This week in Quebec Corruption
This week we heard about large payouts to the two disgraced ex-Mayors of Montreal and Laval.
"After seven months on the job, the ex-interim mayor of Laval Alexandre Duplessis will be walking away from his post with a severance package of $170,378.
The cheque was cut from the city Tuesday, with the 43-year-old Duplessis receiving a $134,975 “transition allowance” and a severance package of $35,403.
The severance was calculated using guidelines under a provincial law on remuneration of elected officials — the Loi sur le traitement des élus municipaux — said the city. The allowance is a payment some city workers get to help find other employment, and eligibility for the severance is normally determined by factoring in the years of service and the pay grade of the individual leaving office. Link
Applebaum resigned from office after being arrested in June on 14 charges including fraud and conspiracy.
He was selected as mayor by Montreal city council on Nov. 16, 2012, following the resignation of Gérald Tremblay amid allegations of corruption.
Applebaum's payout is over $50,000 more than his predecessor, who received a total of $216,000 after holding the mayor's office for more than a decade. Link
Up to now, the corruption scandals enveloping Quebec have implicated politicians and public servants, but now the police that are investigating these scandals have a whopper of its own.
"Three former high-ranking Quebec police officers are the subjects of an investigation into allegations of criminal activity.
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| Jean Audette, Steven Chabot and Richard Deschênes |
Chabot is retired, but Deschênes and Audette were both relieved of their duties when provincial police head Mario Laprise alerted Public Security Minister Stéphane Bergeron.
Bergeron told a news conference Wednesday that the allegations came to light when Laprise was doing a routine check of the accounting books, and discovered some unaccounted money.
According to the minister, the money was in a fund set up to discreetly pay police informants or cover the cost of drugs in undercover operations.
He said a high-ranking officer authorized the use of money from that fund to pay someone's retirement bonus. Bergeron would not name the individual who benefited from the alleged bonus." Link
In recent developments;
(translation) "According to information obtained by La Presse, it's because Denis Despelteau was planning to flee the country, the crown decided to rush his arrest by quickly filing charges against him. Sources revealed that there were no plans to make any arrests in the matter before September Link{fr}
Mr. Despelteau was an ex-cop turned consultant and has a suspicious and checkered past, twice declaring bankruptcy in the face of hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to the tax department.
Pauline reminds us just what a petty and nasty piece of work she really is.
This one story illustrates just what a nasty, public money-waster and utterly predictable idiot our Premier really is."Trust the Parti Québécois government to seize every opportunity to rain on a royal parade.Sadly the PQ actually has a good case, but so what?
It was in the hours after it was reported that Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, had gone into labour leading to Monday’s birth of a royal son that the Quebec government announced it will join in a constitutional challenge to a federal law amending the rules governing succession to the titular post of Canadian head of state.
The holder of that post also occupies the British throne, and the law in question, the Succession to the Throne Act, 2013, essentially gave Canadian consent to a British law that abolished the rule of male primogeniture in the royal line of succession.
It means that male children will no longer take precedence over their sisters, no matter what their age, as had been the case up to then. The revision also removed the age-old interdiction that an heir to the throne may not marry someone of the Catholic faith.
The constitutional challenge was mounted by a pair of busybody Université Laval law professors whose objection is not the change in the line of succession or the liberalization of a royal heir’s marriage prospects, but the fact that the Conservative government passed the law approving the change without seeking formal endorsement from provincial governments." Read more
If the challenge is successful, Ottawa will have to go back and ask for permission from each province to allow for a change in the rules for Royal succession.
If that is the case, even the PQ would be forced to give that consent, the public would not stand for the government opposing a law that guarantees equality of genders in the Royal succession.
It would appear really low to oppose such a consent.
End result..... Money-wasting gamesmanship that serves no purpose.
By the way, the case will take years to litigate and Marois and her gang will be long gone. Any new Quebec government will certainly withdraw the petition.
And let's not forget that the birth of the latest male heir to the British throne has placed the whole issue on the back burner, one that can be safely put off for thirty or forty years.
So what's a few more million down the drain?
After all Quebec taxpayers are a generous and docile lot....
The gift that keeps taking
If there is any symbol of the decline of Quebec it may very well be the disaster that is the Olympic Stadium. WikipediaA monumental disaster of design and engineering, the stadium is a painful reminder of failure.
The white elephant known unaffectionately as the 'Big Owe' wasn't even completed in time for the Olympic games and its unfinished tower, a humiliating reminder and symbol of Quebec incompetence, and corruption.
It's $1.6 billion price tag haunted Montrealers for decades, and it took until 2006, to pay off the monumental debt.
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| Roof collapse in 1999 |
By 1992 the roof was destined never to open again. The sad fiasco of the Kevlar roof has been an ongoing nightmare with one failure after another.
Today the government body that runs the stadium revealed that the roof is just about finished with a costly $200-$500 million rebuild an imperative. The way things go in Quebec that $rebuild will definitely be on the higher side of the estimate, all to preserve a venue that is substandard in every respect, primarily it's location out in East Montreal, far from those with the money to spend on tickets.
Read" Rips in Olympic Stadium roof scare away event organizers
Three years ago, we were warned about the impending disaster, but like usual, nothing is to be done, no decision taken, until a new disaster unfolds.
Let's be done with it. Major league baseball is never returning to Montreal and the stadium is just not needed. Even the Alouettes refuse to play there outside the playoffs and a Grey Cup every decade isn't enough to warrant the expense.
Ottawa-bashing ramped up by Quebec in Lac-Megantic tragedy
In Quebec, holding Ottawa responsible for every ill that strikes Quebec is a lugubrious and long-standing tradition and in the sad aftermath of the Lac-Mégantic tragedy the blame game shifted into high gear, with the responsibility for the accident placed squarely on the regulations and oversight of the federal regulators, with deregulation of the industry made out as the villain in the whole affair.The Ottawa-bashing was not exclusively a Quebec only affair, with the insufferable Tom Mulcair blaming Ottawa for the perceived failure of deregulation and its impact on the tragedy, without a shadow of evidence.
Now there's no doubt that regulations need to be tightened so that when humans fail, the consequences are not as disastrous as the experience of Lac-Mégantic, but truth be told, the disaster was caused by someone doing his job badly or irresponsibly.
The same happened in San Francisco as two pilots landed their aircraft short of the runway for no apparent good reason. Without passing premature judgement, if that was the case , there's not a lot the airline manufacturer or the FAA could do about it.
The rail disaster in Spain that took so many lives can probably be attributed once more, to human error or dereliction of duty, where clearly the train was speeding, causing it to derail.
Here is an amazing video, witnessing clearly that the train was travelling too fast.
I don't think the government had much to do with that disaster and while regulations and oversight can always be improved, you just can't eliminate accidents when humans are in involved.
The advantage pressed by Quebec nationalists over the incident is disrespectful to the dead and injured, a sad powerplay on the backs of a town which has become a pawn, in the never-ending political chess match that is Quebec/Ottawa relations.
If the Conservatives are responsible for the disaster, because of deregulation, as we are told over and over again in Le Devoir and vigile.net, should these mighty organs of truth logically congratulate the Conservatives for Canada's falling crime rate (announced Thursday) as a result of the Conservative's get tough on crime bill?
Not likely....
If the Conservatives are responsible for the disaster, because of deregulation, as we are told over and over again in Le Devoir and vigile.net, should these mighty organs of truth logically congratulate the Conservatives for Canada's falling crime rate (announced Thursday) as a result of the Conservative's get tough on crime bill?
Not likely....
Young entrepreneur does a YouTube rant over the Quebec government's refusal to allow registration of an English business name.
"A Quebec-based startup is complaining after officials rejected his company based on its English name, Rob Lurie reports."
Watch the CTV news story in English HERE.
Here is the original YouTube rant in French;
Mouvement Québec français wants language to be central issue in Montreal election campaign
Beaulieu said he’s targetting the mayor’s race in Quebec’s largest city because more than 85 per cent of the 50,000 immigrants each year in Quebec settle there. According to him, Montreal is becoming more and more anglicized, and he denounces the fact that no municipal party has proposed solutions to counter this phenomenon." Read the rest of the story
Of course to Mr. Mario Blowhard, the issues of corruption, finances, unemployment and job opportunity, skyrocketing taxes and a collapsing infrastructure, are all small potatoes compared to language.
Vigile.net's most overt xenophobe outshines himself.
In a post that even astounds me, vigile.net's most overt and prolific xenophobe, Rejean LaBrie, delivered a beauty of a screed in which he rants against 'foreigners' playing for the Montreal Canadiens or the mythical Nordiques, who perhaps like the Phoneix, might one day rise again, to compete, according to Mr. LaBrie, without resorting to those nasty strangers.If you read French, go over there and see why vigile.net has been roundly condemned as a first class purveyor of hate.
Jusqu’où ira la négation des identités nationales dans le sport ?
For those without French, Mr. LaBrie first complains that the French national soccer team has too many
He offers this photo to prove his point that the team is unrepresentative of French society.
I suppose Mr. LaBrie would also advise the NBA to limit Black participation to 10%, the demographic percentage of Blacks in America.
The league would be eminently less talented, but no matter, according to Mr. LaBrie, it is worth the sacrifice to see more white faces!
Think I'm exaggerating his position? Here is a translated quote from the article.
"Furthermore, assuming that the Canadiens or the Nordiques finally returned to the fold, composed exclusively of native Quebecers, we would have to accept that the teams would probably occupy last in the league, but honorably, with the advantage of having valiantly competed with courage,....Readers, I can assure that this ultra xenophobia is extremely rare, so let's not generalize.
...At any rate, that may be better than a victory gained by outsiders, better than the glory gained by impersonation."
I think a reader in the comments section said it best;
"But to whom and what end, Mr. Labrie, do your posts on people of other ethnic groups than whites, actually serve.
I wonder if you do not purposely make we independentists and "vigiliens," out as a gang of racist or mental defectives, unable to accept people from different backgrounds on our TV!
Weekend Reading
YES side got illegal donations: engineer
(translation) “The Yes camp received illegal funding during the 1995 sovereignty referendum , according to testimony gathered by the police who investigated the alleged criminal network headed by the former mayor of Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt.An engineer, Claude Vallée, a former partner at Valley Lefebvre, provided the information found in the complaints. that led to the ongoing anti-corruption unit (UPAC) to conduct searches in Laval.
In 1980 and 1990, Vallée was involved in various political organizations in order to procure government contracts. He worked at the municipal and in the entourage of the Bloc Quebecois and the Parti Quebecois, we read in the papers.”"
He collected large sums of cash for the Parti Quebecois, mainly for the referendum, ," noted police following a meeting with Vallée.
These sums "were laundered by militants without anyone knowing the origin of the funds and there were no repercussions," it said. Link{fr}
English-speaking nannies hot property in France
“Don’t believe all that you hear about French people's resistance to English. The language police at the Académie Française might be against the invasion of anything Anglo but the same cannot be said for French parents.More and more of them appear to be waking up to the fact that their child’s future may depend on their grasp of English, which of course is good news for Anglophones looking for work in France.” Link
At Tour De France, Default Language Now Is English
“French is disappearing here,” said Pascale Schyns, the Tour’s official translator. “It wasn’t too long ago that we could say that French was the predominant language, but now there’s more English.” LinkEnglish terms the French want barred
“When it comes to fighting off the invasion of English words the French Resistance has had mixed fortunes over the years. Nevertheless the fight goes on. With the help of the Ministry of Culture here's a list of the latest English terms that French authorities want deported.The reality is the French language police have long been fighting an uphill battle to stem the invasion of English words into the language of Moliere.” Link to Story Link to see those Terms
Why French immersion should be in all schools – or none at all
“This streaming has lead some critics to suggest that French Immersion programs are less about educational benefits and more about providing school choice in Canadian public schools. They allege that parents enroll their children in French Immersion to ensure that they’re placed in classrooms with students from higher socioeconomic groups and with teachers that aren’t distracted by higher needs students.” LinkHave a laugh...
Composting in Montreal.
When a Montreal woman was told by a neighbor that her efforts at composting were going for naught, she decided to follow the composting truck to see if it was true.Here's a video that she shot showing the
The furious woman confronts the worker, who blows her off.
The video made quite an impression, with the city forced to admit the error, but responding as is usual in cases like these, that it was an isolated incident.... Hmmm...
Here's more municipal workers doing what they do, this time in Buckingham, Quebec.
And no need to have good French to understand this gaffe;
I wonder what the OQLF has to say about this FAIL;
And here is my favorite summer picture. BTW, it's Dustin Brown, of the Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings, taken year last ..
