The misleading headline, however, has fuelled local reporting across Canada that reproduces the idea that violent crime is rising and ignores all the nuances from the article. As usual, Pascal Robidas blames the rise on unhoused people and suggests transit cops should have guns.

The article itself is nuanced. It includes a Toronto transit spokesperson saying they've been encouraging people to report incidents, so we don't know what the actual figures are, and a transit expert saying unhoused people are not the cause of crime.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The integration of urban development, humanitarian aid, and various layers of military and police control is a jaw-dropping and dystopian experiment in counter-insurgency urbanism. Critics are calling it "not war but not peace,” which is apt except that it's definitely still war.

The fact that Plante can't even describe a leftist agenda after stepping down explains a lot about the last eight years.

In the upside-down world of policing, punishment is reward and reward is punishment. Kill someone on the job? You risk being "suspended with pay" - which, in the normal word, is called paid vacation.

What does this mean? Not much, in the long term. We're in for the struggle of our lives in the coming years, and that would be the case regardless of the outcome of this election. We need everyone in this fight, and we need to understand that liberalism won't save us.

Public safety for whom? An analysis of public safety, policing, and the current Montreal election - on my substack.
tedrutland.substack.com/p/public-saf...

This report, released today (?), has a lot of food for thought about the undiscussed consequences of Projet's time in power.
profitmontreal.wordpress.com

Projet Montréal has spent more time complaining about a Transition candidate's social media post, which joked that we should be allowed to kill anyone who uses the word "woke" in their platform, than the actual violence committed by the SPVM on its watch. J'ai mal à mon Montréal.

I would have expected Transition's platform to spark a debate, but I haven't seen it. Both Projet and Ensemble are promising to reduce racial profiling by introducing body cams (which don't reduce profiling) and expanding "mixed squads" (which don't do anything useful).

The exception is Transition Montréal, which has a smart plan to improve public safety for everyone by removing the police from situations it was never meant to address (non-criminal 911 calls) and banning practices that harm people without contributing to safety (street checks).

Journalists and communicators can shift coverage and provide context to help counter copaganda.

Our latest online resource⬆️ is a guide for how journalists/communicators can deal with law enforcement disinformation. It expands on our “Don’t Be A Copagandist” guide series, which you can find here:

If the decline in housing starts from 2021 to 2024 was caused by regulations and fees, what caused the increase in Montreal in 2025 - the highest increase of any large Canadian city?

Is it possible the housing market is more complicated than the developers' lobby purports?

Not surprisingly, Ensemble's claim is lifted directly from the March 2024 report of the developers' lobby group, l'Institut de développement urbain. So, too, is their claim that the decline is caused by regulations and development fees.

One last point. The reason the 20-20-20 policy hasn't operated as intended is that the CAQ eliminated the social housing program, AccèsLogis. Developers were never expected to PAY for social housing; they were expected to BUILD it with gov't funding. That's the CAQ's fault. 7/7

... and will create a city-owned enterprise to build social housing, Batir Montreal. None of this is radical or unprecedented. It reflects the longstanding and once-mainstream view that there are sectors of the economy that are especially dysfunctional (housing). 6/7