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How safe is your métro station? http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Montrealers+safe+your+m%C3%A9tro+station/8972463/story.html Quiet stations tend to have more crime per capita Berri-UQÀM, in eastern downtown, recorded 12.5 million boardings in 2009. There were 20.4 crimes per 1 million boardings. Photograph by: Marie-France Coallier , Marie-France Coallier MONTREAL - For the first time, Montrealers can find out which métro stations see the most crimes. Turns out some least-used subway stops have the highest per capita crime rates. The Gazette has obtained station-by-station statistics after Quebec’s access-to-information commission sided with the newspaper in a three-year battle with the Montreal police department. The figures cover 2008 and 2009, as police only revealed partial information for more recent years. Between 2008 and 2009, criminality jumped at 38 of 64 stations patrolled by Montreal police. At 13 of those, the number of criminal infractions more than doubled. The network’s busiest station, Berri-UQÀM — a transfer point served by three métro lines — saw the largest number of crimes. There were 255 crimes in 2009, up from 243 the previous year. In 2009, 18 stations saw at least 10 crimes involving violence or threat of violence (“crimes against the person”), including Berri-UQÀM (59 cases), Lionel-Groulx (33), Sherbrooke (20) and Vendôme, Snowdon and Jean-Talon (17 each). For every station, The Gazette calculated the number of criminal prosecutions per 1 million passengers who entered the network there. Berri-UQÀM, in eastern downtown, recorded 12.5 million boardings in 2009. There were 20.4 crimes per 1 million boardings. But it was Georges-Vanier, in Little Burgundy southwest of downtown, that recorded the most crimes per capita. At that station — the network’s least used with only 742,000 boardings in 2009 — there were 28.3 crimes per 1 million boardings. Georges-Vanier is a reatlively desolate location, especially at night. It’s next to the Ville-Marie Expressway and no buses serve the station. Beaudry and Monk stations are other examples. Both are among the bottom five for boardings but in the Top 5 for per capita crimes. Click for an interactive map showing crimes in the métro. Reading this on a mobile device? Find the link at the end of the story. The figures give only an approximation of station-per-capita crime rates. The STM only maintains statistics for the number of people who pass through turnstiles at individual métro stations. That means ridership figures used in these calculations only give an idea of how busy stations are. Some stations have few people entering but a high number of passengers disembarking. In addition, transfer stations are busier than boarding figures would suggest because passengers there move from one line to another without going through turnstiles. Bylaw infractions, including graffiti and malicious damage to STM property, were also detailed in the 2008-09 statistics. In more than one-quarter of Montreal métro stations, there were at least 10 bylaw infractions in 2009, with Berri-UQÀM (378 incidents), Sherbrooke (76) and Atwater (67) having the most. The figures obtained by The Gazette cover the 64 stations on Montreal Island and Île Ste-Hélène. Laval and Longueuil stations are patrolled by their respective police forces. Every year, Montreal police publish crime statistics for the entire métro network, but the force has resisted providing more detailed data. After failing to convince the access commission that the data should be kept secret (see sidebar), police recently provided The Gazette with the number of crimes and bylaw infractions at every station in 2008 and 2009. But when the newspaper subsequently requested 2010, 2011 and 2012 statistics, the department did not provide comparable data. Instead, it lumped incidents such as lost objects and calls for ambulances with crimes and bylaw infractions, rendering the 2010-12 statistics almost meaningless. The Gazette is appealing the police department's decision to keep the 2010-12 crime figures under wraps. Police and the STM say Montreal has a very low subway crime rate compared with other cities. Crimes in the métro are relatively rare and the métro's overall crime rate has dropped significantly between 2008 and 2012. Montreal police started patrolling the network in 2007. Before that, STM officers were in charge of security in the métro system. The Gazette sought the station-by-station figures so it could tell readers at which station passengers are the most likely to become the victim of a crime or to witness crimes or bylaw infractions. Making the data public also allows the public to monitor progress in reducing incidents at particular stations. ariga@montrealgazette.com Twitter: andyriga Facebook: AndyRigaMontreal © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette

La dette per capita sous la barre des 1200 $ par Stéphane St-Amour La dette per capita sous la barre des 1200 $ Gaétan Vandal, adjoint au directeur général, administration, de Ville Laval. Elle accapare 17 % du budget de la Ville La dette per capita sous la barre des 1200 $ Fidèle à sa tradition, la Ville empruntera en 2009 moins que ce qu'elle remboursera sur sa dette à long terme, ce qui permettra de réduire la dette per capita sous la barre des 1200 $. Quand la Ville planche sur son programme triennal d'investissement, c'est le «premier critère» qui guide son action, mentionne l'adjoint au directeur général, Gaétan Vandal. Pour réaliser ses projets de développement, la Ville financera des travaux à hauteur de 67,7 M$, alors qu'elle remboursera 70,1 M$ sur le capital d'une dette qui se chiffrerait au 31 décembre 2009 à 467,3 M$. Au chapitre des frais de financement de cette dette, il en coûtera à l'administration 38,4 M$, soit 3,5 M$ de moins qu'en 2008. Capital et intérêts confondus, le service de la dette nécessitera en 2009 un déboursé de 108,5 M$, équivalant à 17 % du budget annuel de la Ville. En dix ans, Laval a diminué la dette de 636 $ par personne, ce qui représente une réduction de 160 M$. Pour la même période, dans l'ensemble des autres villes de 100 000 habitants et plus au Québec, la dette per capita a augmenté, précise le maire Gilles Vaillancourt. «Nos efforts de réduction de la dette sont reconnus par Standard & Poor's, qui vient de renouveler la cote de la municipalité, soit AA -, avec perspective stable, la meilleure évaluation attribuée à un organisme municipal au Québec», n'a pas manqué se souligner M. Vaillancourt, ajoutant même qu'il s'agissait d'une cote supérieure à celle décernée au gouvernement du Québec.

Selon Martin Prosperity Institute The Great Musical North November 12, 2009 The music business is a fascinating example of a creativity-driven industry. Advances in manufacturing and sound recording technology mean that only a small part of the value of the final product – a compact disc or digital download – is generated by manufacturing and distribution. Instead, most of the costs of the music business today are incurred by creative work: writing, producing and performing the music; designing the packaging and branding; and marketing via blogs, magazines, videos and more. This emphasis on creative inputs makes the music industry an excellent research subject for improving our understanding of the geography (and other dynamics) of a broad range of creative industries, from software to medicine to media. While the public perception exists that Canada is a hot spot for music and musicians (from Neil Young to Shania Twain to Kardinal Offishall), a comparison with the global leader in music production – the United States – will help us to separate perception from reality. The most recent period for which detailed and directly comparable data are available is 2007. This Insight aims to improve our understanding of the dynamics of the business by focusing on one particular aspect: the differences between the music industries of Canada and the United States. On a per capita basis, Canada’s music industry dramatically outperforms the US when it comes to the presence of music business establishments (this category includes record labels, distributors, recording studios, and music publishers). Canada has 5.9 recording industry establishments per 100,000 residents, about five times the US figure of 1.2. A detailed breakdown at the metropolitan level can help us to better understand what drives this disparity. To make the scope of our analysis more manageable, we focus on city-regions with populations over 500,000, as they are home to 85% of recording industry establishments and about 65% of the North American population. Using location quotients, a standard industry measure of regional concentration, we find that almost half of the 15 cities with the highest music industry location quotients are Canadian (Exhibit 1). But despite its much lower per capita figure at the national level, the United States has the two top-ranking cities. The first, Nashville, boasts an incredibly high figure due to its heavy specialization in country and pop music. The second, Los Angeles, is the global giant of the entertainment business. US dominance becomes more apparent when we look at size. Recording industry establishments in the US are slightly larger – they have an average of 5.9 employees each, compared to only 5.7 in Canada. But the difference is dramatically more pronounced when it comes to revenue. US establishments earn average receipts of $4.1 million per establishment, compared to only US$540,000 in Canada. So Canada has considerably greater per capita musical activity than the United States in terms of record labels, recording studios, and licensing houses. But the data tell us that the United States has much higher-earning businesses that are more heavily clustered in fewer places – especially Nashville, Los Angeles, and to a lesser extent, New York. While this research is preliminary, we can speculate about what drives these differences. Economic geographers, from Jane Jacobs to Allen Scott to the Martin Prosperity Institute’s own recent analysis, have long noted that growth in creative industries like music tends to be driven by clustering and economies of scope and scale. The concentration of the American music business in a few key cities likely encourages these forces. In Canada, the fact that the music business is more evenly distributed is certainly a positive thing for musicians looking for opportunities in smaller cities. But failure to cluster in a few key centres may be discouraging the Canadian music industry from growing larger and more internationally competitive. [/img]