Montreal’s F1 Peel Terrace Shut Down Fiasco Is A Lesson In Bad Bureaucracy
An opinion piece on how Montreal embarassed itself with fire inspectors granstanding
On Friday June 7th, the Friday night of Montreal’s Grand Prix weekend, the fire inspector brigade struck.
To be clear, the homie Chris Chrome was at Mad Hatter’s on Crescent around 9 PM when they showed up and shut down the terrace. Anyone who wanted to keep drinking needed to move inside. I’m not really sure what violation took place but something about all this feels suspect.
No one’s upset that fire inspectors are shutting down terraces because restaurants that aren’t following the rules.
I think we can all agree that this is a necessary evil, or at least it’s one that makes sense on paper.
It’s really weird to choose 9 PM on one of the busiest nights of our tourism year to strike.
Clearly the fire inspection people wanted to make a bold statement.
This statement was made at the cost of a lot of people’s planning and preparation.
None of this should have gone down like this in my humble opinion.
The Ferreira Café terrace did violate the rules but the circumstances smell fishy
According to this article, citing the Instagram video posted by @missferreira, a few weeks ago a warning was made.
Originally after fighting hard (back and forth crap with city officials) to get permission the terrace was 6 inches too far into the street. Who am I to comment on if the average size of a dick is a big deal or not. They fixed this issue up.
After 40’000$ of investment and obtaining special permission, the terrace was good to go.
Only it wasn’t.
The fire inspection folk had pulled up on a Thursday a couple of weeks back and let them know the canopy on the terrace was within 3 meters of the building, which is a fire hazard.
They tried to tell the fire people that the city said it was good. The fire folk were like nah, this is a hazard, remove it. After the fire inspectors failed to listen, The Ferreira Café team again followed up with the city, allegedly.
Allegedly the city said everything was gucci and not to stress it.
Then, with a full terrace on F1 Weekend, tourists and all, they were inspected and shut down for violating the warning.
Everyone, myself included, feels left with the question of why did this happen at that exact time?
If this was really about safety why did they wait until the busiest possible time?
The fire inspector people made a really weak argument to defend their actions.
Their argument was that if a fire had broken out and people died, they would have been held accountable. There were real optics in play. This sounds like PR spin doctoring.
To their credit, they are not wrong. We would have raked them over all the hot coals for failing to inspect. You really can’t win with us pesky citizens.
Let’s focus.
If this was really about safety, and there was already a warning on the record, then why didn’t the inspection happen earlier in the week?
What if a fire had broken out 20 minutes before the inspection? The fire people allowed all the terraces to fill up. They waited until peak business and then shut shit the fuck down.
Wildly in public. In an embarrassing way. Especially considering the amount of visitors in our city.
If they really were worried about the safety, they never would have let the terrace open on Friday. It would have been shut down far earlier and the business owners would have been given a chance to rectify it before their cash grab weekend.
I’m more annoyed with the fire inspection folk for being so last minute if it really was such a big deal.
To me it was a threat and they were wildly negligent to let the terrace fill up. Or it wasn’t a big deal and it shouldn’t have happened at that time.
As much as the fire folk want to make this sound like they were obliged to make this inspection now, they are the same rulemakers who set the inspection date.
This feels like a giant fuck you to our local merchants.
And in my opinion Valerie Plante is accountable.
If the city really did greenlight this terrace, then Valerie Plante holds some blame
Before anyone gets mad about how the Montreal city mayor shouldn’t be in the weeds of the day to day, I say, she should be for the borough of Ville-Marie.
This happened in her hood.
How did the fire inspector people have the go ahead to run an inspection, shutting down businesses that her administration gave special permission to. I’ve dealt with the city, it’s the councillors and mayor of the borough who ultimately decide what permits are allowed. Or at least it’s city officials they work with.
Something is inherently broken in the command chain if an inspection like this happens and Valerie is caught blind sided.
I know it’s ridiculous to put the blame on her. It’s not lost on me how tiny this is for the scope of her life. Only now she had to release a press statement, so it’s clearly not that tiny.
This inspection feels like it should have required the mayor’s approval. Anything that would disrupt commerce at such a scale is problematic. Downtown is already gutted and this just cost a lot of businesses a lot of money.
On top of that, consider the reputational damage we get from this. People spend hella money to come here and go to these restaurants and bars. Then, after reservations are made and plans are set, a branch of the municipal forces fucks up the programming.
I clearly am speculating from the sidelines but this feels so unnecessary.
Yes there have been bad fires in the past, but I reiterate that if this was about safety they never would have let the terraces fill in the first place.
The real problem is the business believed they were following the rules
The city is a particular beast to deal with.
Everything is about logistics and process. You jump through hoops for approval and in theory once approval is given, that should be enough. Apparently the city was giving out special permits that were in violation of the fire code.
I don’t think the fire inspectors were wrong to block the terrace. I believe their grandstanding was a power play to bully the business owners into reminding them who’s really boss. That was still within their right.
However if the business owner has paperwork giving them permission to do this, then the entire situation feels weird.
If this was a violation, then it should have been dealt with. Either the permit should never have been given, or the fire inspectors should have come with a much shorter delay. They waited weeks to come, what if someone had burned to death before that?
The question is so preposterous, and relevant, I had to ask it twice in this article.
My concern is that Miss Ferreira was under the impression she had done due diligence. Then her business invested big money into a nice terrace for the summer. Then they got shut down over something they had permission for.
It’s pretty damned bad bureaucracy if people can do everything properly only to be made an example of.
No wonder people don’t trust the government.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone