My estimation is that if we had a similar level of effort into looking into other regions, we'd see similar or greater issues. The refusal to look into real-estate or casino based money laundering as well as substantially counterproductive financial secrecy laws make for lots of issues in Canada.
Is there grift in Montreal? You betcha. Is there grift in Toronto? You betcha, but it doesn't make the news.
I’d prefer it if they could just take kickbacks on financial shenanigans.
This is a great shame.
It is amazing how time and time again, his supporters entirely dismiss these things. Amazing that they are fine with a government with zero transparency and zero accountability, despite their platform clamouring for exactly that. Regardless of the party in power, I would be equally as disgusted. I wonder if people will wake up when they see the bleak financial situation that comes to light post-COVID.
I haven't even mentioned his other previous ethics violations but I'll spare you the details.
>The Post Millennial is a conservative Canadian online news magazine started in 2017. It publishes national and local news and has a large amount of opinion content. It has been criticized for releasing misinformation and articles written by fake personas, for past employment of an editor with ties to white supremacist-platforming and pro-Kremlin media outlets, and for opaque funding and political connections.
>The Post Millennial has been described by Buzzfeed News as an advocacy organization for the Conservative Party operating through opaque personal connections and undeclared social media ties.
>In July 2020, The Daily Beast exposed an online network pushing United Arab Emirates propaganda against Qatar, Turkey and Iran, using op-eds placed in news outlets using fictitious authors. The Post Millennial published some of these articles. After being contacted by the Beast, it took the articles down without comment.
If you don't trust Wikipedia on this, just have a look the topics and opinion pieces run by this "news" organization. Hardly a reputable source by any stretch.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-co...
> Given that much of what has been released on the WE contract has contradicted what the prime minister has told Canadians publicly, the opposition are well within their rights to probe it and other spending, including the sole-source $237-million contract for ventilators made by former Liberal MP Frank Baylis’s company Baylis Medical
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/macdougall-trudeau-embrace...
https://alkhaleejtoday.co/international/5157524/Contract-to-...
https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/companies-warn-tory-mo...
Did you read the first sentence of my comment? It starts with "I'm not saying your overall point is incorrect..."
Could be my interpretation. My apologies. No need to be snarky about it eh.
I only want the reader to be wary of claims (and the claimant) citing an obviously partisan source. A source that has been caught red-handed publishing disinformation provided by foreign state actors[1].
Although you sound well-intentioned, I'm just not interested in engaging when someone plays fast and loose with facts and sources. I'm just so incredibly tired of it.
[0] https://www.charityintelligence.ca/charity-details/82-we-cha... [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/right-wing-media-outlets-duped...
Actually your own cited source challenges this. You didn't dig far enough.[0,1] WE Charity transferred 7% of its revenue to Me to We, a for profit company that did the payouts to Trudeau's family. Charity Intelligence themselves found this very unusual. Unlike every other charity that they monitor, in fact. I guess it's okay for a not for profit to operate a for profit company to get around the rules then?
This isn't even a partisan thing, this is on WE Charity's wikipedia page.
[0]https://www.canadaland.com/we-charity-was-in-financial-troub... [1]https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-july-13-...
No, my link does not challenge this. WE is a registered charity (as designated by CRA). It's public information, you can look it up.
I initially chose not to bring this up precisely because it detracts from the fact that there is likely corruption (as you point out). I only brought it up when pressed for why I endorsed the gist of the parents comments, but not the stated details.
You know, it is possible for someone to believe that corruption occurred but also believe that getting the surrounding facts correct is important. That's all I was advocating for.
You've totally misinterpreted this entire thread.
It is, but then also it isn't really all that amazing if you sit down an examine the entire system. People being "fine with a government with zero transparency and zero accountability" isn't surprising, because these problem derive from the structure of the system itself, not any one individual politician operating in it. One could Google up plentiful examples from history of all politicians leveraging the opaqueness of the particular political system they operate in (all systems on Earth are flawed in this manner, to varying degrees) - but at the individual level (politicians and voters), they all realize that "these things are inevitable", and that even though technical wrongdoing has occurred, from the aggregate perspective, the ends justifies the means (which is a perfectly reasonable position to hold in my opinion, if we assume that the individuals in question are not aware that their perception of reality does not match objective reality, which is ~always the case).
I believe that to fix the problem, these systems must be completely redesigned to accommodate the obvious shortcomings. But then to do that, it would require buy-in from both politicians and the media, who both likely enjoy the amount of power in their possession and wouldn't be too keen on giving it up, so I wouldn't hold my breath on anything improving, ever.
He mostly does name licensing these days.
That area of NYC had been completely derelict and run down at the time. Midtown East was NYC's red light district up until the 1950s when it moved across town to Times Square. It still is the area to this day where most of the asian brothels in the city are.
Anyway, the Grand Hyatt project completely revitalized that neighborhood.
Then Trump put his (rejected) bid in for the Javits Center project and was the project's biggest salesman to the public. His proposal for which streets to develop nearly exactly became the Hudson Yards project 30 years later...
I mean, it's pretty typically for a gov't official to lose track of $41,000 in expenses right? Happens every day.
I'm curious about the logistics of this scam. Does this mean the concrete delivery would show up on the books of the concrete company as two orders, one for the 10%, and one (or more orders) for the remaining 90%? Or was the concrete company in on the scam for a kickback so nothing would show up on their books nor the contractors' books?
With so much being automated and tracked these days, is it squeezing out these scams?
It's somewhat ironic that this is part of your profile text though.
You can be anti-censorship and still find our libel & slander laws reasonable.
I went back to visit right before leaving North America forever. I was shocked at how depressed the city was still. I assume it's these parasites stealing from the people.
A lot of new modern buildings have been erected downtown and the city is quite clean.
As for the corruption, it is very visible on the roads. They are constantly redoing the roads and yet there are still a lot of potholes. The weather is not an excuse, roads are much better in Ontario.
Also I don't know if it is still the case but you could read occasionally in the news some housing construction buildings being burnt.
Roads do get a beating because of snow. Montreal definitely get more than Toronto, and the road system is way over capacity, with the number of cars and trucks increasing 2% each year.
The costs estimates are interesting too, because the construction industry is/was colliding in order to hike prices. So now all projects are fixed-price, meaning that companies won't take risks and tripple their estimates.
Some say that these problems started in the 60s, but got worse during government downsizing attempts. Internal expertise was lost and they had to rely on (corrupt) private companies. Others say that the restructuring were required to get rid of inside corruption. Whenever two government entities get merged, it's pretty much always as an attempt to water down corruption.
All that said, these days the city is pretty lean. I know lots of folks working there. I also did my small part to help liberate the city from Oracle consultants (siphoning the city) and also ran for borough office some time ago.
Just don't get your car towed. They are as bad in Montreal as everywhere else. And the city needs more public transport.
The other factor is repairs were neglected for much of the 2010s, which compounded damage, so they're playing catch-up. So yes, there is a lot of construction, and undoubtedly some corruption and incompetence mixed in, but it's not as bad as some people who like to complain say.
It will be interesting to see if they can "catch up" some year, and it's very important for informed people to remain critical and engaged.
The library system in montreal (+BANQ) is one of the things i missed most when i left. It really was amazing.
I've lived there. Any canadian who has lived in all the big cities (toronto, vancouver, montreal, calgary) will tell you the same.
> I've lived there.
So have I
There is corruption, but it’s not clear how much worse it is than in other North American cities.
Also, fun fact, parties that seemed to be more engaged in this corruption were not the “socialist” ones, but the neoliberal ones.
But hey, don’t let that stop you, it’s a great strawman you built there.
The government here pays huge subsidies for electricity, a lot of social housing and a generous $6/day child care regime, which is far more than anywhere else in the US.
Montreal is measurably 'more corrupt' [1], there's no doubt about it, there was a massive investigation into it, and some of it was addressed by having more intelligent/trained buyers for public sector goods etc., but much remains.
"At the Charbonneau inquiry, an "ex-construction boss said that for years, three per cent of the value of all contracts he received from the city of Montreal went to the mayor's party, and another one per cent, known as "la taxe à Surprenant," went to a city official"
I don't think the level of corruption has that much to do with the ideology of government though.
Montreal is in the US?
The construction industry is very clearly siphoning billions of dollars of tax money into organized criminals' hands. Every few years a given street gets torn up with a new excuse. And it seems to be consensus that it's much worse these days than it used to be.. this year in particular I think something like one out of every five blocks downtown is closed off for "construction".
Cops saying "just don't look into it" regarding organized crime sounds about par for the course anywhere I've ever been though.