16 ms·

I don't have a source for this, but I grew up in NJ and now live in Montreal, and I am pretty sure the local corruption here is worse than where I grew up (wher

by cowpig 6y ago

I don't have a source for this, but I grew up in NJ and now live in Montreal, and I am pretty sure the local corruption here is worse than where I grew up (where three of the four mayors of my hometown served time in jail after their time in office). Things got a lot better there and I think a lot of the organized crime might have moved up north. 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.

ABCLAW 6y ago
The corruption in Montreal is more visible than in many other metropolitan regions places, but the city and province do a lot more than other areas to bring it to light and fight it. 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.
- busterarm 6y ago
  I mean, that grift extends all the way to your PM and political dividing lines are preventing it from being properly investigated. This is a great shame.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    The US president made his career in casinos, development, and high end real estate... It's shameful but not really rare.
    - NicoJuicy 6y ago
      The president would never have had his first and greatest success without his dad ( Trump tower). He mostly does name licensing these days.
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        He's being compared to Justin Treadeau, who basically owes his entire political career to being Pierre Treadeau's son. Nepotism encourages such underworld connections.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - busterarm 6y ago
        His first and greatest success was actually the Grand Hyatt New York @ Grand Central Station in 1980. 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...
    - TravHatesMe 6y ago
      The Canadian PM got caught red handed in a number of scandals, lining the pockets of his friends with tax payer money. Overpaid $100 million in COVID medical equipment; his former parties' MP setup a shell company 7 days prior to be the middleman between govt and equipment imports (pocketing a nice $10K per unit purchased). Add on that a huge no-bid contract awarded to his favourite buddies that run a for-profit charity that has promoted his brand for years, paid his family members, expensed lavish trips, etc. These guys had zero experience in these domains. Then he prorogued parliament to prevent investigations. He continued with filibustering tactics, threatened an election during the pandemic when further inquiry was pushed. 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.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Indeed. The former finance minister was just cleared of ethics violations because he firmly believed he had paid the $41,000 in travel expenses when in fact a charity funded by the Liberal gov't paid for it. I mean, it's pretty typically for a gov't official to lose track of $41,000 in expenses right? Happens every day.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      The guy's a former CEO of a ~2 billion dollar company, that's actually fairly believable. The rest of the claims are more damning.
- linspace 6y ago
  I love this related quote from The Wire: "You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the f* it's gonna take you."
- refurb 6y ago
  I'm not sure. I think your comparison with Toronto is probably fair, but I would say Montreal has a greater share of corruption than most major Canadian cities. Why? The presence of organized crime is probably a big factor. When you have crime families who have been established in Montreal for decades, I think that breeds more corruption than a city that has a less organized set of criminal elements.
- dghughes 6y ago
  And I wouldn't trust Sûreté du Québec I'd rather RCMP.
- graeme 6y ago
  There’s something especially dysfunctional about Montreal grift where it involves physically destroying the built environment every year and impeding traffic, creation pollution and making excess noise. I’d prefer it if they could just take kickbacks on financial shenanigans.
dragosmocrii 6y ago
This is correct. I lived in Montreal for one year, and the road closures (barree barree barree) is ridiculous. It's so bad that without a navigation app like Waze you can get stuck going in circles.
- ornornor 6y ago
  And for roads or streets that aren’t closed, you better drive a tank of a car or keep your eyes wide open on a bicycle because of all the potholes.
joering2 6y ago
I recall a buddy of mine worked in construction industry in 80s/Miami Florida. It was “typical”, as he told me that they ordered truck of concrete, and then at the same time filled out the hole with as much garbage as they could. Then covered with concrete using less than 10% what was ordered. Of course rest was sold on black market. First people who were doing it (probably not first but the most “famous”) was Morgan family (constructions) before they switched industry to became Morgan&Morgan Lawyers (for the people).
- busterarm 6y ago
  Because writing libelous posts about a powerful, wealthy, politically connected lawyer is a smart thing to be doing with your time online... You're talking about the third largest corporate donor to Hillary's 2016 campaign. Have a sense of self-preservation.
  - cinntaile 6y ago
    > Censors have never been on the right side of history. If you support censorship, consider that you may be advocating evil. It's somewhat ironic that this is part of your profile text though.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      I'm not censoring the guy. I'm just telling him he's being dumb. You can be anti-censorship and still find our libel & slander laws reasonable.
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  > Then covered with concrete using less than 10% what was ordered. 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?
interestica 6y ago
In this light, it's really crazy reading about the initial Montreal Metro construction -- completed in less than 5 years. They actually extended the orange line by two whole stations because they found their construction costs were lower than expected. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro
elevenoh 6y ago
Is there an underlying pattern here: Canada's most 'socialist' big city is also its most corrupt?
- goodlyvibes 6y ago
  Does a single instance of a thing represent a pattern?
- bawolff 6y ago
  What makes montreal the most "socialist"? Which socialist policies even apply at the municipal level?
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Montreal has a public housing initiative, but so does Toronto. The public transit networks are municipal, so maybe those? We've also got a good library system...
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Those damn commies and their public transit (that you have to pay for) ;) The library system in montreal (+BANQ) is one of the things i missed most when i left. It really was amazing.
  - elevenoh 6y ago
    culturally, the income taxes, the intra-provice tuition, low competitiveness in publicly-funded domains e.g. city construction, subsidies etc. I've lived there. Any canadian who has lived in all the big cities (toronto, vancouver, montreal, calgary) will tell you the same.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      So in other words, things that have nothing to do with the city of montreal, but are the domain of either the provincial or federal government (other than construction which i'll give you is not great... but not sure how you link it to socialism.) > I've lived there. So have I
TomSwirly 6y ago
I lived in Montreal in the early 70s and this was rumoured to be the case then. I see little has changed in 50 fucking years. 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.
- bengalister 6y ago
  I lived in Montreal a couple of years 10 years ago and I visit it quite regularly. I actually enjoy that city and don't find it depressing. It is a big city but it does not feel oppressive. 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.
  - mgbmtl 6y ago
    There is definitely alot of organized crime in Montreal, but a lot of money is invested into fixing the water distribution system, which is crumbling and was neglected for decades. They usually fix 1-2 blocks at the time, and it costs hundreds of millions. 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.
ycombonator 6y ago
Sounds like Boston. The roads are torn up on a perpetual basis and made worse. These are what I call “brother in law contracts”

by cowpig 6y ago

ABCLAW 6y ago

The corruption in Montreal is more visible than in many other metropolitan regions places, but the city and province do a lot more than other areas to bring it to light and fight it. 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.

busterarm 6y ago
I mean, that grift extends all the way to your PM and political dividing lines are preventing it from being properly investigated. This is a great shame.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  The US president made his career in casinos, development, and high end real estate... It's shameful but not really rare.
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    The president would never have had his first and greatest success without his dad ( Trump tower). He mostly does name licensing these days.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      He's being compared to Justin Treadeau, who basically owes his entire political career to being Pierre Treadeau's son. Nepotism encourages such underworld connections.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - busterarm 6y ago
      His first and greatest success was actually the Grand Hyatt New York @ Grand Central Station in 1980. 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...
  - TravHatesMe 6y ago
    The Canadian PM got caught red handed in a number of scandals, lining the pockets of his friends with tax payer money. Overpaid $100 million in COVID medical equipment; his former parties' MP setup a shell company 7 days prior to be the middleman between govt and equipment imports (pocketing a nice $10K per unit purchased). Add on that a huge no-bid contract awarded to his favourite buddies that run a for-profit charity that has promoted his brand for years, paid his family members, expensed lavish trips, etc. These guys had zero experience in these domains. Then he prorogued parliament to prevent investigations. He continued with filibustering tactics, threatened an election during the pandemic when further inquiry was pushed. 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.
- refurb 6y ago
  Indeed. The former finance minister was just cleared of ethics violations because he firmly believed he had paid the $41,000 in travel expenses when in fact a charity funded by the Liberal gov't paid for it. I mean, it's pretty typically for a gov't official to lose track of $41,000 in expenses right? Happens every day.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    The guy's a former CEO of a ~2 billion dollar company, that's actually fairly believable. The rest of the claims are more damning.
linspace 6y ago
I love this related quote from The Wire: "You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the f* it's gonna take you."
refurb 6y ago
I'm not sure. I think your comparison with Toronto is probably fair, but I would say Montreal has a greater share of corruption than most major Canadian cities. Why? The presence of organized crime is probably a big factor. When you have crime families who have been established in Montreal for decades, I think that breeds more corruption than a city that has a less organized set of criminal elements.
dghughes 6y ago
And I wouldn't trust Sûreté du Québec I'd rather RCMP.
graeme 6y ago
There’s something especially dysfunctional about Montreal grift where it involves physically destroying the built environment every year and impeding traffic, creation pollution and making excess noise. I’d prefer it if they could just take kickbacks on financial shenanigans.

dragosmocrii 6y ago

This is correct. I lived in Montreal for one year, and the road closures (barree barree barree) is ridiculous. It's so bad that without a navigation app like Waze you can get stuck going in circles.

ornornor 6y ago
And for roads or streets that aren’t closed, you better drive a tank of a car or keep your eyes wide open on a bicycle because of all the potholes.

joering2 6y ago

I recall a buddy of mine worked in construction industry in 80s/Miami Florida. It was “typical”, as he told me that they ordered truck of concrete, and then at the same time filled out the hole with as much garbage as they could. Then covered with concrete using less than 10% what was ordered. Of course rest was sold on black market. First people who were doing it (probably not first but the most “famous”) was Morgan family (constructions) before they switched industry to became Morgan&Morgan Lawyers (for the people).

busterarm 6y ago
Because writing libelous posts about a powerful, wealthy, politically connected lawyer is a smart thing to be doing with your time online... You're talking about the third largest corporate donor to Hillary's 2016 campaign. Have a sense of self-preservation.
- cinntaile 6y ago
  > Censors have never been on the right side of history. If you support censorship, consider that you may be advocating evil. It's somewhat ironic that this is part of your profile text though.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    I'm not censoring the guy. I'm just telling him he's being dumb. You can be anti-censorship and still find our libel & slander laws reasonable.
yourapostasy 6y ago
> Then covered with concrete using less than 10% what was ordered. 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?

interestica 6y ago

In this light, it's really crazy reading about the initial Montreal Metro construction -- completed in less than 5 years. They actually extended the orange line by two whole stations because they found their construction costs were lower than expected. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Metro

elevenoh 6y ago

Is there an underlying pattern here: Canada's most 'socialist' big city is also its most corrupt?

goodlyvibes 6y ago
Does a single instance of a thing represent a pattern?
bawolff 6y ago
What makes montreal the most "socialist"? Which socialist policies even apply at the municipal level?
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Montreal has a public housing initiative, but so does Toronto. The public transit networks are municipal, so maybe those? We've also got a good library system...
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Those damn commies and their public transit (that you have to pay for) ;) The library system in montreal (+BANQ) is one of the things i missed most when i left. It really was amazing.
- elevenoh 6y ago
  culturally, the income taxes, the intra-provice tuition, low competitiveness in publicly-funded domains e.g. city construction, subsidies etc. I've lived there. Any canadian who has lived in all the big cities (toronto, vancouver, montreal, calgary) will tell you the same.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    So in other words, things that have nothing to do with the city of montreal, but are the domain of either the provincial or federal government (other than construction which i'll give you is not great... but not sure how you link it to socialism.) > I've lived there. So have I

TomSwirly 6y ago

I lived in Montreal in the early 70s and this was rumoured to be the case then. I see little has changed in 50 fucking years. 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.

bengalister 6y ago
I lived in Montreal a couple of years 10 years ago and I visit it quite regularly. I actually enjoy that city and don't find it depressing. It is a big city but it does not feel oppressive. 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.
- mgbmtl 6y ago
  There is definitely alot of organized crime in Montreal, but a lot of money is invested into fixing the water distribution system, which is crumbling and was neglected for decades. They usually fix 1-2 blocks at the time, and it costs hundreds of millions. 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.

ycombonator 6y ago

Sounds like Boston. The roads are torn up on a perpetual basis and made worse. These are what I call “brother in law contracts”