PQ patronage appointee not up to the job
"I have a lot of confidence in Nicolas Girard's abilities," Transport Minister Sylvain Gaudreault said. Link{Fr}"How many chief executives does Montreal’s commuter-train authority have?
The Agence métropolitaine de transport says it has just one: Nicolas Girard, a former Parti Québécois MNA named to the post after he lost his seat in September’s election.
But when it looks at the AMT’s upper echelons, the opposition Coalition Avenir Québec sees two: Girard, plus Paul Côté, a veteran Via Rail executive whom Girard replaced.
When Girard took over in October, he kept Côté on as a “special adviser.”
“By paying two CEOs at the AMT simply to reward a friend of the PQ regime, the government of Premier Pauline Marois goes farther than the Liberals in the field of patronage,” CAQ transport critic Éric Caire said Monday." Read the rest of the story Alternate Link
Double-dipping PQ Minister shamed into renouncing 2nd paycheck
It seems that PQ minister Jean-François Lisée was collecting two big fat paychecks at once, all of course on the back of Quebec taxpayers, that is until the public disclosure shamed him into renouncing his second paycheck.Mr. Lisée is being paid about $165,000 as a minister in the new PQ government, but is also collecting a $100,000 salary from the University of Montreal in a convoluted deal that sees him getting paid after he left the job. The payment was part of an avoidance scheme. It seems that the university couldn't pay Lisée as much as he demanded because of salary rules, so agreed to pay him a 'thirteenth' month each year, to be paid at the end of his employment (or something to that effect) The whole scheme sounds about as kosher as a ham sandwich Link
PQ lowers level for bilingual status for towns to 40%
"It’s no longer 50 per cent, but 40 per cent — and even then, it’s not automatic.Quebec’s minister responsible for the anglophone community, Jean-François Lisée, said he has convinced his cabinet colleagues of the need to soften the rules under which a municipality loses its official bilingual status under the Charter of the French Language.“I argued with others that it should not be at 50 (per cent),” Lisée said following a speech to the Jeune chambré de commerce de Montréal on Monday.
“It should be at 40. I felt it was important to make it rather difficult to take away the status, which is worth a lot.” Link
OQLF harassment..What is Chunky-monkey in French?
"Off duty, an OQLF officer waits in line on a busy afternoon in the summer. When he orders, he also points out that the bilingual chalkboard menu should be displayed in French. I politely mention that while there is English, the exact same menu and prices are displayed in significantly larger and bolder characters in French right next to it.
The off duty officer begins to raise his voice, mentioning that the law requires 100% of our displays to be in French. While making a scene in front of other customers, he storms out of the store, threatening us that we will be hearing from the OQLF.
Approximately a week later, we receive a letter from the OQLF stating that they suspect us of breaching the “Charte de la langue française”, and that they will be sending over an officer shortly.
Read the entire article...fascinating
Listen to a CJAD radio interview with the manager
(credit; Lord Dorchester)
In another OQLF story, Quebec
At least it's name is french..... Link
Quebec Corruption watch... this week
On Wednesday 140 police officers carried out 44 search warrants in relation to phoney billing scams, a practice whereby construction companies use fictitious invoices to defraud the tax department. Link*****************
There was some clarification this week about a story about disgraced ex-mayor of Laval Gilles Vaillancourt whose cousin was reported to have tried to flush money down the toilet. It is now reported that Francine, the wife of the ex-mayor brought a shoebox of money over to Ginette Vaillancourt's adjacent swanky condo for safe-keeping.When police arrived at the apartment building to conduct a raid on Gilles Vaillancourt's home, the cousin panicked when she saw all the police cars and tried to flush the $20,000 down the toilet. Link You might recall that when police raided two safety boxes belonging to the ex-mayor, they discovered over $100,000 in cash!An investigative television show reported that the Mayor shipped money to Switzerland via a friendly banker in the Caribbean. The show also reported that corruption has been rampant in Laval for decades. Link
On Thursday, police raided offices of the new mayor of Laval, Alexandre Duplessis who is a crony of the ex-mayor. The raids are in relation to the skyrocketing cost of the yet to be built hockey arena that the city is supposed to build for the farm team of the Montreal Canadiens, now playing in Hamilton. Link{Fr}Keep tuned!
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For Deschênes, it's been a mighty fall."Three former high-ranking Quebec police officers are the subjects of an investigation into allegations of criminal activity.
The investigation involves former Quebec provincial police director Richard Deschênes, as well as Jean Audette and Steven Chabot, who were responsible for criminal investigations for the Sûreté du Québec.
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 for money." Link
He was fired as Chief of the provincial police force a month after the PQ took power with many in the media alleging that it was payback for the Keystone Kops misadventure at the Club Metropolis where during an attempt on Pauline Marois' life, the police utterly botched the security detail. Deschênes had two years left on his contract and so was humiliatingly demoted to finish out his term. Now he's suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. More payback?
*****************It seems that after finally coming on board and supporting the Charbonneau Commission, the QFL, Quebec's largest union, has gotten a case of cold feet.
Largely involved in the construction industry, it seems that the revelations at the commission looking into corruption in that industry is hitting the union too close to home.
"The Charbonneau commission is meeting some resistance on the part of the Federation of Labour (QFL), its affiliate, the FTQ-Construction and the Solidarity Fund, in collaboration with the investigation concerning them, learned Le Devoir.
According to reports, the investigators Committee has met resistance and a lack of volunteers who could explain situations that raise doubt, especially with regard to the possible infiltration of organized crime. So far, more than six people have received a summons to appear before the commission Charbonneau in the coming months." Link{Fr}
PQ calls on citizens to rat out English
"The Parti Québécois government is calling on all citizens to act as “sentries” in defence of the French language, sniffing out businesses that fail to respect a newly enshrined right to live and work in French.As she tabled the PQ’s “new Bill 101” Wednesday, Diane De Courcy, the minister responsible for the French Language Charter, acknowledged the government does not have the resources to enforce the law adequately.
When an immigrant convenience-store owner is unable to serve customers in French or an employer unjustifiably requires a worker to speak English, it is up to people to complain to authorities, she said. Read the rest of the story
Montreal lags badly in tall buildings
A report published by the Council of Tall buildings and Urban Habitat shows just how badly Montreal is falling behind other cities in Canada. Montreal has now fallen to third place behind Calgary, which has twice as many tall buildings. | |
| Click on diagram to enlarge |
At present Toronto has15 skyscrapers under construction, the most of any city in the world!
How many are under construction in Montreal? ..... zero.
This will mean that Toronto will have 45 skyscrapers to Montreal's seven by 2015.
Draw your own conclusions.
Montreal has placed only one building in the top ten highest buildings in Canada and that building is in tenth place.
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| Click on diagram to enlarge |
et cetera....
"The more time francophones spend with their anglophone neighbours, the less they worry about losing their first language, says a new survey.The surprising finding, which seems to contradict the notion that francophones living in urban areas like Montreal are concerned about the increasing use of English in their midst, was revealed in a poll conducted by Léger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies." Read the story
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A few days back, in the comment section, one of our prolific commenters "ED" said this;
"When a lie is told over and over it becomes reality in the minds of honest men. people say it must be true, I've heard it before. Unfortunately it is still a lie."
Here below is a perfect example of how a lie can snowball. You might remember last week, I posted a subtitled video of an interview with Quebec's Resource minister who told a Radio-Canada interviewer that Canadian taxpayers were on the hook for 900 million for a loan guarantee for Newfoundland's new electricity project in Labrador. The interviewer tried to correct the minister by pointing out that Ottawa wasn't spending anything, just guaranteeing a loan.
That lie has now gone mainstream. In an article in a Quebec City newspaper, Le Soleil, this paragraph led a story about Quebec's betrayal by Ottawa.
"Ottawa has decided to create another precedent, this time in the field of hydro-electric development, announcing a financial contribution of more than one billion dollars in support of the 514,000 citizens of Newfoundland, the shareholders of the company State Energy Narco." Link
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The writer goes on to say that this $900 million financial contribution to half a million Newfoundlanders would be the equivalent of $15 billion to Quebec's 8 million residents.And that is how a lie can grow....
But I'm not surprised that the newspaper printed such utter rubbish. I guess any newspaper that allows the hilarious gaffe of "Narco" instead of Nalcor" isn't much on fact-checking!
At least some La Presse reporters get their facts straight. Link{Fr}***************** It seems that Prime Minister Harper has taken an example from Madame Marois and humbly admitted a gaffe;
"It was wrong to appoint an auditor general who is not bilingual, Prime Minister Stephen Harper now reportedly admits. According to Montreal newspaper La Presse, the prime minister told his Conservative caucus last week he made a mistake last year when he appointed the English-speaking Michael Ferguson to the job, and indicated the government would support the NDP's bill requiring officers of Parliament to be bilingual before their appointment. LinkIn the article cited above, the Toronto based website ran a poll of its readers asking;
"Do you think the auditor general should be bilingual"
At the time I researched this article, almost two to one said that the auditor general didn't have to be bilingual....Hmmm. LinkThe results didn't surprise me much, but one thing that I found curious is that 2% of readers who responded, clicked the "I don't know" button.
The question is, what kind of idiot responds to a voluntary online poll to register no opinion?
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 |
| CLICK to try it out! |
The software reads web content out loud, phenomenally well.
I went over to the site to try out the new French reader, but alas it is not available yet to test.
I tested the English reader to see how the software worked.
After choosing a female voice, I typed in a few swear words that the voice repeated perfectly. (Okay, I couldn't resist)
YIKES... It then occurred to me that there are a lot of perverts who would love to get a women's or man's voice to repeat out loud what is typed!
Yes, here is the link again, for the third time.. Link
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 |
| Spendthrift Minister |
“It was false to report that my Ministry paid $64,000 for the meeting. It cost about $39,000 and the money didn’t come out of other programs,” Mr. Kotto said. However he failed to mention that the amount paid by his department didn’t include travel costs paid for by the Ministry of International Affairs....
“At a time when this government is asking all ministries to cut costs, the only good thing they can think of doing is to bring-in cultural delegates from abroad, pay their hotel rooms, pay their meals only to tell them that their budgets are being cut,” said Liberal critic for economic development." Link
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You might want to check out this new Facebook group;
The New Province of Montreal/La Nouvelle Province de Montréal
****************.....and finally
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| Charbonneau Commission firming up witness list for new year |
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!
BONNE FIN DE SEMAINE!
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