An item in Metro says our police are joining a growing tendency to check a person’s immigration status even when it’s not relevant, a trend seen across Canada – even though the SPVM has a directive that this is a question they should not ask.
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Kate
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Kate
The Gazette is headlining the resignation of a Jewish General surgeon over alleged antisemitism. He’s going to that heartland of tolerance, the United States.
They also namecheck Gad Saad, who apparently made a similar announcement recently. This would be the Gad Saad who called Quebec French an affront to human dignity, right? Which the Gazette seems conveniently to have forgotten. Bon débarras, Saad lad.
Here’s a blog thread about Saad around that time.
Taylor C. Noakes
The big red flag here is that the individual in question refused to make any on record statement explaining his motivations.
If I pitched an article that was “person X is doing Y because of Z”, and I couldn’t get person X to explain Z, I wouldn’t have a story and it wouldn’t get published.
And for good reason: there’s no story. There’s literally nothing to report.
With all due respect to Aaron Derfel, this isn’t news. It’s ragebait.
There’s nothing of substance here (as noted by the almost immediate pivot to discussing Gad Saad, noted pusher of the idea empathy is bad – among other embarassments)
Also, as Kate rightly pointed out, leaving Montreal for the famously tolerant American South, and more specifically a state that had the Confederate Battle Flag on its state flag until what, 20-30 years ago?
Georgia still has active KKK chapters FFS.
There’ve been numerous antisemitic incidents there recently, many of which appear to be far more violent than naything that’s happened in Montreal.
I can think of a far more likely reason why any Canadian physician would move to Atlanta – or anywhere else in the US – right now. Our governments are bending over backwards to undermine public healthcare, and down there a physician can be a millionaire.
Why beat your head against the wall in a public system being undermined from within, where you get shit pay and patient outcomes aren’t what they should be – even at an exceptional hospital like the JGH – when you can get paid properly, expect better patient outcomes (for those with insurance), and get afford to live in a gated community with its own private school?
He’s a highly trained professional at the top of his game and he’s doing what’s best for his family, but I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with antisemitism.
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Kate
Taxi drivers want to take a class‑action suit to the Supreme Court, saying that when Quebec deregulated their industry in 2019, it did not pay drivers anything like fair compensation for their expensive taxi permits.
DeWolf
I hope the next provincial government brings back taxi inspectors because it’s the Far West out there (as our media like to say).
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Kate
Continuing with its Airbnb theme, La Presse notes an infinitesimal fine it received for breaking the law that limits where they can be located.
But Airbnb still lists hundreds of offerings that should not be permitted, and this piece lists other illegal maneuvers being committed under its name.
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Kate
Mount Royal park marks its 150th anniversary this year.
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Kate
The REM will open late on weekends this summer, and not run at all on a few Sunday mornings, which may suck for anyone needing the REM to get to work on a Sunday.
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Kate
A ceremony was held Monday for the start of the Afro‑Canadian Cultural Centre to be located in the old École des Beaux‑Arts building on Sherbrooke Street.
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Kate
Maintenance, usually not the most glamorous of political issues, is now on the minds of the premier and the mayor as the poor state of everything from roads to water mains can no longer be ignored.
Joey
I suspect we are, collectively, underplaying the story about the emergency repairs needed to the Atwater main – I suspect there have been some very tense briefings in the last few days.
CE
A friend of mine used to work for the STM. We walked by the big construction site on Berri the other day and he said they were talking about the job over a decade ago and were dreading having to propose it to the city because it was going to be such an intrusive site that would take a long time to get done.
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Kate
Enlargement of the Palais des congrès is back under discussion, but this time the idea is to densify the existing building, or add more floors. There is a drawing of what this could look like. I do not find it beautiful.
What will happen to that very old block of buildings where Steve’s Music used to be, which was expropriated for an enlargement years ago, is not known, but this piece talks about involvement of private money both in expanding the Palais and redeveloping that block.
Zi Rui
I hope the enlargement means extra space for the conventions held at Palais des congrès. Otakuthon has been a lot more packed these past couple of years.
Taylor C. Noakes
If only there was a large venue located somewhere in this city, ideally connected directly to a subway line and paid for by taxpayers, that could accommodate large groups of people when the Palais des Congres is insufficient.
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Kate
Quebec and Ottawa have finally struck a deal on federal funding for public transit. The blue line is the immediate project mentioned in this hot‑off‑the‑presses piece.
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Kate
Work started on the weekend to repair the water main on Atwater that runs from the water treatment plant in Verdun up to the reservoir on Mount Royal.
La Presse offers advice for reducing water usage.
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Kate
Illegal networks of Airbnb postings have been found in five downtown condo towers and the authorities seem helpless to counter them. The situation is also said to be difficult for regular condo dwellers.
Nicholas
Condos usually have a rule that you can’t sublease, short or long term. Condo board should fine these people into bankruptcy.
Kate
Unless the condo board consists of subletting owners.
Ephraim
The problem here is Revenu Quebec… as soon as you know who is doing it, a 7 year tax audit should start to see if you declared all that income as well as paid the GST and QST. Most people in Quebec would rather have teeth pulled without anesthetic than deal with Revenu Quebec. But the assumption should be that you have cheated the tax man.
The other problem specifically with condos is the insurance. The condo is violating the insurance tract, which means that the insurance won’t pay out for those apartments who are violating the tract. That means that their mortgages are also in default.
Nicholas
Kate you make a good point. But Ephraim shows there are many pressure points. And the condo board have a duty to follow the law and their insurance and mortgage covenants. The non-violating condo owners should be going after the rest, including board members if necessary.
Joey
It’s been a while since I was inadvertently in a Facebook group for one of those Griffintown projects, but my impression is that there are a lot of extremely poorly run co-property syndicates. It’s unrealistic, I think, to assume that volunteer condo boards are going to be the solution to the ‘Airbnb’s business model is to never follow the law’ problem. Though presumably some enterprising legal/notarial firm could probably make a killing putting liens on a bunch of apartments all over town…
GC
It sounds like many of these aren’t even people who buy condos and turn them into Airbnbs, but a lot of cases of renters who are doing the same. That should be even easier to enforce, but I suppose the process with the TAL is very long.
Ephraim
Seriously, there are cases where people have had to keep paying their mortgage while coughing up for repairs out of pocket because the insurance company rightfully refused to cover them.
There should be a mandatory clause in the condo purchase contract. First, a warning from the mortgage holder making it clear, and explicitly signed off on, that if the building doesn’t have the right insurance for short-term rentals, the mortgage automatically goes into default. Second, a reciprocal sign-off from the condo board when they finalize the building’s insurance policy.
It’s a serious problem. Condo buildings usually hold a single master policy for the entire property, and short-term rentals (under 30 days) are almost universally banned.
The law is changing again this September. To get a “primary residence” permit, you will have to provide two proofs that you actually live there, like tax bills or car insurance. Worse for hosts, the condo board must re-authorize the permit every single year. There are no grandfathered clauses; it requires explicit annual permission signed by the board via the government portal. You need ironclad paperwork proving the building allows it—and the city still gets a final veto.
But AirBnB, in spite of promising repeatedly to follow the law and to verify licences, isn’t following the law. And individuals themselves are, as well. But until we make their lives miserable and unprofitable, they will continue to do it. Revenu Quebec needs to do their job. As I have said here, repeatedly, the statistical correlation isn’t between crime and punishment, it’s between crime and apprehension. But in the case of AirBnB, you just need to make it unprofitable and bureaucratic. The harder to do business profitably, the less interested they are.
jeather
Ephraim, why do you only push on Rev QC doing their job and not the CRA? It isn’t that I think RQ shouldn’t, but surely either would have similar effects?
Ephraim
@Jeather in Quebec, Revenu Quebec is in charge of almost the entire dossier. The city is responsible for city tax (and I have one building I reported to the city that if charge hotel taxes, should be paying over $600K more. But GST/QST is the responsibility of RQ in Quebec. And the hotel laws are the responsibility of RQ in Quebec, so the CRA would only be able to go after unpaid income tax, if they could prove it. So RQ has 3 dossiers Quebec Income Tax, GST and QST and then pass it on to CRA if they have them on income tax.
When you find an illegal AirBnB, other than the city, the Tourism ministry and the CITQ all send you to Revenu Quebec which has a form for it.
Ephraim
In case anyone wants to see the anatomy of an illegal AirBnB listing… from the JdM article, the airbnb listing, an example of the AirBnB listing that is illegal is https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/1362374276662085355
Click into “Show More” and down at the bottom you will see “Quebec – Registration number 314648, expires: 2029-07-24”. You can then go to https://repertoire.hebergement.tourisme.gouv.qc.ca/ and see the address it supposed to be registered at. In this case, on duBullion with postal code H2W 2E5. But if you look at the bottom of the AirBnB listing the map clearly shows you a location around H3C 1J2. You can put this into Gemini for example, to give you the straight line distance… it’s 2.6km. This one is evident. But sometimes they find the ONE legal one in the neighbourhood and use that… for all the listings.The opposite is also true, you can give AirBnB a postal code without dates and see everyone in a block and a half or two block radius who is renting. Click in to see if it’s under 30 days.
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Kate
Brendan Gallagher has announced he’s leaving the Canadiens.
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Kate
Édouard-Montpetit REM station was closed for awhile Monday morning when the elevators stopped working.
The station is located 22 floors below street level. The item reads “Without them, many users with reduced mobility would be unable to access the station” although I’d venture to guess that many physically mobile people would prefer to avoid a climb of 22 storeys too.
Tim
I disagree with this policy. Users should be given the choice to descend or ascend the 22 floors instead of closing the station to everyone.
Nicholas
I agree with Tim. If you’re going to class at UdeM you might prefer to climb stairs than walk all the way from Canora. The Exo trains are inaccessible to many users with reduced mobility; should we shut them down permanently until that’s fixed? Make announcements on the train and provide a shuttle for people who need it.
CE
I would assume that those 22 flights of stairs are designated as being for emergency only. If you open them up for regular use, what happens if someone gets injured six storeys up? Emergency workers would have to descend 16 storeys then come back up with the person. I doubt they want to cause such a situation to happen unless absolutely necessary (an emergency evacuation).
Kate
The stairs are definitely marked as emergency only. I passed through the station last week and noticed that. But I don’t know whether anyone would stop you if you opened the door and started on up.
GC
If they are designated for only emergencies, I suppose it’s possible that just opening the doors would set off an alarm? And then you might be subject to a fine, if they caught you. I assume they would catch *me*, at least, since it would take me a bit of time to do those 22 flights.
Major Annoyance
@CE: I happened to transfer from the REM to the Blue Line at Edouard-Montpetit the other day. I took the right-most elevator of the bank of five up (the elevator that was initially set aside for the fire crews when the station first opened). Unlike the other four elevators that one has buttons to access 11 intermediate floors so rescue personnel have direct access to any trouble in the stairwells. The designers appear to have thought through a lot of the possible emergency scenarios.
CE
Interesting. Good thinking on their part.
Nicholas
The story says two elevators malfunctioned. So could they not handle it with three of five? It reopened at 7:22 am. Least they could do is leave it open until crowding got too bad. Have they fixed the problem where you can’t call one elevator until the first one has left? If only three are working set them to run back and forth without rest.
MarcG
If there’s an emergency that causes the elevators to not function or be considered safe, how does the special fire elevator continue being an option? Is it on a generator?
Joey
@MarcG maybe that elevator is more for accessing intermediate floors for maintenance rather than an emergency (and, as we see here, it’s entirely possible for some but not all of the elevators to cease functioning).
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Kate
On Sunday, a party involving an inflatable castle in a Lasalle park was hit by a strong wind, which scooped up the castle and injured 11 people, including one critically injured kid.
CTV also notes a big fallen tree blown down in Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve.
Sadly, it was reported Tuesday that the three‑year‑old girl most seriously injured in the castle incident has died.
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