Slumlord city

Robert Sebag’s hold on a notorious dump of a 38-unit apartment building in Côte-des-Neiges may finally be slipping, thanks to action taken by the city over the weekend. The building, infested with vermin, mould and mushrooms, and with spotty heating, had to be renovated within 48 hours as of Saturday afternoon or else either face footing the bill for repairs or being forced to sell. If he decides to sell, he’ll walk away with an estimated $4-million.

It’s a situation that could drive a housing activist crazy. François Saillant of housing group FRAPRU offers some suggestions on avoiding similar situations in the future. First, fine slumlords big dollars. Second, ease expropriation rules so the city can step in sooner.

“If the city has to carry out the repairs, the cost of the repairs should be deducted from the final selling price,” he says.

Saillant says he is encouraged by tougher city action against landlords in recent years, but thinks more needs to be done to send a clearer message.

“If someone is known to be a dangerous driver, he’s prohibited from getting behind the wheel,” he says. “If a landlord owns a building that is dangerous for tenants, the province should prohibit him from owning a building.”

Season’s giving

It’s the holidays, but the rotten economy is killing giving. Earlier this week, the provincial government had to hand out $250,000 to Quebec food banks in order to meet demand that is rapidly outpacing supply. Even media pseudo-celebs can’t help: the annual Grande Guignolée des médias held last week brought in much lower returns than expected.

So it’s tough times all around, and local food banks are doing what they can. Not that it’s been without sacrifices. Fiona Keats of the NDG Food Depot says her community organization still managed to distribute 22,000 food bags this year—but looking at the books revealed an estimated $30,000 budget shortfall. Having benefited from some unusually large gifts in 2008, Keats says this year, donations and gifts from foundations are way down.

“Fortunately, the community has been incredibly generous,” she says. “Being locally rooted, I think people here like the idea of helping out their fellow NDGers.”

They’ve been cutting corners where they can—no more powdered milk, for example, and substituting dried beans for baked ones (which Keats says is healthier anyway)—but still need help. “If someone asks me what we’d rather have, food or cash, I’d say cash,” Keats says. But nothing will be turned away. Call (514) 483-4680 or e-mail admin@depotndg.org to help.

Migrant blues

The Dominican Republic might have beautiful beaches, nifty colonial architecture and even a democratically elected, somewhat functional government, yet when it comes to the treatment of its numerous Haitian immigrants/refugees, the country has an abysmal human rights record.

Essentially, Haitians in the DR have no rights. And while life for your average DR-residing Haitian is generally pretty miserable, it’s still better than starving in Port-au-Prince, so each year they cross the border en masse, both legally and illegally, to enjoy the relative prosperity of their somewhat more together neighbours. To mark International Migrants Day, Friday, Dec. 18, Amnistie Internationale Canada and le Centre justice et foi have organized a forum/film screening/photo exhibit on the situation migrant workers face both here in Quebec and abroad, including an excellent series of photos by Louise Renaud documenting the plight of Haitian migrants in the DR.

“We want to raise awareness to the plight of migrants, not only those in Quebec, but around the world,” says Louise Dionne, spokesperson for Centre justice et foi. The event takes place Thursday, December 17, from 5–9 p.m., at Bellarmine House (25 Jarry W.).

Suggested donation is $5. To register, send an e-mail to cleguen@cjf.qc.ca.

Nuke still go

In the face of repeated calls by environmental groups and the official opposition PQ, Jean Charest’s Liberals have made it clear they’ve no intent to shut down Quebec’s only remaining nuclear reactor, Gentilly-2 in Bécancour, on the south side of the St. Lawrence across from Trois-Rivières. Rather, the government intends to go ahead with Hydro-Québec’s plan to refurbish the facility to the tune of $1.9-billion, all in the effort to extend the plant’s life another 30 years.

Not surprisingly perhaps, not everyone in the province is as enthusiastic about Quebec’s nuclear energy pursuits as the Liberals and Hydro-Québec. “Quebec is currently awash in surplus energy and has enormous potential with respect to conservation and renewable energies like wind power,” says Michel Bélanger, president of Nature Québec. “There are no valid reasons for the government to maintain nuclear power in its energy portfolio.”

Nature Québec, a Quebec City-based NGO dedicated to the environment and sustainable development, points to the usual suspects in its opposition to Hydro-Québec’s nuclear scheme, noting that nuclear energy, in particular the Candu technology employed at Gentilly-2, issues several hazardous elements into the environment, including tritium, a nuclear material with a radioactive half-life in the thousands of years.

For more, see naturequebec.org.

Rear-view mirror

10 YEARS AGO - DEC. 16–23, 1999

On the cover: Robert Warren, the “hard-nosed, soft-hearted, butt-kicking Anglican priest” who’s taking over the Old Brewery Mission. “The people who come here can’t go anywhere else,” he says. “This is the end of the line for them.”

•Mireille Silcott looks at Polly Esther’s, a ’70s/’80s/’90s-nostalgia chain club just opened on St-Laurent and Rachel. The ’90s room, called Generations DVD, writes Silcott, “has CDs plastering the walls and the bar adorned with an over-sized credit card (huh?). The soundtrack is techno (oh god).”

• Interviewed on the set of the Montreal-shot Slow Burn, Pam Grier discusses blaxploitation past and present. “In the ’70s we had heroines. We were coming out of the political gains of the ’50s and ’60s and reaping the rewards in the ’70s. Now, blaxploitation is mainly about comedy.”

• According to Philip Preville’s Thing column, the PVM luminescent “tree” was first erected in 1966, is 65 feet high, composed of 12,700 seven-watt bulbs and every year uses 84 kilowatts of electricity.

Angel >>The Yes Men hoax It sounded too good to be true: According to a press release distributed to thousands of reporters in Copenhagen this week, Canada will slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80 by 2050. It would also give billions of dollars to Africa. Indeed, the release was a hoax, carried out by American-based pranksters and corporate critics the Yes Men, designed to embarrass the Conservatives and their shameful inaction on climate change in Copenhagen. The Conservatives were indeed embarrassed, especially when Stephen Harper mouthpiece Dimitri Soudas made an ass of himself by publicly, volubly and wrongly accusing Équiterre’s Steven Guilbeault of organizing the hoax.


Insect >> Federal funding for climate deniers With the Tories’ reputation already in the toilet, it sunk even lower when it was revealed this week that the Chrysotile Institute, an asbestos industry lobby group, was getting over a million dollars a year from the feds. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the institute’s website promotes a book by notorious climate change deniers that claims to debunk science-related hyste.ria—pooh poohing everything from mad cow and the Y2K bug to global warming and, yes, the dangers of asbestos. So these guys benefit from public money while groups like Kairos, a church-based human rights/environmental group, gets its funding cut, as it did last week.