When it comes to the search engine reputation management services hometown, they are celebrating their 375th anniversary. But, yesterday, not everyone was celebrating instead as usual, there were protests happening to get the mayor Coderre’s attention and the police officers sure did. While celebrating, there was also a stabbing at the Old Port where two men were having an argument, which lead to one man having a serious stab wound to the upper body.
Although it was Montreal’s 375th birthday party, an estimated 3000 off-duty police officers tried their best to disrupt the celebrations by protesting through the city and into Old Montreal. They were all wearing red baseball caps and camouflage pants while honking horns and blowing whistles they got a lot of loud boos from those on terraces. The Montreal police have been without a collective bargaining agreement for the last three years therefore they marched down the city’s streets to protest their rights and their situation to the mayor Coderre who they claim doesn’t care about police officers.
The police union and the mayor have been feuding since 2014 and Coderre supported legislation that would scale back public funding of pensions for police officers, firefighters and other municipal workers. Most were marching against the pension reform that Coderre has championed. Police officers are not allowed to go on strike therefore they waged a political campaign against Coderre refusing to wear their regular uniforms, organizing protests and making embarrassing anecdotes about the mayor to reporters.
Unfortunately Montreal couldn’t celebrate their 375th anniversary without something occurring but everyone knows that when the city celebrates something, a protest is likely to arise. By this time, Montreal is known as the city with many protests. Hopefully everything has quiet down in the city and they can continue on with their 375th anniversary celebrations for the rest of the hot week.