Premier François Legault

Striking ConU students and staff protest tuition hikes

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , ,

Photo Andraé Lerone Lewis

Iness Rifay
Local Journalism Initiative

On March 13, around 400 Concordia students, faculty and staff gathered on the corner of Mackay and De Maisonneuve Street to the sound of upbeat tunes, clanking pots and pans, and the croak of trombones and trumpets. 

On that same date, over 22,000 students across various student associations were on strike from their classes, with hard-picketing measures enforced all throughout the Hall building as well as on Loyola campus. The strike officially started on March 11 and is set to end by March 15. However, some departments have discussed an unlimited general strike.

Under the afternoon sun, volunteers coated Mackay with red paint reading “Free education” in light of the Coalition Avenir Québec imposed hikes, which exclusively target anglophone universities in the province. 

Dominik Séguin, one of the volunteers and a third-year student in the English literature program, believes the implementation of the hikes is only the first step in a series of other “discriminatory measures.” 

“What’s to stop [Premier François] Legault from making more laws that affect anglophones, or any other group?” said Séguin, while swiping her red-stained paintbrush on the concrete. “If people are leaving after their education, I can guarantee you it’s because they don’t feel welcome here.” 

Quebec’s minister of higher education Pascale Déry argues in favour of the hikes, saying that out-of-province students and international students leave the province after their studies and that the new increase “better reflects what it costs to educate a university student.” 

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Petition calls for Montreal trusteeship after massive tax hikes

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By Joel Goldenberg

A change.org bilingual petition is calling on Premier François Legault to place the City of Montreal under trusteeship in light of steep commercial and industrial property tax increases for many in the past two years.Two owners of commercial properties in St. Laurent brought the petition to The Suburban‘s attention before the start of the February borough council meeting.

“In 2024, commercial and industrial property owners in the city of Montreal received incredulous increases for their municipal properties [of] between 15% and 20%-plus,” the petition says. “In 2023 it was 22%! As an owner, this makes absolutely no sense! To be at nearly 39% of increases in two years because of inflation is incredulous. The result is an increase in inflation: tenants pay more, consumers pay more and the cycle continues.”

Legault is being asked to place Montreal under trusteeship “to stop these incredulous annual increases. “Furthermore, we are also asking for a class action lawsuit for all tenants and commercial and industrial property owners on the island on Montreal.”

The petition can be seen at www.change.org/p/creation-de-l-inflation-par-la-ville-de-montr%C3%A9al-inflation-creation-by-the-city-of-mtl?utm_source=starter_dashboard_page_qr_code.

Rosemont resident Alfred Decivita, who has a 5,000-square foot mailroom equipment business in an industrial building on Sartelon in St. Laurent, told The Suburban that his property tax increased by $5,000 in the past two years — his bill this year is over $16,800.”The increase was not just me — I asked my neighbours on our street, we all got the same increase, 17 percent,” he added. “Last year, it was 22 percent. Next year, what’s it going to be? Another 17 percent?” The business owner also says owners like himself get less service, such as no access to eco-centres.

Jimmy Metaxas, who has a 3,500 square-foot industrial condo with his brother on Pitfield and rents to a paper business, said his taxes went up the same amount in the past two years. “It’s getting ridiculous, my bill is up to $14,000. It’s literally gone up 40 percent in two years. This is really getting out of hand — we’re talking about $1,200 a month just for taxes. There’s also school taxes — I don’t know what’s going to happen. If we’re talking about two to three percent inflation, we’re six times more with the tax.”

During the council meeting, Decivita addressed Mayor Alan DeSousa on the issue, saying the tax increase from the Plante administration is “not normal.

“Are you taking your budget out on the businesses?”

DeSousa said former Executive Committee chair Dominique Ollivier, who is a Rosemont city councillor, “made the budget that was proposed to council” and that he, City Councillor and Montreal Opposition leader Aref Salem and City Councillor Anna Nazarian also questioned the budget and voted against it.

“We found lots of places where the administration could and should have reduced expenses [to reduce the tax bills]. We made constructive proposals to the administration, saying the 4.9 percent residential average increase and the 4.6 percent average for non-residential is way too high in the current economic context. The administration refused to consider it. We had found ways to reduce everyone’s tax bill by at least one percent.”

Decivita urged DeSousa to visit his business neighbours.

“My neighbour’s a plumber. He’s got 35 plumbers, he laid off 10 this week!”

“Your concerns are our concerns,” DeSousa said, adding that the business owner should also bring his concerns to Montreal city council. He also mentioned to The Suburban that the much higher than average tax increase for some property owners was the result of valuation changes. n

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Editorial: It’s broke, don’t fix it

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Photo Ivan de Jacquelin

The Link
Local Journalism Initiative

On Feb. 5, the Quebec government confirmed that the Olympic Stadium’s roof repair would cost $870 million. 

Ever since the roof was completed in 1987, it has never really worked as intended. Portions of the roof notoriously collapsed in 1991 and 1999, yet the city believes a facelift will solve the impending dome doom. 

Another option for the Olympic Stadium is to entirely demolish it, a task proving harder than imagined. Politicians, engineers and board members are unsurprisingly against the demolition and have said that demolishing the stadium could run up to $2 billion, despite financial and engineering experts questioning the exact figure. 

In 2017, preserving the Olympic Stadium was justified through its heritage status. Since “my father, your father, paid for it, built it. […] It’s impossible, foolish to think about dismantling it,” said Michel Labrecque, head of the Olympic installation board at the time.

At the heart of the current roof renovation project is a blatant disregard for larger problems directly impacting citizens.

Clearly, Labrecque’s reasoning is that the roof is an ongoing issue which needs a solution since past generations paid dearly for it. Yet, the worry for other long-standing issues like basic human needs—cost of living adjustments, the healthcare and housing crises, unjust pay for public sector workers—are not as dire. 

But, sure, fixing a roof that will likely cave in with enough snow mounted on top of it for a couple car shows a year should be our utmost priority.

Speaking of car shows, the empty promise is to generate revenue for the city through additional events that could be held thanks to the renovation. Tourism minister Caroline Proulx said the renovated stadium could accommodate large shows for mega-celebrities like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. With all these potential events, it is estimated the stadium itself could generate a whopping $1.5 billion over 10 years—or barely half of the construction fees. It’s to note that the ideal outcome for the roof would be that it lives to see 50 years. The future is short for the Olympic Stadium.

It’s funny to see the Legault government concerned with revenue when actions such as a decrease in funding for Montreal’s English universities—and the consequent diminishing enrollment numbers—will have the opposite effect. 

Less student traffic will have consequences on the workforce down the line but, immediately, neighbouring downtown shops and restaurants reliant on student traffic will be greatly affected. The impact of the decision to cut funding alone has had repercussions, but the benefits from extra events remain to be seen.

The other promise was for housing to be constructed in the residential neighbourhood surrounding Olympic Park. At the end of the day, it is solely a promise given by a man who has shelled out numerous empty ones.

The estimated revenues for the stadium, too, are a promise, and they will likely not be as high as predicted. Cost overruns have plagued the Olympic Stadium since its inception. When construction began in 1970, the budget had been set for $134 million, but the final costs were well over a billion dollars.

The Big O might need a new top, but it’s a bottomless money pit at best.

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Editorial: Power to the public sector

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , ,

Graphic Zachary Fortier

The Link
Local Journalism Initiative

“Guardian angels” is how Quebec Premier François Legault described healthcare workers in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We heard similar sentiments towards teachers who made sure children were being educated, both online and eventually in-person, often putting their health at risk by doing so.

Now, these “guardian angels” are all without contracts and going on strike because the Coalition Avenir Quebec is failing to fairly compensate them for their work.

Teachers in Quebec remain the lowest paid across Canada, even if they’ve been working in the profession for over a decade. According to the latest salary-scale, released by the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers, the base salary of a “regular teacher” has increased 15.6 per cent over eight years, from $39,291 in 2014-2015 to $46,527 today. 

This pales in comparison to the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) who was recently offered—and rejected—a 21 per cent increase over five years. On their website, the SQ 2021 starting salary is $48,386, which rises to $84,366 after five years. The SQ also increases the salary of officers every six months for the first three years, and every year after the fourth year.

Many nurses, who often have to deal with insufficient staffing and lack of beds, have reportedly been sleeping at the hospital between double or triple shifts.

At any given time, Montreal hospitals are at 80 to 200 per cent (or more) occupancy. Nearly 14,000 patients have been waiting for various surgeries for over a year, including over 4,000 in the Montreal area. An estimated 450 further delays are caused every day, that healthcare workers are on strike.

In the last few years, broken promises have led to growing anger. This includes the promise of bonuses to people to work in the healthcare system being cut, and a Quebec tribunal ordering nurses to stop threatening mass resignations.

Quebec has more than enough talent and money to be able to fill vacancies and properly compensate those who take on the exhausting work most often performed by women, particularly immigrant women of colour. 

Previous strikes by various unions have led the government enacting “back to work” legislation, and then continuing to shaft the people who were deemed heroes globally just under four years ago.

Back in 2021, Legault said “We’ve reached the capacity of what we can pay. So when some union leaders say ‘We want more money,’ well, we don’t have any more money,” adding that he had “been patient” with the unions for the previous year. The truth is that our essential “guardian angels” have been patient with you, Frank.

If the National Assembly is looking for extra funding, they can rescind the $30,000 salary increase they gave themselves in June 2023, or one of the other benefits that amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars for travel and “transition” allowances when they get voted out or leave politics.

If any of these politicians gave half a fuck about any of the roughly 570,000 striking workers, they would cap their own salary increases to match that of the lowest public sector employees. 

The Link stands firm in its support of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé, The Fédération autonome de l’enseignement, the Common Front, and all labour unions. We applaud the fight to ensure members are paid more than subsistence wage and given protections from the abysmal working conditions far too many are subject to.

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