Quebec Transport Ministry continues to clean graffiti off the Turcot interchange - is it worth it?
Motorists that look up while heading through the Turcot Interchange in Montreal will have a hard time missing the crews removing graffiti from the walls and other structures.
Transport Quebec (MTQ) said some areas are coated with a material that makes it easier for the tags and other street art to come off.
"Other structures, we paint over them with latex paint," said MTQ spokesperson Louis-Andre Bertrand. "Every structure that the ministry is responsible for, we go twice a year. Once in the spring and once in the fall."
The MTQ claims it doesn't know how much it costs to remove graffiti but that it's part of the general maintenance budget.
It did say that the paint to remove the tags cost more than $13,000 last year.
That, and it's against the law.
"It is illegal to put graffiti on structures," said Bertrand. "It's an infraction punishable by law, and so we remove them twice per year except in the case that it's a heinous graffiti; then, within a week, we will go and cover it or remove where it's located."
Some argue the merit of covering paint with paint.
"It's doing what it thinks is best in that situation, and I completely understand that, but I think it's a losing battle and one that's quite costly to taxpayers. It's not working," said muralist Jason Botkin.
Botkin said a solution could be to work with those painting the structures and not against them.
"If, for example, we put a little bit of that money or a bunch of that money that was being used for cleanup and created a few scholarships out of it and a really good press release, and suddenly you have this legacy public art project," he said.
For now, the plan is for nature to take over the area.
"As you can see, the greeneries are growing, and once these grow to a higher height -- they will cover the wall, and it will be less enticing to put those graffitis up," said Bertrand.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
OPP's mandatory alcohol screening during traffic stops 'not acceptable': CCLA
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Maple Leafs down Bruins 2-1 to force Game 7
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.