Associate Professor, Concordia. Author of Displacing Blackness (2018) and co-author of Out to Defend Ourselves (2023) and Il fallait se défendre (2023).
Out to Defend Ourselves tells the story of Montreal's first Haitian street gang, les Bélangers. It traces how the gang emerged from a group of friends, how they battled white racial violence, and how police actions worsened gang violence. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Poilievre posted a video explaining his analysis of the housing crisis and how he plans to fix it. I’m seeing a lot of people agreeing with all or part of his position. I want to take a moment to show what’s wrong, incredibly wrong, with his analysis and supposed solution. 1/18
In McGill's request for an injunction against the Gaza solidarity encampment, they make what should be a deeply embarrassing claim: they've repeated asked the police to attack their students, but the police have urged them to resolve the situation peacefully.
New report finds that keeping a person homeless in Quebec costs $72,521 per year, including $17,000 in policing expenses. Providing them a home costs less.
We've known this for years, but politicians prefer to campaign on more punishment than more care, even if care is cheaper.
... namely: the incredible and constantly increasing cost of land, our near-total reliance on homes built by huge, profit-driven companies, and the increasing financialization of housing (its treatment as a financial asset within often huge investment portfolios). 18/18
It's amazing Canadian police killed more people than anytime on record in 2022, about half of people killed by police since 2000 were in mental distress at the time, and the entire public discourse right now is about how people with mental illness are dangerous for *police*.
Canadian police killed more people than ever recorded in 2020. And then they set a new record in 2021. And then they set a new record in 2022.
Thanks to
@trackinjustice
and
@alexmcclelland
for putting together this database.
“The United States and Germany are by far the largest arms exporters and shipments have increased since 7 October 2023. Other military exporters include France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.”
Canada’s most overfunded police force deployed in the hundreds to protect McGill’s investments in genocide. (This is one deployment; the whole campus is surrounded.)
No one asked for my opinion, but if U of T’s whole thing is that the campus is private property, the City of Toronto should start charging them property tax and send the money to Gaza.
Focusing on government “red tape” is an old neoliberal move. It’s standard fare for the Conservative Party, going back to the 1980s, and it can be politically useful. 3/18
The students who got arrested for occupying the McGill admin building tonight have all of my respect and admiration. They embody everything that universities claim to value and promote - but actually disdain.
It’s worth noting that, in this graph, Montreal seems to lack the usual pesky regulations, and homes somehow sold for less than they cost to build in 2021. This is a good sign there’s something wrong with the report's methodology. 7/18
In the video, he blames the housing crisis on Trudeau, but then shifts to an analysis of how *city* regulations (“red tape”) are the cause. These regulations, he says, inflate the costs of housing, and his entire plan is to force/encourage cities to remove them. 2/18
The idea of red tape provides a way of speaking to the needs of “ordinary” Canadians, while advancing the interests of the party’s corporate backers. The existing capitalist provision of housing in Canada need not be changed in any way. We just need to cut gov't waste. 4/18
In court today, the SPVM spoke against McGill’s request for an injunction against the Gaza solidarity encampment, arguing police discretion is essential and they aren’t the private security force of the university.
You know how hard it is to make the SPVM look reasonable?
People have pointed out that Gaza is roughly the size of Montreal, with about the same population.
As Israel has destroyed the homes of 250,000 Gazans since Saturday, that's like flattening the Plateau, Petite-Patrie, and Rosemont.
The UN called for a ceasefire on Saturday. The next day, five countries (incl. Canada) got together to reaffirm their support for Israel's mass slaughter.
We're not part of the international community. We're part of a small clique of countries that got rich off colonialism.
Israel has killed 5100 Palestinians and 19 journalists, and bombed 42% of all housing in Gaza. 1000+ people are missing in the rubble, including hundreds of kids.
And the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the UK just released a statement doubling down on support for Israel.
Second, the report doesn’t bother to consider how the cost of land varies FROM CITY TO CITY in Canada or over TIME. It simply assumes that land costs 25% of total construction costs for a home, whether we’re talking about Vancouver or Montreal, Toronto or St. John’s. 10/18
I'm releasing a report today on police spending between 2017 and 2021 in Canada's ten largest cities/regions. The report shows how, despite politicians promising a "racial reckoning" in 2020, cities have continued to boost police budgets - some much more than others. 1/7
@hope0070
Read the last two tweets in the thread. The solution has to focus on those three issues. Meaning we need to partially de-commodify land and housing. Lots of people have shown how that’s been done in Canada in the past and elsewhere in the present.
I hope it’s clear these three assumptions lead to an economic model that has nothing to do with the actual housing market in Canada or any capitalist country. 13/18
The solution to the housing crisis in Canada, then, is to get every city to adopt the regulations used in Montreal. That’s it. Never mind that developers and right-wing politicians constantly complain about the regulations in MTL or that we have a housing crisis here too. 16/18
Ahmed Hussen is telling the Can Press that the Liberals only restored UNRWA funding after the US "implored" them to do so.
For him to say this now is optics. But it's telling that our gov't has to get US permission to do something as radical as sending food to starving people.
Any real solution to the housing crisis in Canada needs to wrestle with three aspects of the housing market that CD Howe and Poilievre purposefully ignore ... 17/18
Montreal in four figures:
- Largest police force per capita
- Lowest public confidence in police
- Highest support for
#DefundThePolice
- Largest police budget increase in 2022
“The fight to defund the police is … a fight for political power. It is a fight to prioritize care as a society instead of criminalization. Despite bloating police budgets, this is the struggle that continues.” My text with
@shiripasternak
#DefundThePolice
Indeed, the report’s methodology is absurdly bad. The report makes a series of assumptions to make its quantitative/econometric analysis possible, three of which deserve some attention. 8/18
This man’s need for attention, despite having nothing to say and no analysis, is going to get someone killed.
In the full video, we can see the student was told they would get raped in the Middle East and they respond with the c-word (which you can hear in this video too).
In reality, the barriers to entry to property development are INCREDIBLY high. Pension funds, REITS, etc., invest in property precisely because the profits are high. The cost of LAND also varies massively from city to city and over time. 14/18
Poilievre’s claim that regulations are inflating the costs of housing is based entirely on a report by the CD Howe Institute. In figures cited by Poilievre, the report says regulations inflate housing costs by huge amounts: $1.3M in Vancouver and $350K in Toronto. 5/18
Maybe I was dreaming, but I feel like there were some events recently where a company was selling land in these illegal settlements and a bunch of Liberals were attacking activists for trying to stop it.
Canada’s position is clear: the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank endangers the prospects for a two-state solution and we call for perpetrators of extremist settler violence to be held accountable.
Finally, it assumes that any gap between home PRICES and their COSTS of construction is the result of housing market “dysfunction.” Basically, regulations - "red tape." 11/18
First, the report assumes that property development in Canada is “perfectly competitive.” There are no barriers to entry, and there are so many firms that “the overall market price for that good will equal its marginal costs of production.” The assumed profit rate is 17%. 9/18
In fact, the report hints that the “lack of (perfect) competition” is a possible dysfunction, even though this contradicts the report's core assumption. But this is soon forgotten in order to assert that the GAP is entirely the result of government regulations – “red tape.” 12/18
The problems with Poilievre’s analysis and housing plan are evident in the graph I posted earlier. According to the graph, regulations add 60% to the cost of homes in Vancouver and less than 0% in Montreal. That's the only reason Vancouver is more expensive than Montreal. 15/18
McGill students tirelessly turn attention back to the real issue: "The real question is why are people not focusing on the fact that our administration is investing in real guns and real weapons that are currently perpetrating massacres and violence in Gaza as we speak.”
Breaking: Israel has destroyed the remaining buildings of Al-Azhar University in central Gaza. It has demolished all the universities in Gaza, higher education institutes, and hundreds of government and UN schools.
#GazaGenocide
It's incredible to me that, with a few exceptions, the urban planners and urban scholars I follow are totally silent about Israel's genocidal assault on Palestine.
Entire neighbourhoods are being reduced to rubble and people are tweeting about bike lanes.
Journalist
@motaz_azaiza
shared this video moments ago showing the complete destruction of Al Zahra city.
He asks whether the world will finally stop this Nakba aka ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians using genocide.
The report itself provides a remarkable graph, supposedly showing the gap between the price a home WOULD sell for without unnecessarily regulations and the price it ACTUALLY sells for. The gap, we can see, is often very large. It’s ~60% in Vancouver and ~40% in Toronto. 6/18
The Houthis are blocking ships in the Red Sea until needed food and medicine are allowed into Gaza. Canada claims to care about getting aid to Gaza, but hasn’t done anything to ensure that - and will now contribute to this military operation against the Houthis.
Canada is sending "a handful of personnel" to the Middle East as part of a multinational operation to counter escalating attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, a government official told Global News.
READ MORE:
Compare the city's response to illegal Airbnbs, which are everywhere in the city, to its response to a few encampments created by people displaced, in part, by illegal Airbnbs.
The Israeli army detonates the last university it hadn't destroyed yet. A scene from the explosion of the Palestine University with 315 bombs. The university is owned by businessmen and is not affiliated with any political agenda.
Israel has destroyed all universities and about
Concerned your country might be on the wrong side of history? Experts say a good rule of thumb is to check if your country signed a US-authored joint statement supporting the bombing of a poor country for trying to stop a genocide.
For three months, students showed what education hitched to courage and moral principle looks like. Our hearts swell with respect and gratitude toward them.
The movement is stronger for their efforts and it will continue in myriad other forms. Free Palestine.
Interesting that the STM (Montreal public transit) posted a $43M deficit in 2021 and it's a major crisis, while the SPVM went over budget by $51M in 2021 and the city just paid it and increased next year's budget (which the SPVM will *still* go over).
Canada votes for a ceasefire at the UN.
No credit to Liberals for this, all credit to the amazing people who have been organizing in solidarity with Palestine for the last two months - and long before that.
It’s not a binding resolution, but it’s not nothing.
153 votes in favour of full ceasefire and clapping in the UN general assembly whilst the Israeli ambassador looked pissed on his phone.
They also rejected the amendments that the US and Israel provided that mentioned Hamas previous to this.
A public message from professors to the students involved in the Palestine solidarity encampment at McGill.
"As professors and teaching faculty, we are humbled by what the students have taught us. Our hearts swell with respect and gratitude toward them. Free Palestine."
Someone needs to explain how being against violence means condemning Hamas on Saturday, and then projecting an Israeli flag on public buildings as Israel bombs Gaza to rubble, destroying homes and killing people who’ve nothing to do with the attack in Israel, every day since.
The SPVM just released data showing gun crime is down 7% this year compared to last year. Police seizures of guns are down 17%. Only one journalist has reported on this.
It’s just constant terror and destruction and death. Canadian universities are profiting from every bomb. Justin and Mélanie are networking at a Montreal cocktail party while the SPVM beats and pepper sprays student activists outside …
A few hours ago, Israel bombed a UN-run school sheltering displaced Palestinians in an area it had designated as a "humanitarian zone" in Khan Yunis city two days earlier, causing casualties and spreading horror among displaced families.
When you run a university and the police are like, "wait, aren't these your students? Have you tried dialoguing with them?" you should maybe be doing a different job.
As an aside, Toronto police are the only large force in Canada that “doesn’t keep a record” of no knock raids, so there’s no way of knowing how often they bust through the front door of someone wanted on “mischief” charges.
Early Wednesday, police raided a townhouse, reportedly looking for a man they allege vandalized a Toronto bookstore. The problem? The man in question moved out the home more than a year ago. How a police raid left these Toronto housemates terrified
The argument for defunding the police isn’t that there’s no violence or any other kind of harm. It’s that police don’t prevent violence, that they *are* violence, and that our financial and libidinal investment in police prevents us from actually keeping each other safe.
Many people rightly distrusted the NYT story from the beginning, but the point by point debunking of its claims in this Intercept piece is definitive. Mélanie Joly, who has been trumpeting the NYT’s claims for months, should be asked to respond.
Anat Schwartz, the Israeli filmmaker & ex-air force intelligence official, gave a stunningly revelatory interview detailing the process that led to the NYT's "Screams Without Words" story alleging systematic sexual violence by Hamas on Oct. 7. Story below:
Pakistan's UN rep, criticizing Bob Rae and Canada's ghoulish need to add a condemnation of Hamas to a motion calling for a humanitarian truce:
"He does not feel the need to name Israel for killing 7,000 Palestinians and injuring 17,000. Only Hamas.”
Worth a watch: Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN criticising Canada's amendment to the UNGA resolution on Gaza, solely condemning Hamas.
All Western states voted for the amendment that nevertheless failed to pass.
Enough is enough, this is hate speech and incitement to hate, pure and simple!
Freedom of expression and the right to protest have their resonable limits and they have been reached. De-escalation at McGill has clearly failed. This needs to end!
@SPVM
@mcgillu
This is from the former Prime Minister of Canada. Absolutely unhinged, racist garbage - expected from both Harper and
@nationalpost
.
The vastness of genocide support masked as journalism in the comparatively small Canadian media industry puts US newsrooms to shame.
The Quebec police brotherhood says the "thin blue line" isn't racist because cops started wearing it "before George Floyd." One member says "6 or 7 years before." So I guess there was just a sudden feeling of solidarity among cops around 2014 for no reason at all.
The SPVM budget for 2021 was $679M. They ended up spending $733M. They self-increased their budget by $54M. Rhetorical question: who's running this city?
Canada was meant to present today at the ICJ hearings on Israel's occupation of Palestine. Its reps have chosen not to present, but the leaked written submission is available.
Basically: "Who cares about international law? Just get two incredibly unequal parties to work it out."
@JP_Peacemaking
@Heidi__Matthews
@CIJ_ICJ
Canada’s position is direct negotiations between parties is the established framework for resolving conflict, and ICJ should exercise its discretion to not render an advisory opinion. It’s a rather weak legal argument.
🇨🇦 submission is here ⬇️
Canada unequivocally condemns the October 7th attack on Israel. I am deeply troubled by the allegations relating to some UNRWA employees. I have instructed Global Affairs Canada to pause all additional funding to UNRWA pending the outcome of the investigation. Read my statement:
Avec l'ajout de 450 policiers annoncés aujourd'hui, Montréal dépassera encore plus la norme pour les grandes villes du Canada. Nous avions déjà 33% plus de policiers par habitant. Là nous en aurons 41%. La violence à Montréal n'est PAS le résultat d'un manque de policiers.
@MarcMillerVM
This is a vile tweet for an MP. Listen to the video. The student did not say k*ke; they were also disgustingly provoked, as the longer video you've been provided shows. Meanwhile, your and your party's refusal to support a ceasefire is killing a Palestinian child every 10 mins.
From supporting Israel's mass slaughter in Palestine to super-funding police forces in our cities, our political leaders continually promote organized violence as the solution to real and imagined social problems. A thread on police spending in Canada. 1/11
Three Liberals –
@AHousefather
,
@marcomendicino
and
@BenCarrwpg
– voted against last night's watered-down motion on Palestine. No surprise. For months, they've have been pursuing their own pro-genocide policy, circulating Israel's lies, and slandering anyone who speaks up.
The CAQ's new "affordable housing" program will give developers $200 million to build housing units rented for the median rent in the region. The median. If they want to give public money to their friends, just send over a Brinks truck. Don't call it a housing program.
Asked if we're in a housing crisis, François Legault said it's a matter of perspective. Of course it is. For someone who owns a $5 million house in Outremont, as Legault does, it's not a crisis but a bonanza.
#capitalism
Coderre announces he'll ban alcohol in parks after 8pm. So, having read the room, he feels people are hungry for more restrictions on their social lives right now? Can someone please get this man a campaign team?
At home washing pepper spray out of my eyes and off my clothing, and wondering why an SPVM cop decided to spray a group of people in the eyes when they were five feet away and retreating - other than the obvious answers.
Projet Montreal is forcing the STM to cut expenses by $77M so they can boost SPVM funding by a record $63M - along with the usual $30M the SPVM allocates to itself every year by spending what it wants.
The green in the party's logo is increasingly crowded out by the blue.
BREAKING:
Dramatic scenes from the university of Calgary as the Police begins to dismantle the anti-Israel encampment on day 1.
Follow and support
@MediaBezirgan
for more on-the-ground coverage.
Another day, another email from McGill admin saying "dialogue has failed, we have unfortunately called the police to dismantle the encampment."
As usual, the admin claims the students are refusing dialogue - and assumes no one will check the receipts.
Congratulations to Joseph Facal for being the first of the repugnant Quebec media figures to celebrate the fascist victory in Italy - which, as he explains, is just giving the voters what they want in an era of "massive" non-white immigration and ethnic replacement.
« Je suis content qu’on soit débarrassés de cet individu-là .» François Legault on the suspected author of a triple murder, who was killed by police.
It's easier to celebrate an execution than to reflect on whether, with a better mental health system, four people would be alive.
In 2020, Montreal asked the public if they wanted the SPVM budget cut. 73% said yes.
In 2021, they removed the question from the pre-budget survey.
Want to see the question added back? You have until Friday afternoon to email commissions
@montreal
.ca and tell them so!
1/2
Children should never be used as a pawns in war.
We welcome the news of the 6 Ukrainian children who have returned home from Russia, through Qatari diplomatic efforts.
Excellent and critical recap of how the Toronto Police Association stoked public fears, lied to the public, and aggressively lobbied politicians to win a larger police budget increase this year.
Quite jealous that Toronto journalists do this kind of work.
Destroying a Palestine solidarity camp, Montreal style. Riot cops storm the camp at dawn and kettle the campers. Further units come to destroy their belongings, city garbage trucks hall them away, and ECCR (the squad that “helps” unhoused people) passes orders to the displaced.
Chaque fois qu'on lui pose des questions sur le risque d’abus policiers, Legault répond toujours que le gouvernement ne peut pas s'immiscer dans les affaires de la police.
Lorsqu’il estime que la police n'est pas *assez* abusive, le gouvernement doit soudainement intervenir.
NOUVEAU
@francoislegault
demande
@SPVM
de démanteler le campement pro palestinien
@uMcGill
Selon lui, il est illégal, la loi doit être respectée
«Je m'attends à ce que les policiers défassent le campement»
#polqc
#polcan
Somehow it took Mélanie Joly’s office all day to respond to the ICJ decision by saying they’ve been saying for three months now: We will continue to pretend this genocide is consistent with international law. Disgusting.
A new report shows Montreal lost 35,000 residents (net) last year - the most in 20 years. This is being reported as an exodus to the suburbs, as if people are leaving empty homes behind. In fact, the wealthy here are taking over more space and *displacing* people from the city.
The Black teenager who was pinned to the ground, handcuffed, and strangled by SPVM cops wasn't charged with any crime, but was given a ticket for disturbing the peace. His lawyer says this was because he screamed while being strangled.
Montreal spends tens of millions each year to have 270 cops patrol the metro system, harass homeless people, and chase people down – and sometimes, as we saw on Saturday, beat them down - for not paying the fare. Fire them and use the money to reduce fares.
#DefundThePolice
It's soothing to blame the first-past-the-post system for the QC election results, and it's part of the problem. But we also have to face that 54% of votes went to parties (the CAQ and PCQ) that refuse to recognize any of the real problems we face and campaigned on xenophobia.
54% of Quebeckers support defunding the police. And yet the Quebec government, in the vacuous 490-page report on the future of policing released today, claims "none of the stakeholders we met were in favour of defunding the police." Thanks for admitting you're hopeless.