Have you seen so many Transport Quebec trucks in one place in your life?

Infrastructure is one of those things - nobody pays it any attention to it until it fails. People have better things to worry about, so they don't think about their water pipes, their electricity lines, their building foundations or their roads or bridges, so long as they're working properly. But when something goes wrong, any of these can suddenly become a top priority.

For this same reason, those who are in charge of infrastructure tend not to prioritize it. If the people don't care, why should the government? Making a working thing still work is not going to win you as many votes as making a brand new thing. And that's a logic that's not reserved for inept governments. Given the choice between paying a professional engineer to do an inspection on that seemingly innocuous crack in a home's foundation and spending that money on a new big-screen TV, which do you think is going to be the more common choice?

Lessons from NASA

(Feel free to skip this section if you know what STS-51-L and the Rogers Commission are)

When I hear about major infrastructure failures, like the de la Concorde overpass collapse in 2006, I think about the Space Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle was an extremely complex system, requiring thousands of highly educated experts to work together to make it a success. But of all those engineers, scientists, programmers, administrators and other staff, it's just those handful of people who actually board the shuttle for a trip into space that really attract the public's attention. And for every mission, it's only those few days spent actually executing it that people notice (if even that).

On a cold day in January 1986, all those experts worked hard to send one of those space shuttles into orbit. Like a scene from a movie, the flight director asks department heads if they're prepared for launch, and if everyone agrees, gives the "go for launch", which can be revoked right up until liftoff. The launch can even be aborted while in progress. There's a procedure for all that, because those really smart people have pondered every contingency.

Launch delays for the shuttle program were so common as to be routine. Mechanical issues and bad weather were the most common reasons (there are uncommon reasons too). But they're also very expensive, not to mention how bad they look for the public, even if they understand that safety is paramount.

The launch of STS-51-L was delayed multiple times, because of bad weather at the launch site, bad weather at emergency landing sites, and mechanical failure. It was six days after its originally scheduled launch that it finally took off from the pad at Kennedy Space Center. And even then it was over the objection of engineers who were worried about the effect the cold might have on a critical component of the external solid rocket booster.

Actually, it wasn't quite like that. There wasn't some veteran gray-haired engineer sitting at mission control explaining exactly what would happen, screaming that no one was listening to him and guaranteeing that the shuttle would explode if it lifted off. The conversation actually took place internally within the contractor responsible for the rocket booster. The engineers in charge signed off on the launch despite the concerns. And it's not too hard to understand the logic. The concern was theoretical. It wasn't guaranteed that the part would fail, and even if it did, there was a backup.

On Jan. 28, with the weather having warmed up and no remaining reasons for delay, STS-51-L took off. Everything looked fine for 73 seconds, even though the part in question - an O-ring seal around the right solid rocket booster - had indeed failed, along with its backup. By the time anyone noticed something was wrong, the failure led to the solid rocket booster partially detaching, the centre fuel tank disintegrated and the orbiter was torn apart.

What millions on the ground and on television saw was an explosion and clouds of vapor heading in directions they're not supposed to go. The Space Shuttle Challenger had been destroyed, and its seven astronauts wouldn't survive. (Their exact cause of death isn't clear, but they survived the explosion and may have even been conscious as they plummeted to their deaths.)

An inquiry was ordered, and it was thorough. Blame was spread around, particularly among those who dismissed safety concerns because they wanted the launch to proceed. But there was also blame placed on a culture where risks were be minimized because of overconfidence in the safety of the system as a whole. So much redundancy was built in, and minor failures in such a complex vehicle were so common, that concerns about even serious problems were easily dismissed.

The shuttle program was grounded and the next one wouldn't take off until 32 months later. NASA made sweeping changes as a result of the report, and the disaster is even taught to engineering students as a lesson in what happens when one becomes overconfident in safety. The hope was that, for the shuttle program specifically and for major engineering projects in general, such a mistake would never be allowed to happen again.

And then it did.

The circumstances and cause were radically different for the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003. It happened on re-entry, not takeoff, and while there were concerns about damage before it began its doomed descent into the atmosphere, nobody really had a clear idea what kind of damage could be caused by a simple piece of foam flying off the external fuel tank.

Still, the conclusion reached after the second fatal accident in the shuttle program was that NASA had not learned its lesson from Challenger. The culture had not sufficiently changed, and safety concerns were being dismissed wen the likelihood of them causing significant trouble was low.

A hole beneath the elevated Metropolitan Expressway currently being repaired

Risk management

Whenever I hear a politician, a company CEO or anyone else say that safety is their "number one priority" or that they don't take any chances with safety, I cringe. Because really, safety is not paramount. It's a risk, one they try to minimize but only so far as their budget can reasonably take them. If it costs too much money to reduce the risk of injury from almost impossible to impossible, they'll stick with almost impossible, so long as they can do so legally.

And the rest of us are the same. Yes, speed kills, but the vast majority of speeding doesn't result in death. A driver who goes 120 km/h in a 100 zone is increasing the risks to himself and others around him, but the chances are still pretty low that anything bad is going to happen. You buy your car with airbags and crumple zones because you know that the chances are pretty good that someday something might happen, but on a given day the likelihood is too small to even think about.

It's called risk management. Nothing can be made 100% safe, so a balance is reached where there's an acceptable (very low) level of risk that can be achieved economically.

The question, then, becomes where this balance is to be placed. For something where failure is a mere inconvenience (like, say, cable TV), something like 99% or 99.9% is sufficient. People will complain when they get to that 0.1% of the time, but there won't be any commissions convened to investigate it. For infrastructure where failure can mean fatalities (like in a bridge or tunnel), 99.9% is nowhere near adequate. Even a 99.999% success rate would mean failure for one out of every 100,000, or a couple of cars a day on the Turcot Interchange. It has to be 100%, and it has to be everywhere.

Workers do repairs on the St. Pierre Interchange at night to minimize traffic disruption

Quebec, you've lost me

Before Sunday, I had confidence in Quebec's infrastructure. You might think that's ridiculous, with all the news I've been exposed to about collapsing overpasses, crumbling bridges and surprise sinkholes under our roads. But things I had seen gave me more hope than fear. When the government shut down one span of the Mercier Bridge, it acted before there was structural failure and before anyone died. When Transport Quebec imposed lane reductions on the Turcot Interchange, it did so as a proactive measure. While Montreal motorists whined that this was all evidence of the government being irresponsible about infrastructure, I took it the opposite way.

But the collapse of a "paralume" at the entrance to the Viger Tunnel on Sunday changed my feeling on the subject. It was entirely subjective, and maybe not entirely rational (it looks increasingly like this was the result of a mistake in repairs to the tunnel's walls rather than a case of not noticing a badly decayed structure). But as of that moment I couldn't trust Transport Quebec to keep roads safe.

Transport Minister Sam Hamad isn't exactly helping matters. When asked point blank by CTV's Todd van der Heyden whether he's ultimately responsible for what goes on in his department, Hamad avoided answering the question. To Daybreak's Mike Finnerty earlier in the day, he compared what happened to a plumber doing a bad job on your house, saying it was the plumber, not the home owner, who would be responsible. Hamad clearly wants to blame anyone but himself for this.

And yet the man who's responsible for nothing was in charge enough to reassure us that any road that's open to traffic in Quebec is safe - while standing in front of the proof that his statement was clearly not true.

But I'm not calling for Hamad's resignation as transport minister. Yes, he's incredibly bad at media relations, and he can't take responsibility for his own department. But do we seriously think that the next person Jean Charest appoints to this cabinet post is going to do anything substantially different, other than being a better bullshitter?

Odd sight of an empty Ville-Marie Expressway during the morning rush hour

And this isn't just Hamad's fault. Quebec's infrastructure problem predates his tenure as transport minister. It predates the Charest Liberal government. In fact, funding for inspections has gone up significantly since the de la Concorde collapse. There's just far too much infrastructure out there to keep tabs on, even without counting what can happen when someone makes a construction mistake.

Hamad should take responsibility, if not blame, and Quebec needs to seriously look at how it manages its highway infrastructure, through an inquiry if necessary. And inspection reports should be made public. They'll probably show that there are overpasses, bridges and tunnels all over Quebec that are in a critical state. They'll probably lead the media and motorists to panic, in some cases unnecessarily. But they'll also show the full extent of the problem, and what a monumental task it will be to bring it all up to an acceptable level again.

And it's a monumental task that Quebec will undertake half-assed, if at all. Because Quebecers want huge increases in spending on infrastructure maintenance. We just don't want to pay for it.

CTV Montreal viewers overwhelmingly reject paying more for highway repairs

Well, we don't care THAT much

It's an unscientific poll, but I don't think the 1,393 who responded to CTV Montreal's TalkBack question are too far out of the mainstream. Quebecers want roads and bridges to be safe, but they don't want to pay tolls or higher taxes to ensure this. They want the money to come out of nowhere. Maybe from education, or health care. Many probably think there's a few billion in the budgets of the Office québécois de la langue française and Jean Charest's salary as premier to fix it all up, or that once we eliminate corruption in construction contracts everything will balance out.

But really, just like the government, the transport department, and those engineers at NASA, Quebecers are willing to play the odds. If half a dozen people die once every five years or so because of a major infrastructure failure, that's an acceptable loss, or at least not so outrageous that they'd consider paying a few cents more for gas or paying a few bucks to cross a bridge every day.

We'll never admit it, of course. The Ville Marie tunnel collapse didn't kill anyone, but we're still all up in arms about it just because it could have. (The fact that this happened in the middle of summer when there isn't much other news certainly contributes a bit.) Ask any regular Quebecer, and they'll say there should be no risk, no gambling of anyone's safety. They'll say no injury is acceptable.

They'll say infrastructure safety should be the government's top priority, no question.

Well, except taxes. And health care, and education, and the economy. Those other "No. 1 priorities" will take up a larger part of everyone's attention as the months and years go by without a major infrastructure failure. Those millions of extra dollars being shovelled into keeping our roads and bridges even more safe won't be noticed by motorists, except when they see the traffic cones (which they will no doubt whine about). When the next round of across-the-board budget cuts comes around, the transport department and its team of inspectors won't be immune, any more than health care and emergency services workers are.

And then, in a few years, when we see the next bridge collapse, the next tunnel cave in or the next sinkhole develop that either kills someone or looks like it could easily have done so, we'll have this same debate all over again. We'll all shift the blame around, demanding someone else be held accountable.

We certainly won't look in the mirror, and realize that we've reached a subconscious pact with our government that allows them to roll the dice with our safety. Because despite what we say, our No. 1 priority isn't infrastructure safety when we enter the voting booth. It's sovereignty, or the personalities of the party leaders, or health care, or education, or immigration, or whatever big thing has most recently caught our attention.

Like our government, we'll do a lot of talking about how unacceptable this all is. But when it comes time to put our money where our mouth is, we'll suddenly become very silent.

P.S. I wonder who inspects the structures that hold up TV reporters so they can get a better backdrop while reporting on the tunnel collapse.

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An example to illustrate this is a company called Côté Tonic in Quebec City, which has been doing copy editing and page layout work for the Journal de Montréal during its lockout. Stories in Rue Frontenac and La Presse show that the small company did production work during the Journal de Québec lockout and had to fire people after that was resolved, but learned about an impending lockout at the Journal de Montréal before it was launched and even before the end of the labour contract for Journal de Montréal workers.

This information comes out now for a somewhat ironic reason: an employee who was laid off when she took maternity leave complained she was fired illegally. Her complaint was rejected because it was determined that the layoff happened after the Journal asked the company to reduce its workforce. But because labour relations board decisions are public, the dirty laundry comes out into the open.

The union representing locked-out workers claims there are all sorts of fly-by-night operations doing their work in secret, from customer service to page layout to accounting. But they've had difficulty gaining evidence about how they work, and under the current law there's nothing they can do about it anyway.

Also worth reading:

• La Presse's Martin Croteau looks at both sides of the argument about whether the anti-scab law needs to be updated
• Paul Journet has a recap of Tuesday's hearings, including Pierre Karl Péladeau's testimony
• Rue Frontenac's Yves Chartrand and La Presse's Journet on the Journal de Québec union's testimony, including their worry that Quebecor could be planning a second lockout there
• Rue Frontenac's Mathieu Boivin on union boss Raynald Leblanc's testimony
• Rue Frontenac's Charles Poulin on the demonstration the union made by producing this week's paper by remote.
• The FPJQ's presentation to the commission, which focuses on its desire for a separate inquiry into the concentration of media in Quebec (Radio-Canada has a summary)
• Chartrand on the second day of testimony, and statements that the commission will recommend changes to the law
• Steve Proulx on the need to update the law to make all strikebreakers illegal regardless of location
• Union president Raynald Leblanc interviewed by TV5 in France (where the concept of "lockout" doesn't exist because it's illegal)

There's also the Twitter feed of Rue Frontenac's David Patry, or the hashtag #commissionJdeM. The hearings can also be viewed online, in case you have a few hours to waste.

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The resistance has begun...

So last week, the Liberal-controlled provincial government rammed through Bill 115, née Bill 103, which sets rules whereby students in English-language private schools not otherwise eligible for public English education can acquire such a privilege.

And if you believe Pauline Marois, Pierre Curzi and others with similar mindsets, the French language and Quebec society are one step closer to extinction thanks to the evil anglophone invader.

Yeah.

And yet, the public outrage about this law isn't what they expected. In fact, many politicians and pundits are downright shocked that there hasn't been some sort of mass uprising about Bill 115.

As an anglophone, I'll admit that I'm hard-wired to be against whatever the leader of the Parti Québécois is for when it comes to language policy. It's instinctual more than it is reflective.

But I agree with them that this is a bad law and creates a system where the rich have more rights than the poor.

Where we disagree is our alternatives. The PQ would rather deny rights to more people than have the rich be able to buy it. I think we need to look at whether denying English education does more harm than good to the future of Quebec.

The numbers

I don't have statistics on how many students want to enter English private school in order to get around ineligibility, but the impression I get is that it isn't many people. On Tout le monde en parle on Sunday, culture minister Christine St-Pierre gave a figure of 4,000 students out of a total of 1 million. That sounds about right.

Anglophones from anglophone families for the most part already have access to English public education, so when we talk about this issue we're looking at those students whose parents were educated in French (in other words, francophones) or those from outside Canada, both anglophones and allophones who would prefer English education to French. I'll deal with those groups below.

Francophones: Though I suppose there are some people out there whose parents were educated in French but whose mother tongue is English, let's assume that for the most part this consists of francophones whose parents believe that sending their child to an English school will give them a better grasp of North America's dominant language than the English classes they would get in a French school.

This is, quite simply, an embarrassing failure of Quebec's francophone education system. The teaching of the English language in French schools is apparently so bad that francophone parents would rather have their children go to English schools whose paperwork is in English, whose students are English-speaking and whose French classes rarely seem to go beyond the rules of basic grammar (I'm assuming it hasn't changed much from my high school days in the mid-90s). Rather than obsess about loopholes, imagine if politicians asked themselves how they could make Quebec's French-language schools better so no one would want to spend thousands of dollars "buying a right".

Unfortunately, having a serious discussion about the quality of education doesn't score cheap political points as easily as screaming in the National Assembly about whether the Québécois nation is a "grand peuple" or a "petit peuple."

Anglophone immigrants: Anecdotally, the group I keep hearing about at the centre of access to education debates are immigrants from the United States. These people speak English, but for some reason (most likely work-related) they have decided to immigrate to Quebec and contribute to our economy.

Under the French language charter, these anglophone immigrants are forced to send their children - even teenagers more than halfway through high school - to a French-language public school. There, the students can't understand their teachers, their classmates or anything else. How this could be useful as a means of education, when there's an alternative that is specifically designed for them, is beyond me.

So these parents face one of three options: Send their children to private school at great expense, have them educated outside Quebec (even to the point of driving every day to a border town in Ontario) or give up and move out of the province. I fail to see how any of these options benefits the French language.

Allophone immigrants: Because of Quebec's declining birth rate, the number of allophones is increasing in Quebec, particularly in Montreal. Pierre Curzi would have us believe that the vast majority of immigrant allophones become anglophones, but according to the latest census figures, the number of allophones choosing French as their second language has surpassed those who chose English. Note that this includes all allophones, regardless of how long they have been here. For recent immigrants, it's closer to 75% French and 25% English.

For those allophones who are fluent in neither English nor French, it's hard to argue against French being the best choice for the dominant language of education. Despite the doomsayers of the PQ, Quebec is still predominantly French, and it's easier to be a unilingual francophone than a unilingual anglophone, though it's best to be bilingual.

For those with some fluency in either language, it makes sense to continue one's education in that language for the same reason as I point out for anglophone immigrants.

Won't someone please think of the children?

I find it interesting in this debate that nobody seems to give a rat's ass about what's best for the children who are being educated. The PQ talks about the future of the French language, implying that this common good is more important than any other consideration when it comes to choosing what school a child can go to.

The other side of the debate isn't better. The English school boards, represented by the Quebec English School Boards Association (though particularly the English Montreal and Lester B. Pearson boards), talk about their need for increased enrolment, how much they're suffering because fewer anglophone children are entering their schools. I suppose it shouldn't surprise anyone that a bureaucracy is primarily concerned with self-preservation (name me a bureaucracy that isn't), but I can't criticize the PQ's stance on this issue without pointing out the equally self-absorbed mirror image.

The children are mere pawns in this game of tug-of-war, numbers to be tabulated on a political scoresheet. That's probably the saddest part about this whole debate.

A chart of language statistics from Pierre Curzi's study on the French language in Montreal

Grand peuple

Curzi and other sovereignist hardliners like to throw out the statistic that the island of Montreal has fewer than 50% francophones for the first time.

The statistic is valid, having come from the 2006 census. But it's also misleading. It gives the impression that 51% of Montrealers don't speak French, which is not the case. The statistic refers to mother tongue, and those break down as 49% French, 25% English and the rest some other language. Of those anglophones, the majority are bilingual, and the majority of allophones become francophones within a generation or two.

In fact, using a chart from Curzi's own report on the so-called anglicization of Montreal (PDF), it's clear that the proportions have remained pretty stable over the decade studied, with the only difference in the increased number of Quebecers whose first language is neither English nor French. And even then, the spoken language figures remain about constant. Quebec isn't turning English; the statistics in fact show a slight downward trend in the proportion of native English speakers.

Not that I'm worried that the English language is going to disappear from Quebec.

This isn't to say that Curzi is wrong in everything he writes. His 85-page document has 106 references and includes a lot of statistics, but also a lot of one-sided analysis of those statistics that assumes its conclusion and then tries to prove it.

I could get into a long argument about these statistics, with each side throwing out a bunch of percentages to prove that the French language is in freefall or that it's stable or even growing, but this blog post is already a week in the making and I'm getting tired of wading through contradictory statistics. (Besides, I don't want to start sounding like the National Post.) Both the French and English language are healthy in Quebec, but the declining birth rate of both combined with 50,000 immigrants a year means the number of those speaking a third language - particularly on the island of Montreal - is rising.

Throw all the statistics at me you want, it'll be pretty hard to convince me that a language spoken by five million people representing 80% of the population, and with 220 million speakers worldwide (and growing), is in serious danger of extinction.

UPDATE (Feb. 10, 2011): The Gazette's Don Macpherson also uses Curzi's statistics against him.

So what do we do?

I don't pretend to have a magical solution that ensures the French language will be here for the next 10,000 years. I think globalization pressures will eventually cause the world's population to gravitate toward its most popular languages, whether it's English, French, Spanish, Arabic or Mandarin. The business world communicates in English. Given a few hundred years, the world could end up being mostly English-speaking. And I doubt there's much that can be done to stop that.

For the medium term, it might help to focus on some of the causes of decreasing Frenchification than obsessing about raw numbers. Is Montreal becoming less French because of increased immigration? Probably. Are immigrants being too drawn to English? Maybe. Are francophones becoming richer and moving to off-island suburbs in far greater numbers than anglophones and allophones? It seems that way. Do zombies on the island of Montreal prefer eating francophone brains? Absolutely.

Between the carrot and the stick, let's look at the carrot side. I know of very few Quebec anglophones who wouldn't want to speak and write better in French, myself included. So maybe there are ways to help them.

Some suggestions:

• Make all French language courses free. There is a program to educate immigrants to improve their French, and the government offers financial aid for French language courses, but there are still fees. Work on eliminating them and having completely free language courses for anyone who wants to learn or improve their French.
• Improve education of the French language in both English and French schools. The English side has already improved drastically since I was in elementary school 20 years ago. French immersion is being introduced at a younger age and more forcefully, getting young children to pick up their second language when it's easiest for them. A majority of anglophones are bilingual. But this can still be improved. More students should be put into immersion programs, for one.
• Start giving a crap about what happens in the rest of Canada. As unalarmed as I am about the state of the French language in Quebec, it's pretty clear how poor a state it's in elsewhere. While bilingualism rates in English Canada are stable or even improving slightly, they're dropping among younger Canadians, which is a bad sign. French immersion outside Quebec and the Maritimes was in the single digits in 2000. And in New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual province, well ... see for yourself. If language hard-liners in Quebec took half the energy they do maintaining French here and spent it negotiating or promoting improvements to French language education in other provinces, we might see some real movement.
• Focus on taking down cultural barriers instead of putting them up. Quebec has an impressively healthy culture considering its size. Canadian producers in film, music and television look to Quebec with envy. But few anglophones take advantage of it. I don't know why, and I don't know how to fix it, but bringing the two solitudes together culturally will go a long way toward integrating anglophones into Quebec society.
• Put people in schools based on language, not heritage. If we establish that English schools are better for anglophone students and French schools are better for francophone and allophone students, how about sending people to schools based on competence rather than where their parents were educated? Putting a student in an English school with a strong French immersion program shouldn't impede their learning of the French language. If it is, that needs to be fixed.

What not to do:

• Don't restrict unsubsidized private schools. The PQ wants to expand the French language charter to include unsubsidized English private schools, which is kind of scary when you think about it. I'm imagining black-market schools that teach forbidden subjects in an illegal language, the kind of stuff you'd find in a science fiction novel. Fully private schools, whether they're English language schools, religious schools or other, exist outside the public system and shouldn't be interfered with unless they're doing something illegal. Yes, this means that the rich will have better access to education than the poor, but that's life. Unless you're planning to make university education free, outlaw private tutors and start restricting access to bookstores, rich people are always going to have it better than poor people.
• Don't extend language laws to CEGEPs and universities. It's really hard to believe that someone who has gone through French elementary and high school will lose their ability to speak the language because they went to an English CEGEP. Besides, many people choose CEGEPs and universities based on the programs they offer, not the language they teach in. Restricting access would limit educational opportunities for francophones.

I'm not an expert. Half the arguments in this post might be bogus. But this whole issue just annoys me so much that I have to get this off my chest.

If you want more objective analysis, I'd suggest watching some reports from the Téléjournal last week about language in Montreal. You might even learn something.

There. Now that I've solved Quebec's language debate, let's move on to something else.

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Just to recap:

• May 2006: The Quebec government announces it's going to hand a $1.2-billion contract to build new metro cars to Bombardier without putting it out to tenders. It reasons that Bombardier is the only company that can build the cars in Quebec on rubber wheels. Competitor Alstom immediately points out that it could have done the same.
• June 2006: Alstom sues.
• January 2008: A judge rules in favour of Alstom, which he says has a right to bid on the contract.
• February 2008: The Quebec government starts from scratch, opening up bidding for the contract.
• November 2008: Bombardier and Alstom submit a joint bid on the contract. Being the only bidders, they quickly get it.
• November 2009: The Quebec government decides to double the scope of the contract from 340 to 765 cars, replacing not just the oldest cars but the entire fleet.
• December 2009: Chinese company ZhuZhou comes out of nowhere and demands to be able to bid on the new contract. ZhuZhou promptly sues. A Spanish company, CAF, does the same.
• January 2010: A judge rules that because of the expanded scope of the contract, these new companies should be allowed to bid. The STM puts out a call for interest, but competitors argue it's rigged to ensure that Bombardier-Alstom gets the contract. ZhuZhou says it will sue.
• March 2010: Both China's ZhuZhou and Spain's CAF express interest in bidding for the expanded metro contract.
• May 2010: Bombardier-Alstom sues.
• June 2010: A judge rules against Bombardier-Alstom, saying the STM can put out a public call for bids on the expanded metro contract.
• July 2010: The STM decides to start from scratch for a third time, opening up bidding for the expanded contract
• October 2010: The Quebec government decides it will start from scratch a fourth time, and just hand over a $1.3-billion contract without putting it up for bids. It cites the urgency of acquiring new cars. CAF says it will sue.

(Projected):

• January 2012: A judge rules that the "urgency" argument doesn't hold up, and orders a call for bids on the new metro car contract. Bombardier-Alstom sues.
• March 2012: The STM puts out a new call for bids, and 12 more companies come out of the blue to express interest.
• May 2012: The STM picks Bombardier-Alstom as the winner of the bid. ZhuZhou, CAF and a bunch of other companies promptly sue.
• September 2012: A judge rules something, but nobody reads the judgment and everyone just announces they're going to sue each other.
• October 2012: The Quebec people sue the government for incompetent mismanagement of their funds.
• December 2012: The world comes to an end. All evil dies in the apocalypse. Civil courts stop functioning, and all lawsuits are dismissed.
• April 2025: The first new metro cars are delivered. Quebec Premier Patrick Huard participates in a photo op and pretends it was all his doing.

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A mini museum (and souvenir shop) to Gilles Villeneuve on Crescent St. during Grand Prix weekend

During the Grand Prix weekend, I noticed that this bar on Crescent St. had been converted into a museum honouring Gilles Villeneuve, the guy from whom the circuit the race takes place on gets its name.

There were photos of Gilles, videos of Gilles, and some original items in a section roped off lest anyone consider actually touching them. They were brought in from the Gilles Villeneuve Museum in Berthierville for the occasion.

Oh, and there was the souvenir stand. In fact, it seemed the entire point of it was to sell memorabilia related to Gilles Villeneuve. But I'll give them some slack. It's not like I paid anything to get in.

Anyway, fast-forward a month, and the government is considering levying a fine against the museum because those photos contained advertisements for tobacco products, which were caught by inspectors from the health department (apparently they have people who go around looking for tobacco ads).

The story makes it clear that the government hasn't decided whether to fine the museum, which obviously doesn't think it should be fined for showing historic photos to the public. But they haven't ruled a fine out either.

Let's hope some common sense prevails soon. After all, it's not like Marlboro is paying the museum (or Villeneuve) for the ads anymore.

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The scope seems to be pretty large, and could touch on everything from whether newspapers should be subsidized to whether the government should fund a news department at Télé-Québec. (My knee-jerk reaction to both would be "no".)

Although the situation in Quebec media is different from the rest of the world (some would say we're behind the times, which is a plus for newspapers and television networks), I don't know if it's so different that a study like this will bring any new insight into this debate that has already been over-analyzed by self-proclaimed experts all over the world.

More information at Le Devoir, Agence France-Presse (!) and Projet J, which has an interview with St-Pierre.

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• The metro car contract: a depressing timeline
• Premier’s Job 1: Tree naming
• When 90% just isn’t good enough

We're doomed. (via Le Monde Selon Jay)

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Laurent Maisonnave on his iPhone, not that he'd ever cancel his contract unilaterally

The Quebec Liberals this week announced Bill 60, proposed legislation that would strengthen (or "modernize") consumer protections particularly where it concerns long-term service contracts like cellphones. The bill has already (and unsurprisingly) gained the support of the Union des consommateurs, and others. Cellphone providers have stayed silent for the most part, though their advocacy group says the bill is redundant because the industry is already looking to self-regulate (those who buy this please raise your hands).

The full text of the bill is online (PDF). It hasn't been debated in the National Assembly yet, so it could very well be changed significantly before it becomes law.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Changes to contracts must come with 60 days' notice and the consumer has the ability to cancel the contract without penalty if the changes involve "an increase in the consumer's obligations or a reduction in the merchant's obligations"
• Such changes can't affect "an essential element of the contract" like the nature of the service offered
• Fixed-term service contracts can't be unilaterally cancelled by the provider
• Consumers can't be required to pay penalty fees beyond simple interest charges for missed payments
• Merchants are required to fully explain existing warranties before asking customers if they would like extended warranties
• If you buy an item second-hand that's still under warranty, manufacturers can't require that you prove the previous owner abided by the warranty's conditions
• Gift certificates and gift cards cannot have expiry dates, and must come with written explanations of how to check the balance on them. They also cannot be subject to fees
• Contracts must come with various things in writing, including the total dollar value of "inducements" (like free cellphones)
• Contracts cannot be automatically renewed
• You can't be charged for service while the device you use to access that service (assuming it was provided with the contract) is being repaired
• Consumers can unilaterally cancel contracts and pay back the value of any inducements provided at contract signing (or 10% of the remainder of the contract, or $50, depending on the circumstance)
• Advertisements must include the full cost of services, less taxes (though it's hard to see how this would be enforced since cellphones, cable, Internet and other services come with different plans)
• In case a company breaks any of these provisions, the government or a recognized consumer advocacy body can seek an injunction forcing the provider to comply
• The bill also contains some minor provisions dealing with travel agents

A lot of these are common sense (no one should be allowed to unilaterally change a contract without the other side's consent, and companies shouldn't get free money out of gift cards). Others will probably be criticized because they allow loopholes that lead to abuse (for example, if I know Rogers is about to change their contract, can I get a three-year free iPhone deal and then cancel the contract a week later without paying a penalty and get a free iPhone?). Still others are open to interpretation (we could expect arguments about whether a certain change really increases the obligation of a consumer).

Others sound like they could be downright annoying, like being forced to sit down while a Best Buy employee reads out the complete text of a manufacturer's warranty to you.

But all in all, it's a good bill, and provides some valuable protections for consumers against abusive contracts. Law-abiding businesses should be able to point out loopholes that might be exploited against them, but let's hope the lobbyists don't start torpedoing parts of this bill just because it might cut down on their bottom line.

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As an anglophone Quebecer, it always annoys me when people confuse "Québécois" with "French-Canadian". Not all Quebecers are francophone, and not all francophones in Canada live in Quebec.

It's not just the Rest of Canada that does this, it's also many of the Québécois themselves. Us anglos are really better off living in Toronto, where we belong. And French-speaking Canadians outside Quebec are ignored because they won't be part of the new sovereign country anyway.

Thankfully, these views aren't shared by the majority. Which is why I'm heartened at the near-universal outrage in the comments section of an article by La Presse's Martin Croteau about two anglophone bands being banned from Fête Nationale celebrations on June 23. (The fact that hell is being raised by francophone publications (see also Voir, Bang Bang, Josée Legault) instead of just The Gazette, CJAD, CTV or The Suburban is also nice. Those outlets would be quickly dismissed for bringing up stories like this first.) There's even a petition going around to bring them back (with requisite Facebook group).

It seems that the Autre St-Jean organizers were getting pressure from Fête Nationale directors (read: SSJB) and others to remove Bloodshot Bill and Lake of Stew from their event, even to the point where protests were threatened if they were allowed to go on. Though both are Quebec bands, their songs are in English, and that's just not right, they argue. Fête Nationale is about celebrating a French Quebec.

This, of course, comes mere days after celebrating the fact that they were including anglophone bands and being more inclusive.

UPDATE (June 15): A short, bilingual message posted on the event's website says they are "maintaining" their list of invitees, including the two anglo bands:

Montreal, June 15th 2009 – As the producer of L’AUTRE ST-JEAN, we, C4 productions, have been mandated by l’association Louis-Hébert to create an alternative musical event to celebrate our National Holiday.  In that sens, we maintain our choices for the line up of the event with Malajube, Vincent Vallières, Les Dales Hawerchuk, Marie-Pierre Arthur, Lake of Stew et Bloodshot Bill which represents forty minutes of anglophone music on a six hour show.

We wish that the event on June 23^rd at Park ‘du Pélican’, which is, in our opinion, in the image of Québec and Montreal in 2009, will be peaceful.

More info will be communicated wednesday.

Mind you, in Quebec City, it's still French-only.

Whether or not they'll actually get to play, I think back to the basic question: What is the Fête Nationale supposed to be about anyway? Is it about language, culture, or about the province of Quebec?

If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Fête Saint-Jean-Baptiste was about language and culture before the Quebec government got its greedy little paws on it. It was about French culture, and by that logic you might consider having only francophone bands perform at such an event.

But the Quebec government turned it into the civic Fête nationale holiday, wrapping it in the fleur de lys, blocking off non-Quebec francophones and making it to Quebec what Canada Day is to Canada.

Perhaps it's because of their proximity on the calendar, combined with the political Quebec-vs-Canada divide that's overwhelmed our politics over the past half century that people see an equivalence. Patrick Lagacé suggests if we turned this around - francophones being banned from Canada Day celebrations because of threats of protests from Albertans who want it to be English-only - that the outrage would be much higher.

If we accept that le 24 juin is a civic holiday about celebrating the state, then the comparison has some credence. The only catch is that Quebec wants to be unilingual while Canada does not.

But if it's about culture, then a more apt comparison would be with St. Patrick's Day in Quebec (indeed, the holiday has its genesis from those who wanted a celebration of the Québécois on June 24 like that of the Irish on March 17). And anyone who's been to a St. Paddy's parade in this town knows they're very liberal when it comes to who can call themselves Irish. It's not just Scottish pipe bands that slip by. Ukrainians, Israelis, Chinese are all welcome. Just put a shamrock sticker on your cheek and some green in your beer and you're accepted into the club. So even then, anglophones (and any other language) should be welcome.

Provincial civic holiday, or francophone cultural celebration? Which is it? And which should it be?

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Proposed extensions to Orange, Blue and Yellow lines

This week, La Presse came out with the news that the mayors of Montreal, Laval and Longueuil have joined forces to suggest to the Quebec government that proposed metro extensions in their cities be acted on simultaneously.

Because these projects require such a huge infusion of cash from the provincial government (they cost $150 million per kilometre, and that's a low estimate), the decision to proceed with them tends to have as much to do with politics as it does with need. The Laval extension, for example, was pushed forward ahead of the extension of the Blue line mostly because of the fact that Laval has swing ridings whereas the east end of Montreal tends to be pretty well PQ blue (when the PQ has a chance of winning elections, anyway).

The three proposed extensions aren't new. The Blue line extension has been on the books for decades now in one form or another. Laval's closed loop was suggested in 2007, Longueuil's plan is a bit more recent.

But why these three? Why not extend the green line in either direction? Why not create a line on Pie-IX, or Park Avenue, or through NDG?

The answer is that Montreal only has one mayor, and because of the way politicians have setup our cities, the mayor of Montreal has no more say than a smaller suburb on either side. So in order to get a much-needed metro extension in the dense neighbourhood of St. Leonard, we have to approve two comparatively useless extensions in underdeveloped off-island areas.

The idea isn't going over so well, even among people who you'd think would support it. Some transit activists are arguing that less expensive (and less sexy) projects should be dealt with first, like improving commuter trains and setting up a tram network.

Let's hope common sense prevails before the government writes that $3-billion cheque.

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The scandal, she figured, had to do with the fact that the former head of the Caisse, Henri-Paul Rousseau, now works for Power Corporation, the company that owns Gesca. Clearly this presented a conflict of interest.

Except, as the government pointed out, the first loan was issued before Rousseau was hired at the Caisse (by the PQ government, no less).

That revelation doesn't entirely absolve Rousseau of the appearance of conflict (other loans were issued during his term), but one wonders if Marois would have been so critical if it involved a company that didn't have such apparent ties to the Liberal Party of Canada.

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We'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now, as Jean Charest is doing. But you know something's going to happen. Either one of them (probably him) is going to switch parties, one (or both) will leave politics, or they're going to break up.

And if they do decide that the National Assembly isn't for them, Nathalie Normandeau and François Bonnardel could become odd-couple political commentators.

I mean, if James Carville and Mary Matalin could find a way to tolerate each other, anything's possible with love.

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I'm getting a bit tired of the language debate in Quebec.

I feel a bit guilty saying it, because the neverending battle has become so central to the province's identity that it's almost like I can't call myself a true Québécois unless I have a spot on the front lines. What does it mean to be a Quebecer if not to constantly argue about French vs. English, federalism vs. sovereignty, Liberal vs. PQ/BQ?

The most popular post on this blog, by far, in terms of comments is a criticism I made in 2007 about anglo rights crusader Howard Galganov. The comment mark on that post just passed 500 (all of which I had to individually approve), and new comments are added every day. Discussion of the statements made in the post or of Galganov himself have long fallen by the wayside. The four participants who keep the thread going just yell at each other, call each other racist and compare each other to Hitler in their discussions of the great divide. I block those comments that go too far, but if I deleted those that I didn't think advanced the conversation enough, over 90% would disappear immediately. At this point, I'm just watching the counter go up, in awe about how much time people can waste trying to change the mind of someone who is obviously never going to agree with you.

Autre

I'm an anglophone. Even though I've lived in Quebec my entire life, I'm seen as the enemy. No different than the Rest of Canada. It's assumed that I'm just waiting for my chance to make it in Toronto or New York, and that I don't really belong here because I don't really want to be here. Though I love Quebec as much for its culture (which is inescapably intertwined with its language) as its politics (which is inescapably intertwined with language issues), because I use English more than French in my daily life I'm set aside from real Quebecers.

Once, in a conversation with some young francophone journalists, I was asked about my opinion on Quebec politics in a way that gave me the impression I was introducing these people to a culture they'd only read about. I felt like I was giving them a sociology lesson on what it's like to be an anglo Quebecer.

One of the things that was odd about the conversation is that it came a bit out of nowhere. People don't stop me in the street to debate politics. I've never been refused service at a commercial establishment on account of my language. Francophone bloggers link to me, and I link to them, with little regard to the fact that our posts are in different languages, unless the thing were talking about is language politics. Quebecers are more concerned with daily life, gossiping or getting laid than they are convincing others of their point of view on separation.

I got dragged into a brief debate about my positions on Bill 101 recently, and though I have serious issues with some of its provisions that seem more anti-English than pro-French (and the psychological factor and selective enforcement only exacerbate the anti-English sentiment), part of me wanted to scream out at one point: "I don't care!" I can read French signs fine. I can communicate fine in that language (just don't ask me to write in it for a living). In that sense, Bill 101 doesn't really affect me. Though I cringe at how much the government is spending on language enforcement rather than language education, I think there are far more pressing issues for it to deal with than reforming our language law.

Pure laine

I bring this up because of a couple of debates going on that really make me wonder where Quebec's priorities lie.

La Presse's André Pratte had to apologize on Friday for noting that Michael Sabia, the ex-Bell CEO who has just been named to head the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, is (a) not a Quebecer and (b) doesn't speak French very well. It seems he was wrong on both counts. Sabia has lived in Quebec for 16 years ("how long do you have to live in Montreal before you become a Quebecer?") and his French, while accented, is fine. He attributed his first error to "un détestable réflexe québécois" - namely that if you're anglo, you're not a Quebecer. Believe me, this is a big problem. It's not just in Quebec, of course. People, media and PR agencies all over Canada will look at someone with brown skin and assume they're an immigrant. In the U.S., if you're latino, it's assumed you're an illegal immigrant or the descendant of one.

I accept Pratte's apology, but he wasn't the only one to bring this up. Sabia needed to defend himself from an attack by Bernard Landry, saying he's now chosen to live in Quebec three times since 1993.

UPDATE: No, wait, La Presse has gone back to saying he doesn't speak French well enough for their liking.

Now we know why there are rules against political interference in the Caisse's affairs. If something as petty as province of birth is a political issue (and deemed more important than making money for Quebec pensioners) then who knows how many ways 125 MNAs could figure out to screw with the system and doom our finances in order to maintain political correctness.

As Martin Patriquin points out, "Quebec must be the only place in the world where it actually matters what language money speaks."

Not just money, but pucks.

Jeu de puissance

The other debate, which has just started, is over who will fill Guy Carbonneau's shoes as head coach of the Canadiens. For any of the other 29 NHL teams, the only criterion would be the ability to coach a team of players to a Stanley Cup victory. (Well, that and not being a child molester, hockey gambling addict or 9/11 terrorist, I guess.) But in Montreal, they want to add another: the ability to speak French. And because former Hamilton Bulldogs coach Don Lever is a prime candidate (he was promoted to Habs assistant coach when Carbonneau was fired), there's already discussion that, no matter how good a hockey coach he might be, he can't get the job because he won't be able to speak properly to the media and to fans. Even Bob Gainey, who speaks French fine but with a strong accent, isn't good enough for the people at RDS.

The Gazette had a little fun with that Saturday, suggesting some intensive training courses and giving a list of simple phrases for an anglo coach to learn.

This debate should come as no surprise. The same debate has been going on ever since Saku Koivu was promoted to be the Canadiens' captain. Patrick Lagacé complained about it when he was at the Journal (though he's softened his stance at La Presse - Lagacé the old softy disputes this in a comment below) in a column more notable in media circles for its hilarious follow-up. Of course, there are plenty of NHL players who don't speak a word of English, but nobody complains about that. After all, their job is to play hockey, not to give speeches. But, in defence of this particular point, there aren't any NHL captains who can't at least carry on a conversation in the language of Gary Bettman.

And then there's debate any time you see a trade, a call-up, a healthy scratch, or even a line-change which alters the makeup of the team to make it less francophone. It doesn't matter what Guillaume Latendresse, Maxim Lapierre or Mathieu Dandenault's skills are. What matters is that they can be interviewed in French on RDS during intermission, and therefore they must be on the team and in the lineup. For these people, a Patrice Brisebois is more valuable than an Andrei Markov, and certainly more than a Mike Komisarek.

Fans can demand these things. It's their right. And Canadiens fans aren't exactly known for their logic or cool-headedness anyway. And it's the government's right to demand that the head of the Caisse is a Quebec-born francophone who watches Star Académie.

Priorités

But when you say that language and nationality is more important than skill, you can't complain when you don't get results compared to others. You can't complain that the Caisse is losing more money than other pension funds when you passed over a qualified anglophone for a less qualified francophone for the job. You can't complain that the Canadiens failed to bring home their expected 25th Stanley Cup when you cut the field of head coach candidates to less than half of what it was so that RDS viewers don't feel uncomfortable.

In the United States, the military is mocked because it fires gay Arabic translators even when it's in desperate need of them. We make fun of the Americans because they put what you are above what you know, to their own disadvantage.

Sometimes, I wonder if Quebec is any better.

Except, I'm tired of debating the point. So I'm just going to hit "publish" and move on to something more interesting.

UPDATE: More discussion of this on Lagacé's blog, which also talks about Simons's opposition to that stupid OQLF sticker campaign.

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Perhaps more interesting, Dumont is also being brought on as a consultant to the Rémillards, to advise them on the regenesis of their television network.

What do you think Dumont is going to recommend as far as TQS's regional stations go?

UPDATE: Pat Lagacé has some tips for someone trying out TV for the first time. Richard Therrien meanwhile points out that the ADQ opposed Remstar's gutting of TQS's news division, and now Dumont is profiting off of it.

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Yes, it has two journalists.

I don't remember any major provincial government scoops being broken by La Voix du Sud, so I'm kind of wondering what the big deal is.

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If you've never seen Red Bull's Crashed Ice event, you need an immediate injection of testosterone. Every year, "competitors" in this event gather in Quebec City to "skate" down a 550-metre track whose grade is better suited for tobogganing than anything one would do on skates. (It's a 56-metre vertical drop, according to this PDF press release).

The point is not important, I guess it's a race of some sort. The fun is watching everyone crash as the tumble down the ice. And this year, for the first time, they're opening it up to women.

Of course, because it's harmless fun, there's gotta be someone out there to spoil it. The Mouvement Montréal Français, apparently confused because this event is in Quebec City, is demanding that Red Bull give it a proper French name. The government, desperate to appease francophone activists, has passed on the request with official backing, though they're stopping short of asking Red Bull to change its own name.

I think it's a bit insulting to have an event like this in Quebec City with an English name. I'm sure Red Bull's marketing people could come up with a bilingual one or a clever French name that would solve this situation easily. (They've already done it for Italy's Toro Rosso F1 team) But this should be a result of grassroots pressure, not government fiat.

Either way, let's not let the political discussion ruin the fun.

Crashed Ice is being broadcast live at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday in French on TVA and in English on TSN HD.

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UPDATE: CTV also wasted time on this non-story. It's funny how pundits can argue at the same time that nobody cares what it's called and that it must be called Christmas because that's our tradition.

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The biggest surprise of the night was Mario Dumont's decision to leave his party leadership. The obvious question that comes up now is: Who the heck is going to lead the ADQ? Can you even name another ADQ MNA?

Amir who?

The biggest electoral surprise is clearly Amir Khadir winning the Plateau riding of Mercier for Québec solidaire. Not only did he unseat the PQ's Daniel Turp, but he surprised a lot of news outlets who hadn't planned for one of the "autres" to get a seat in this election. (Our front page needed a last-minute redesign to add a fourth box for QS's seat total.)

In the early stages of returns, the seat seesawed between Khadir and Turp, but another riding way off near Quebec City was also showing a QS lead (with one poll reporting), reminding everyone that these results were still early. That other candidate ended up dead last with 1,000 votes.

But as the night wore on, the lead became more constant, and slowly started to grow. Cynicism that Khadir's lead would vanish when more conservative mainstream votes came in slowly started to vanish. As the party's co-leaders (they're really going to have to get rid of that co-leadership system) gave their news conference, the networks called the seat for Khadir, and another political party officially entered relevance.

Now, does this mean QS will be invited to leaders' debates?

They almost got it wrong

CTV Montreal is very proud of the fact that they called a majority government first, just after 8:30pm. This means they're cool and their penis is larger than everyone else's, I think. The seats certainly looked to be going to a solid majority early on.

But around 9pm, the number of leading and elected Liberal seats started holding steady at 63-64. This was right on the razor's edge. All it would take is a couple of Liberal-leading seats to shift to another party and Charest loses his majority. Part of me wanted exactly that to happen so that overeager news directors would have to explain why they got it wrong.

In the end, though, the Liberals got 66 seats, pending recounts, and their majority isn't in doubt. Only a couple of ridings in the Montérégie area were close enough (the lead in votes is significantly less than the number of spoiled ballots) that a recount might change something.

Media analysis

I didn't watch any of the live TV coverage (beyond glancing at the changing numbers on the screen), so I'll leave commenting on that to you, or Richard Therrien, or Mike Boone, or Paul Cauchon.

There were liveblogs from Lagacé/Ouimet at Cyberpresse (you can cut the metrosexual tension with a knife) and Philippe Gohier at Maclean's in case you want to re-live the night in real-time.

Here's how the main news sources handled their online results:

• CTV had its own custom election system which failed in a very important way: It couldn't process a win by a candidate outside the three main parties. Seat totals don't include Québec solidaire, and Amir Khadir is not listed as elected in Mercier, nor is QS or the Green Party listed under "party leaders". It also doesn't list incumbents.
• Canoe (TVA/Journal) had a very basic, non-Flash elections page. A table of results by party, and individual tables of results for each riding. Québec solidaire was listed under "Autres".
• CBC, which has been at online election results longer than everyone else, had an interactive election map with colour-coded ridings. The map format made it easier to find ridings visually, but it also meant if you wanted a Montreal riding you had to "zoom in" three times. It also had a separate page with results tables by region (and links to tables by riding). No indication of incumbency here either, which surprised me.
• Radio-Canada had a different online election setup (do these people not talk to each other? Surely it's easier to translate existing software than create an entirely new system?). It's not much to look at.
• Cyberpresse, Le Devoir and The Globe and Mail used a flash widget provided by Canadian Press/Presse Canadienne. The interface was slick, with square tiles representing each riding. When you click on them, they jump out and form a staacked bar graph. But it was also incredibly basic. It didn't even provide percentage totals for each candidate. The tile system also made it more difficult to find ridings visually, compared to a real map.
• The website of the director general of elections (which The Gazette pointed to for results) had the advantages of being official and fast. But around 8:45pm, it stopped updating (while CP and CBC's feeds kept going), panicking reporters and editors who were using it for results. It came back around 9:15 and stayed reliable for the rest of the night. The table system is simple, which is good, but because it's an official site it doesn't declare candidates elected like the news networks do, and it also doesn't note incumbents or incumbent parties.

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Lisette Lapointe, the PQ candidate in Crémazie riding (and Jacques Parizeau's wife), campaigns in the Sauvé metro station last week.

The polls are now open in 75 125 ridings (my civics knowledge sucks) across Quebec, and the voters have 22.5 10.5 hours (my math sucks) to make their choice. Polls close at 8pm tonight.

If you need help, the DGEQ website has information available. If you're not registered to vote, sorry, but you're screwed. Unlike in federal elections, Quebec doesn't allow registration on voting day. The deadline was last Friday. Better luck next time.

Now go vote. I'll be busy editing election copy tonight, but I'll see you in the aftermath. Be sure to let your local journalist know of voting-day irregularities.

TV results schedule

For those watching the returns on TV tonight, here's what the networks are planning:

• RDI's election special starts first at 6:30pm, a full hour and a half before polls close. Rad-Can joins in at 7:30.
• CBC and Newsworld have live coverage starting at 8 p.m.
• CTV Montreal has local anchors Todd Van der Heyden and Mutsumi Takahashi quarterbacking coverage starting at 8 p.m. CTV Newsnet will be picking up the feed from CTV Montreal, also starting at 8.
• TVA and LCN go all-election at 8.
• Global Quebec, not wanting to give up Prison Break and Heroes, only goes live at 10pm.
• CPAC has no scheduled election coverage
• TQS will have wall-to-wall election coverage with live returns throughout the night and reports from hundreds of journalists based in all 125 ridings and ... oh just kidding, they're ignoring it entirely. Maybe André Arthur will mention it tomorrow.

Online, most news outlets will be running data from Canadian Press. I'd recommend CBC or the DGEQ website directly for results.

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From news interviews and party platforms, here's what I've been able to piece together about what the parties have promised for public transit in Quebec.

The promises are about what you'd expect: practical but uninspiring from the Liberals, pandering and expensive from the PQ, non-existent from the ADQ and completely unrealistic from the Green Party and Québec solidaire.

Nothing radical or even particularly interesting comes out of the main parties (the PQ's promises, in particular, involve many things that are already being planned), but it does give an idea of what portions of the electorate each party is targeting.

Liberal Party of Quebec

• Increase the frequency of train trips to Laval and the South Shore suburbs by 35% within 12-24 months, an additional 230 train departures each week, or 264,000 seats
• 10,000 new parking places at commuter train stations (a 35% increase)
• Consider Montreal proposal for construction of tramways

Total cost: $260 million ($200 million through the province, $60 million from the AMT)

Sources: Charest promises increased transit to Laval, Longueuil

Parti Québécois

• Extend blue line east
• Build a tramway to Old Montreal
• Create a direct rail link to Trudeau Airport
• Create express bus lines on Henri-Bourassa Blvd.
• Create an LRT from Brossard to downtown
• Build a commuter train to Repentigny
• Build a commuter train from Longueuil to Châteauguay
• Create reserved bus lanes on Highways 13, 15, and 19
• Increase public transit use 16 per cent by 2013 (double the current Liberal goal)

Total cost: $3.6 billion, not enough says Normand Parisien of Transport 2000

Sources: PQ promises $3.5B for public transit, Transit union boss backs PQ

Action démocratique du Québec

The ADQ has nothing in its platform (PDF) about public transit beyond a vague promise to "modernize its management", though Mario Dumont has said in the past he would make public transit an essential service, removing from its unions the right to strike.

Québec solidaire

• Reduced fare for low-income earners
• In the long term, the complete elimination of transit fares
• Encouraging the use of fully electric vehicles
• Increase use of collective taxis in low-density areas where bus service is impractical
• Unspecified extensions to metros, commuter trains and bus network on the island of Montreal

Total cost: $1.2 billion over five years

Source: Party platform

Green Party of Quebec

• Create high-speed rail link between Quebec City and Windsor
• Extend Montreal metro's blue line east to Anjou
• Build tramways in Montreal (including, apparently, on Pierrefonds Blvd. in the West Island), Quebec, Longueuil, Gatineau, Laval and Sherbrooke
• Electrify existing rail links connecting Quebec City, Alma, Gaspé, Sherbrooke and Montreal
• Reduce the cost of transit passes by 50%

Total cost: $40 billion over 20 years (includes non-public transport measures), financed by a carbon tax and road tolls

Sources: Party platform (PDF), Transport plan announcement

What do you think? Which party has the best public transit platform?

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