Quote of the week

“We have to work together with the merchants of Ste-Catherine street… but it is a possibility in the future.” —Montreal police chief Yvan Delorme, on possibly closing the strip during future playoff rounds.

Mum on beat-down

The Friday night beating of two white Waterloo, Ontario men at Ste-Catherine and Peel last week, and posted on LiveLeak.org as “Racial Insults Results [sic] in Massive Beat-Down in Montreal,” probably won’t result in any arrests, say Montreal police.

“Because the two victims didn’t want to press charges, there’s no actual investigation, no arrests to be made,” says police spokesperson Anie Lemieux. The incident, which occurred at around 10:45 p.m., was triggered by the alleged use of the word “nigger” by one of the victims. The poor quality cell phone video footage shows a group of people swarming the two men, kicking, screaming and laughing at them and eventually leaving them prostrate and motionless on the street. A policeman soon arrives on the scene, where the two men, aged 23 and 26, are seen recovering their senses. Their injuries turned out to be minor, and they later refused to cooperate with police.

Fo Niemi, from the Centre for Research Action on Race Relations, was at a loss after seeing the footage. “We have to be careful of the consequences, and be sure that most young black males won’t become suspects when they go downtown,” he says.

Health
mayday

For the last four years, a coalition of Quebec’s labour unions has been attempting to stir up a revival of International Workers’ Day celebrations on May 1. In 2004, 100,000 people marched in Montreal to protest the Charest government and this year’s demonstration aims to bring another critical mass onto the streets, this time in defence of public healthcare.

“Public healthcare is one of the greatest gains working people have won in the last 40 years,” says the Confédération des syndicats nationaux’s (CSN) Lyle Stewart. “Without the labour movement, I don’t think there would be a public healthcare system.”

Last February, the Castonguay report recommended privatization as the remedy for the runaway crisis that has become Quebec’s healthcare system. Critics disagree.

“If you look at the budget, it is private expenses that are increasing, while public expenses have remained stable,” notes Dr. Saideh Khadir, of the coalition Médecins pour l’accès à la santé, which is participating in the demonstration.

The coalition, which includes all the major union and student federations in Quebec, is calling for a return to a fully public system. The demonstration takes place on Saturday, May 3, at noon in Parc Lafontaine.

by MATT JONES

Petro reports

Quebec’s workplace safety commission issued another report last week saying a five-month-long lockout of 260 workers at Petro-Canada’s Montreal refinery has not affected safety at the plant. Commission inspectors visited the plant two weeks ago after a Quebec labour commissioner issued an injunction against five replacement workers at the plant.

The workplace safety commission’s report was the second report issued since the lockout. The first report came under fire this month when the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers’ Union, which represents the workers, said the lockout increased the risk of an accident at the plant. The union says it will also contest the new report.

In related Petro-Canada news, the provincial Environment Ministry is still waiting for a proposal regarding the safety of the refinery’s 1.3-kilometre tunnel linking it to the port of Montreal. The leak detection system currently installed has failed several tests, and Petro-Canada proposed installing gas detectors along the length of the tunnel. A ministry spokesman erroneously told the Mirror last week that they had already received a safety improvement proposal.

The fire department, however, has received it, and an official with the department says the city is still considering the proposal.

by SAMER ELATRASH

Ecology
at home

With another Earth Day come and gone, it’s time to see who’s going to stick by their resolution to be more socially and environmentally conscious and who just needed an excuse to pull out their tye-dyes and attend all those wild Earth Day parties.

For those who are genuinely concerned, the Montreal Urban Ecology Centre (MUEC) have organized “Changing the World, One Neighbourhood at a Time,” the first Montreal conference on sustainable neighbourhood development (Thursday, May 1, 7–9 p.m. and Saturday, May 3, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., at UQÀM’s science complex, 200 Sherbrooke W., $30, $20 for students). There will be 20 workshops on transportation, greening, waste management, urban agriculture, ecological housing etc. Keynote speakers include Brian Tokar from Vermont’s Institute for Social Ecology and David Brown, director of McGill’s School of Urban Planning.

“People do not realize urban sustainability also involves economic and social issues in addition to environmental concerns,” says MUEC project coordinator Virginie Bonneau. “There are numerous ways for citizens to participate and make a difference in their own neighbourhoods.”

For info and registration, see www.urbanecology.net/colloque.

by STEVE ZYLBERGOLD

Rear-view mirror

18 YEARS AGO - APR. 26–MAY 3, 1990

On the cover: Flappers smoking, for an article on the “city’s feminist history” for the 50th anniversary of near universal suffrage (“certain ethnic groups continued to be exploited,” the article notes). Feminism grew in Quebec out of a need to help fight the city’s anti-prostitution campaign, it suggests, and political power soon followed.
•The Mirror looks into the practice of illegally tampering with the Hydro meter. Marc says he saves 60 per cent on his bill, while sticking it to the utility. “It’s a creature of the government and it works against the interests of the people,” he says.
•“Sure, young people can have the blues,” says John Lee Hooker. “Anywhere there’s a man and a woman, there’s blues.”
• Indie Toronto filmmaker Peter Mettler’s feature debut, The Top of His Head, “skillfully projects a person’s inner turmoil and transformation onto the screen.”
•Montreal “painter of the homoerotic” Peter Flinsch exhibits 150 pieces at the Goethe. “At the age of 70, I find myself considered avant-garde,” he says.

Angel >> Embarrassing Mario Dumont It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec. The official provincial opposition party, which glided into second place just over a year ago largely by playing up the reasonable accommodation fears, is down 12 per cent in opinion polls since September, and is now facing two more crises. The first involves Sylvie Tremblay, a former Verdun candidate and ADQ vice-president who resigned on Sunday, calling the party a “dictatorship” whose social policies will take women “back 50 years.” The same day, PQ leader Pauline Marois announced she’s suing Chauveau MNA Gilles Taillon after he accused her of letting an investment executive at disgraced Norbourg Asset Management receive $900,000 in government money when she was finance minister in 2001.

Insect >> Throttling The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, and countless millions of Canadian file-sharers, are furious at Bell Canada. The utility giant has been deliberately slowing Internet speed to smaller providers, who lease portions of Bell’s network to deliver high-speed connections, saying heavy file sharing traffic is congesting their bandwidth. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will hold deliberations this week on whether Bell’s policy, called throttling, should stop immediately until a federal policy is created. Until now, the CRTC has shied away from regulating the Internet, which is good, but unfortunately, it looks like they have to step in now.