Monthly Archives: June 2009

Raitt’s fake

June 11, 2009 – 12:32 am| Posted in In the news, Opinion

So Lisa Raitt apologized today, bringing out the waterworks a day after she found out that acting like a robot and refusing to address the issue during question period wasn't a working strategy.

The video is all over the place (the news media have finally figured out that when you talk about "tearful" and "emotional" apologies, it's best to have the video). So now all Canadians (and opposition MPs) who might have branded her a heartless politician for calling cancer treatment a "sexy" political issue now feel sorry for a crying woman who lost her daddy and brother to cancer.

What gets me about this isn't that the tears seem so scripted, as if a political analyst backstage told her to go out and cry. It's that the people who are so naive about politicians to think that they don't all put their political ambitions ahead of basic human decency, the ones who were so outraged about Raitt's candid comments as if they told us something we didn't already know, those are the same people who are going to fall for this display, who think she will have learned her lesson and that either she didn't mean it or she's changed.

For the rest of us, her candid comments showed a rare honesty, and her emotional apology is unnecessary.

Sadly, the rest of us are the minority.

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Creative Parking, Summer Edition

June 10, 2009 – 8:32 pm| Posted in Montreal, photos

During the winter, when huge snowbanks are blocking the sides of streets, I've noticed many drivers like to bend the rules when it comes to where they can park their cars.

In the summer, I think it's just laziness.

Bixi parking

Bixi parking (rear)

Really? You're going to park across the entire Bixi station? Do you not know what it's for? Has it not been talked about enough in the news that you don't recognize it?

I know it used to be a parking space, but you don't think the giant contraption (not to mention the red "no parking" bag over the meter post) might have been an indication not to park there?

No wonder we need garish concrete barriers installed next to these stations.

A fire hydrant at Sherbrooke and Clark forces this driver to park a bit ahead

A fire hydrant at Sherbrooke and Clark forces this driver to park a bit ahead

Then we have this guy (or girl), who decided to obey that don't-park-in-front-of-the-fire-hydrant rule but disregard that don't-park-too-close-to-intersections rule.

You'd think the fact that you have to park at an angle might be an indication you're too close to the corner.

You'd think the fact that you have to park at an angle might be an indication you're too close to the corner.

It looks like it's making a turn, but there's no one inside.

It looks like it's making a turn, but there's no one inside.

What gets me is I'm pretty sure I saw the same car parked the same way in the same space a few weeks earlier. Someone needs to give the driver a ticket or this behaviour is going to continue (or worse, spread).

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Concordia’s dollars and sense

June 10, 2009 – 3:59 am| Posted in Montreal

Concordia University and the Concordia Student Union have signed an agreement which will see the eventual construction of a new $70-million building for student activities funded largely by the students themselves through mandatory per-credit fees.

Meanwhile, the CSU says it spent $200,000 on legal fees alone in the past year.

Good thing I'm not a student there anymore. I can laugh about their misfortune instead of crying at the massive waste of money.

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My cable bill and Videotron’s profits

June 10, 2009 – 2:06 am| Posted in Business, Media, Navel-gazing, Opinion

My monthly bill to Videotron passed a milestone this month, crossing the $100 barrier and sitting at $100.38 for my Internet and digital cable.

In April 2008, the bill was $94.74 a month.

Nothing has changed in the amount of service I get. The increase of $5.64 a month is due entirely to Videotron's price hikes:

I could understand this if Videotron's costs were going up and it needed the extra money to stay afloat, but according to Quebecor's financial statements, Videotron makes a shitload of money. Like, $800 million in profit off $1.8 billion in revenue. Not only are those numbers higher than any other unit of the megacorporation, but the profit margin is way, way higher than Quebecor's newspaper or broadcasting divisions.

Even if you take amortization and capital costs out of the equation, that leaves $165 million of profit for Videotron, more than enough to cover interest payments on its $1.8 billion debt.

I'm not that great with quarterly statements, so my numbers might be off here. But Videotron is making a heck of a lot of money off me and other cable subscribers.

No wonder Canada is considered to have the most overpriced broadband Internet in the developed world.

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New summer bus schedules

June 10, 2009 – 1:23 am| Posted in Montreal, Public transit, West Island

The STM has released summer schedules for its bus network. Among the notable changes that take effect June 22:

  • 70 Bois-Franc gets a significant boost in service to complete its schedule. Service now extends to midnight, seven days a week (before it ended about 7pm), and intervals during rush hour drop from 30 to 15 minutes in both directions.
  • 119 Rockland adds Sunday service in both directions. Previously it was a Monday-to-Saturday bus.
  • 164 Dudemaine's western terminus is extended by two blocks, ending at Steinberg St. instead of Bois-Franc, to serve an area the STM considered to have inadequate service.
  • 174 Côte-Vertu Ouest gets midday service on weekdays at half-hour intervals, as well as four new departures in the evening, extending its service from 6pm to 8pm.
  • 209 Des Sources now stops at the Trudeau Airport via the Dorval train station.
  • 210 John Abbott adds a stop inside the Kirkland shopping centre that includes the Colisée, for all the John Abbott students who want to watch a movie after school (or instead of?). The STM cites safety as a reason for this stop, which replaces one at Jean-Yves and the service road.
  • 219 Chemin Sainte-Marie gets the same modification, but only in the westbound direction.
  • 361 Saint-Denis moves to a summer schedule with more departures, particularly on Sunday nights when intervals drop from 45 minutes to 30.
  • 515 Vieux-Montréal-Vieux-Port takes on a summer schedule, which reduces wait times from 20 minutes, seven days a week to 13 minutes on weekdays and 10 minutes on weekends.

UPDATE: The Gazette has a story on the changes based off the STM press releases. Both misspell "Bois-Franc".

Meanwhile, the AMT is reducing service on the new schedule for its Nuns' Island express bus, increasing intervals from 20 minutes to 30. Mitigating this news somewhat is that the STM has just approved a new bus route, probably to take effect in the fall, connecting Nuns' Island with the LaSalle metro station.

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Scenes from the Tour la Nuit

June 9, 2009 – 5:35 pm| Posted in Montreal, photos

Even though I was working early Saturday morning, I passed by the Tour de Nuit on Friday night out of curiosity. And because it happened to be on the way home and I figured I might as well take advantage of the closed streets. I'd never been to either annual tour before, so I wasn't really prepared for just how many cyclists take part.

The Bixi stand was almost full. The Tour extended into Ahuntsic and St. Michel, where stands aren't available.

The Bixi stand at Mont-Royal and Garnier was almost full. The Tour extended into Ahuntsic and St. Michel, where stands aren't available.

Here's what I saw. For more pictures from the Tour la Nuit and Tour de l'Ile, see photo galleries from The Gazette and its cycling blog, as well as lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures on Flickr.

Read More »

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Monitor vs. Citoyen: Lots of whining, little journalism

June 9, 2009 – 4:19 pm| Posted in Media, Montreal

NDG Monitor

Back in March, after the NDG Monitor shut down its print operation after 83 years and decided to go online-only to save costs, the borough of Côte-des-Neiges-NDG relaunched its borough newsletter Le Citoyen to make it more newspaper-like. The Monitor's Toula Foscolos took this as a direct attack on freedom of the press and blasted the paper in a (now-online) column.

Two weeks ago, she did it again, criticizing the paper for being a mouthpiece of the government (which it is).

This prompted a nasty response from borough spokesperson Michel Therrien, saying Foscolos is bitter about the Monitor shutting down and is taking it out on the borough (via Andy Riga). His letter in turn prompted a nasty response from Foscolos, who said it's her job to criticize the borough newsletter.

Both sides are being a bit childish here. A government official complaining that a newspaper is too critical is kind of absurd on its face, no matter what they may think the journalist's motives are. But Foscolos's response, which talks about how the paper's number changed and that's why she didn't get his messages, sounds like the kind of stuff I used to hear from student politicians who thought it better to have an hour-long public screaming match about miscommunication than a two-minute phone call that would have resolved the issue.

What annoys me is that with all the bitter exchanges back and forth (Foscolos is helped out by supportive letters she publishes from her readers) is that the Monitor and Le Citoyen are basically the same. Both of them republish press releases without commentary, write fluff stories about community events and do little original journalism - Le Citoyen because that's not its function, and the Monitor because it doesn't have the budget to report. Instead of spending what little precious time she has doing original reporting, Foscolos leafs through the borough newsletter and complaining that it's not a newspaper.

This city already has enough self-important blowhards who nitpick the media instead of doing original reporting. It doesn't need more.

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Raitt’s state

June 9, 2009 – 2:12 pm| Posted in In the news, Media, Opinion

It's the kiss of death for a cabinet minister when the prime minister issues a statement saying he has confidence in him or her.

"The Prime Minister has confidence in his Minister of Public Works" was the word from Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's spokesperson on Jan. 9, 2002, when the minister in question was a man named Alfonso Gagliano, who was facing allegations of patronage. Six days later, he was dropped from cabinet in a shuffle.

So you can imagine how Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt feels that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has confidence in her, after her latest embarrassment.

It seems her aide had mistakenly left a tape recorder with a mistakenly-recorded private conversation in a bathroom (this was before she was fired for mistakenly leaving "secret" ministerial documents at CTV), and that tape got into the hands of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.

After successfully fighting off an injunction to stop its publication, the Herald put the tape online last night and is going to see its hit count skyrocket over the next few days.

Opposition MPs are, of course, outraged to hear a cabinet minister think that a cancer treatment crisis is "sexy". Except, it is sexy from a political and journalistic perspective, if not a human one. And opposition MPs were just as outraged at Raitt yesterday in question period.

Neverthless, Raitt's days as a cabinet minister are numbered. Not because she's incapable of handling the portfolio (though she probably is), not because she has poor choice of staff (though she does), and not because she doesn't have a soul (she doesn't, and neither does any other politician), but because she got caught talking about the stuff that every politician thinks but no one will admit publicly.

And so Raitt will be replaced by some other politician who's better at lying and keeping things out of the grubby hands of the press. And our government will continue to be run by people who can manage their image instead of people who can do their jobs.

Such is politics, I guess.

Now if you'll excuse me, question period is about to start. And it's gonna be gooooood.

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Journal Lockout Digest: Canoe promos are ads, arbitrator rules

June 8, 2009 – 11:20 pm| Posted in Media

You know how the Journal always has little boxes pointing you to Canoe.ca? For Richard Martineau's blog, or photo galleries, forums, or various other Quebecor cross-platform stuff? A grievance from the union that dates from before the lockout (in fact, dates so far back it mentions Canoe blogs from Patrick Lagacé and Dominic Arpin that no longer exist) has finally been decided on. The ruling from arbitrator Diane Sabourin (PDF) says that these promos in editorial space were promotional material, which violates the collective agreement's clauses preventing the mixing of advertising and editorial content.

This case is actually somewhat complicated because of the Journal's union contract. The contract prevents the Journal from setting up a website without union approval, so instead Journal stories have been published on canoe.ca. The Journal has been pushing the limits of this ability by pointing to columnists' blogs and other material on Canoe. Here, it was determined that the employer crossed the line. Either the contract will have to be changed or such promotions will have to be done in advertising space.

The union, of course, is celebrating.

QUINZE. TONNES.

Free trip to Switzerland

Rue Frontenac's Jean-Philippe Pineault has been "invited" on a trip to Switzerland sponsored by the Swiss tourism bureau. Apparently there are no ethical issues involved here.

In brief

Synergie multi-plateforme globale intégrée de toute


Christian Vanasse's take on PKP during what was otherwise a fairly uninteresting AJIQ awards ceremony.

And at Le Réveil...

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Love is an MP3 download

June 8, 2009 – 6:33 pm| Posted in Media, Slow News Day

Some familiar voices from CBC Montreal read some passages from dearoldlove.com for Jonathan Goldstein's Wiretap show last month (complete audio of the show is here). Can you pick them out?

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