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THE FACULTY OF ARTS PRESENTS A MCDONALD-CURRIE LECTURE
Cra�ing ‘State Na�ons’: India and Other Mul�na�onal Democracies Alfred Stepan
Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government Columbia University Alfred Stepan’s teaching and research interests include compara�ve poli�cs, theories of democra�c transi�ons, federalism, and the world’s religious systems and democracy. He has published Arguing Compara�ve Poli�cs; Problems of Democra�c Transi�on and Consolida�on: Southern Europe; Rethinking Military Poli�cs: Brazil and the Southern Cone; The State and Society: Peru in Compara�ve Perspec�ve; The Military on Poli�cs: Changing Pa�erns in Brazil. Alfred Stepan was a Professor of Poli�cal Science, Yale University, 1976-82, Burgess Professor of Poli�cal Science, 1987-93, then served as First Rector and President at Central European University (Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw), 1993-96, and was Gladstone Professor of Government and Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford University, 1996-99. Professor Stepan is also a Fellow at American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of Bri�sh Academy.
Thursday, September 30, 2010 6:00 p.m. Recep�on to follow Stephen Leacock Building Room 232 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal QC For more informa�on contact Professor Narendra Subramanian Tel: (514) 398-4803 Email: narendra.subramanian@mcgill.ca
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AUS back taxes seized by government $18,000 taken from student faculty association’s RBC account Erin Hale The McGill Daily
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he federal and provincial government seized $18,000 in unpaid taxes this May from an Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) account at the Royal Bank of Canada. AUS President Dave Marshall confirmed that AUS has not filed a complete tax return in several years. Sources inside AUS claim that tax woes began with the 20032004 executive, and that over the years incomplete exit reports and accounting errors had compounded the problem. The current executive was unaware of the government seizure until September, Marshall said, when they received a duplicate of an original notice sent by the Quebec government this spring. “We were very much under the impression that we had inherited a clean house, in the sense that we know we had these issues in the past, but believed that they had all been resolved in the past,” Marshall said. Shehreyar Jamshed, last year’s VP Finance, said he did not know about the unpaid taxes when he took on his position last year. “I didn’t know about the situation but
suspected it because we couldn’t find tax records from before,” he wrote in an email to The Daily. “The tax issue appears to be a very old issue.” However, as the year progressed, Jamshed says that he and AUS executive became aware of the back taxes. “During my term in office I tried to collect data on when the last time we paid taxes was and how much we owed,” he wrote. “AUS council was also aware we could not find tax records, and were trying for months to find enough information to pay them,” continued Jamshed. Marshall suggested that government notices about AUS’s unpaid taxes might have been lost in McGill’s internal mail, or might have been overlooked during the transition from the 2009-2010 executive to the current one this spring. He said he was concerned with the timing of the news that AUS had bungled its finances, as AUS currently supports the re-opening of another student-run service, the Architecture Café. “The fact we didn’t pay taxes in the past few years does suggest a great amount of negligence on our part, and [on the] part of the AUS as a whole,” Marshall explained. “I would be remiss to suggest of our
executive that we cannot function, in a time like this, when the ability of students to run organizations is brought into question.” AUS Council was informed of the situation during a confidential session on September 22. Though AUS is similar to a nonprofit organization under Quebec law, it is still required to pay taxes on income earned from events, the sale of alcohol, and SNAX profits, as well as capital gains taxes on its investments, endowment, and interest earned from its assets. Marshall and a source within AUS, who spoke anonymously due to confidentiality requirements, said that the amount seized by the government was artificially high because it was based on the assumption that the AUS would make a profit every year, based on projections on the last annual declaration of assets, submitted in 2007. However, it was recently discovered that last year’s executive ran a deficit of $51,000 – though they initially reported a surplus – after they misallocated funds for the Arts Student Employment Fund. “I have spoken to last year’s executive: many of them don’t understand how that could have happened. It appears there was a misunderstanding with how those funds were allocated or distributed.
“AUS council was also aware we could not find tax records, and were trying for months to find enough information to pay them...” Shrehreyar Jamshed AUS VP Finance 2009/2010 It’s been a little frustrating for this year’s executive because it seems we’ve spent a large amount of time fixing problems left by previous executives,” Marshall said. He explained that this meant any government assessment would have been inflated. He said the AUS is currently attempting to appeal the assessment, but sources within the AUS say their chances are “slim to none,” as the 90-day deadline to submit an appeal to Revenu Québec has likely run out. Marshall and a source within AUS said that steps have already been made to correct accounting mistakes, which they saw as the product of systemic miscommunication and accounting errors in payroll and inventory.
“Our major task this year is to rebuild not our student services, because they are fantastic, but rebuild the infrastructure that surrounds those services,” Marshall said. “A permanent office administrator is coming in, [to improve] the way we do our departmental bank accounts, things as simple as payroll.” Marshall said he does not think the seized back taxes will significantly affect the AUS operating budget this year. The AUS has also externalized its payroll services to the same firm as McGill, and is currently working with four former McGill students, who have offered their services pro bono, to improve the way the executive handles taxes.
QPIRG and Opt-Out campaign clash Competing charges of violence fuel tensions between groups Andra Cernavskis The McGill Daily
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ast Thursday, September 24, tensions peaked in the ongoing battle between QPRIG (Quebec Public Interest Research Group) and the Opt-Out campaign against it, as the two groups clashed in the hallway between Macdonald Engineering and the Adams Building. The Opt-Out campaign accused QPIRG of attacking their “private property,” including the fliers and posters on the Opt-Out table, while two QPIRG board members reported that a member of the Opt-Out campaign grabbed a QPIRG board member and briefly prevented her from leaving. Last Thursday’s incident led the Opt-Out campaign to call McGill Security. According to
Pierre Barbarie, Associate Director, University Safety, who was not on campus Thursday to witness these events firsthand, “The people wanting to hand out fliers called us to make sure everything went smoothly while they were handing out their fliers.” When asked if any physical attacks had occurred, Barbarie said, “Not according to our log entry. We didn’t witness physical incident. Often times, we arrive and things are over, and I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I didn’t read anything that tells me that there was a physical altercation.” However, Maddie Ritts, a QPIRG board member, said she was grabbed by Jess Weiser, former Conservative McGill president and current Opt-Out campaigner, after Ritts removed a pile of fliers and posters from the OptOut table.
“I had to push and fight him off of me…he would not let go of me” Maddie Ritts QPIRG board member
“I had to push and fight him off of me…he would not let go of me,” she told The Daily. According to an article this week in the McGill Tribune, Weiser denied any allegations that he touched Ritts. However, Kira Page, a QPIRG board member and a witness to the event, confirmed that at one point Weiser physically held Ritts. “Maddie was very frustrated [with the Opt-Out campaigners],” Page told The Daily. “She wasn’t there for long, but she ended up grabbing the fliers off the table. Then, Jess grabbed her and wouldn’t let her go. She was yelling ‘Let me go, let me go,’ and at that point I intervened and said physical assault is really a different thing than taking fliers, and I think you should probably let her go right now. … and he let her go, and she ran.” In an email to The Daily, Weiser said it was QPIRG that acted violently. “QPIRG’s board members as well as their group of supporters grew in number, and their verbal attacks on campaign members became increasingly vial [sic], including racial slurs and stereotyping,” he wrote. The slurs included the phrase “rich white boy,” according to the Tribune.
“... their verbal attacks on campaign members became increasingly vial [sic], including racial slurs and stereotyping.” Jess Weiser Former President of Conservative McGill Addressing Weiser’s charges of racism, Ritts said, “I believe that calling someone out for speaking from the stance of white privilege does not constitute a racial slur.” She said she was not speaking on behalf of QPIRG. Ritts added that she was “frustrated and saddened” that Weiser would not “own up” to grabbing her. “I think that’s it’s deeply troubling when statements get made that emphasize harm to private property – which I don’t even think removing a stack of fliers constitutes – [and are then] conflated with physical restriction on to some one else’s movement,” she continued. Wesier maintained that “members of QPIRG board of directors” argued “aggressively with members
of our campaign.” He also alleged that QPIRG board members “physically obstructed members of our camapaign from distributing flyers.” Citing an Opt-Out press release disseminated the night of the confrontation charging that QPIRG “physically attacked” the campaign table, Page said the incident “is being turned into a ‘QPIRG is violent’ thing, and [the campaigners] are really playing into the line, which is that QPIRG is funding terrorism and anarchists and building pipe bombs, and this whole lie about what QPIRG does, which is totally incorrect.” The period during which students could opt out of paying QPIRG’s $3.75 per semester student fee ended yesterday.
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The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
David Suzuki speaks to McGill Renowned environmental activist delivers “legacy lecture” Bora Plumptre The McGill Daily
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elebrated Canadian scientist and broadcaster David Suzuki visited McGill’s Pollack Hall Tuesday night to discuss two futures: humanity’s and the planet’s. Part way into a presentation about the necessity of saving an ailing planet, the 74 year-old Suzuki departed from his scripted presentation to lambast Prime Minister Stephen Harper's environmental policies. He condemned Harper for “saying that doing something about climate change will ruin the economy.” Suzuki pointed to the example of Sweden, which imposed a substantial domestic carbon tax in the 1990s, and has since grown its economy by 44 per cent while far surpassing the environmental targets set by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. He went on to remark of Harper, “How dare a leader of this country tell you a lie without even examining what the hell he is saying.” Suzuki appeared on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation, in
promotion of his recently published book, The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision For Our Sustainable Future. The ten dollar tickets to the event sold out a week in advance. Billing himself as a speaker “without any hidden agenda,” Suzuki told the audience he wanted to give a final, personal message to younger generations. Noting his age, he joked that he had entered “the death zone.” But he also stressed that it was the responsibility of society’s elders “to sift through our experiences in a lifetime–our observations and thoughts–to distill a legacy…that will be something worth passing on.” Speaking for well over an hour, Suzuki returned repeatedly to the theme of “legacy," urging his audience to consider the impact of current Western lifestyles on the lives of future generations. After an introduction by way of the trailer for the upcoming film Force Of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, the iconic environmentalist and educator walked on stage to enthusiastic applause. Suzuki outlined several ways that humanity is putting a dent in the plan-
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et, such as overpopulation, an economy flawed in its evaluation of natural resources – a forest, he argued, provides valuable ecological services that standard economic models do not account for – and harmful technologies of industries driven by profit. “When you add these things together – our numbers, our technological muscle power, our consumptive appetite in the global economy – that means that we have become a force that has never before existed in the 3.9 billion years of life on Earth,” he said. “We have become a force of nature.” A biologist and geneticist by training, Suzuki appealed to empirical research: “We are now altering the chemical, physical, and biological properties of the planet” on an unprecedented scale, he said. Suzuki also emphasized the shared etymology of the words “economy” and “ecology.” “‘Oikos’,” he said, “is the Greek word for ‘household’ or ‘domain.’ Ecology is the study of home. Economics is the management of home.” The problem, he continued, is that our society elevates the latter
Montreal Region Carrefour Angrignon Carrefour du Nord Carrefour Laval Centre Eaton Centre Laval Centre Rockland Fairview Pointe Claire Galeries d’Anjou Galeries Joliette Galeries Rive Nord
Suzuki delivering his lecture above the former, which results in unsustainable lifestyles. Moreover, he argued, an economy is an artificial structure, whereas an ecology is not. “Let’s put the ‘eco’ back in ‘economics,’” Suzuki said. Suzuki also urged the audience to reassess the consumerist values of the West. “What’s an economy for?” he asked. “Are there no limits? How much is enough? Am I happier with all this stuff?”
Jardins Dorval Mail Champlain Place Alexis Nihon Place Longueuil Place Montréal Trust Place Rosemère Place Versailles Place Vertu Promenades St-Bruno
Quebec City Region Galeries Chagnon Galeries de la Capitale Place Fleur de Lys Place Laurier Promenades Beauport
Robert Smith | The McGill Daily
City living, he continued, has “cut us off from the world that keeps us alive.” Suzuki pointed to the mass urbanization of Canada – 85 per cent of Canadians now live in cities – and the world in general as a major factor in what he sees as humanity’s disregard for nature. “If we don’t go outside, how can we fall in love with nature? And if we don’t love nature, how can we ever worry about what’s happening to it?”
Elsewhere in the Province Carrefour de l’Estrie, Sherbrooke Centre Alma, Alma Galeries de Granby, Granby Galeries de Hull, Hull Galeries Terrebonne, Terrebonne La Grande Place des Bois-Francs, Victoriaville Les Rivières, Trois-Rivières Place du Royaume, Chicoutimi Promenades de l’Outaouais, Gatineau Promenades de Sorel, Sorel-Tracy Promenades Drummondville, Drummondville
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Student groups tackle campus food AUS, EUS, SSMU, Midnight Kitchen all taking action in response to Arch Café closure
Adam Winer The McGill Daily
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aculty undergraduate associations and student organizations across campus are taking action on what is fast becoming the most important issue in student politics this fall: food. After student interests united around the closure of the Architecture Café – culminating last week in hundreds of students marching through campus to protest the closure – student organizations have turned their attention to more long-term initiatives. The Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS), Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS), Midnight Kitchen, and SSMU have all moved – albeit in different ways – toward addressing a common goal of student involvement in campus food. The student-run Midnight Kitchen collective held an open “strategy session” September 27 to address the issue of food on campus. Collective member Carol Fraser explained their push for a boycott. “The Midnight Kitchen collective was actively involved in the boycott of McGill food services the last time the Architecture Café was temporarily closed in 2007. ... We are concerned about student’s input and active control on campus. As the last standing student-run food service [offering full meals], we felt the need and responsibility to do something in light of recent events and the overall trend in the past ten years,” wrote Fraser in an email to The Daily. Ideas explored at the meeting included raising awareness amongst first-year students (many of whom have pre-purchased meal plans and must spend their money at McGill cafeterias), organizing a boycott of McGill food supplier Aramark, and strengthening alternative student-run food sources on campus. Fraser added that Midnight Kitchen is considering hosting cooking skill-shares and an increased serving capacity in conjunction with a larger boycott, but stressed that the collective is “not ‘spearheading’ so to speak.” The EUS, which includes the Architecture Students Association as of this semester, also took action this week. At EUS council September 28, President Daniel Keresteci authored a motion proposing that the EUS officially register disapproval with the administration’s decision to close the Architecture cafe, and to earmark $500 in support of the campaign to bring back the café. The motion did not mention a boycott. “I don’t think that the EUS mandating support of a boycott would achieve the aims that we are look-
Midnight Kitchen collective hosts strategy session. ing at,” said Keresteci. On September 21, the EUS submitted a full business proposal to the administration, aiming to take full control of the Architecture Café’s operations if it were to be reopened. “All the financial burden would be on us,” said Keresteci. As of press time, the administration had yet to respond. AUS council approved a motion September 22 mandating that they explore the idea of day-long interfaculty food market, as well as taking initial steps toward a boycott of McGill food services. The motion, brought by Anthropology Students Association councillor Brittni Martin, was unanimously adopted by the council. AUS President David Marshall explained the motion. “The proposed boycott is, as noted in the resolution, simply a proposed one: the representatives from AUS that approach EUS, ASA, and SSMU will simply suggest that a boycott take place to supplement any food market that may come into existence. It is certainly not set in stone, but the spirit of the motion – to encourage discussion and debate around the real issue of needing broad-based student consultation, as well as to bring to light the fact that students have many ideas as to how to run a food service on campus – remains intact.” AUS operates one of the few remaining student-run food services on campus, SNAX in the Leacock
building. “SNAX has been a profitable business for us, and very beneficial for the students, as well as the faculty, that frequent it,” said Marshall, adding that business was up this year. SNAX general manager Erin Schilling confirmed that business has been up this year, but reiterated that there are likely reasons beyond the closure of the Architecture Café. “It’s not the sole factor, but you can’t really deny that we’ve picked up that clientele,” she said. “Being AUS-run, we try to keep our prices low. This year, we’ve tightened up the management. Making the store more accessible has also improved our business.” Arts Senator Tyler Lawson and Councillor Kallee Lins submitted a motion to SSMU regarding the aftermath of the closure of the Architecture Café. “On the basis that SSMU need represent student interest – which has been so clearly and continually demonstrated on Facebook, in the campus press, as well as at the rally last Wednesday – we will move that SSMU officially endorse and promote a boycott of McGill Food and Dining Services amongst its members until the Architecture Café is reopened,” said Lawson. The Facebook event “Boycott McGill Food Services,” running from September 23 to December 31, had over 2,800 attendees when The Daily went to press.
Kieran Mak for The McGill Daily
Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
Students work in the re-purposed Arch Café space.
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NEWS BULLETIN Gun registry saved Parliament voted to preserve Canada’s long-gun registry September 22. The private members bill, which aimed to scrap the registry, was defeated by a vote of 153 to 151. In response to the bill’s second reading, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff directed all Liberal MPs to vote against the private members bill, proposed by Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner. The Bloc Québécois also vowed to defend the registry, leaving the outcome of the vote dependent on members of the New Democratic Party (NDP), whose leader, Jack Layton, did not provide his party with a voting line, but told MPs to vote according to their conscience. The long-gun registry requires that all shotguns and rifles be registered – neglecting to do so can be considered a violation of the Criminal Code in some cases. The registry was implemented in 1995 with the intent of reducing gun violence in the wake of the 1989 École Polytechnique shooting, in which 14 women were killed. Survivors of the massacre, along with survivors of the 2006 Dawson College shooting, sat in Parliament’s public gallery during the vote. Since its inception, the registry has also been accused of being ineffective, failing to target criminals and
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
making life difficult for law-abiding owners of firearms. An evaluation of the Canadian Firearms Program issued by the RCMP in February 2010 found a significant decrease in deaths caused by long-guns in the four years following the introduction of the registry. It also found a decrease in the total number of annual firearm-related deaths. Among the groups who oppose the registry is the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), which has issued a statement demanding the exemption of treaty Indians from the registry, claiming that the it violates their treaty rights. “These violations have had tremendous impacts on our First Nations hunters and gatherers,” said FSIN Vice Chief Lyle Whitefish. “First Nations in Saskatchewan have been threatened with Criminal Code violations for practicing their livelihood.” Conservatives have vowed to keep fighting the registry. Outside the House of Commons after the vote, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters, “After 15 years, opposition to the long-gun registry is stronger in this country than it has ever been,” the Toronto Star reported. “With the vote tonight, its abolition is closer than it has ever been.” —Emily Meikle
Bill 103 debate hearing up in Quebec parliament The National Assembly is in the midst of a heated debate about Bill
103, a language law presented by the Liberal government that would allow children to attend English speaking public schools after completing three years of private English schooling. The bill would also require that each child face a panel that would assess the child’s right to access subsidized English education.The government bill is meant to be a replacement for Bill 104, an attempt to close the loophole that allowed children to study at English public schools after only one year at a private English school. Though the legislation did not pass last year, the Supreme Court gave the Quebec government a deadline – October 22 – by which it can create a new law.Many critics of the proposed bill argue that the provisions are not strict enough. The Parti Québécois (PQ) is in favour of solely applying the French Language Charter to the educational system, which would prohibit anyone without historically anglophone roots from attending English schools. Immigrants and francophone students who desire an English education would not have access to subsidized English schools. The French Language Charter, also known as Bill 101, is currently only applicable to the public school system. The PQ, however, has expressed intentions of attempting to include private schools by utilizing the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution. Others have criticized what they see as the anti-anglophone motivations and an attempt to preserve
French language at the expense of the English-speaking minority. The English Montreal School Board – the largest English school board in Quebec – is petitioning against Bill 103, asserting that they are “proud Quebeckers” who have “been threatened by restrictive government legislation that clearly endangers [their] school system.” Bill 103 will be debated at hearings through early and middle October. —Farah Momen
The Trib celebrates independence The youngest student newspaper on campus has officially become independent. The Tribune signed its memorandum of agreement at the first Board of Governors (BoG) meeting of the year Tuesday night, formally creating the Tribune Publications Society (TPS). In a SSMU referendum held last March, Tribune editors campaigned for a three dollar per student, per semester fee increase. Matt Chesser, a former editor-in-chief and current chair of the TPS Board of Directors, explained that the fee levy was essential to the continued existence of the Tribune. “The University will not allow you to form a student group without a mandate from the students. We tied its [The Tribune’s] mandate for existence to a three-dollar student fee,” said Chesser. Three years ago, SSMU mandated for the newspaper to become independent by January 2010, later pushed forward to September 2010.
Although editorially autonomous, The Tribune was operating under the auspices of the SSMU, which paid for the newspaper’s rent, insurance, accounting services, and legal services. Chesser expressed confidence that the TPS would be financially viable. “We worked really hard last year with last year’s [SSMU] VP finance Jose Diaz and Pauline Gervais, SSMU general manager, to put together a detailed budget,” he said. “The operation of putting out a newspaper hasn’t changed. Our structure and accountability has changed.” Chesser elaborated that the TPS is now a non-profit corporation in Quebec, “the same way the DPS [Daily Publications Society] operates for The Daily.” “The Daily was our jumping-off point for what we wanted to do – if you look at the structure of them, they are almost identical. ... Anyone who shows up who is an undergraduate student at McGill has a vote,” said Chesser. Seven members sit on the TPS Board of Directors: four student representatives who were elected at the first Annual General Meeting, who must be unaffiliated from campus publications; one writer representative, one editor representative, and the editor-in-chief. TPS meetings are open to the public and will be advertised beforehand in The Tribune. —Rana Encol
Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
CANADIAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Winnipeg buying downtown hotels City hoping to curb drunken behaviour; social service agencies concerned Sonya Howard The Uniter (Univ. Of Winnipeg)
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innipeg (CUP) — The city of Winnipeg is looking at shutting down or converting downtown hotels in an attempt to combat public intoxication in the city. The Portage Avenue Action Strategy, drafted by the development agency CentreVenture and adopted by Winnipeg’s city council in July, states that the city will work with hotels, vendors and the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission to limit drunken behaviour downtown. Diana Soroka, spokeswoman for the MLCC, says that they are already working closely with downtown businesses by providing fund-
ing and training for the Downtown Watch program – a group that works with intoxicated members of the public. Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz is supportive of considering buying out the liquor licences at historic downtown hotels like The Maclaren and The Woodbine in order to shut them down or convert them. The goals of these actions, according to the strategy, are to make the downtown more comfortable for the public and to attract and keep investment. But, local social service agencies, hotel residents, and academics are concerned about the impact this will have on the people who depend on these hotels as a longterm housing option. “We need to recognize that
the people living in these hotels are people and citizens first,” said Karen Hoeft, assistant executive director of community relations for the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army, a Christian social service agency, provides 500 beds across three shelters in Winnipeg, 70 of which are for intoxicated people. “It is intolerable when we stereotype hotel residents by calling for fewer drunks,” Hoeft said. “We tend to put a more stringent ideology on this population, who just happens to not have a voice.” Downtown hotels may be the only option for some, Hoeft notes, not because they’re drunks but because they can’t afford to live anywhere else due to low vacancy rates or because they cannot meet
the tenancy requirements of holding a lease. Marlborough Hotel resident Maria Twersky agrees. “People are trying to help themselves when they live in hotels like this,” Twersky said. Even if the Portage Avenue Action Strategy includes some low-income and student housing, Twersky is concerned that there would be a lot of people left homeless. “They don’t really care if you’re here or not,” said Twersky. “We have humane societies for animals, but what about human beings as well?” Jim Silver, co-director of the University of Winnipeg’s Urban and Inner-City Studies program, cautions that the Portage Avenue Action Strategy needs to go beyond cleaning up a part of the city by relocat-
ing what seems to be the problem. Instead, it should try to address the problem of access to housing for low-income people. “There is a shortage of affordable housing in Winnipeg,” said Silver. “Further, these hotels are part of Winnipeg’s history, and businesses as well. We can’t just shut down a legally operating business.” While the MLCC is not directly involved in decisions on hotel buyouts, Soroka notes that the bars in these hotels are operating as businesses and they have every right to be profitable. Deputy Mayor Justin Swandel notes that the hotel buyout option is still at the concept stage and will be reviewed in some detail before council moves forward on it.
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The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Income by first official language spoken, Quebec, 2006 Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of population
50 English
Thousands of dollars
40
French
30
20
10
Average income (female)
Median income (female)
Average income (male)
Median income (male)
Quebec anglo incomes lagging New StatsCan report shows anglophones have lower median incomes than francophones Alexia Jablonski The McGill Daily
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he impression that anglophones in Quebec are a rich, privileged minority took a hit last week with the release of a Statistics Canada (StatsCan) report showing that English-speakers have a lower median income than francophones with the same qualifications. The 122-page report, released September 23, describes demographic trends among Quebeckers for whom English is the first language. According to 2006 Census data, anglophones have a median income of $1,806 less than francophones. Among men, the gap was about $3,900 and among women it was approximately $2,200. The report’s findings do not paint a picture of total francophone economic domination in the province, however. A wealthy minority exists within the anglophone community, skewing their average income data
upwards – anglophones’ total average income is $3,080 higher than that of francophones. Anglophones also have a higher poverty rate – by six per cent – than francophones, dragging their median income results down. A median is the numeric value separating the higher half of a sample from the lower half. Factors influencing the disparity in average income between the language groups include age, education, region, and type of employment. When controlling for these variables, the StatsCan report found that average income of anglophone men is still $1,900 lower than for their francophone counterparts. An anglophone woman earns $300 less than her French-speaking counterpart. The report detailed specific factors that have affected this dramatic turnaround in income status. “On the one hand, the major changes that Quebec society has undergone since the Quiet
Revolution have considerably improved the status and socioeconomic position of francophones within Quebec society,” explained the report, authored by Jean-Pierre Corbeil, Brigitte Chavez, and Daniel Pereira. “On the other hand, the departure of many anglophones from the province during the 1970s, along with the arrival of a growing number of international immigrants, many of them from developing countries, have affected the demographic, ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of this language group.” The majority of migrants to Quebec are English-speaking – 33 per cent of the anglophone population is made up of immigrants, compared to only 7 per cent of the French-speaking population – and inflows of foreign migrants contribute to higher poverty rates among anglophones. “Numerous studies have already shown that, despite a higher education level, immigrants have a higher unemployment rate and lower
income levels than their Canadianborn counterparts,” said the report, titled “Portrait of Official-Language Minorities in Canada – Anglophones in Quebec.” Perhaps more significant, however, has been the mass exodus of wealthy anglophones to other Canadian provinces. Historically, lack of employment, fears over separatism and an uncertain political future, and unfavourable language legislation have driven anglophones out of the province. Indeed, the biggest wave of emigration occurred between 1976 and 1981 – the Parti Québécois’s first term in office – when 151,308 Quebec anglophones emigrated, according to StatsCan. From 2001 to 2006, the anglophone population faced a net loss of 16,005 people to other provinces. Almost a quarter of anglophones aged 18 to 24 intend to move away from Quebec within the next five years. “[Quebec] changed a lot between, say, 1950 and 1990 as a
result of deliberate policy measures,” said William Watson, a Senior Research Fellow at Montreal’s Institute for Research on Public Policy, and a McGill Economics professor. “Many of those policy measures were distasteful to a lot of English people, so they left. So it’s a case of social engineering, really. There is an argument that these [demographic] changes might have taken place without the pro-francophone policies being brought into place... but I think the probably more convincing argument is that the policies themselves have had some effect.” Watson also said he doubted whether this study will have an impact on the public discourse about anglophones and on policy decisions, at least for the moment. “A result like that has to be repeated many times to become part of public awareness, to have an influence on people’s thinking,” he said.
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Commentary
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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The Tribune needs a lesson in journalism Casey Adams Hyde Park
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t is appropriate that the Tribune’s editorial on AUS this week (“Making AUSes of themselves,” September 28) led with the phrase “emergent details.” That accurately describes their approach to this story all along – basing their articles on only those sensational facts which have floated to the surface. Had they read The Daily’s articles on frosh, they would have found a complete accounting of the causes of the over-budget food orders they mentioned in their front-page article (“Arts execs reveal $30,000 Frosh budget deficit at Council,” September 28), an episode which they cherry-
Words hurt
Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily
Using offensive terminology deflects substantive debate Noah Lanard Hyde Park
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here were many disappointing aspects of Michael Morgenthau’s Hyde Park “What Will Follow Withdrawal?” (Commentary, September 27), but chief among them was the nagging sense that in his view, there is no nuance to the Arab-Israeli conflict whatsoever. To him, the Israelis have no choice but to occupy the West Bank indefinitely, unless one wants passenger planes attacked by a barrage of rockets and turned the West Bank into a “stepping-stone to kill [his] aunt and uncle.” In his view, the Israelis have been ready to accept a peaceful settlement since 1921, but Arab leaders keep standing in the way. To say that this view is an extreme oversimplification would be generous. Morgenthau argues that the Arabs have rejected every peace offer that has been proposed to them, but does not bother to ask why this might have been the case. Instead he just assumes that Arabs are too radical or anti-Zionist to ever accept a Jewish state in the Middle East. One can take almost any of the examples that Morgenthau cites as a case of Arabs standing in the way and show that the actual situation was much more complicated. For example, it is true that the Jews accepted the partition set up by
the 1937 British Peel Commission and the Arabs rejected it. However, he also neglects to mention that that Ben-Gurion saw the small Jewish state established by the Peel Commission as an enclave that could be used to facilitate the eventual takeover of the rest of Israel, in his words, “whether through agreement and mutual understanding with our Arab neighbours or in another way.” Another way being a euphemism for armed conflict. The Arabs had good reason for rejecting the 1937 partition, insofar as it would have given a territorial base to a group of people who by that point were committed to continued expansion. This same ambiguity existed in 1947, 1967, et cetera. Yet Morgenthau still presents a black-and-white narrative. However, it wasn’t historical inaccuracies and oversimplifications that first caught my attention, but rather the line “Judea and Samaria. (Oops... I mean the “West Bank.”)” To grasp the significance of his word choice, one must look at the reasons why the vast majority of people (including Jews) have stopped calling the West Bank “Judea and Samaria.” Palestinians have lived in the West Bank for hundreds of years and referring to their homeland as Judea and Samaria gives credence to the anachronistic view that because Jews lived there over two thousand years ago, they have the right to expel Palestinians from their home-
land – e.g. by continuing to build settlements. Referring to the West Bank as a part of the land of Zion puts scripture ahead of Palestinian human rights and only serves to further inflame tensions. Palestinians are understandably infuriated by the use of biblical names and using them makes reaching a peace agreement even harder. Both from a normative and strategic perspective, referring to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria is hard to justify, unless of course one solely aims to provoke Palestinians and those sympathetic to their struggles. Unfortunately, I suspect that this was Morgenthau’s intention. Instead of engaging in a substantive debate, he opted to repeat the dogmas of right-wing Zionists and dismiss his opponents as a group of radicals indifferent to the deaths of Israeli civilians. His sarcastic tone and fear mongering serve little purpose but to stifle debate and reinforce the deadlock that has hampered peace negotiations for so long. If there is any hope for making progress in increasing our understanding of the conflict, we must stop mindlessly repeating talking points that bear little resemblance to the reality on the ground, and adopt a much higher level of discourse. Noah Lanard is a U2 Philosophy and Political Science student. Write him at nlanard@gmail.com.
Today is International Blasphemy Rights Day. To read Edna Chan and Benjamin Elgie’s two cents on the matter, go to bit.ly/BlasphemyRightsDay.
say nothing of the fact that the size of the event increased significantly and against our opposition during the planning process. It was precisely the fact that we managed to pull off an event despite the “oversights and miscalculations in the planning process” (as the Tribune put it) caused by issues in the Events portfolio that earned us the increase. Most concerning was the childish, sophomoric, and personally damaging tone of the editorial. This was wildly inappropriate for what was once a respected publication. The Tribune appears to have made next to no effort at anything remotely resembling investigative journalism on this issue, and what information it has come across has been gleefully and irresponsibly misreported for the sake of sensa-
Attacking students with a tone befitting a gossip column does not foster respectful debate picked from Council and provided no follow-up research on. Had they consulted the publicly available AUS budget or paid attention at the Council hearing they sat in on, where they took the time to misquote AUS VP Finance Majd Al Khaldi in order to incorrectly and publicly blame me for the costly mistake that resulted in ordering too much food, they might have noticed that expenses this year were under projections. (Al Khaldi’s response to the error can be found in the comments section of the online version of the article.) It was the shortfall in revenues, attributable to under-registration, which caused frosh to go over budget. The event’s financial woes were therefore caused in large part by the increased cap for registration, something that both the Tribune and The Daily have acknowledged in the weeks since frosh. In the Tribune article, a councillor was quoted as stating that “raising the cap was the biggest problem they had.” Since The Daily actually took the time to talk to coordinators and attend the Council meeting in early September, they were able to report that the decision to raise the cap was persistently and openly contested by the coordinators both before and after it was made by the former VP Events. With that information in hand, it is hard to conclude, as the Tribune has, that the coordinators were to blame for the budget shortfall. In their editorial, the Tribune also took the time out to malign the stipend increase as “the congratulations that running in red apparently earned their Frosh coordinators.” Again, an attempt at research would have revealed that total compensation for the frosh coordinators decreased from last year. This is to
tionalism. On the same page that they accuse the AUS executives of “doing their best imitations of real politicians, mimicking everything from their fiscal irresponsibility to their inconsistent commitment to honesty,” the Tribune editorial board mourns the fact that “campus debate suffers from the hostile tone its participants often assume” (“Editorial to Restore Sanity,” September 28). The hypocrisy in this juxtaposition is breathtaking. Openly and viciously attacking fellow McGill students with a tone more befitting a gossip column than an editorial does not foster respectful debate. They repeatedly raised the theme of transparency, but made no effort to act as the organ for that transparency through detailed research, balanced reporting, or a level-headed perspective. Standing up for transparency and accountability is both necessary and commendable. The choice to sling mud instead of following up on that stance reflects a lack of serious inquiry and has accomplished little more than further confusing the issue and damaging reputations. The Tribune needs to be accountable for their editorials and articles, especially when they choose to write them in a way that is personally destructive to other McGill students. Their editorial on AUS stated that they wish to “foster a culture that rewards competence.” If this commitment is genuine, then we should expect resignations from the editorial board – or at the very least a public apology – in the near future. Casey Adams is a U2 Political Science and History (Joint Honours) student. He was an AUS Frosh Coordinator. Write him at caseyjamesadams@gmail.com.
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Decriminalize sex work William M. Burton Comment
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arlier this week, the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario struck down three provisions of the criminal code, namely those that prohibit the maintenance of a “common bawdy house” (performing sex work indoors), living off the avails of prostitution (living off sextrade income), and communicating for the purposes of that trade. This exemplary decision, written by Justice Susan Himel, is an important move in the right direction – it breaks open the silence surrounding sex work and gives us the opportunity to reform the laws regulating it, not just in Ontario, where the decision will have a tangible effect, but throughout the country. Prohibitions on sex work are an anachronistic vestige of Victorian prudery. Opponents of prostitution support their arguments to maintain criminalization by cobbling together legitimate concerns about human trafficking and violence against women with this prudishness, but in reality, their utopian goal of a world without sex work would end up hurting the women and men who ply that trade more than decriminalization. All this does is distract the cops from the serious business of stopping abuse and harmful exploitation by employing them to police the bodies of already-marginalized people. Striking down these provisions will help sex workers protect themselves on the job. Now, instead of working in alleyways, in cars, in the dark, sex workers can do their job indoors – in safety, with body
guards, with a support network. Now, instead of fearing that their landlords, their live-in partners, or anyone they take care of will be prosecuted for living off money gained through prostitution, they can without trepidation feed and clothe themselves and their loved ones, and pay employees – like body guards. Now, instead of having to abbreviate negotiations with clients, leaving sex workers without a strong feel for who they’re doing business with, they can take their time – discuss, sound out the john, and lay out the ground rules, keeping them that much safer from brutality and rape. But these changes aren’t enough. Worries about human trafficking and underage prostitution are wellfounded. When the cops stop wasting their time trying to eliminate a perfectly legitimate profession, they can start helping sex workers protect themselves. To be able to call the police without fear of arrest – to tell them you’re in danger without thinking you’ll lose everything – that’s a real step forward. And the cops will be able to focus precisely on those dangers that remain: illegal trafficking of girls and women, boys and men in Canada and around the world. As the sex-work organization Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC) has said, a specialized police force should be created to deal with these problems – not with a sexual transaction occurring between consenting adults. Women forced into sex work by drug addiction and unscrupulous pimps should be assisted, not prosecuted; women freely choosing to work in the sex industry should be respect-
Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily
It’s time we start respecting the world’s oldest profession
ed and exercise the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens. With this ruling, sex workers will be able to form co-operatives, guilds, unions. They’ll be able to pay taxes, create health standards, establish workers’ compensation funds. Decriminalization is the next logical step according to SPOC, and that will make it easier for women to get out of sex work if they want to. Sex workers will be able to establish a community with their colleagues to offer government-supported resources, like skills-training classes so that those pushed into sex
work by economic necessity can get out of a profession they might not enjoy. There are other areas where sex workers need regulation and support. Parasitic, exploitative pimps should be taken out of the picture – sex workers can keep the books themselves, and when they have the right to hire their own receptionists, body guards, and other staff, the need for some other boss evaporates. Additionally, sex workers of colour and indigenous and trans workers will need specific protections and programs to keep
them safe. The elevated threat of violence they’ve had to deal with is well known; so too the systemic and deadly neglect they’ve had to face from the police. Already marginalized through their racialization or their supposed gender transgression, these sex workers will need particular assistance. Getting the police off their backs is a great first step. But we shouldn’t just go inventing solutions on our own. We need to listen to the people on the ground, who put their bodies on the line every day. Like I’ve said, SPOC has called for decriminalization – and that is the only logical next move. The organization has other suggestions, like sex-consumer education programs and professional accreditation for sex workers. Parliamentarians should pay close attention to these propositions. It’s high time they showed some respect to the people who work this trade. Himel, the Superior Court justice, said that it’s now up to Parliament to “fashion concrete action” to regulate sex work. Rather than appealing this decision, the government should consult with SPOC, Stella, and other sex-workers’ rights organizations. No more paternalistic, top-down, bullshit solutions offered by technocrats with no idea what it’s like to work the sex trade. Let’s listen to the people involved for once. William M. Burton is The Daily’s Commentary & Compendium! editor. BA 2010 Lettres et traduction françaises, he’s currently a special student. Write him at commentary@mcgilldaily.com.
The union makes us strong To combat substandard pay, lecturers should collectively organize Ted Sprague Hyde Park
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cGill ranks as one of the top 25 universities in the world. To be more exact, it sits in 19th place. However, it pays its course lecturers – there are around 1,500 of them – much less than most other Quebec universities, by almost 30 per cent. Course lecturers at McGill receive $5,000 per course that they teach. Concordia pays them $7,770, UQAM $7,563, Laval $7,737, and – get this – at Chicoutimi, they’re paid $8,257. How do we reconcile these two facts: that McGill is one of the best schools in the world, yet pays its lecturers a pittance? In an ideal world, a prestigious university – a title McGill likes to claim for itself – would pay its teachers a handsome salary, or at least one on par with other univer-
sities. But we don’t live in an ideal world. In our society, if an employer can get away with paying their workers pennies while extracting the maximum amount of surplus value, they will. It is only through the vigilance of workers and their unions that we have prevented employers from bringing us back to a Dickensian way of doing things. Course lecturers in all Quebec universities – except McGill – are unionized, and thus they can bargain for not only a better salary, but also better working conditions. That situation should be a slap in the face of people opposed to unionization. Facts are concrete – they have a way of smacking one in the face rather hard. With such a disturbingly low salary for course lecturers, a union for them is long overdue. As I write, there is a unionization campaign underway. This movement will be
the biggest concern for the administration – far more important than the 400 students who protested the closure of the Arch Café. Imagine this: 1,500 course lecturers, if they get paid on par with those at Concordia, will cost the University at least $4 million a semester. This is assuming that each course lecturer only teach one course. Furthermore, that figure only accounts for their base salary. McGill has been able to get away with underpaying course lecturers for more than a decade because they lack a union. One course lecturer I met confided to me that a decade or so ago, he and a group of course lecturers did think about unionizing. However, they decided not to – at that time, they weren’t doing so badly, compared to their counterparts at other universities. This is a classic case of not having your umbrella before it rains. Politically, this would also be
another big blow to an administration known to be rabidly anti-union. More than 300 casual workers and 150 invigilators have recently been unionized. Once the part-time teachers are too, there might be a chance that the full-time teachers will demand the same thing. A unionized workforce will mean that the administration cannot do whatever its heart desires without engaging in real discussion – not sham ones, like Town Hall meetings – with its workers. The administration, therefore, will resort to any means to stop the campaign and neutralize the union behind it – the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill. For anyone who has been seriously involved in the union movement, we know all too well how far an employer will go to stop the workers from exercising their rights. They will resort to intimidation, openly or behind closed
doors, and they will attempt to bend the law with their army of lawyers. They will capitalize on the workers’ instincts to preserve their jobs and keep their heads down: “I don’t want to cause trouble.” “I don’t want to jeopardize my career.” “I don’t want to lose my job.” It is at this very moment that the course lecturers need the utmost solidarity from students. A simple gesture of support from us will go a long way in convincing course lecturers that their cause is just and worth fighting for – that they are not alone. At the end of the day, both students and teachers are facing the same cuts in education, resulting in ever-increasing tuition fees and worsening working conditions. Ted Sprague is the pseudonym of a Masters II Chemical Engineering student. He can be reached at ted_ sprague@yahoo.com.
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10Features
Containerized Capit Niko Block examines the lockout that shut down
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n July 18, president of CUPE Local 375 Daniel Tremblay received a call from Maritime Employers Association (MEA) president Jean Bedard, telling him that he and his 900 fellow longshoremen would be locked out of their jobs the following morning. On July 6, Bedard had announced his intention to lay off 107 of his employees, prompting the union to stop working overtime hours immediately. In the two weeks that followed, 16 freighters were backlogged in the St-Lawrence seaway after a diesel tanker upstream ran aground and started leaking into the river; the weather got so hot that it caused Montreal’s death rate to spike; and tensions between the union and the MEA were steadily rising. For Bedard, the decision to lock his employees out was just a matter of numbers. “The productivity in one week went down 30 to 40 per cent, depending on the terminal,” he says. “At 40 per cent it’s cheaper to close the port than to keep it open.” But Tremblay was blindsided by the move. “I was angry,” he says. “I was angry because we were not so far [from reaching a settlement]. We did not have the Grand Canyon to cross. It was only like the street here.” Beyond the overtime stoppage, the pace of work on the docks was noticably lagging. “It was very slow on the dock,” says Tremblay, “because they were angry about the
employer, so they were making their [own] pressure tactic [during those two weeks]. But there was no order from the union.” The night Tremblay received the call from Bedard, however, 450 of the union members had just convened and decided to officially call for a slowdown – but they were preempted by the lockout. Bedard had insisted that his payroll was too large ever since the Port of Montreal’s business plummeted due to the financial crisis, but by July the longshoremen had been working without a contract for a year-and-ahalf and negotiations were at an impasse. When Bedard initially proposed the layoffs, the union balked, insisting that the MEA’s bottom line could be improved by less drastic measures. At least three union heads were kicked out or resigned in the wrangling that ensued, until Tremblay was nominated in September 2009. Tremblay – who in his 20 years at the local was on his fourth contract negotiation – managed to hammer something out by May, but it was voted down by his members. The same thing happened again in June. “The last contract negotiation was a lot smoother,” he says. The main sticking points in these negotiations had to do with job and income security. Payment for the equivalent of 40 hours a week was guaranteed to the longshoremen, regardless of the hours they actually worked. In exchange, they had to be available to work eight hours a day for nineteen
days straight before their guaranteed two-day break. “When the ship is in we have work; when the ship is not in, we don’t have work,” says Bedard. “I guarantee your salary every year. In exchange you give me your availability. That’s the deal.” They all had more time off when shipping traffic dropped precipitously due to the recession, but the MEA, adhering to the terms of its expired contract, had to continue forking over the same old wages to the same number of workers. These contract stipulations are the product of the extraordinary amount of flexibility demanded of labour by the shipping industry. “There’s a schedule, but we can’t really follow that,” says Bedard. “So you can’t set your agenda for the next six months, who is going to work and when. The ship that was supposed to be in today might be late because there was a storm in the Atlantic. Or you’ll have three ships coming in at the same time because they were all blocked off by ice in the river.” For longshoremen like Tremblay, who operates the docking cranes, not having the ability to make dinner plans throughout the week is a hassle, but it comes with the territory.
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t’s an open-air warehouse at the biggest scale you can possibly imagine,” says MEA labour relations consultant Guillaume Couture as he drives through the port’s western gate after flashing his ID to
a security guard. On the docks, a freighter full of sugar was being unloaded by means of a gigantic metal clamp that deposited what Couture estimated to be 10 tonnes of sugar at a time into a 25-foot funnel. A diagonal shaft then carried the sugar to the top of the seven-storey Lantic sugar refinery on Notre-Dame. Further along, Couture drove past a series of titanic mountains of salt that had just been dropped off from Africa and South America, waiting to be deployed on the icy streets of Montreal this winter. The containers went on for miles. Steel, food, copper, furniture, wine – everything. “A container we unload here can get to Chicago inside 24 hours,” said Couture. “We don’t know what’s in ‘em, we don’t care what’s in ‘em. If it has to be shipped to Detroit, we’ll do it as fast as we can.” He added that up to five and six hundred trucks visit each of the port’s seven major terminals every day. The Port of Montreal sprawls across 25 kilometres of the island’s southeastern shore. Three of its terminals are located at the bottom of Peel, near the Farine Five Roses plant, where you’ll also find storage space for 260,000 tonnes of grain and 15 million barrels of “liquid bulk,” or petroleum. The remaining 12 terminals lie east of the Old Port, where most of the container handling takes place. Following Vancouver, Montreal is the largest port in the country, and the largest inland port in the world, giving it a huge advantage over New York and Halifax in accessing the
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The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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tal Canada’s second-largest port in July Midwestern American market. Last year, more than 1.2 million containers carrying over 11 million tonnes of cargo passed through the port. “If a ship leaves Antwerp, Belgium, to come to Montreal,” says Bedard, “he’s closer to Chicago and the Midwest and Toronto – the big markets. That’s what Montreal is good at.” About half of the cargo the port handles is either entering or exiting the US, and the whole operation accounts for approximately 70 per cent of the consumer goods that go to Ontario and Quebec. When the lockout struck, ships already en route were forced to dock in Halifax, which didn’t have enough capacity to keep things running on schedule, while others charted for New York. A handful of boats already in the seaway simply dropped anchor – adding to the backlog created by the oil spill – and hoped for a quick resolution to the dispute.
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dverse effects made themselves known immediately. The Quebec Trucking Association said it feared layoffs would ensue shortly if the situation didn’t resolve itself, as did North America’s largest manufacturer of newsprint, AbitibiBowater Inc. Wal-Mart emphasized that “if the shutdown is not resolved quickly, it will have a serious impact on all businesses who rely on the Port of Montreal.” The Gazette ran an editorial stating, “Too much is at stake to allow this labour dispute to hold the province
ransom.” The union’s ability to hold the province “ransom” has doubtlessly played a role in its overall success in bargaining with its employer. (The average longshoreman earns upwards of $80,000 a year.) But if the strike revealed the “strength of the working class,” as marxist.ca put it, it also demonstrated the federal government’s alacrity in protecting these flows of capital. Labour minister Lisa Raitt immediately issued a press release expressing her “disappointment” with the dispute. “I urge the parties to resume bargaining and reach a negotiated agreement as soon as possible,” it read. Two days later, amidst a chorus of demands for immediate intervention, transport minister John Baird, followed suit. “We’re tremendously concerned about the impact, not just in the Montreal area but indeed southern Ontario and southern Quebec, the manufacturing sector, the auto sector, which is still in a fragile state of recovery,” said Baird. Though the government never intervened, aside from its appointment of two mediators, both parties got the message. “At the time [Bedard] decided to put a lockout, I think it was because he wanted the government to apply a law or something to be in the way of negotiation,” says Tremblay. “About two months before the lockout we were talking with people at the government to say don’t [interfere] in our negotiation. Let us make it like the [Labour] Code says, and I think Lisa Raitt listened to us.”
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erhaps even more urgently affected by the lockout than Wal-Mart was the island of Newfoundland, and premier Danny Williams’s office had good reason to ask Ottawa to step in. One hundred per cent of the food, pharmaceuticals, toilet paper and countless other products that arrive in St. Johns pass through Montreal first. Raitt deferred the question to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), which quickly began moving towards deeming Newfoundland’s cargo an essential service. “That was fucking crazy,” laughs Tremblay. “They said that they’ve only got inventory for about ten days, so if they don’t have the stock they will have to shut down some companies.” In August, the CIRB determined that loading shipments to Newfoundland is an essential service, but the specifics – in particular how many men need to stay on the docks – have yet to be determined. The longshoremen aren’t particularly enthusiastic about having their hands tied. “To us [Newfoundland shipping company] Oceanex is not an essential service, because they can do business in Trois-Rivières, they can do it in Sorel, they can do it in Quebec – so it’s only a logistic problem for the company.” Tremblay is primarily concerned here about the potential for managerial abuses of the Labour Code. A labour dispute at the Port of Vancouver last year led to management there pushing for the classification of docking work as an essential service across the board, which
would paralyze the union’s ability to strike. “In the west coast, the employer there doesn’t want to negotiate with the [longshoremen],” says Tremblay. “He wants to have a new reglementation and he’s pushing very hard there...so that if [they] don’t reach an agreement, they’re going to have to go to arbitration, and that’s very bad. We need to do what Canadians have always done – negotiate. It’s normal here. We’re normally a democratic country.” Bedard points out that the government has intervened in each of the Vancouver port’s major labour disputes in recent memory. “We’ve always managed to find a solution and negotiate a solution,” he said. He adds, however, that he thinks the government should amend the Labour Code to impose a deadline of some sort to otherwiseinterminable negotiations. Bedard himself was in charge of negotiating a collective agreement with the union in Trois-Rivières, but infighting within the union stymied the process and it ended up lasting 14 years. “Vancouver is going for forced arbitration. Maybe that’s the solution, but at the moment there is none so you end up with an openended system.”
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he MEA’s exclusive source of revenue is a $3 fee on every tonne of cargo that passes in or out of the port. As president, Bedard is accountable to a board of directors that includes representatives of many of the
12Features
world’s largest shipping and loading companies, like Hapag-Lloyd, Hanjin Shipping Co., and Maersk – as well as exclusively local operations like Montreal Gateway Terminals (MGT) Partnerships. The association was judicially mandated as the representative of each of the longshoremen’s employers in the early 1970s. This was largely due to the near-constant labour disputes between the handful of unions and the various shipping companies operating at the port. Income and job security have been mainstays of the union’s contracts ever since. “We needed to settle [on] something,” says Tremblay, “because for the Canadian economy, we needed to fix all those strikes and lockouts at that time. It was mostly strikes.” Tremblay’s father worked at the docks when he decided to abandon his day job as a photographer for Journal de Montréal and became a longshoreman himself. But the early 70s was also a pivotal moment for the industry worldwide. Shipping was growing rapidly at the time, especially given the recent introduction of standard containerization – a key innovation in the development of global trade. “When I began here we were working a lot with our arms,” recalls Tremblay. “Now it’s only machines.” The industry has steadily grown more flexible and more lucrative ever since. According to MGT, shipping has grown three times faster than GDP since the early 1990s. One firm called Drewry Shipping Consultants estimates that global container flow will rise by 7.2 per cent per year on average between 2009 and 2015. (This figure lags noticeably behind the double-digit
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
growth the industry saw in the early years of the last decade.) Large-scale projects to increase shipping and port capacity are almost perpetually underway around the globe. New York’s container terminal – which competes directly with Montreal – recently announced plans to double its service capacity. The Panama Canal likewise plans to double its capacity by 2014 – a development that will open up ports in the southeastern U.S. to ships from China, which typically only dock on the west coast before their cargo is carted east by rail and truck. The recent recession was in fact the first time the industry had seen a net decline. “Container shipping is not a very old business,” notes Bedard. “It’s what, 40 years old? Fifty at the most? I would say [2008-2009] was a huge slump, when you lose 20 per cent of the business. And we didn’t do worse than the other ports.”
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n recent years, the industry’s rapid growth has garnered billions of dollars in investment capital, breaking up the traditional vertically-integrated business model of the past. “The big difference is that ten years ago the major player in Montreal, the major shipping line, was CP [Canada Pacific] ships,” says Bedard. “CP ships owned the biggest terminal in Montreal, so it was their ships unloading on their terminal; then they would put the containers on their rail cars, on their railways.” The first major investment fund to move into the Canadian ports, he says, was the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) – the largest pension fund in Canada with over $87 billion in net assets – which in 2007 established Global Container Terminals Inc.
(GCT). GCT now handles 70 per cent of the containerized flow through Vancouver’s port in addition to ten per cent at the ports of New York and New Jersey. Morgan Stanley, awash with more money than it knew what to do with at the time, followed suit the same year after hiring one of the OTPP’s investment managers. The investment bank bought an 80 per cent share in the MGT, which operates the terminals that had once belonged to CP. And this was right on the heels of the acquisition of other terminals in Vancouver and Halifax by an Australian investment bank. What this expanded growth and diversification in the industry means for longshoremen, as far as Bedard is concerned, is that the union no longer has the same leverage it once did, because Montreal can no longer monopolize any shipping routes. “Montreal was CP’s only port of call in North America,” says Bedard. “So if the union went on strike they would virtually close off North America to CP ships. So for a long time, the union felt that they had some bargaining power because of that. All that’s changed in the last ten years. The biggest terminal in Montreal is now owned by Morgan Stanley. The lines that call Montreal, one is Chinese, one is Danish, one is German, and one is from Geneva. They all have terminals either in Halifax or in New York. So if Montreal is not a good place to come, or if it is too expensive, or the longshoremen don’t want to play the game, they’ll just do like the birds and flock off to their terminals in Halifax and somewhere else, that’s all.” In terms of traffic volume, the port has weathered the rise of the Canadian dollar in the past decade relatively well, but it has
inevitably affected its competitiveness. “It’s much more volatile a business than it used to be,” says Bedard. “The liners can go anywhere. The decision is made in Hong Kong, or Stockholm, or Hamburg. They don’t care about the place where the container will be unloaded, whether it’s Savannah, Georgia, or Boston or Halifax. These are just names for them.”
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y July 23, Tremblay and Bedard were both anxious to open the port and resume negotiations – and both hoped they would progress faster that the glacial pace that had characterized talks up until that point. Bedard simply wanted an end to the work-to-rule tactics; the union simply wanted an end to the lockout; and the business world breathed a sigh of relief when work resumed that weekend. The union voted on the new contract proposal last Thursday, and approved it. It encompasses severance packages for 50 employees – mainly older ones – in addition to a pay-raise of between 1.5 and 2.5 per cent, and a bit of finagling with job and income security that gives the MEA more options in case of a future slowdown in business. Their pensions won’t be affected. “It’s a start,” says Bedard, noting that container traffic in Montreal has bounced back approximately to 2006 levels, which to a certain degree has helped ease some of the tensions between the MEA and the union local. “These guys are business men,” shrugs Tremblay. “I’ve got a good relationship with [Bedard] and everyone there – also the board. Yesterday I was with the CEO of Morgan Stanley. I’m going to take a glass of wine with him in New York in maybe two weeks.”
Health&Education
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Small loans, big results Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus uses microcredit for Bangladeshi welfare Peter Shyba Health&Education Writer
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here is no doubt that microfinance has become one of the biggest buzzwords of this decade. Microfinance, or the practice of giving small loans to poor individuals in order to start a small, often informal, business, has been incredibly successful. Practiced most widely in Bangladesh, it has funded startups businesses from basket-weaving to bread-baking, often serving niche markets overlooked by large corporations. Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winning economist widely believed to be the father of microcredit, started the Grameen Bank in 1983 in order to facilitate the lending process among the people of Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank now has assets of over $855 million U.S., and has diversified its business to include an energy company, a cell phone company, a fishery, and a clinic network. Yunus calls these ventures “social businesses.” Asked to comment recently about the world economic crisis, Yunus said, “I am not blaming [American bankers]; I am blaming the theory which produced them. ... We can create money in the business; also we can change the world in business. That changing the world...is what I am calling social business.” In his recent book, Creating a World without Poverty, Yunus describes “social business” as enterprises with social objectives like building a clinic or the sale of mosquito nets that must be profitable and able to pay back investors their initial contribution. Social business differs from other development initiatives because it isn’t a handout, nor is it a loan with an unreasonable rate of return (see: the World Bank’s structural adjustment programs), but rather a for-profit business which has an incentive to make its programs work. The issue of seemingly worldwide doctor shortages has affected the rural population of Bangladesh immensely. In an
Alexander McKenzie for The McGill Daily
Yunus calls his microloans project “social businesses.” effort to train more doctors, last October, Grameen Health along with representatives from Emory, Duke, and McGill Universities signed a Memorandum of Intent to create a learning centre in Dhaka. While still in its nascent stages, the centre will create degree programs for training doctors and nurses. It will act as a hub of planning and research in Bangladesh’s health sector. Yunus said during the World Health Care Congress that “while initial evaluations of the Grameen Clinic network and its health impact are positive, continuous improvements in coverage, disease prevention, quality of care, and sustainability remain as top priorities.” In Bangladesh, rates of moderate-to-severe youth malnourishment hover around an extraordinary 55 per cent. In response to this, the Grameen Bank partnered with the French dairy comapny Danone to create Grameen-Danone in 2006. They produce nutrient-rich, fullcream yogurt, which the company
sells for around ten cents a cup. The yogurt is sold door-to-door by women who would otherwise be unemployed, giving income to one of the country’s most vulnerable populations. The business, which employs around 1,600 people, has been incredibly successful, and Danone’s community trust reports holdings of nearly $35 million. Danone plans on reinvesting those profits into new social business models in Bangladesh and around the world. Another important social business headed by Yunus is Grameen Kalyan (meaning well-being in Bengali), a network encompassing 50 clinics across the country. Each clinic serves up to 50,000 people in the immediate vicinity, many of whom are users of Grameen’s health insurance program that offers full insurance for around $2 USD a year per family. The network of clinics includes a pathology library, pharmacy, and emergency services. As part of a new partner-
ship with General Electric (GE) and the Mayo Clinic, Grameen Kalyan plans on expanding its care network throughout Bangladesh. Yunus has appealed to GE to create more portable, accessible, and less expensive ultrasound devices that women from around the country can be trained to use. According to Yunus, “Young women...will be encouraged to become entrepreneurs who go house to house and operate and sell the use of this equipment.” Using a partnership with GrameenPhone (another Grameen Bank social business), the images from these ultrasounds in rural areas can be sent to doctors in the cities for consultation. Canadians, who have a perennial fear of the words “business” and “health” in the same paragraph, may wonder whether it is justified for a business like Grameen Health to act as a health care provider in lieu of the government. Highlighting the social business
aspect of Grameen, Keat Yang of the McGill Student Network for Economic Development commented, “It is one thing to look at privatization of public goods in askance, but there is a distinction between social enterprises and firms that seek to maximize only profit.” Indeed, while Grameen may profit from its Grameen Kalyan network, its mandate would force the reinvestment of that excess money into the community. According to Shelley Clark, a McGill Sociology professor specializing in global health, “When the government has failed to provide adequate care for decades, I personally see no reason why businesses couldn’t lend a hand.” Muhammad Yunus will be visiting McGill from September 30 to October 2 for the McGill World Platform for Health and Economic Convergence. Go to www.mcgill. ca/aoc/events/2010/beatty-memorial-lecture for more information.
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14Health&Education
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
Proposed MS treatment meets controversy Despite positive reports from patients, medical professionals don’t support ‘liberation treatment’ Ashleigh Mattern The Sheaf (Univ. of Saskatchewan)
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askatoon (CUP) — A potential new treatment for multiple sclerosis has Canadian experts pitted against the patients whose lives it could save. Chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, or CCSVI, hypothesizes that MS is caused by vein blockages in the neck. The treatment proposed by Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni involves using angioplasty to unblock those veins. Since Zamboni’s treatment was created in late 2009, some people with MS have already spent thousands of dollars to travel to other countries to have the procedure. Darrell Derkson, president and owner of J&A Heating in Saskatoon, travelled to Sofia, Bulgaria in July to have the treatment. “It was at a point in my life where I had to make a decision,” said Derkson. “What was being offered in pharmaceutical drugs wasn’t making my MS stop.” He reports feeling less fatigued, gaining an improved tolerance to heat and feeling less tension on
his neck since having the procedure done. “Just by eliminating some of those symptoms I was able to function better,” he said. But, the treatment has been surrounded by controversy. On September 1, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the federal government announced that they would not fund research into the liberation treatment, citing that any research would be unethical. The announcement was a disappointment to the thousands of Canadians suffering from MS who believe there is a link between CCSVI and their disease. So if patients report positive results, why don’t the CIHR, the federal government and the MS Society of Canada support further research? “To be frank, when a patient says that they feel better, to some extent, that’s a subjective evaluation,” said Allen Backman from the University of Saskatchewan’s School of Public Health. “If we put them through some kind of objective testing procedure we might not find [an improvement].” Backman says there simply isn’t
enough evidence to support a link between CCSVI and MS, and to make matters more complicated, there’s a significant risk to the patient, because Zamboni’s treatment is a surgery. “If the researcher doesn’t actually believe that there is a good chance that an intervention would result in a benefit to the patient, it’s unethical to do the research,” he explained. “There is no expectation that this might actually work and therefore you can’t do the studies.” But for someone like Derkson, who has been suffering from MS for 20 years and experienced relief from the treatment, this view is hard to swallow. “They’re basically accusing me of faking my good fortune, which is irritating,” he said. While clinical studies of Zamboni’s treatment may not be on the horizon for some time, research happening right now at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of British Columbia will eventually provide some answers. Both universities are currently studying whether there is a link between CCSVI and MS.
Cyberspace specimens
BOOSTER SHOTS
Osler Library puts a medical archive online Joan Moses
Viruses in Guyville
The McGill Daily
T
he modernist environs of the Osler Library of the History of Medicine belie the true character of its antique collection of texts and instruments. Tucked away on the third floor of the concrete tower that is the McIntyre Medical Sciences Building, it is a trove of rare books and vintage furnishings, hidden amongst cutting-edge lecture halls and research labs. The library was founded in 1929 to hold some 8,000 rare medical books, collected by the prominent physician William Osler in his “Biblioteca Osleriana,” but has since then acquired a collection of around 100,000 texts. This collection comprises up-to-date books and periodicals relating to the history of medicine, but maintains its focus on rare texts and primary source documents. The collection is used by students and professors in a variety of faculties at McGill, and by scholars around the world. Accessing the collection was recently made even easier when the partial archives this collection was moved to another surprisingly high-tech location: the Internet. The Osler Library Archive Collection has, according to their website “over 100 collec-
Funded by the Saskatoon City Hospital Foundation and the MS Society of Canada, the study will enrol 100 people in Saskatoon and 100 people in B.C., both with MS and control subjects. A second study, which is only happening in Saskatoon, will enrol 30 subjects, some with possible MS, some who definitely have MS, and some who are healthy to act as controls. The current studies may take up to two years to complete. In the meantime, any proposals to test Zamboni’s treatment must be reviewed by the CIHR and, without further evidence, it’s unlikely CIHR will reverse its stand that any proposed research is unethical. Both Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador have announced they will help fund any research into the procedure, and the New Brunswick Conservative Party have promised to designate $500,000 to research if they win the province’s election on September 27. But the promise of funding will do little good until researchers make a proposal. “The more research that’s
Sheehan Moore with Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
tions of papers by or about doctors, medical students and organizations” that are now searchable in an online database. It contains historical records regarding Osler, the papers of numerous prominent Canadian doctors, and the course notes from McGill medical students in the 18th, 19th, and
20th centuries. By archiving this material, the collection aims to represent the history of the practice, as well as the pedagogy, of medicine. The Osler Library Archive Collection can be accessed at osler.library. mcgill.ca/archives/.
It’s becoming common knowledge among collegeaged women that Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations should be administered in a series of three injections over a six-month period. Women between the ages of nine and 26 usually receive vaccinations for the virus types that most commonly cause genital warts and more importantly, cervical cancer. However, the term HPV itself actually encapsulates more than 100 related viruses according to the Mayo Clinic. But in February of this year, Canada approved the HPV vaccination Gardasil for men and boys aged nine to 26 – a fact that remains little known and not often acted upon. While cervical cancer may not be an issue for men, there are numerous reasons to receive the vaccination. HPV infections can lead to rare penile and anal cancers. This makes the vaccine especially important for men with samesex partners, who according to
done that doesn’t involve taking a knife to human patients, the more research that’s done that suggests a link, the more likely a researcher has an expectation that this intervention might have a benefit,” said Backman. So despite a community of MS patients and their friends and family members desperate for a cure, and mounting anecdotal evidence that the treatment provides some relief, the scientific community in Canada will not move forward to test the treatment until more basic evidence has been confirmed. And without the backing of the scientific community, the federal government will not fund the treatment. Still, the current lack of evidence doesn’t mean MS patients should lose all hope. There is research on the go and Backman says that in science there is never a definitive answer. “There have been serendipitous discoveries in medicine,” he said. “It is possible that this treatment is in fact effective in spite of no evidence for it and in spite of no theoretical foundation for why it should work.”
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, are 17 times more likely to develop anal cancer than those with opposite-sex partners. The vaccinations immunize a patient against 90 per cent of genital warts, a more common but less threatening symptom of the disease which can be difficult to treat. Men immunized against HPV have a lower of risk of spreading the viruses. As Pierre-Paul Tellier, director of the McGill Health Centre stated, the University had even pre-empted Canada’s approval of Gardasil: “The clinic made the vaccine available for men even before Health Canada accepted it. We had scientific evidence that it was effective so we chose to go ahead.” Not only is the vaccine approved but immediately accessible. “It is easily available, all a man has to do is book an appointment with a nurse and they will give it. Now that it is accepted by Health Canada, students can also be reimbursed in part through the SSMU health plan.” Yet even with the reimbursement, the cost may be high. Currently, the three vaccinations are $140 each and the test for HPV itself is $110. — Joseph Henry
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Culture
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Bounce the system New Orleans artists bring queer hip hop into the limelight Gillian Teo Culture Writer
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oes the image of a transgender rapper working out her swagger in a pair of heels fit your preconception of hip hop? Can you imagine 50 Cent belting out an aggressively unrepentant hook about the delights of gay sex? Sissy bounce culture, a sub-genre of New Orleans’s bounce scene, has become a space for openly queer artists to rework normative conceptions of sexuality and gender politics in an unexpected creative fusion of gritty dance beats and social critique. Amidst the sweaty bump and grind of bodies moving to hypersexualized, fast tracks, there’s the sense of exploring something completely fresh through a reckless abandon of convention, stereotypes, and norms. Given the ongoing criticism that the rap and hip hop community receives regarding its brazen use of misogynistic and homophobic tropes, it seems impossible to imagine a more unlikely place for the acceptance of transgender and queer expression in the music world. And it hasn’t been easy – the world of a working-class, southern, AfricanAmerican male queer person is a terrain marked by difficulty and oppression. It is also a reality that is largely invisible in the eyes of wider society. Katey Red, the transgender rapper credited with the creation of sissy bounce, gets to the heart of the complexities of maintaining such a marginalized identity in “Punk Under Pressure.” The song has become something of an anthem for black queers trying to navigate their way through the difficulties posed by the intersection of race and gender prejudice. The sissies see themselves as punks just trying to get by as well – except they’re getting by on stage, surrounded by dancing women, most of them “p-popping” (a signature dance move where one assumes a push-up position and bounces forcefully at the hip).
Yasemin Boluk | The McGill Daily
Sissy bounce has grown popular in queer communities across North America. As New Orleans’s own personal brand of hip hop, bounce itself has been around for close to 20 years. It’s a kind of rap that is best appreciated in its live form. Bounce is a sweaty dance party set to an infectious beat, drawing its energy from a relentless calland-response dynamic between the performer and the audience. Bounce is inseparable from the musical and social environment from which it springs forth. Hidden in its beat and rhythm and in the lyric references is a deep and profound pride for the city’s various neighborhoods and ethnicities, and the ethereal multicultural heritage of Mardi Gras.
As a sub-genre of bounce, sissy bounce is just as wrapped up in the blend of kinship and memory that comprises New Orleans’s distinctive cultural landscape and history. Its major point of departure from the larger bounce genre lies in the identity of the performers themselves. While it’s undeniable that queer identity and hip hop make for an unusual marriage, New Orleans has a history of allowing unlikely fusions to flourish. However, as a result of the trauma of Katrina and the failure of governmental aid, many sissy bounce artists are no longer primarily based in New Orleans. Now they must stay in touch with their roots
through their music. By manipulating the rap genre for queer expression, sissy bounce’s success and popularity stems from a sense of ambiguity and openness to the full spectrum of gender and identity. It would be a mistake to reduce the performances and the artists themselves to their sexual identity, as, after all, it is this narrowness in thought and perception that sissy bounce performers speak against. In “Stupid,” a duet between herself and fellow sissy Big Freedia, Red says, “Am I a boy or a girl? Nah, I’m Katey Red.” A person, after all, is always more than the fixed categoriesof gender, race, and class. While remaining close to its
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place of birth, sissy bounce has been spreading beyond New Orleans, with Big Freedia coming to Montreal’s Club Lambi last June, and reappearing this weekend at Pop. And even though the queer community in Montreal is the most familiar with Freedia and other sissies, it’s a genre that definitely does not limit itself to a strictly queer audience. In fact, Big Freedia’s show in Montreal attracted a diverse mix of people. While sissies use bounce music for their own self-expression and identification as queer artists, the appeal of the catchy hooks and welcoming attitudes makes their performances universally accessible.
Meetings: 5:30 Tuesday Shatner B-24
16 Culture
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
What does car-free mean? McGill takes steps to emulate global promotion of the pedestrian Nicole Leonard The McGill Daily
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n the last decade, environmentalism has emerged as a characteristic that will define 21st-century business, design, and lifestyle. City planners the world over are developing ways to promote cooperative living environments that diminish reliance on automobiles in favor of amiable and responsible transportation. After five years of planning and consultation, McGill’s vision for “car-free campus” has become reality. The closing of McTavish on May 28 signalled the realization of an enclosed and pedestrian-dominated lower campus. The effectiveness of the McGill Green Project in achieving premier urban planning goals of cohabitation however, comes in to question when we compare results with cities and design philosophies elsewhere. Urban planners, like many university students, often refer to Amsterdam – not because of its lax
dated World War II. Drachten and Makkinga forgo signs, streetlights, and traditional methods of traffic control in order to promote users’ awareness of their surroundings. This has resulted in lower average speeds and fewer accidents. Sharedspace areas have been cropping up all over the world in the past decade with particular success in European cities like Reykjavik, Bucharest, and Berlin; new projects are currently underway in New Zealand, Toronto, and countless American cities. McGill, however, fails to fully meet criteria for shared space. New protocol requires cyclists to walk bikes on campus and does not allow for cars, with exceptions for emergency vehicles and delivery trucks between 7 and 11 a.m. In an open forum last Thursday, frustrated cyclists offered alternatives to the policy that would enable them to coexist with pedestrians, namely separated bike paths. While segregation of bikers, walkers, and cars into different lanes functions somewhat effectively throughout Montreal, McGill’s administration
We want the campus to be seen as an extension of our living rooms” David Covo Former director of McGill’s School of Architecture drug policies but due to its seamless integration of high densities of pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists. Many other Dutch towns now employ philosophies of “shared space,” which aim to desegregate cars from human activity and revive pedestrian-friendly towns that pre-
asserted that paths on campus were unsafe and unviable. Some criticize the rules’ inauguration as a confirmation of McGill as an ivory tower, vastly removed from the Montreal community that contributes to the school’s unique urban identity. David Covo,
Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily
Car-free policies allow students to diversify their use of campus space McGill professor and director of the School of Architecture until 2007, disagrees, claiming that McGill is still widely accessible to the public despite the requirement to dismount. “We want the campus to be seen as an extension of our living rooms, not our garages,” muses Covo. “There is the idea that when you enter campus, you acknowledge a social contract of security.” The change is reminiscent of New Pedestrianism, an urban planning concept that explicitly promotes walkers, cyclists, and celebration of the natural features of implicated areas. Although McGill
hasn’t fully incorporated bicycles, this philosophy is more applicable to the new vision of campus than shared space. The University of California at Irvine’s equivalently-sized walk-bike zone and Copenhagen’s Strøget – the first pedestrian-only area in Europe – set precedents for McGill. In the future, Covo predicts cooperative attitudes and further evolution of campus as a pedestrian priority zone, involving a departure from asphalt and the implementation of textured surfaces to slow people and improve the aesthetic. He emphasizes the removal of curbs, which create unnecessary
distinction between roadways and walkways; the additions of James Square by the Milton Gates and planters straddling the boundaries of the main Roddick Gates walkway demonstrate substantive progress. It is important to remember that aforementioned European examples’ successes are due to a pre-existing walking culture established over generations. Here at McGill, it will take time to develop ideal relationships and physical features, but students’ sprawl already indicates that they have taken to the streets and begun to claim campus as their own.
Activists helping activists Got Your Back! promotes solidarity between diverse non-profit groups Susannah Feinstein The McGill Daily
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hese days, many people seem to doubt the effectiveness of activism as a means for social change. Last weekend’s Got Your Back! workshop, however, demonstrated the ability of activism to raise awareness about and improve issues of social inequality in concrete ways. Drawing on speakers dedicated to a variety of causes, the forum not only addressed issues of both local and global importance, but also proposed direct ways in which the audience could get involved with these causes. McGill undergrad Liam OlsonMayes, one of the small group of
Concordia and McGill students responsible for organizing the event, explained how Got Your Back! came into being: “A few months back we had the idea of creating a rad forum on support… There were a lot of issues we wanted to discuss. We contacted different organizations and chose which causes to focus on based on who responded.” Discussing the groundwork for Got Your Back!, Olson-Mayes emphasized the importance of the help of Dean Spade, an assistant professor at the Seattle University School of Law who spoke during “I Am What I Say I Am: A Panel On Self-Determination.” Olson-Mayes also explained that despite some on-campus publicity, the target audience for the workshop was not so much students as
it was various non-profit organizations within the Montreal community, most of which were contacted directly. As Olson-Mayes revealed the efforts that went into planning the event, it became clear how Got Your Back! attracted representatives from so many diverse and interesting groups concerned with combating social inequality. One of the highlights of the forum was a lecture entitled, “Dealing With It: Intense emotions and grief while organizing.” Gathered in a circle, the attendees first revealed their causes, diverse concerns ranging from feeding impoverished children to LGBT community activism. The main speaker, Pascale, then began to share her experience working at Stella, an organization that sup-
ports sex workers in Montreal. In her words, Pascale has seen “a lot of crazy shit.” She discussed the health and political issues surrounding sex work, bringing up an interesting point: “People think it’s chic to protest for gay rights and pro-choice rights. But they also think it’s chic to protest against sex work, and don’t realize the political consequences of their actions.” According to Pascale, the criminalization of sex work leads to legal troubles for Stella and can prevent sex workers from gaining access to the health resources the organisation provides. In addition to sex workers, the lectures also focused on sexual assault victims, aid for migrants and refugees, the meaning of “safe space,” and provided a glimpse of the inner
workings of the penal system. Most of the workshops were held in the same interactive and engaging manner: an informal yet informative lecture followed by an active question and answer session, and suggestions from the audience on how to resolve the set of problems facing a particular community. Although one might have been turned off by the overwhelming lists of terms and causes used in Got Your Back!’s publicity materials, the lecturers, volunteers, and the atmosphere itself was nonetheless engaging. It was clear that those involved in the workshop stood that creating a comfortable environment for open discourse is the vital first step in getting people to engage in social action.
Culture
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
17
Old Montreal Inc. Manufacturing tourism in the historical heart of the city Laura Pellicer Culture Writer
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Robert Smith for The McGill Daily
The Old Port offers a variety of tourist-friendly attractions
ourists stroll the cobblestone streets of Old Montreal. They purchase local fare, pop into boutiques and avidly people-watch as Montreal natives indulge in the rituals of city life. When their vacation comes to an end, they return home to wow their friends with stories of the bon-vivants they met and the joie de vivre that the city exudes. But there is a problem here: so much of the “authenticity” of the old port, from the cobblestones to the horse-drawn carriages driving on them, is tailored specifically for the tourist experience. Many tourists never even venture outside of the historic quarter to the regions where most Montrealers actually live. According to Tourisme Montréal, of the 18,379,535 people who visited the city in 2008, over half visited Montreal for one day only and over a third spent time in Old Montreal. Benjamin Forest, a professor in McGill’s Urban Systems Geography program explained this paradox. “The development of the tourism industry typically destroys the very thing they are marketed on,” what Forest refers to as an “authentic historic cultural experience.” The tourist is left chasing a ghost. “You want to experience authentic culture but tourism
is never part of that culture.” Although approximately six million people visit Old Montreal each year, only 4,000 actually live in the area. Forest explained that the absence of residents is not necessarily problematic, however, as it “means that there isn’t that tension” between locals and tourists. Forest pointed to Griffintown as a neighbourhood where tensions between residents and outsiders has arisen. One corporation in particular holds enormous sway over the Old Port tourist experience. The Antonopoulos Group is a massive conglomerate whose mission is to provide an enjoyable and up-scale Old Montreal experience for those who stay at one of their many ventures. The company owns and manages over 13 properties in Old Montreal, including VieuxPort Steakhouse, Place d’Armes Hôtel & Suites, Rainspa, Suite 701 Lounge, and Hôtel Nelligan. Their monopoly of the district ensures that tourists can eat, sleep, and party all within the same franchise. The variety of businesses under the Antonopoulos umbrella offers the illusion of choice to those seeking a diverse range of experiences. Yvon Creton, who has owned and managed the independent l’Aventure restaurant since 1989, commented on the phenomenon. “It’s hard to fight with giants,” he admitted. As an independent business owner he feels exclud-
ed from decision-making in the marketing of the neighbourhood, while large corporations hold undue sway with Tourisme Montréal. Creton opposed the incursion of major chains and big local companies as he feels that they don’t add character to the city. “They slowly kill others,” Creton said, referring to the take-over of independent businesses. When asked if he thinks Old Montreal is for Montrealers or for tourists, Creton explained that he’s been asking himself that same question for 30 years. Although locals do frequent his restaurant, they are generally limited to government workers who come in hordes on weekdays to inhabit the numerous government offices in the eastern part of Old Montreal. He explained that residents of Old Montreal choose to dine elsewhere as they “don’t like mixing with tourists.” Old Montreal is marketed as a tourist mecca by Tourisme Montréal at the expense of other districts. There could be a benefit in this dynamic, however – the culture of neighbourhoods outside Old Montreal is somewhat protected from the onslaught of the tourism industry. Montrealers can still hope, though, that Old Montreal becomes less of a corporate money-making machine, allowing it to provide a more authentic historical and cultural experience for residents and tourists alike.
erased from history due to the fact that “they had vaginas… Duh!” Chicago’s new work suggests further feminist ideas, with glass cast hands conveying both female power and fragility. Quite shockingly (or quite Chicago), the artist said she felt that “there was nothing to see” at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. The more meaningless the art, Chicago argued, “The easier the institution absorbs it.” “The structure is fucked!” she announced, explaining that she was tired of “all the boys” (Picasso, Matisse…) being portrayed as the forerunners in art history in museums, with female artists only appearing as “disruptions” to the maledominated tradition. In addition to her work’s feminist art-historical critique, Chicago also focuses on issues of religious harmony, as featured in the wall sized “Rainbow Shabbat.” As people in the crowd questioned the naive optimism of the idealized world presented in this piece, Chicago
challenged them: “Just because something is unobtainable, does it mean we shouldn’t strive for it?” Her closing statements then forced the audience into a subjective consideration of this problem: “Interesting to me is the discussion about a lack of hope or lack thereof, idealism…I heard a lot about the fact that Quebec and Montreal transformed [themselves] peacefully, threw off the oppression of British domination, threw off the oppression of the church, created [themselves] a heterogeneous, multiple, diverse, secular society… and you’re telling me there is no basis for hope or idealism?” Unscripted, unedited, and unplugged, Chicago places us as the proprietors of the harmonious, idealized society her artwork so beautifully encapsulates.
Vulvas and rainbow Shabbats Judy Chicago brings female anatomy into the picture Christina Colizza Culture Writer
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nternationally known for her groundbreaking piece “Dinner Party” (1979), Judy Chicago remains an iconic contributor to the contemporary art world. The work – which features a literal banquet table set with place settings commemorating important mythical and historical women (Celtic Queen Boudica and Susan B. Anthony, to name a couple) and plates decorated with vulva-like patterns – was particularly bold for its time and received strong criticisms. Deemed vulgar, crude, and kitschy, “The Dinner Party” was rejected from multiple museums and art venues before it found a permanent home in the Brooklyn Museum. A provocative artist and persona, this tough criticism hasn’t deterred Chicago’s work yet. Her new show “Chicago in Glass” is showing at Montreal’s Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec this month.
The show begins with a glass revisit of a plate from “Dinner Party” as well as 16 glass sculptures of arms, hands, heads, and the final centerpiece, Chicago’s “Rainbow Shabbat.” The product of an eightyear research project entitled “The Holocaust Project”, Chicago’s stained glass triptych presents an idealistic world where men, women, and children of all different religions and races follow a Shabbat prayer in harmony. Along with the exhibit, former McGill Religious Studies professor Norman Cornett facilitated a discussion with the artist herself. When I met with Cornett before the discussion, he explained the “uncensored, unedited, and unplugged” nature of the session, expressing that a non-scripted format would induce creativity and a “no-fear zone,” and, as I would soon find out, the perfect and only format for Chicago. Chicago’s appearance matched her personality all too perfectly. With bright red hair and a match-
ing jacket, Chicago was fiery and to the point. The session began with a viewer commenting that she had felt a “bit uncomfortable with the vulva flower, as it felt too obvious, explicit, to have a strong sensuous quality.” Desensitized to this sorts of criticism, Chicago immediately retorted, “What about all the phallic towers in the urban landscape…do those make you uncomfortable?” She explained that as women, “we don’t see our bodies extended into physical space.” It is precisely this that Chicago wishes to change by making women and their symbolic representations visible in art. The discussion covered the debate between art versus craft, new mediums in Chicago’s work, and the politics of the contemporary art institution and the strong male-narrated history of art that Chicago feels women are excluded from. Chicago described her work as quite “tame,” and as not simply vaginas on plates, but pieces for women who were
Judy Chicago’s work will be on display at Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec (613 Ste. Croix) from September 22, 2010 to January 9, 2011.
Photo Essay
Flora Dunster
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Compendium!
The McGill Daily | Thursday, September 30, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Lies, half-truths, and Boston accents... again
New Jersey: surprisingly, more than just the Shore
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uck you Canadians. Every fucking time I say where I’m from, the reaction is always the same. I am from New Jersey. NORTHERN New Jersey. That’s not near the Shore, and if you could name five cities, five fucking cities, in the state, you wouldn’t sound like such an asshole. Yes, I have been to the Shore. And yes, there are those douche bags who are tan, jacked, and have shriveled dicks from all the steroids they’ve done. But it’s mostly just drunk teenagers. So stop asking me if I fist-pump and why I’m not jacked. It’s a fucking TV show on MTV, a network that is famous for other gems like Next and Date My Mom. For fuck’s sake, the cast opened the New York Stock Exchange this summer. So shut the fuck up, Canadians. You know nothing about New Jersey and you just sound like a bunch of knob slobbers. P.S. The Situation is from Rhode Island.
The Town was shitty (SPOILER ALERT!!)
Métromètre is a weekly quality-of-life index.
Ontario Superior Court strikes down a bunch of stupid laws that made sex work less safe! Owner of Segway “found dead at the bottom of a cliff with one of the two-wheeled electric scooters near his body” (Toronto Star)
he Town was wicked awful. Where Gone Baby Gone gave us a fairly accurate, reasonably intelligent, all-around well-made portrayal of contemporary Boston, this piece of shit was badly written, uninspiringly shot, poorly crafted (the deus ex machina of the MBTA thing at the end was ridiculous), and used music as a crutch to build emotion throughout. Its misogyny was breathtaking: every female character merely revolved around male characters, as functions of the universal phallic personality. And it was homophobic to boot: the only mention of queers were gay-bashing slurs and the crypto-homosexual ‘foreign’ villains, marked by their celibacy, their homosocial relations, and their non-Bostonian accents as ‘other,’ and therefore ‘evil.’ But it’s more than this one movie – I am fucking sick of Boston movies. Sick and tired of the glorification of violence, sick and tired of the ghastly cult of death that has been propagated since Boondock Saints. Boston is not some paradise for murderous heterosexual Irish Catholics; it’s a living city full of people, almost none of whom are like the killers portrayed in movies like The Town. Where are the Boston movies where black characters are more than set pieces to be abused? Where queers are more than slurs? Women more than warm bodies? Enough with these shallow, formulaic paeans to death-dealing anti-heroes. IT’S BORING. Fuck This! is an occasional therapeutic rant column. Send your rants to: fuckthis@mcgilldaily.com.
MINUS 10
Report acknowledges that the SPVM in MontrealNorth racist
PLUS 50
QPIRG still exists
MINUS 5
QPIRG opt-out campaign juvenile and whiny
MINUS 2
Swiss Club forgets proud heritage of neutrality
EVEN
Tribune signs its memorandum of agreement of
MINUS 1 PLUS 10
Pop Montreal in full swing SHIT I FOUND
PLUS 50 MINUS 100
MTL-N police still racist
Tribune introduces unfunny imitation Compendium! (“Odds & Ends,” HAH!)
PLUS 10 PLUS 2
Roddick Gates clock renewed Clock will probs be fucking annoying
T
PLUS 200
SNAX selling hot chocolate for 50¢ if you bring your own mug
PLUS 20
McGill Food Services boycott seems to be going well Education Minister Beauchamp promises action against McGill for its self-funded tuition bullshit
PLUS 25
I wish it was direct action
TOTAL LAST WEEK’S TOTAL
PLUS 73 MINUS 1 PLUS 321 MINUS 347.5
Sugar dick daze Pogo New
This is a company we don’t let advertise with us anymore. Bonus points if you know what it’s called today. Sweet ad, though, eh? (From October 17, 1938.)