Month: January 2025

A longtime friend, now part of Ottawa’s diplomatic community, married into a family of lawyers with an established practise in a central Mexican city. Life was good until the family was approached by an underworld cartel looking to acquire a property the family owned.

It might be for sale, the family said.

No, we don’t wish to buy it, was the response. You will sign it over to us for nothing. The ‘or else’ didn’t need saying.

At first their targets ignored the extortionists. But the threats (including photos of my friend and her infant daughter) escalated to the point that the young familt decided to flee — first to an American border city where they knew they wouldn’t be safe — and then to Canada,

I was reminded of their story by Trump’s rantings to the Davos crowd vis-a-vis Canada becoming the 51st state. There’s no distinction to be made between #47 and a Mexican cartel boss. “Nice little country you got here…a shame if something would happen to it.”

Like that Mexican family, the initial reaction is one of indignation. Greenland, the Panama Canal or Canada aren’t for sale. But the threats continue, the hostility ramped up. Anxiety builds among those targeted. But unlike my friends, there’s no escaping to a safe haven.

Canada isn’t dealing well with Trump’s megalomania, but I don’t suppose anyone else is. A big problem is the power-sharing agreement between Ottawa and the provinces. Gray areas abound on the jurisdictional map. Energy was a federal competency; it has been steadily eroded by provincial pressure depending on whether it involves fossil fuels, electricity or nuclear — or whether it’s a have or have-not province in the Canadian interprovincial wealth-transfer system, with or without a carbon-compensation structure. Regardless of which political party wins the spring federal election, the winners will get to work with a gridlocked confederation crippled by interprovincial trade barriers and jurisdictional spats.

…which brings me back to how best to deal with Trump. Is he corruptible, ready to drop this lunacy if the price is right? Or should Canada address the list of pretexts Trump plopped in front of Justin Trudeau at that Mar-a-Largo dinner? Trumpian grievance creep is notorious; what was a GDP two-percent NATO contribution in Trump’s first term was more than doubled to five in his Davos call.

Other U.S. pet peeves — security and fentanyl — are issues Canada should be dealing with long before we were forcibly reminded of having swept them under the rug for far too long. What have been justified as progressive policies, such as allowing needle centres in residential neighbourhoods and homeless encampments in our city centres are already generating pushback throughout the country. Shouldn’t we have been dealing with these surface-level issues, along with homelessness and ruinous cost of living increases?

Over the past months I’ve been reading up on what Canada has been up to in addressing some of the more glaring shortcomings, such as our subpar NATO commitments. Halifax Shipyard has just launched the last of six ice-capable warships. Lauzon’s Davieship is preparing to cut
metal for 10 icebreakers, including three medium and one polar-class ship to replace our ageing fleet. Military equipment specialists, like Rheinmetall Canada in Brantford, Ontario, are pioneering new generations of materiel inspired by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

What irks me is the absence from the leadup to next March’s federal election of authentic discussion about Canada’s role on a planet where America, Russia and China are jockeying for world supremacy. Do these bubble dwellers think Canadians can’t handle reality? I’ve tuned out of the major parties’ juvenile attacks on their opponents, knowing that Justin Trudeau and his inner cabinet remain in power during prorogation. I don’t know many Canadians who like the idea of a government they don’t support making daily decisions that will bear on Canada’s future as a nation, but without Parliament’s counterbalance.

I lie awake nights knowing that Canada is a rudderless ship in stormtossed, reef-strewn seas. This worldscape we’re living in has no spectator seats, nowhere to take shelter except for the ultra-rich. And as my Mexican friends learned, the rest of the world may sympathize, but don’t expect them to rush to your rescue. They have their own problems with America’s extortionist-in-chief.

We need to trust our journalists and community

Geoff Sharpe
18 Jan 

For too long, local news and the people behind it, have been hidden away. Readers very rarely understand the how or why of the stories they read. 

Our series Editor’s Notes explores issues in local news, our cities and society, the ideas we’re exploring and a look at our team and what we’re up to, to increase transparency with our community of readers.

Like many people, I spent the holidays reading books. Unlike most people, I couldn’t stop thinking about local news. 

The book I spent the most time reading was called Filterworld: How Algorithms Flatten Culture by Kyle Chayka. 

It’s a detailed dissection of how algorithms shape the world around us, by pushing and tugging in certain directions based on digital signals, essentially destroying the very uniqueness of what we seek out and like, in favour of the sameness of the algorithm’s recommendations. 

Ever wondered why many coffee shops look the same in every city? Blame the Instagram algorithm, as coffee owners herd towards uniform and “popular” designs in order to drive more visitors.   

He writes how Spotify, the popular music service, doesn’t actually recommend music based on your interests but focuses on a small sliver of songs, making it harder and harder for people to discover new things and develop their own tastes.  

As we’ve hit the ground running this year here in Ottawa, I can’t help but think about how Filterworld algorithms are shaping local news.  

Take, for example, discovering a new local restaurant. Owners have to shape their restaurant design and food to quickly catch attention when scrolling social media. Media outlets frame a story around a viral dish. The quality of the food? Forget about it. Good places without a strong Instagram feed are ignored.   

Local journalism stories skew more towards what drives clicks and eyeballs, funded through banner ads. That means viral headlines, quick hit pieces and a shift away from longer, in-depth stories that actually explore and shape important issues. Publications need traffic, and the algorithm delivers. 

The media industry has substituted journalist tastes — their insights, on-the-ground research and hunches that shape what gets written — for some vague algorithmic sugar fix, focusing on the stories that get shared and less on the stories that shape lives in Ottawa. 

The journalists get this. But many of the companies they work for don’t. Fighting the algorithms isn’t easy. But local news especially has to resist the urge to become like the same coffee shops in each city. 

As the Lookout begins 2025, with our first full-time employee and a vision for what we want to cover, I’m keeping Filterworld in the front of my mind.  

We’ve resisted the urge to offload our editorial direction to the whims of the algorithm. Charlie pursues local Ottawa stories that he thinks readers need to know. Ralf reviews restaurants based on the quality of food, not what the Instagram algorithm prefers. And I never look at page views or virality to determine if the Lookout is successful. 

We let the tastes and interests of our writers and journalists, the feedback from our readers, and the problems of our city, shape what we cover at the Lookout. We can do this because we’re mostly reader-funded, not based on whim of traffic from an algorithm.

I won’t lie — forsaking the algorithms is the right decision, but it’s risky. We’re missing out on visibility. We’re cutting off certain revenue streams. Fewer people see our stories. And we can’t grow as quickly as we want, even though we’d love to hire even more journalists. 

But Filterworld’s world impact on local news offers a cautionary tale of what can happen when we get too far away from journalism. Just look at the layoffs and shuttering of local outlets across Canada. Sure, other things are to blame, too. But algorithms and lack of trust in journalists are a big part. 

Publications put algorithms in charge when we forget that at its heart, journalism is about people, the reporters who write stories, the locals impacted by those stories and readers like you wanting to be informed. These can’t be flattened into an algorithm. 

I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions. It’s hard to radically change your trajectory with a promise at the beginning of the year, committing to a big change to improve everything. 

Luckily, we’ve been charting a path without the algorithms since we started the Lookout. So, I will break my rule about not making resolutions by making a promise to all of you. 

Our promise is this — this year, and every year after, we won’t be tempted by the algorithms, clickbait stories or viral restaurant reviews, and we’ll trust journalists and team members to tell you the local stories that matter. 

The siren song of the algorithms is real. But we’re able to ignore them because we’re mostly reader-funded by readers like you. It means we don’t need to chase viral stories, but focus on the deeper, more in-depth journalism. 

If you believe in what we’re doing, and are tired of the algorithmically driven news, than consider becoming a Lookout Insider member. Your support ensures our team has the resources to pursue real journalism, not clickbait content.

Less than a week in, 2025 is setting itself up to be a pivotal year for the planet. Be it the Liberal leadership meltdown in Ottawa, the MAGA/Musk reality show south of us, Europe teetering on war’s brink, a hair-trigger Middle East or southeast Asia set to explode, far too many hours of our days are spent consuming mostly bad news, driven by a combination of curiosity and dread.

What we don’t hear or read about is the rapidly evolving collection of crises much closer to home, a conflation of feuding bureaucracies and complacent elected bodies and their failure to react to an array of old problems and new challenges — beginning with mobility and public transportation.

According to Quebec’s Institut de la statistique’s 2025 forecast, our county — the regional municipality of Vaudreuil-Soulanges —will have close to 200,000 residents by 2036, but without a coherent plan for a regional public transportation system. Worse, there is no indication the four layers of government we subsidize feel any responsibility to come up with a plan. 

Major factors:

— the Bridge. As the transport ministry (MTQ) announced last fall, the replacement Ile aux Tourtes bridge will open in stages, with five temporary lanes moving traffic by the end of 2026, followed a year later with the opening of the six permanent lanes. Until then, residents will continue to face unpredictable traffic jams as a direct result of the MTQ’s improvised fixes, detours and emergency closures to keep the the 60-year-old structure safe for more than 80,000 daily users.

— REM inaccessibility. With a soft opening date in the third quarter of 2025 but no parking for off-island users, Vaudreuil-Soulanges residents won’t be able to access the Anse a l’Orme Réseau express métropolitain (REM) terminal the way they can now find park-and-ride facilities for existing exo train and express bus service at the Vaudreuil station. Of even greater concern to those who depend on Vaudreuil-Hudson train service, exo’s cash-strapped parent Authorité régionale de transport métropolitain(ARTM) has indicated there won’t be money to maintain exo service on any line where a REM option exists.

— broken political promises. In March 2019, then junior transport minister Chantal Rouleau told a closed MTQ briefing of elected officials and concerned citizens the Ile aux Tourtes bridge replacement would be strong enough to carry a light rail transit (LRT) system to the Vaudreuil-Dorion side. (V-S REM: Stupid not to extend, www.thousandlashes.ca; March 11/19) Six months later, the MTQ denied any knowledge of plans to include an LRT right of way (ROW) on the new bridge. Instead, plans show a future ROW running parallel to the new span — in the air.

Did the CAQ or their Liberal predecessors ever intend to bring the REM to Vaudreuil? During the leadup to the October 2022 Quebec election, former Liberal finance minister Carlos Leitao — who oversaw negotiations with Quebec’s Caisse de dépot to enable the creation of the REM — told us plans to bring the REM across the water had already been refocused on running the line across Ile Perrot, then crossing the St. Lawrence to Les Cèdres.

— unjustifiable cost increases. Given the daily chaos on the Ile aux Tourtes, the public had hoped to convince the MTQ to force through transport truck traffic to use Highway 30 and remove tolls for off-island residents. Apart from a few emergency-closure exceptions, neither happened. Effective Feb. 1, tolls on the 30 will rise to $4.60 for most passenger vehicles and $3.45 per axle for anything larger or higher. The rationale? Under the deal with the A30 consortium, the MTQ gets a bigger slice of the take when traffic volume and debt service costs increase (electric vehicles will continue to enjoy free passage). 

Effective Jan. 1, there’s also a $100 public-transit surtax on off-island vehicle registrations. Under pressure from the cash-strapped ARTM, the Legault CAQ allowed the SAAQ to levy a $100-per-vehicle increase on annual registrations for residents of the 83-municipality Montreal Metropolitan Community. As I’ll explain below, this has a direct bearing on the future of the new Vaudreuil-Soulanges regional hospital.

Collateral damage

We’re already seeing knock-on effects. Most of us know people who are reluctantly planning the move back to Montreal Island (or have already made the move) because they can no longer cope with epic traffic tieups and have no faith in a better quality of life once the new bridge opens. Other less obvious effects:

— On Dec. 11 we learned the 404-bed Vaudreuil-Soulanges regional hospital won’t open by the end of 2026 as promised. In the best-case scenario cited by the Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI) the $2.6M project would open in the summer of 2027, six months after the regional health and social services agency (CISSSMO) takes delivery. In the worst case, it would not be operational before the fall of 2028. The aim had been to open the ambulatory care pavilion while work on the main tower continues, but according to CISSSMO this isn’t practical and would only delay completion.

Neither Ile aux Tourtes bridge congestion nor the lack of regional public transit were blamed for the delay, but there are indications they were among the factors as the regional health and social services authority struggles to recruit some 4,000 employees in a region without convenient public transit.

Tasked last summer by the CISSS de la Montérégie-Ouest to propose a reorganization of existing public transit resources to serve the new hospital, an exo team presented a proposal centred on increased shuttle service between the Anse a l’Orme REM station and intermodal hubs at the Vaudreuil and Dorion exo stations where riders would transfer to and from existing CIT bus routes. However, the proposal included this caution: Given the fiscal context and the outlook for 2025, exo has developed a baseline scenario which respects the current budget in trying to meet the reorganization’s original orientations. The scenario remains to be confirmed [depending on the budgetary constraints].

Given the ARTM’s $563M 2024-25 shortfall, will there be new money for a convenient regional public transit network? Quebec’s contribution — $200M to compensate all Quebec municipalities — clearly isn’t enough, so the question becomes what can be cobbled together with the money available.

Surprises

With any major project, surprises are the worst enemy. Montreal’s REM was delayed for months by the discovery of century-old live explosives in the Mount Royal tunnel. In the case of the $2,6B Vaudreuil-Soulanges regional hospital, it was the discovery that there isn’t enough pressure in the existing potable water network to ensure pressure to reach the hospital’s 12th storey. Plans had predicted the need for six new wells to supply the complex, but it will require a new pumping station to ensure adequate pressure. How will that affect St. Lazare’s water supply, drawn from the same aquifer? We won’t know until the hospital opens for business.

What should concern us isn’t that our region faces these challenges, but that they’re not being dealt with by those we pay and elect to deal with them. In 2007, the MTQ assured us the existing Ile aux Tourtes span would be good for 70 more years; 10 years later, it was under emergency repair which will continue until its replacement opens. The REM, originally promised to our region, won’t have parking for off-island users; there may not be adequate funding to maintain existing train service. And yet we face exponential increases in fares, tolls, fees and taxes, all without our approval or consent. Like far too much in Canada, this isn’t working.