The words filled the conference room at the posh Hilton Bonaventure hotel as Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Québécois (PQ), steps down from the podium. She had just given the keynote speech at her party’s general council – five hundred party members and supporters were assembled to hear their leader speak. They loved her. Earlier, when her arrival was announced, four or five people entered the room, playing bongo drums that were suspended from their necks, while music blared from the loudspeakers.

Still, as I listened to the PQ rank and file chanting for an independent Quebec, I wondered, briefly and whimsically, if they had all just listened to a quite different speech than the one I had just taken in.

In the speech I heard, Marois lambasted the provincial Liberal government of Jean Charest for its energy policies, but above all, his tuition hikes, budget deficit, and general economic performance.

Marois also hammered the prime minister on the environment, military spending, and health care. Her solution for all of it seemed to come down to sovereignty. “The most fundamental change for Quebec is to pass from Stephen Harper’s Canada to the country of Quebec,” Marois intoned. “We want to change countries!”

I was confused. Weren’t these the same things Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe had talked about over and over, blithely self-confident, before seeing his party nearly wiped off the electoral map last May, and losing his own seat in parliament to an NDP upstart? What made the PQ think it would work for them? Hadn’t Quebec moved on?

***

Earlier that evening, I arrived at the hotel to register for Friday evening’s activities. As I walked through a series of hallways adorned with glistening mirrors, chandeliers, paintings, and luxurious rugs, I passed groups of businessmen in sharp, tailored suits. I felt a gnawing sense of being a bit too casually dressed for the venue.

It wasn’t the only way I felt out of place. I was, in a sea of separatist francophones, an anglophone McGill student. Could they tell I was an outsider by the way I walked? By my smell? Uncertain as to whether I was inadvertently giving off any telling anglo signals, I followed the signs to the press room, where I was given a nametag indicating that I was writing for the “Journal Université McGill.” (This, by the way, is like being a small tuna fish trying to sneak past a Great White and getting a nosebleed.)

After the opening plenary ended, I went to a nearby room where the national youth committee’s conference was being held. When I entered the exquisitely decorated conference room, hung with Quebec flags, a middle-aged man approached me and said, “You look lost. Are you looking for something?”

“I’m checking to see if those seats in front are reserved for the media section,” I replied.

He looked puzzled. “The media section? I didn’t even know there was a media section.”

As I moved to the front, I realized that his surprise was justified – I was the only person sitting at the media table during the rest of the conference.

(The PQ youth wing does seem to have a fairly persistent visibility problem. Alexandre Banville, the group’s communications director, forwarded my editor’s first email to him to the youth wing president, with a message attached: “lol !” He accidentally copied my editor on the inside joke. When my editor asked if he was meant to receive the message, Banville replied that he was sorry – he and his colleague “were just talking about how long it had been since we talked to any anglophone media.”)

After a few opening speeches, a handful of youth delegates who had recently been elected to new positions – treasurer, vice-president, and so forth – headed to the front. Each of the eight or so beaming and chicly-dressed poiliticos-in-training gave a short speech expressing their gratitude and their fond expectations for the party’s future.

All of a sudden the crowd burst into a standing ovation. When I turned around to see what had incited this furor, I saw that Pauline Marois had entered the room. She spoke for a few minutes in praise of the recently elected youth members, then left.

The delegates then voted on various resolutions to revise their mandate. Motions to preserve the French language and to “put an end to the federal government’s interference,” were voted in unanimously.

Other, more wonkish, topics incited long debates among delegates, as when the room split on support for free university education. (They finally decided to convene a national youth meeting on the topic of accessibility to education.) At the end of the meeting, I talked for a few minutes with one of the youth delegates. I asked him whether the committee’s support for tuition subsidies – a topic that only minutes ago had made them waxing grandiloquent on students’ inalienable right to a free education – would be extended to out-of-province students attending English-language universities. Pausing for a moment, he replied that he was unsure and would have to look it up.

I then asked him about the relevance of sovereignty in Quebec, and he enthusiastically responded that it still represented the wishes of a large proportion of Quebecers. Pointing to a Léger Marketing-Le Devoir poll from last year, he stressed that 41 per cent of Quebecers support sovereignty. I looked the poll up when I got home: it was conducted between May 9 and 11, exactly one week after the Bloc Québécois, Canada’s only federal sovereigntist party, had lost 43 of its 47 seats in the federal election.

***

The federal riding of Verchères-Les Patriotes, located on the South Shore of Montreal, is one of the ridings the Bloc lost last May. It has a population of 97,726, and has sent a Bloc MP to Ottawa in every election since 1993, the Bloc’s first. In 2011, NDP newcomer Sana Hassainia beat the Bloc incumbent Luc Malo by a margin of roughly 4,000 votes. When I first heard that the riding had switched to the NDP, I was shocked. Many of the towns that make up the riding are nearly homogeneously francophone.

Varennes, a small suburb of about 21,000, remains inhabited primarily by the descendants of French settlers who arrived hundreds of years ago. The skyline is dominated by the silver spires of Sainte-Anne de Varennes Basilica. Located directly across from my aunt and uncle’s house is a large, graphic monument, erected in 1850, commemorating the suffering of Jesus on the cross.

If there is any town that is made up of the type of traditional “pure laine” Quebecers that the Bloc loves, and that constitutes the purported backbone of the sovereign cause, it is Varennes. Most of my relatives here identify primarily with the nation of Quebec rather than Canada, if they’re not explicitly separatist. This is a place where people only celebrate la Saint-Jean, Quebec’s national holiday, and barely acknowledge Canada Day. One of my relatives, who is originally from Ontario, told me that his neighbours pressured him to take down the Canadian flag he had placed outside his house on July 1.

To try to puzzle out why such a dyed-in-the-wool francophone region had abandoned the Bloc, I visited Varennes, and went straight to Bugsy’s, the main bar in town.

Bugsy’s opens on a small, shed-like mudroom. Up a few steps and through a ramshackle door is the bar, and a giant pool table. A few of the mostly middle-aged patrons were still wearing their work clothes from the nearby chemical plant. A Habs flag adorned one of the walls. After my aunt introduced me to a group of customers as her “English niece from Montreal,” several people were extremely eager to share their views on politics. And they were all surprised about what had happened in the 2011 election.

“I expected changes, I expected that the NDP would make a lot of gains, but not as much as this,” said a local teacher, who asked not to be named. “Even here, in Mr. Malo’s riding, I was surprised.”

One of the contributing factors to the Bloc’s defeat was an inflow of anglophones and other ethnic groups, voters who are less sympathetic to a party that has traditionally appealed primarily to francophones. However, the people I talked to described this as a secondary factor, and stressed that the real reason for the change was exasperation amongst dependable pro-Bloc voters.

“I think it was a movement against the status quo, and that’s why people voted orange everywhere in Quebec,” the teacher said. “Even here, in Verchères-Les Patriotes where it was very pro-Bloc and very péquiste, it was Sana Hassainia who won as the representative for the NDP because people want change.”

“I don’t believe that Gilles Duceppe represented our ideas,” said a first-time NDP voter, who also didn’t want their name printed. “I felt that it was like he was just holding a job, that he was cynical, that we had given him this position and that he was entitled to it. It didn’t look like anything was moving.”

Besides being dissatisfied with the direction of the Bloc’s leadership, there was a strong feeling of disillusionment with the ideal of sovereignty.

“[The ideal] is alive among older people maybe, but most people think it is way too late for this,” said the NDP voter. “It goes against all the establishment, everything that is established, everything that is. There was the sovereignty movement in the time of [PQ leader René] Lévesque, but at the moment I don’t believe in it anymore. There’s no one that has the charisma to move people.”

“If it was supposed to happen, it would have happened over a decade ago,” said another patron, Jean-Guy Dagenais. “I think it’s burnt out.”

A “lesser of two evils” mentality seemed pervasive in many voters’ decision to elect the NDP. While few of the bar’s patrons seemed particularly enthusiastic or knowledgeable about the party, it was regarded as least atrocious national party.

Earlier, I had asked my aunt why she thought Sana Hassainia had beat the incumbent Bloc MP.

“People were looking for an exit door to not have to vote as usual,” she said. “After the results were announced, we were all asking each other, ‘who is this?’ She had never made any public appearances, no speeches, there were only posters plastered everywhere… You want to know how bad it is for the Bloc? They don’t even fucking know this person!“

She told me that the building in which Hassainia has set up her office is better known for being a hive of illegal activity. Apparently, there was a police crackdown involving an illicit “Chinese massage parlor” on one of the building’s floors several months ago.

But whatever you think of Hassainia and the NDP, they don’t stand for leaving Canada and, with it, its generous transfers of federal tax revenue.

“Everything that the federal government sends us, we would lose it if we became independent,” Dagenais said.

“Whether Quebec is able to manage on its own, I don’t know, because Quebec is one of the most indebted provinces in Canada,” said the NDP voter. “What would happen if Quebec became sovereign? I have no idea. For me, sovereignty would be darker than what we have now.”

***

As we saw at the federal level last May, a new provincial party has emerged this year that Quebecer voters hope will extricate them from the political quagmire. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), a party founded by former PQ minister François Legault and businessman Charles Sirois, has deliberately set aside the sovereignty question – its platform is primarily one of economic reform. Despite having been formed less than a year ago, it is already leading in the polls. In a poll conducted last December by CROP, possibly Quebec’s most trusted pollster, 39 per cent favored the CAQ, while 28 per cent preferred the incumbent Liberal party and just 18 per cent supported the PQ.

Tellingly, while the NDP and CAQ represent new, popular political forces in Quebec, they are almost diametrically opposed in their economic policies. The CAQ, described as a “centre-right” party, advocates fiscal austerity and supporting entrepreneurs, whereas the NDP endorses greater spending on public services and higher corporate taxes. Why are citizens who voted so strongly in favor of a party of the left now turning to the other side of the political spectrum? Since the main commonality between the NDP and CAQ is their newness and deliberate avoidance of the sovereignty issue, the answer may simply be that most people in Quebec are desperate to move past the tedium of the separatist debate. That’s what people are telling pollsters, anyway – another CROP survey last fall found that 71 per cent of Quebecers think the sovereignty debate is “outdated.”

And yet the sovereigntists blaze on. The most striking moment I witnessed during the PQ conference was when party president Raymond Archambault proclaimed that, “Quebecers should not let themselves be seduced by the hypnotizers of the coalition, those who are telling us that we must abandon our dreams, those whose projects are poorly-defined but who view the state as a supplier of services for the lowest cost, those who are evoking the specter of the public debt to make us forget another, much more menacing specter, the negation of who we are, the negation of the Quebec nation.”

The performances of Marois and Archambault that night actually reminded me a little of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who held out in the Philippines for almost thirty years after the end of WWII, until his commander tracked him down to officially relieve him of his duties, and tell him the war was over.  In the cavernous conference room of the Hilton Bonaventure, I felt like that commander. Madame, I wanted to tell Marois gently: come out of your foxhole – the other guys won.

The post Sovereignty after the fall of the Bloc appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The plan, which will be carried out over the course of 25 years, aims to stimulate investment in the region’s forestry, mining, hydroelectricity, tourism, and bio-food sectors. The area covered by the plan consists of 1.2 million square kilometers – 72 per cent of Quebec’s geographic area. According to government estimates, the plan is expected to create, on average, 20,000 jobs a year and bring in $80 billion in investments.

In an effort to limit the environmental impact of industrial activities, the government has vowed that by 2015, 12 per cent of the land covered by Plan Nord will be dedicated to the creation of protected areas. This area will gradually be extended so that by 2035, 50 per cent of the territory will be protected.

This provision, however, has incited criticism on several fronts. The Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes (RQGE)  – a network of environmental groups in Quebec – has deemed this land protection proposal insufficient.

“The first problem we have with [the plan] is that the fact that this 50 per cent number is somewhat arbitrary,” said Bruno Massé, general coordinator of the RQGE, in an interview with The Daily. “We see it more as a symbolic political number than anything else, because they present it as protecting half of the territory, which validates basically doing the exploitation of the other half.”

Similarly, several First Nations groups have expressed concerns about the impact of industrial development. The area covered by Plan Nord is inhabited by a number of First Nations communities, including the Inuit, the Innu, the Cree, the Naskapis of Schefferville, the Algonquin, and the Atikamekw.

Ghislain Picard, the regional chief of Quebec and Labrador in the Assembly of First Nations, told The Daily that, even though Plan Nord “offers great perspectives in terms of employment,” the government has not made enough efforts to protect the region’s environmental security.

“We’re very much concerned with the intentions expressed by the government, such as the commitment to have at least 50 per cent of that territory dedicated as a protected area,” said Picard. “The biggest question that comes after that is what becomes of the other 50 per cent? Is it all wide open for development? If that’s the case, then we’re not in favour of that.”

An additional critique is that even protected regions will still be open to certain development activities.

“Even if we were to just focus on that [protected] 50 per cent, we see that [the provincial government] still consider forest exploitation not to be an industrial activity,” said Massé. “They would also permit mining and exploration, tourism…and the construction of infrastructure, all within territories that are supposed to be protected.”

Massé also noted that the selection of protected areas would be susceptible to industrial interests.

“Basically, their plan is that, by 2035, they have to have this 50 per cent number, but to get there they’ll be switching around areas if they realize that there are resources that they hadn’t seen before,” he said. “It will be a whole mix and match, shifting things around, as long as, at the end, they can have their 50 per cent that will be fulfilling their goal.”

For many First Nations communities, this prioritization of industrial interests has drawn comparisons to past development projects.

“There are also memories of the past,” said Picard.  “In Schefferville, it’s not the first time that mining companies have come to that area. To demonstrate that, around Schefferville, all you have is big holes…from the exploitation between the 1950s and the 1980s. People who live there, who have continued to live there despite the closure of the town, remember that. So there are very deep concerns about the environment.”

Though the government is accepting input from concerned groups in the form of public meetings and online communication, Massé argues that these steps are merely symbolic.

“Our input has not been valued at all ever since the beginning, and the biggest problem we have with these consultations is their lack in the basic principles of democracy,” he said. “If they’re asking us to voice our concerns, they should at least guarantee that these concerns are going to be taken into account…we can blow steam as much as we want, but we have no power whatsoever as to what they are going to do.”

Despite concerns, the project is likely to continue.

“The resources that we have up North were not worth much a couple of decades back because of the world context, but now we’re seeing a rise in demand and the resources are getting much more rare,” said Massé.

“We have to remember that before we try to tackle the subject because it’s happening on a much larger scale,” he added.

Massé warned that, if criticisms are ignored, the environmental security of Quebec’s territory could be threatened.

“We hope the people will start asking the right questions and try to change towards a more sustainable way of life,” he said. “We can only hope that this transition will be done voluntarily and peacefully before it’s too late, and not in a sort of catastrophic setting, which is what we’re headed towards if nothing changes for real.”

The post Environmental and First Nations groups criticize Plan Nord appeared first on The McGill Daily.

A February 2 article in the Journal de Québec revealing the spending patterns of CEGEP administrators sparked the controversy. According to the newspaper, entertainment expenses in 2010 – including conferences in luxurious hotels in Brazil, Guadeloupe, and Europe – amounted to at least $324,000 dollars.

Léo Bureau-Blouin, the president of the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ), called the spending “extraordinary” and “excessive.”

“They were talking about five-star hotels to hold meetings of the CEGEP Federation, or trips to Europe, or in Morocco, that could have been avoided,” said Bureau-Blouin. “We think that it was a lot of money that could have been spent on more priority aspects of CEGEPs.”

“In many regions of Quebec, there are great needs for psychologists, or for classes, or for new computers, and we are seeing that CEGEP administrators were making trips to, like I said, Morocco, or to China,” he added.

However, CEGEP representatives have criticized the accuracy of the Journal de Québec accusations.

“We found that this article is incorrect, that it is false on many respects,” said the CEGEP Federation director of communications Caroline Tessier in French.  “There is some information that is not fair, or that in any case implies negative things that are not the reality. I am thinking for example of everything concerning international trips. This is part of CEGEPs’ mission, so it is normal for them to travel abroad.”

Nevertheless, FECQ and the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ) – a union representing nearly 180,000 members, including over 100,000 education personnel – have used the controversy to push for the adoption of Bill 44.

Bill 44 was first introduced to the National Assembly on October 30, 2008, to tighten rules regarding the financial management of CEGEPs, by increasing transparency and accountability. However, after two years of detailed study and numerous amendments, the bill has stalled.

“We also think that by making public the meetings and the statements of administrative councils, it will be much easier to follow the activities of CEGEPs,” said an adviser for the CSQ, Gabriel Danis, in French.  “So it’s for this reason that we were making the link between the frivolous expenses that were revealed in the newspaper and Bill 44.”
It remains to be seen whether the bill will be re-introduced to the National Assembly.

“We think that we really need to have clear rules about how we spend money that comes from the Quebec government that is given to CEGEP students, because we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that are given to Quebec CEGEPs,” said Bureau-Blouin. “We can’t wait anymore and we hope that the ministry of education will hear our calls.”

The post CEGEP expenses exposed appeared first on The McGill Daily.

At 2:30 p.m. yesterday, former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Michel Bastarache announced that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that Charest was complicit in rigging the judicial nomination process for appointing three judges – Michel Simard, Marc Bisson, and Line Gosselin-Després – from 2003 to 2004.

On April 14, 2010, the provincial government tasked Bastarache with heading an investigation into former Justice Minister Marc Bellemare’s accusations that he received undue pressure from Liberal fundraisers to select particular judges. After weeks of public speculation and controversial testimonies, the Bastarache commission finally concluded in an approximately 300-page report.

“The majority of the evidence leads me to conclude that these nominations were those of Mr. Bellemare,” said Bastarache in a press conference, reported by Le Devoir. “He was not forced to act against his will.”

Shortly afterward, Charest made a statement to the press reaffirming the report’s conclusions: “Quebeckers can be reassured about the integrity of the judicial system in Quebec,” said the premier in French, reported by TVA, “and so can the men and women who occupy the positions of judges, and who lived with great difficulty last year as false accusations sowed doubts about our judicial system.”

However, Bastarache noted that the appointment of provincial judges is susceptible to political influence, and recommended clarifying the role of different government actors and instituting a more rigid structure to the judicial nomination process.

“He did not really apportion blame, but instead raised some red flags about the ‘porousness’ of the appointment process and its potential to be subject to political influence, including the discretionary power of the minister of justice,” wrote Antonia Maioni, the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, in an email to The Daily.

Despite the positive resolution of the Bastarache commission for Charest, according to a Léger-Marketing poll the premier’s Liberal government still faces a severe lack of credibility among Quebeckers.  The poll, conducted from January 10 to 12, revealed that 75 per cent of respondents were dissatisfied with the Liberal party.

According to Maioni, it is doubtful whether the commission’s outcome will restore Charest’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

“The facts were the object of conflicting testimony; most damaging was the spectacle of having the sitting premier being accused in this way and of having the judicial appointment process being called into question under his administration,” she said.

The post Bastarache commission clears Charest of influence peddling appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In an open letter published in Le Devoir on Friday, the newly formed Alliance sociale (Social Alliance) promoted a return to Quebec’s legacy of strong public services and left-of-centre politics. The Alliance will include the Fédération étudiante universitaire de Québec (FEUQ) and the equivalent federation for CEGEP students: the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ).

The movement originated as a response to dissatisfaction with the provincial government’s last budget in March. The new budget cuts spending in a variety of social programs.

“The Quebec government’s budget was very poorly received among our ranks,” Claudette Carbonneau, president of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), told The Daily in French. “It was seen as a breach in the social pact between citizens and the Quebec government. It was a violation of values of solidarity, of the capacity to intervene not only in public services, but also in the environment, in economic development, and in support for employment. [Each member of the alliance] reacted strongly from its own side … So we came to the idea to try to join our efforts to put forward another dialogue,” she said.

Among other issues, the Alliance is opposed to the government’s proposal to increase university tuition rates.

“This will put into question the accessibility of the majority of the population to higher studies, and it will impose a burden that is too heavy on students from lower and middle income families,” said Carbonneau. “It will contribute to a rate of debt that is overwhelming … In Quebec, we are already below the Canadian average in terms of higher education rates. We think that we should not accelerate this.”

The Alliance was also formed to act as a counterweight to the rise of right-wing political movements. Réseau Liberté-Québec – which echoes the U.S. Tea Party’s right-wing libertarianism – and the conservative movement headed by former PQ ministers Francois Legault and Joseph Facal have recently sprung up to shift the political dialogue in Quebec to the right.

“These are movements tha go a bit in the same direction as Quebec’s last budget,” FEUQ president Louis-Philippe Savoie told The Daily in French. “They put forward propositions that are regressive and that go against what made Quebec strong in the last forty years.”

“It was evident to us that we could not leave the public dialogue open so that people would only hear one point of view, only one way of seeing the future of Quebec society,” said Carbonneau.

The provincial budget reduced spending on social services in order to help remedy Quebec’s budget deficit. The Alliance believes that cuts to education spending will not solve this problem, and may potentially exacerbate it.

The Alliance is planning to organize several events to promote their message in the following months. In December, it will hold a meeting to bring together different actors from the educational sector, though plans are still being hammered out.

“It’s certain that at that moment there will be a student mobilization to bring forward the message that tuition hikes are not a viable solution for solving the problems of students,” said Savoie.

The post New coalition of Quebec labour and student unions appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In its last budget in March, the government announced plans to merge its three existing research financing organizations – specializing in the fields of nature and technology, society and culture, and health – into a single new one called the Quebec Research Fund. Despite the criticism, the new plan has been acclaimed by parts of the entrepreneurial and scientific sectors.

A “chief scientist” will be appointed to oversee the new organization’s administration and serve as a spokesperson for scientific research in Quebec. The government intends to implement this restructuring by April 2011. The final outcome of the entire plan has yet to be determined as it first has to be passed by the National Assembly.

Mawana Pongo, the Director of Policies and Analysis for the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade, explained that the government’s goal to reduce administrative costs was key to this restructuring.

“The decision [to combine existing funding agencies] into one organization was made in the context of the government’s efforts to achieve a budgetary equilibrium, so greater efficiency in terms of governmental administration,” Pongo told The Daily in French.

This decision is just one feature of Quebec’s strategy for research and innovation (SQRI) for 2010 to 2013, announced by the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade in June. The Ministry based its decisions on the recommendations of a special consulting group. The group – consisting of about twenty specialists from various sectors, including universities and businesses – worked for almost a year to come up with strategies to update Quebec’s current research program.

The SQRI’s other major initiatives include supporting the marketing of innovations, providing more university scholarships, and launching five major developmental projects – including an electric bus – to stimulate research. The government intends to spend $1.039 billion for these projects.

The business community has welcomed the overall strategy’s emphasis on channelling innovation toward increasing industrial productivity.

“I think that for once, the government has understood that innovation is supposed to make us more productive than our competitors, and has created the necessary harmonization between innovation, marketing and the needs of our businesses,” Daniel Audet, the first Vice-President at the Conseil du patronat du Quebec, told The Daily in French. “Too often, innovation was perceived as researchers doing work in their labs. It can be that. But it must be followed by commercialization, and answer our actual needs. Innovation in a sealed environment is not very useful.”

Some scientists have also spoken in favour of particular features of the SQRI. For example, Executive Director of Genome Quebec Jean-Marc Proulx told La Presse that he was “very happy” with the strategy because it identified genomics as a strategic sector for development.

However, student groups and left-wing policy experts have criticized increasing government investment in market-ready university research. Eric Martin, a researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’information socio-économiques (IRIS), said the process contributed to a “knowledge economy,” which is turning universities into “patent-producing” factories. “The knowledge economy is the worst thing that has happened to knowledge,” Martin said in a talk at McGill Friday. “People think, ‘Great, there will be knowledge everywhere.’ No, there is economy everywhere.”

PGSS VP External Ryan Hughes, speaking at the same event Friday, echoed Martin. “We are in danger of creating a Canadian version of an industrial-educational complex,” he said.

However, the merging of Quebec’s existing research financing agencies has provoked heated contention. Members of the scientific community have voiced concerns over the haste with which the government made this decision, and feel that they were insufficiently consulted.

Martin Doyon, the Coordinator of University and College Research at the Ministry of Economic Development, admitted that administrative restructuring had not been specifically brought up during the consultation period.

“The consultations for the SQRI were launched in June 2009,” Doyon told The Daily in French. “But the announcement of the regrouping of the three funds itself occurred on March 30 with the budget. It was something that had been discussed before, but it was not brought specifically as a point of debate during the consultations for the SQRI.”

Another concern is that the creation of the Quebec Research Fund might harm each existing fund’s level of financing and specificity.

“The three councils have distinct mandates and serve Quebeckers and their research communities well and they operate efficiently, so it’s difficult to see any savings,” professor and chair of McGill’s department of Biochemistry David Y. Thomas wrote in an email to The Daily
However, Doyon stressed that this restructuring will only occur on the administrative level, as there will exist three separate research boards within the Quebec Research Fund to represent different areas of research.

“There are three sectoral boards planned for the Quebec Research Fund,” said Doyon.

“Three budget envelopes will be granted for the three research areas… Currently, the three financing organizations receive grants from the government. In the SQRI, these funds will once again be given in a distinct manner, according to the field of research.”

“It will be the same mechanism as now… If you take natural science and technology as an example, there will be a board made up of people who best know this field. Same thing for health, same thing for society and culture. Knowledge of the field will be there. … The real difference is that there will be a central administrative council and a chief scientist who will have a more central vision.”

Nevertheless, scientists remain concerned about the future of research financing at McGill and in Quebec.

“We are all concerned as [the restructuring] doesn’t make any sense,” said Thomas. “Certainly the FRSQ [the provincial agency responsible for financing in health research] is a unique organization in Canada and much admired by researchers in other provinces.”

The post Big changes for Quebec science funding appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The Liberal government suspended National Assembly rules to call in MNA’s Monday to vote on the bill. After 15 hours of impassioned debate, the motion was adopted with a vote of 61 to 54. Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois vowed to repeal the law once her party came into power.

Quebec’s Charter of the French Language, Bill 101, specifies that only students whose parents were educated in English in Canada are automatically permitted to attend English public schools. In response to this law, many non-anglophone families enrolled their children in private “bridging schools,” allowing them to transfer to public English schools after a year.

In 2002, the government passed Bill 104, blocking access to bridging schools. However, the Supreme Court deemed this unconstitutional in 2009 and gave the Quebec government one year to find a way to limit access to English schools without violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court set Friday, October 22 as the deadline for the adoption of an alternative bill.

Protesters were outraged by both the bill’s content and the manner in which it was passed.

Mario Beaulieu, president of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal – the Quebec nationalist group that organized Monday’s protest – told The Daily in French that the government pushed the bill through “at the very last minute…to do this as discreetly as possibly.”

Members of the francophone community consider the bill a threat to the French language in Quebec, as it will likely reduce enrolment in French schools.

“This bill will weaken French because schools are what is most important to the [perpetuation] of a language and a culture,” said Beaulieu.

On the other hand, proponents of English schooling are generally satisfied with the bill. Jonathan Goldbloom, a spokesperson for the Quebec Association of Independent Schools, told The Daily that he believes the bill is “a step in the right direction” toward following the Supreme Court’s guidelines. However, he feels that “too much discretionary power [is] being given to bureaucrats” and that the regulations “should be clarified and simplified.”

The post Thousands protest English school bill appeared first on The McGill Daily.

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 Canadian-born 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.

The post Quebec anglo incomes lagging appeared first on The McGill Daily.

On Monday September 20, former associate deputy minister in the justice department Georges Lalande corroborated claims that former justice minister Marc Bellemare received undue pressure from Liberal fundraisers to select particular judges.

He was called to testify as part of the Bastarache Commission, an investigation into Bellemare’s claims that has prompted a majority of Quebeckers to support the Premier Jean Charest’s resignation, making the likelihood of a Liberal re-election in 2012 appear dim.

Charles Rondeau, one of the fundraisers mired in suspicion because of their lobbying efforts, testified before the commission Tuesday. Rondeau said that he had asked Bellemare to appoint an old schoolfriend Chief Judge of Quebec, but added that his request was casual and that Bellemare was unsurprised to receive it, contrary to Bellemare’s claims.

Franco Fava, another fundraiser implicated in Bellemare’s accusations, denied all of Bellemare’s and Lalande’s claims. He said that he didn’t know any of the three judges who were appointed. “It’s not something that interested me, the nomination of judges,” he told the commission.

In April, Bellemare alleged that while serving as Minister of Justice in 2003 and 2004, he was pressured by Liberal fundraisers to appoint three judges: Michel Simard, Marc Bisson and Line Gosselin-Després. He claimed that he reported these problems to Charest, and was told to do as the fundraisers said.

The government launched the Bastarache Commission on April 14 to look into these accusations, and Bellemare’s cross-examination began on August 30.

Bellemare’s testimony was on shaky grounds through Monday. His former chief of staff and former press aid testified that Bellemare had never told them about facing “undue pressure” from Liberal fundraisers. His description of the timeline of appointments did not hold up under cross-examination, and was shown to be implausible in parts by Globe and Mail reporter Daniel LeBlanc. He also did not convincingly explain why he waited six years to reveal this information.

However, Lalande’s account confirmed many of Bellemare’s claims – especially concerning his meetings with Liberal fundraiser Fava – with notes from his personal agendas.

“Marc Bellemare does not understand that we need to appoint our friends, in justice just like everywhere else,” Lalande quoted Fava as saying. “They’re beating down the doors after nine years in opposition.”

Lalande stated that Fava had recommended Simard as a candidate for Assistant Chief Judge of Quebec Court, and Gosselin-Després for the youth court. Both these candidates were later named to the bench.

Throughout the commission, public opinion has been starkly in favour of the former justice minister. A recent Léger poll revealed that 58 per cent of respondents believed Bellemare, compared to only 14 per cent in support of Charest. In an earlier poll, 57 per cent of Quebeckers supported Charest’s resignation.

“You have to look at those numbers … in the context of the political reality,” said the Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, Professor Antonia Maioni. “Jean Charest is a very unpopular premier. His government is not doing so well. So I think many Quebeckers are prepared to think anything negative about Jean Charest. I don’t think it’s an all-out endorsement of Bellemare. I just think that many people are unhappy with Jean Charest’s leadership, and therefore ready to be suspicious in what seems to be choosing between one and the other.”

In addition to this controversy, Charest’s government has been plagued by accusations of corrupt financing in the construction industry. A provincial police investigation – called “Opération Marteau” – is already examining this issue.

“The political context of Quebec was, and still is, very ‘chargé’ because the Liberal party is having a hard time at the polls,” Maioni said. “It’s been suffering from a lot of attacks by the Parti Québécois in the National Assembly. … There’s been a lot of pressure on Charest from journalists and opponents and interest groups to actually have a commission, but a commission on the construction industry, not on this. So when all of these accusations started to come out, what Charest did was appoint a commission, but the commission was not to delve into Liberal fundraising…but rather to make sure that the nomination of judges is still transparent and democratic.”

The Bastarache Commission’s ruling will be announced by October 15. It remains to be seen how high public dissatisfaction will affect Charest’s position within the Liberal caucus, and whether the Liberal party can regain public support before the 2012 provincial elections.

“Barring really unforeseen circumstances, [the Liberals] will probably hold their majority [in the National Assembly]…until the next election,” Maioni said. “Whether Jean Charest will be Premier, that’s a separate question. I’m not sure that Jean Charest will last as leader of the party until the next election. … However, once the election is called, I think there’s a very real possibility that the Parti Québécois will win.”

The post Premier caught in scandal over judge appointments appeared first on The McGill Daily.

According to Beauchamp’s press officer Dave Leclerc, speaking in French, the education minister is “still reflecting” about her position, but said that “there will certainly be action in the future.”

Last spring, former education minister Michelle Courchesne accused McGill of violating the province’s educational accessibility principles. After McGill increased tuition fees for its MBA program from $1,700 for Quebec residents to $29,500, the Ministry of Education threatened to cut McGill’s funding by $30,000 for every Quebec resident made to pay the higher MBA tuition rate. In the fall, McGill went ahead with its new MBA tuition fees, which now stand at $32,500 a year for the two year program.

Beauchamp replaced Courchesne on August 11. At that time Courchesne had not followed through on her threat.

In her first press conference as education minister on Thursday, Beauchamp stuck to the government’s decision to increase tuition fees for Quebec universities.

“We must absolutely discuss [tuition hikes] in relation to the question of university performance,” she said in French.

The minister also announced plans to hold a series of meetings to address four key issues in the provincial education system: the integration of children with handicaps and learning difficulties in classrooms, university financing, the link between the labour market and technical training, and participation in school board elections.

A meeting concerning university financing slated for sometime this fall – to which roughly a hundred as yet undetermined people will be invited – will examine increasing tuition fees, university performance, accessibility to studies and other potential sources of university funding.

The post Minister vows action vs. McGill appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The union asserts that this form of rotating strike will only minimally impact the population.

The blue-collar workers have been without a contract since 2007.

Workers hope the city will meet certain demands, including a reduction in subcontracting to non-unionized workers. In a press release, Syndicat president Michel Parent criticized the municipality’s failure to protect union jobs.

“[This] shows the willingness of the administration to continue to sell our jobs to private enterprise,” he said in French.

The City said that it is willing to resolve this dispute through the courts. It stated that the union’s action will cost the City $35 million, and that it might influence other unions that have signed deals.

Parent, however, argued that the City is responsible for mishandling public services.

“The increase in the taxes of Montrealers serves to fatten a hierarchical structure that is incomparable to the rest of North America, as well as the exorbitant costs tied to the privatization of services, rather than to contribute to the improvement of services to the population by showing confidence in its blue-collar workers,” he said. “[The strike] should demonstrate, in itself, the inability of the municipal administration to run the city adequately.”

The post Montreal blue-collars launch strike against City appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Ignatieff, speaking about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament, for the second time in two years, from December 30 until March 3. Critics have viewed the move as an attempt to postpone a vote of no confidence and escape censure regarding recent political controversies.

A majority of Canadians, 53 per cent according to a Toronto Star-Angus Reid online poll, oppose prorogation.

Ignatieff expressed that Harper’s sudden decision is an affront to Canada’s democratic norms.

“Mr. Harper gambled on the cynicism of the Canadian public,” said Ignatieff. “He thought no one would care if he shut down Parliament. He gambled wrong…. In our idea of democracy, it is Parliament that’s sovereign, not the prime minister…. Any prime minister with respect for democracy must use [prorogation] in the most sparing way possible.”

Despite his criticism, Ignatieff has no power to remedy the present situation. Since Harper’s Conservatives retain more parliamentary seats than any other party, he is constitutionally authorized – with the consent of the governor general – to postpone the reopening of Parliament.

“This system works when the prime minister accepts that his power is constrained,” said Ignatieff.

In order to reverse prorogation, the Liberals would have to topple the government by forming a coalition with other parties.

However, after his ascension as the leader of the Liberal party last year, Ignatieff refused NDP leader Jack Layton’s proposal to form a coalition against the Conservatives. “What I felt missing was political legitimacy,” said Ignatieff, speaking on his decision.

According to Robert Tesolin, co-president of NDP Concordia, Ignatieff’s decision to support Harper’s government last year following his first prorogation of Parliament may have emboldened the prime minister to once again suspend it.

“To a certain extent, [Harper has] acted with impunity because he’s seen that it works. He thinks that his adversaries will let him get away with it,” Tesolin said.

However, Lawrence David, VP External of Concordia’s Political Science Student Association, supported Ignatieff’s decision to avoid forming a coalition with other parties. David argued that the creation of a coalition during the 2008- 2009 crisis would have formed a weak and unstable government due to its necessary alliance with the Bloc Québécois – a party he felt would necessarily undermine the coalition’s agenda by rejecting anything contrary to a sovereingtist position.

“The Liberal party felt it was to their benefit to form a strong party on their own. By forming a coalition, they would empower lesser parties in the eyes of their constituents,” said David. “Their priority is to build a power base.”

As recent polls suggest a decline in popularity for the Conservatives, the question remains as to whether Ignatieff will be able to capitalize on popular discontent to rally support for his party.

David indicated that widespread outrage against prorogation offers “the perfect opportunity and launch-pad to do so.”

Certain students, however, remain pessimistic about the possibility for a revival of political interest in the Liberal Party. “They’ll be forced to tacitly or openly support the government,” said Tesolin. “There’s no way they can come close to forming their own govern–ment…. [Ignatieff] is at the helm of a sinking ship.”

The post Ignatieff critiques Tories on campus tour appeared first on The McGill Daily.