So how can you say that the statistics are real when we know that what’s behind it all isn’t. And much of it is stuff the police can’t really do very much about… like bank robberies. The police show up after they have gone to take a report? Car theft, the police make you go to their office to write up a report? No matter how much “anti-crime” money you throw at it, it doesn’t fix it. So we often don’t bother reporting it. And financial crimes… the banks don’t often even report. I know of a case where about $2 million is missing for the banks, been articles in the newspaper about it, they know who did it… she’s still sitting in her condo and hasn’t been charged with anything because they banks refuse to press charges. $2 million dollars and no one is in jail because the crime hasn’t been reported…. so it’s not really a crime according to the police. Is stealing $2 million dollars a crime to you? Because it is to me. But not part of the statistics, because it was never reported.
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Bernard Drainville promises a new Quebec charter on tolerance this fall. This is supposed to unify all Quebecers.
The bizarre irony here is that the only acceptable stance in Quebec is to be a lapsed Catholic with sentimental regard for the religion’s trappings but no intention to allow it to dictate how you live – in short, the way the province’s white post-Christian majority mostly lives. Such a document risks being simply an enshrinement of the xenophobia of this majority in the guise of rigidly limited areas of “tolerance” and “accommodation” and to allow small-town Quebec to dictate to Montreal why it shouldn’t tolerate “accommodations” for Jews, Muslims and other infidels, while keeping a crucifix in the National Assembly and making Christian holidays into “civil holidays” for purposes of the charter. The PQ knows it’s playing to its suburban and rural base here, who find Montreal’s generosity to its many cultures a tendency to be reined back, not encouraged.
The Liberals think such a document could breed intolerance.
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qatzelok
Societies that don’t have a shared civil theology don’t last very long. In societies like ours, it’s the atheists and amorals (one in the same?) who win the ethical “race to the bottom.”
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mdblog
quatzelok, if a society doesn’t have a “shared civil theology”, is it up to the elite and powerful in that society to forcefully impose one?
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qatzelok
The current Business Elite are the ones who have “imposed” the current immorality that is working so well towards destroying us both physically and socially. The propaganda was pretty strong that convinced us that letting the various mafias “take charge” was a good idea – that this was ‘progressive.’
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Kate
qatzelok, your comments here are not helpful because they’re telling us only about your personal obsessions, not furthering a debate on the issues. In the past you’ve moaned about religion being used to oppress people, now you’re moaning about the lack of religion being used to oppress people. It’s not helpful and it sheds no light.
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Kevin
I recently heard an expression to describe what Drainville is doing: Blowing the dog whistle.
In other words the PQ is using language that turns off many moderates, but goes right to the gut of all the racists and xenophobes out there. And of course, they react exactly like Pavlov says they should.It’s polarizing, but it’s not like the PQ hasn’t always been attracted to polarizing issues.
Will it be successful? It helped Mario Dumont in 2007 — but that support did not last once Herouxville blew over. The monoculturalism that exists outside Montreal and its environs makes such ethnic nationalism a little more likely to succeed in Quebec, but there are many other issues that people think about when it comes time to mark an X on a ballot.That said, as an atheist, I’ve rarely met anyone who claims to be religious who actually practices what they preach such as those Christian ideals of loving thy neighbour. Only someone truly naive could look at the history of the Catholic church — especially in this province and country — and think its leaders had any morals worth touting.
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David Tighe
@Kate. i disagree. It seems to me that Qatzelok is posing ethical questions in an objective or tutorial manner. If he seems to be taking conflicting viewpoints it could be so as to stimulate discussion.
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Kate
David Tighe, maybe. But everything in qatzelok’s view is about how some nebulous elites are using some force – religion, irreligion, language, whatever – to manipulate the poor sods, us. When challenged, he never has anything to say about how he thinks things could or should be different, or how we would get there. I find such positions sterile after a certain point, and as a blogger I have caught myself out thinking “Crap, if I post this story, qatzelok will be on it like flies on shit” and then making myself post it anyway. I don’t want to begin to feel I can’t post on certain themes because they attract certain fruitless lines of discussion.
Like, possibly, this one.
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mdblog
@David Tighe: Excuse me for reading, but I don’t see a question, let alone a question mark in quatzelok’s comments.
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Taylor C. Noakes
The government of the city of Montreal should take to developing parallel legislation that seeks to establish the rules that best suit our own needs within our own borders.
Ergo, if this ‘secularism charter’ is nothing more than a reinforcement of lapsed Catholicism, the city should turn around with legislation of its own, spelling out precisely how we do things here. Same story accommodation. Same story language issues etc etc etc.
It’s in the city’s best interest not just to appear secular, but the actually govern in an atheist fashion – leave your crazy ass god at home where it belongs, in the public sphere, keep your religion to yourself, humanism’s all that counts.
We already have our own climate declaration, declaration of human rights and anti-racism declaration. Why not match every other piece with a local equivalent.
This city cannot be run in the same fashion as the rest of the province. We have our own culture, society, customs etc. Ergo, we should have laws and guiding principles that best reflect our unique needs and desires.
Everything else can follow.
Sovereignty isn’t separation and it isn’t just talk either, it’s how people comport themselves, and a city like Montreal should be as sovereign from the clusterfuckery going on In Quebec City inasmuch as Ottawa.
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Kate
Good comments, Kevin and Taylor. Thanks.
Incidentally, I also find qatzelok’s comments often squelch the possibility of actual legitimate left-wing remarks, since his off-kilter approach kind of taints the observation that yes, in many cases economic elites are manipulating the masses, and what we should be doing about that. Lefty crackpots do more for the right than any amount of conservative argumentation.
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David Tighe
@ Quatzelok: what about a reply?
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Bill Binns
“a lapsed Catholic with sentimental regard for the religion’s trappings but no intention to allow it to dictate how you live”
That’s a pretty good description of me. I would gladly trade the crucifix in the National Assembly, the cross on Mount Royal, the government’s recognition of Christmas and other christian holidays to be able to say no to wearing daggers to school, to having headphones placed on children so they will not be exposed to music, to the nonsense at the swimming pool, to immunity from parking rules for certain groups and all the rest. Having a completely secular goverment is easier and far more fair than trying to accomodate all of the world’s religions in one city.
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cheese
I think it’s odd that qatzelok has associated atheism with amorality, I can’t think of two things further apart. Most atheists I know are very moral people, but perhaps this is because they are of the secular humanist variety (even if they don’t know the term).
I like the idea of having different rules for Montreal, perhaps we should be like a city state. It worked for Italy and much of Europe for a few hundred years, though the cities liked to gang up on each other and fight. Hopefylly we could skip that part and just go for a considered regionalist approach.
Seems like the commenters on this blog (and Kate herself of course) should be running this city. We even have a transport minister in Anton. Why does the established guard make such terrible choices? Taylor are you really going to run for office this fall? I hope you do!
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jeather
Bill, given that Easter and Christmas are federal holidays, we can’t just dump them. There’s a balance between “government acts like it is secular” and “government acts as if all citizens must be secular”.
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Kevin
@Bill
I’d rather dump the cross in the National Assembly, along with the prayers in St. Jean’s town hall, and let people wear daggers to school and let them stop shuffling their cars from one side of the street to the other when the grand gazoo says it’s not acceptable to ‘work’
I see nothing wrong with a kippah on the head of a borough mayor or someone walking around in a nun’s habit. -
Bill Binns
@Kevin – My point is that there should be one set of laws for everyone without exception. If a decision is made to let public employees wear burqas at work it should also be permissible to wear a hockey mask to work or a suit of armor or a clown costume.
If the city wants to suspend parking laws for a few days, they should do it for everyone. Why should I get a ticket in my neighborhood when someone else in another neighborhood got a pass? Can I have a “no tickets week” on my street without coming up with a story about God’s rules for driving? I doubt it.
The swimming pool thing is particularly galling. The city buying the argument “I can’t use this public facility unless you exclude those people over there” is bullshit and no less so because it’s only an hour a week. We all know that a “whites only” hour would never fly. This is no different.
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Jack
I know I posted this before, but it is truly one of the best op-ed pieces I have seen on this subject. Written from the perspective of an ex-President of SSJBQ and Bloc MP.
http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/359768/quand-un-separatiste-se-separe -
jeather
Ok. First we need to get rid of all religious federal holidays. We need to randomise weekends, too, because those are based on religion. We’ll need, obviously, to dump laws that restrict anything on Sundays. Overtime on weekends will need to be dumped, street cleaning and any parking costs/restrictions will have to be the same 7 days a week. School holidays can’t be over Christmas generally, that’s pretty unfair, so we’ll need to redo the school calendars too.
Seriously, though, it’s pretty offensive to consider religious dress at the same level as a clown costume, and our society is fairly heavily built on Christianity as a dominant or state religion — we’d need to rework from the ground up to get rid of the biases that convenience (mostly) Christians, and it would make very little sense to do that when instead we could just give in a little instead of whining it isn’t fair we need the exact same like a kid to their parents.
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mdblog
@Bill Binns: Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to come up with a set of uber laws that satisfy everyone. For the most part, Montreal (and Canada for that matter) is defined by how flexible we are with accommodating different points of view rather than the black and white dichotomy that you seem to be championing. Those kinds of attitude generally are found in the US and 1930s Europe.
We should be proud of the fact that we treat each accommodation request on its own within the appropriate context instead of blindly applying the heavy hand of “the law”. This is what civilized people do – at least in my opinion.
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Kevin
@Bill
Like I said, I don’t believe in any superior being, but I understand there is a huge difference between a clown costume and a head covering and I think it is just dishonest to pretend they are one and the same.(A burka doesn’t qualify — that’s a symbol of tribal oppression, and not imposed by any religion whatsover, even if its adherents come from one particular flavour of one religion).
I have no problems with exceptions being made for any group that asks — as long as you have enough people to qualify as a group and be organized to ask for it. No skin off my nose. I’d be fine with a ‘week of free parking because I’m on vacation”. The key thing — and this is crucial — is that you have to have a reason for it.
For example, when people were drafted for Vietnam they could only claim conscientious objector status if they were religious, but atheists weren’t allowed to do the same. That’s the kind of exception I frown on.
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Mark
Believing that an hour of women-only swimming is the same as an hour of white-only swimming indicates such a fundamental difference in thought from other views here that I’m not sure how a proper discussion could be had about anything to do with equality, accommodation, etc. All arguments in these debates are built on this kind of fundamental assumption, e.g., that either certain groups are underprivileged and deserve different treatment, or that we’re all on a level playing field now and should be treated exactly the same.
The fact that people are divided along those lines is why we have a strange hodge-podge of contradictory progressive and conservative laws, customs, and norms.
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Mark
Sorry that didn’t really add much to the debate, but I just get frustrated watching people try to agree on a solution when their fundamental understanding of the problem is so different.
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qatzelok
@ Kate: “religion being used to oppress people, now you’re moaning about the lack of religion being used to oppress people.”
In both cases, the ideology (of religion or materialism) is dictated from the top down. Europeans used to worship nature (paganism) before they were forced to worship the Jewish Superman god. And the Elite have imposed several unnatural ideologies on the masses since this forced conversion. Their latest trick was to use mass media to make us all anti-social parasites who can only find some kind of fake “status” by appropriating expensive products and services.
Our church is mass media, our god is the economy, and the Banksters our new Popes.
The Church – for all its manipulation and corruption – used to at least counter the lies of the rich. Now the lies of the rich ARE our religion.
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Ephraim
I think we should get rid of all state sponsored views related to religion… of course how you are going to claim you have a right to take Christmas and Easter, I don’t know. And then why should store hours be different on Sunday than Monday, they are all basically the same without discrimination, equal days.
I’m also waiting for the new Quebec flag, sans cross in the middle.
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jeather
I’m intrigued about what history had all Europeans worshiping “nature” (and not various pantheons of gods), who were then forced to convert en masse to Judaism.
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Ephraim
@Jeather – Are you talking about the Khazars? Because forced conversions have been forbidden since around 1000 BCE.
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jeather
I’m talking about qatzelok’s description of history of above, which is an interesting take that seems to lack any actual bearing in reality.
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Kate
I discussed this idea with qatzelok earlier. The tl;dr version: there were a lot more reasons for Europe to convert to Christianity, and a lot more subtle and interesting, than qatzi understands. And I’m no apologist for Christianity, believe me.
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jeather
If he was referring to Christianity, perhaps he should not have called it the Jewish god.
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Kate
Yes, that’s a giveaway where he’s coming from, isn’t it?
I don’t think we need rigidly defined rules in this area, although according to the poll I’m not with the Quebec majority in this area. Apparently most of us want strictly defined areas of tolerance, which is ironic in that tolerance is specifically something that ought to be flexible rather than strictly defined.
I don’t think we need to axe all the traditions to create some kind of level playing field, let alone slyly give Christianity a special place while pretending we’re not.
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jeather
I also don’t think we need rigidly defined rules, because that would — I agree — not really work with the concept of being tolerant.
I do think that to actually get a level playing field, we’d need to kill everything and start over. I don’t think this is practical or even worthwhile. Why not just acknowledge that Christianity gets some preferences built into society and that fairness — as most people learn as children — does not require every single person getting the exact same as everyone else?
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GuySmiley
@jeather: the Christian god and Jewish god (and Muslim god for that matter) are one and the same, FYI.
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qatzelok
@ jeather: “I also don’t think we need rigidly defined rules, because that would — I agree — not really work with the concept of being tolerant. ”
Are there some things that we should simply not tolerate? Bankster rip-offs? Worldwide pollution? Slavery? Torture? Why should we not tolerate them?
All three Abrahamic religions have the same basic structure. And the forced conversion of European pagans to Christianity (based on the writings/editing of a few Jewish writers, and incorporating the Jewish Old Testament and Jewish Ancestor worship) is a historical fact. That many Europeans experimented with Christianity before the 5th Century doesn’t change this act of ideological tyranny.
And the results of Europeans worshiping an imaginary Superman instead of nature are major and world-ending.
If we had decided not to tolerate fake superman text in the 5th Century, the world might not have been destroyed by narcissism and miracle seekers (identity politics and technology). But Europeans obeyed (or were killed) and this act of terrorized-conversion destroyed our relationship to the real world around us.
I hope the new Tolerance Charter takes into consideration the potential harm of ideologies imported from powerful gangs from afar. This includes Catholicism.
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Kate
GuySmiley: I don’t even know what “the Christian god and Jewish god (and Muslim god for that matter) are one and the same” means. I’m not denying there are historical links between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but even a brief study of each religion reveals very different ideas about what their god is for and what they think the purpose of life is. You can’t just say “each of these religions has a single god, so it’s the same god.” Different ingredients went into each of the three and they developed at different times in history. That doesn’t create the “same god.”
qatzelok, you’re putting out some pretty hard-ass white European antisemitic supremacist nutbar ideas here, you do know that – in fact, I’m certain you do, because I’ve encountered that Nazi rubbish about the “evil effects” of importing the “Jewish god” into Europe before.
The sad part is you seem to believe that without this derisory pseudohistory we’d be living in a kind of Rousseauian utopia. Humans can’t create or live in utopias. We’re not that kind of animal.
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qatzelok
@ Kate: “Humans can’t create or live in utopias.”
I completely agree, Kate. Which is why paganism is much more natural and healthy than heaven-based mythology. Man-as-superman (separated from nature) is a result of Abrahamic texts which are – in the end – just charismatic lies. And separating man from nature is the primary crime of these texts, as well as the primary source of our current predicament as a species on the edge of extinction because of our terrible lack of respect for other species and the natural environment.
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Kevin
We’re not on the edge of extinction. Not anywhere close to it. In fact, the only people who think we are on the edge of extinction are Christians hoping for the end of days as described in Revelation.
YMMV. -
GuySmiley
@Kate: this primer on Abrahamic religions should clear up my admittedly laconic comment.
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Kate
GuySmiley, I’m well aware that each successive Abrahamic religion inherited ideas from the earlier ones, but the way they worked out means they each think their god requires different things from them (and different branches of the major religions also have quite different notions, e.g. Sunni vs. Shia, Baptists vs. Catholics, Reform vs. Haredi Jews).
Of course those religions have a certain family resemblance but handwaving the differences with a phrase like “the same god” doesn’t help us see the important differences.
It also sort of suggests there’s an actual god in there, which there isn’t.
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GuySmiley
“It also sort of suggests there’s an actual god in there, which there isn’t.”
@Kate: Yes, I understand that this is an unquestionable article of faith for avowed atheists. :-)
I stand by my comment that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same single god, in spite of theological differences.
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qatzelok
@ Guy: “I stand by my comment that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same single god”
And that the most important feature of these religions – that man is separate from nature – is at the root of our existence-ending environmental vandalism. Trying to live forever in heaven, Abrahamic Elites are creating a hell where humanity and many other innocent species can’t endure.
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The boil water advisory is still in effect Thursday morning throughout most of the island of Montreal and will be reassessed at 5 pm.
The Journal looks at some of the fallout with a photo of empty bottled water shelves, a shortage also bewailed by the Gazette, which also finds that coffee is in short supply along Ste-Catherine.
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Bill Binns
I received an automated phone call at 7pm last night from the “Montreal Metropolitan Agglomeration” informing me of the boil water order. Better late than never I guess.
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DCMontreal
We do so many water related things without thinking and now we have to consider everything! Ouch!
Montreal under boil water advisory; call me when they issue a boil beer advisory http://dcmontreal.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/montreal-under-boil-water-advisory-call-me-when-they-issue-a-boil-beer-advisory/ -
Kate
I’m curious how the city’s going to deal with the growing number of households with no landline phone. Maybe for important things the cell companies need to have a way to send out a general alert – text message or robocall – over the affected area, but I’ve never heard of that being done.
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Kevin
The city gets the test results at 9 p.m. tonight — but says it will take hours before it can analyse them and determine if it is safe to drink.
So we have to boil our water until Friday.Meanwhile, in 1st-world cities, water tests get results with analyses back in 3 hours thanks to the use of PCR, a technique that’s been around for a few decades and led to a Nobel prize or two
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John B
@Kate It’s possible to sign up for alerts by SMS on the city website, but the page is only in French, and I didn’t feel like putting in the effort to read it when I saw it yesterday, (I can speak/understand ok, but reading/writing are harder).
I have to wonder how bad it really is. They didn’t notify hospitals & schools until 11 yesterday, but water had been running brown since at least 8:30, if not earlier. Also, all that happened was that sediment was stirred up that was already in the tank, which means that if they find anything then we’ve been drinking it, (or water that was right beside it), all along.
Either way, communication yesterday was terrible, (I can’t say much about today because, apparently, there’s been nothing to communicate, or maybe it’s extra-terrible today), click my name for the rant I posted about it.
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Carrie
@JohnB, in complete agreement. Why exactly is communications so dismal here? It’s a long list of either poor, bad or inadequate. You’d expect this in a the third world. Here, it just seems odd.
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walkerp
Been drinking tap water as I usually do. So far, no ill-effects.
If only we could attach this same kind of urgency to issues that actually affect our planet and our future. Imagine if everyone realized the incredible damage we are doing by purchasing water in plastic bottles.
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Bill Binns
@walkerp – Why is all the blame for plastic waste placed on people who drink bottled water? If I’m out and about and get thirsty, it’s perfectly acceptable for me to go buy an ice cold bottle of Coke or juice or tea but if I prefer water, I’m expected to lap warm tap water out of my hand in the bathroom?
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walkerp
Your sense of entitlement exemplifies the power of marketing. Not that long ago you would get what was called a “glass” from the kitchen and you would fill it with water from the tap, which would be at room temperature, a fine temperature at which to consume water. And you would have been quite happy about it. Now, you pay a multinational corporation to get that same tap water and pour it into an oil-based container whose production damages our ozone layer and whose waste damages our oceans. The amazing part is that you feel that you deserve to have your water that way and any other way is somehow a slight or a violation of your rights as a citizen.
The difference between water and the other drinks you mentioned is that those other drinks don’t flow freely from taps. Also, water is a necessity and none of those other drinks are. Furthermore, those drinks used to not be distributed in plastic and that transition is another example of how deeply integrated plastic has become in our economy and society. With aluminium and glass, they can be recycled or even re-used.
It’s basically impossible to not purchase plastic today, but I would hope that you would at least try to cut out the plastic packaging that is truly frivolous, such as for bottled water.
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Kevin
@walkerp
You’re stuck in a prior century bub. Most plastic I buy today is made from plants (bamboo is particularly useful) and fully recyclable as well. (Except that it many cases recycling is a bitch move which really means ‘separate the garbage, then throw it in separate piles, because nobody wants to wash and re-sort and buy this stuff)You honestly prefer glass, which weighs more and thus costs more to move — over plastic? Yeesh, even the wine companies are experimenting with lighter weight containers.
Now unlike you, I think that having clean drinking water coming out of my tap is kind of an urgent matter, and you should damn well realize that it is a necessity, and that, omigawd, most people DO NOT actually rely on buying plastic-wrapped water, but only do so because the city fucked up beyond belief.
But you know, when you’re old, and sick, and lying in that senior’s home with a weak immune system, we’ll be happy to piss in your cup of tap water and let your drink it, mm’kay?
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Daisy
I agree with walkerp on this one. I refuse to allow corporations to turn drinking water into a commodity. I carry a stainless steel bottle with me which I refill from drinking fountains as needed. I prefer my water to be cold, so at home I fill a glass jug with tap water and keep it in the fridge (actually I have two glass jugs, so that I’ll be able to drink from the cold one when the other has just been filled). I also agree with the point about plastic. Even when it is recycled it is actually just “downcycled”, as you can never make as high a grade of plastic as the original.
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Ephraim
Costco on Bridge street was raided by the hospitals searching for bottled water. I have a boiler for water. I just boiled some, use it to make ice, etc.
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walkerp
From the wikipedia on bottled water:
“The global bottled water sales have increased dramatically over the past several decades, reaching a valuation of around $60 billion and a volume of more than 115,000,000 cubic metres (3.0×1010 US gal) in 2006.
The rate of consumption more than quadrupled between 1990 and 2005.[3]]”and
“In a study comparing 57 bottled water samples and tap water samples, all of the tap water samples had a bacterial content under 3 CFUs/mL(colony-forming unit) and the bottled water samples’ bacterial content ranged from 0.01-4900 CFUs/mL. Most of the water bottle samples were under 1 CFU/mL, although there were 15 water bottle samples containing 6-4900 CFUs/mL.[20] In another study comparing 25 different bottled waters, most of the samples exceeded the contaminant level set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for mercury, thallium, and thorium.[23]”
So basically, marketing. Nobody in the developed world needs bottled water.
@Kevin go fuck yourself.
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jeather
Sometimes you go out, and you don’t have enough water with you, or you forget and there’s no water fountain, or you spill your water, or whatever. It’s not that there’s never any use for bottled water (my office, and other buildings I’ve worked at, have pipes that are crappy enough that you can’t drink the water out of them, and they always provide those big bottles), it’s just that it should be when there is some problem, not your general method of getting water.
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Kevin
@walkerp
Oh that stings. If only you weren’t conflating 2 or 3 separate issues, none of which have anything to do with what is going on right now in the city of Montreal.The Science of the Total Environment ? That charges $42 per article? Man, that’s what scientists call a completely bogus study that didn’t qualify for a real publication.
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John B
@Kevin: Tell me about the recyclable plant-based plastic. I want to know. Post a link here or E-mail me with the form at http://johnbeales.com/get-in-touch/ (I’m not judging, I’m really interested).
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@walkerp As I mentioned above, if this is all a fuss over stirring up some sediment that was already in our water system then odds are you’re right and drinking the tap water today is no different that drinking it on Tuesday was. However, do people with small children, weakened immune systems, and all that, really want to take the risk? -
walkerp
I apologize for bringing down the tone of the discussion. Cheap rhetorical tactics and especially the excluded middle infuriate me.
Just for the record, I think it is good that the city discovered the sediment and that they alerted everyone. For people at potential risk such as children, the elderly, immune-system deficient and already sick, then of course they should be consuming water at a higher-level of purity. But for the rest of us, I find all this concern and self-obsession to be a depressing mark of the success of consumer capitalism at the expense of our planet and our future.
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Bill Binns
@walkerp – For the record, I was not baiting you. I see the same argument everywhere. Not that plastic bottles are bad but specifically bottled water is bad. I happily drink refrigerated tap water at home. When I am out and hit a dep for something to drink, I will occasionally buy a bottle of water. This is an act that is actually less harmful to the environment than buying a soda since I am at least not contributing to the very dirty industry of sugar farming.
It’s an example of the weird way society looks at environmental issues. Somebody who burns 40 gallons of gas a month in his Prius to get to his job 70 miles away is an enviromental hero. A soccer mom who burns 10 gallons of gas a month in the family SUV is selfishly destroying the planet.
I use a few water bottles a month, I don’t recycle anything and I take 45 minute showers but I have no kids, no cars, no lawnmower and I live in a small apartment. I’ll put my carbon footprint up against yours any day.
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ant6n
I thought Soda bottles have deposits and get re-used.
I guess everybody rationalizes their decisions by creating arbitrary lines they don’t cross (“…but at least I don’t have a car; but at least my car is hybrid; but at least I only drive a few miles; but at least my family doesn’t have two cars; that rich guy there has a private jet!”) -
qatzelok
@ jeather: “there’s no water fountain”
Yes, and the reason we drive our cars is often because there’s no transit. The problem is that limited options are also an ideal sales environment for an expensive product. So when our governments make lucrative friendships with business interests, our inexpensive options can often “dry up.”
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Kevin
@John B
I’m no expert, just, at times, observant. (And other times I freely lob insults, and am glad that @Kate is tolerant enough to allow people throwing sand in her ‘box, and for @walkerp for being the bigger man. Next round’s on me. If we ever meet in person ;)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
http://www.composite-deck.com/bamboo-plastic-composite.html
And a well-balanced article that looks at the pros and cons, . http://www.euractiv.com/specialreport-plastics-pvc/plant-based-plastics-panacea-gre-news-516469
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The UPAC raided the CDN-NDG borough offices for a second time Wednesday, and reportedly also staged a raid at the offices of Union Montreal, which hasn’t completed the process of dissolving the party.
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Four police, two from Longueuil and two Montreal guys, have been arrested on drug trafficking charges.
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david m
a pretty sordid tale, all told. it’s nice that they’re off the streets, but it’d be interesting to get more info on what tipped them to the original investigation. hopefully it was a citizen complaint that they took seriously (don’t know the emoticon for fatalistic arched eye brow).
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Ephraim
Can we take a guess at what the punishment is going to be? Slap on the wrist, drug treatment and then a few days of paid vacation before being put back on the force?
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A piece of green land near the CP tracks in the Plateau, long known as the Champ des possibles, has been given protected status and will be managed by a citizen committee.
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Alex L
Just saw that on facebook. Finally, awesome news!
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Stefan
very good move. i have some very enjoyable memories of that space when living in montreal. a valuable show-piece that real nature can be accessible right in the middle of a city.
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Kate
I used to cross that land pretty often when I had a garden plot in the public garden there. It was nice, but the city used to come raze a lot of it at least once a year, possibly to reduce pollen, but maybe just from an impulse to be orderly. The less razed section was nice and there really were more wild flowers, butterflies and so on than you see elsewhere in town.
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Peter McGill
Perhaps this will be part of the long-promised urban mtn bike park “located near the plateau” that Velo-Quebec keeps dropping hints about, but I doubt it. The mystery continues.
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Michèle Ouimet struggles with the issue of the city’s structuee and governance, finding no illumination in anything said or done so far.
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William
It would be nice if she enunciated her reasons for supporting the merge model.
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Peter McGill
Support the merge model… because the Colbertist central bureaucracy model is part of french dna? (We mean Jean-Baptiste Colbert, not Stephen Colbert)
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In much the same way as Enron destroyed power generation capacity in California in order to sell power from other sources at an emergency price, perhaps Pepsi will eventually be forced to poison our water supply in order to please its shareholders.