Ted Rutland

IA au SPVM : la technologie intrusive au service d’une surveillance policière illimitée – Pivot Chaque fois que la société civile veut en savoir plus, on la traite comme un témoin gênant qu’il faut tenir à distance.

The SPVM concealed that it recently purchased an AI program that allows it to surveil citizens in public spaces. Alex helpfully places this move in a longer history in which the SPVM refuses to tell the public - and elected officials - what tech it uses.
pivot.quebec/2025/12/08/i...

It's copadandize the children season. For the second year in a row, the SWAT team rappelled down the face of the Montreal Children's Hospital and then went inside to distribute gifts. Many hospital staff have criticized this training/PR exercise, but they've been ignored.

Yeah incredibly scary. Have you researched this kind of surveillance (not necessarily in Montreal)? The ring camera bit? I’ve just started digging into it with a student.

Body cameras are not a solution The history of police body cameras tells a different story than the marketing campaign

I wrote about local lobbying for body cams and reviewed @equalityalec.bsky.social's excellent new book, Le caméra d'intervention (Éditions de la rue Doirion), last month.
tedrutland.substack.com/p/body-camer...

The group is basing that claim on cases they've seen where an intervention filmed BY A CITIZEN helped them win a racial profiling case. People should definitely film police. But police brotherhoods ("unions") are lobbying for body cams precisely to counteract citizen videos.

Montreal mayor revives debate over police body-worn cameras - Montreal | Globalnews.ca New mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada says her team is working with the police department and the Quebec government to equip frontline officers — with well-established guidelines.

It's really frustrating to see Red Coalition, a group that opposes racial profiling, call for police body cameras and claim they increase "the chances of [victims] getting justice." They simply don't.
globalnews.ca/news/1155854...

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/...

Just in time for debates about 2026 police budgets: a CBC article that turns a *decline* in violent crime on public transit in 2024 into a headline about *rising* violence across Canada.

The graphs are from the article itself.

The scandal is that we're asking cops to teach youth about consent in the first place. Like why???

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 Guardian reports "the US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a 'green zone' under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a 'red zone' to be left in ruins."

It's "strategic hamlets" (Vietnam war) all over again.

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

If we needed more evidence that Projet Montréal isn't a left-wing party, this tweet captures it. Mamdani has never emphasized equity or inclusion (liberal concepts), but the redistribution of wealth and power from the wealthy to the working class (in all its diversity).

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.

The ability of police to present themselves as victims is incredible. The SPVM was a mess under Pichet, the city decided it couldn't fire him, so he was paid $400K/year to do nothing. He now won a case against the city, where the "harassment" is being paid to do nothing.

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.

A breakdown of the preliminary results of the election.

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

"Whoever wins the election, I hope Transition’s platform encourages Montrealers to revisit ingrained assumptions. Public safety is not a synonym for police, and there are ways of addressing problems like racial profiling that can actually create a safer city for everyone."

(no title) La guerre des classes à Montréal

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).

It's wild how little the candidates in this election have talked about, or been asked about, police racism and violence. The SPVM has killed five people since the last election and a Superior Court judge found the city responsible for encouraging racial profiling. No big deal.

Don’t Be A Copagandist! Series — Interrupting Criminalization This compilation of resources for media and communicators covering criminalization provide framing and language guidance on a wide range of timely topics.

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.

Ensemble Montréal has repeatedly said that "according to the most recent statistics," Montreal is the only large city in Canada to see housing starts decline three years in a row.

The claim is based on 2024 data ... but we're in the fall of 2025. Here's the most recent data:

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