The sex education program will be introduced in around 15 schools in the province and will last two years. While the pilot program will affect only 8,200 students, it could be adopted on a provincial level by 2017. Sex education will be taught for at least five hours a year at the primary level and 15 hours each year of secondary school. According to the Canadian Press, the province invested some $860,000 into the management of the project.

Consent education

According to Victoria Pilger, Funding and Partnerships Coordinator at Head & Hands (a Montreal non-profit organization that provides medical, social, and legal services to the city’s youth) one of the potential benefits of the program is informing Quebec youth about the importance of healthy sex. Furthermore, the concept of health extends beyond contraception and sexually transmitted infections, and encompasses body image, communication, boundaries, and consent as well.

According to Gabrielle Bouchard, Peer Support and Trans Advocacy Coordinator of Concordia’s Centre for Gender Advocacy, “If you want to talk about any area of sexuality, you have to start with consent.”

“When you talk about these basic concepts of consent in a meaningful way. […] that will already be a very useful tool for anybody thinking about sex and sexual relationships,” Bouchard continued.

Introducing an educational program about consent to students from a young age could greatly impact community groups like Head & Hands and the Centre for Gender Advocacy.

“If the government of Quebec started doing [consent education], maybe we wouldn’t have to fight so much here at university to get consent workshops or [have] to deal with so much sexual violence and non-consensual situations at the university level,” added Bouchard.

“There’s no opting out of consent. Consent is mandatory, so knowing about consent should be mandatory also.”

Concerns of community groups

Some of the concerns about the new sex education program regard the fact that there are no exemptions. Some – like Lorraine Normand-Charbonneau, the president of the Quebec School Principals Federation, who spoke to the CBC – have already voiced their opposition to the program, citing cultural reasons and arguing that some parents “don’t want their teen to learn about masturbation.”

“While recognizing that norms about sex and sexuality vary across cultures and communities, what remains the same is that every youth deserves access to unbiased and truthful information to help them be informed and empowered to make decisions about their bodies,” Pilger said.

Magaly Pirotte, Fédération du Québec pour le planning des naissances (FQPN) Project Coordinator, explained that sex education today tends to take a negative tone in talking about sex.

“A lot of the sex ed that we see happening talks about the risks of sexual activity and the possible negative outcomes of having sex when you’re young,” Pirotte told The Daily.

“This is a pretty disempowering way to talk about sex with teenagers. A lot of the time, notions of desire and sex positivity and consent are not part of classes, so we are not answering the needs and questions of the people.”

“Every youth deserves access to unbiased and truthful information to help them be informed and empowered to make decisions about their bodies.”

Pirotte also explained how critical it is that the pilot project not overlook the other issues related to sexuality. For example, homosexuality is often taught separately, as though it is not a part of ‘normal’ sex life, thus reinforcing heteronormativity. “For now, we’re just wondering and hoping that it’s going to be there.”

Another concern has to do with the effectiveness of the program, which could be less than ideal if the government does not consult and partner with people and groups who are involved with sex education on a community level.

“Are these groups […] with their expertise and experience just going to be put on the side?” asked Pirotte.

“Putting back a program is good, but if you don’t give the means to teach it in a meaningful way – […] the teachers haven’t been trained to give this class,” she said.

Pilger noted that the delivery of the pilot project is a main area of concern for Head & Hands as well.

“It’s really important [that] those educators have an actual grasp of youth sexuality and youth needs, and are trained so that they won’t be shaming youth for what they’re doing because of the generational gap,” Pilger said. “[Head & Hands] thinks it’s really important that the government consults community groups to learn from us what we’ve learned from youth. […] We have access to a lot of honest information you might not otherwise have access to.”

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“Sustainability groups, labour unions, and campus media have all come out because this issue affects them directly,” Bronwen Tucker, SSMU Campaigns Coordinator and co-organizer of the event, told The Daily. “We were really lucky to be able to collaborate with a lot of different groups, I think it shows how many aspects of society austerity affects […] and helps get a lot of students engaged.”

The Union for Gender Empowerment (UGE), Demilitarize McGill, CKUT, the Association of McGill University Research Employees (AMURE), and other groups hosted stations to inform those at the event about how the effects of austerity pertain to education, colonialism, environment, labour, health, militarism, and gender issues. People at the stations also shared skills about safety at demonstrations, student strikes, net security, and direct action.

“Sustainability groups, labour unions, and campus media have all come out because this issue affects them directly. We were really lucky to be able to collaborate with a lot of different groups, I think it shows how many aspects of society austerity affects […] and helps get a lot of students engaged.”

“I’m here to make connections with community groups and see how I can join them in their struggles,” first-year student Aishwarya Singh told The Daily. “On an individual basis I find it difficult to fight austerity, because I think it requires mass mobilization.”

The event, attended by roughly fifty students, follows a motion passed at the Fall 2014 SSMU General Assembly regarding solidarity against austerity. “The aim of SSMU’s campaign right now is to give students resources to mobilize around the issue,” noted Tucker.

Tyler Lawson, AMURE Collective Agreement Coordinator, discussed the impacts of austerity on McGill employees. “The [McGill] administration uses the provincial cuts to justify freezing full-time positions or precariously hiring more casual employees,” Lawson told The Daily. “What’s been happening now is people are working three-month contracts without job security, pensions, or any benefits, fulfilling the responsibilities that otherwise would have been accounted for under full-time positions.”

In terms of actions taken in response to such budget cuts, AMURE has launched a sexual assault counselling program to support members who have experienced sexual assault, domestic violence, or abuse.

“The government is choosing to make budget cuts that hurt the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations,” Tucker pointed out. “Even though it affects students directly through tuition, it affects everyone in so many other ways.”

“With austerity, you start to see a lot of disturbing colonialist rhetoric. People start saying, ‘If they’re going to raise tuition, why don’t we just continue expanding resource extraction in the North via Plan Nord, and pay for the tuition using that money?’”

McGill student and member of the Indigenous Women and Two Spirit Harm Reduction Coalition Molly Swain highlighted the effects that austerity has on the Indigenous community.

“With austerity, you start to see a lot of disturbing colonialist rhetoric. People start saying, ‘If they’re going to raise tuition, why don’t we just continue expanding resource extraction in the North via Plan Nord, and pay for the tuition using that money?’” Swain explained at her station.

“Continuing the expropriation of Indigenous lands often ruins them for activities such as fishing, hunting, and harvesting,” she added.

“This is also an issue of […] violence [specifically] against Indigenous women and children,” continued Swain. “There’s been research done that shows that gendered and sexualized violence against women and children tends to go up a lot once areas get opened for resource extraction, since what ends up happening is these corporations will bring in largely male-dominated and transient populations.”

Although McGill has not taken as much action against austerity as other universities in Quebec, the Activities Night was evidence of ongoing interest in anti-austerity activism among students.

“It’s definitely not an issue that’s going away,” Tucker stressed. “For this mobilization […] to continue, we’re trying to use the last bit of the semester to really get students involved before the summer, so it’s something that will definitely still be relevant next year.”

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The rally was the first event in a series of events against austerity organized by the Comité Printemps 2015. The “Spring Committee” works to unite and mobilize students and workers in the anti-austerity movement. The collective intends to hold weekly demonstrations against austerity on Saturdays, supported by the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ). Other future mobilizations include demonstrations throughout the week and a large-scale ASSÉ-organized protest on April 2 in Montreal.

Many students were present at the demonstration. “Over the last year and a half […] more classes are going online, and the education students are given is not what they are paying for,” Julie Chan, a law student at Université de Montréal, told The Daily.

As opposed to the student strikes in 2011-12, which directly targeted tuition raises, the anti-austerity movement today takes a much broader stance. Many student and worker groups and unions attended the march, protesting against cuts to public and social services, including the healthcare and education system.

“Even it’s not directly [affecting] you, it’s always someone near you.”

“My mom and her retirement plans are a bit set off because of the cuts,” Chan continued. “My grandmother has to drive to Montreal to get eye surgery. The bills for the bus used to be covered for her and now they’re not covered for her anymore.”

Many protesters held signs that read “Refusons l’austérité” (Let’s refuse austerity) at the rally, and some wore red squares, which were used as a symbol to oppose tuition hikes in 2012. Demonstrators united in anti-capitalist chants during the march.

“[The effect of austerity is] strong because you don’t feel it right away, it happens gradually,” Sarah Pelletier, a political science graduate student at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), told The Daily. “I think that the main difference between 2011-12 and 2015 is [that] we don’t feel the effects right away, but we know that there’s all these cuts that are going to happen to education and the health system, and we know it will affect directly minorities and vulnerable populations.”

“Even it’s not directly [affecting] you, it’s always someone near you,” Pelletier noted. “It’s my friends that cannot send their child to a centre de la petite enfance (CPE) [daycare] and […] my sister who’s pregnant. […] It scares me to know that my nephew is not going to have what I used to have […] because it will be much more expensive for her to send her child to a CPE.”

“The government has cut funding from all the public services, so it’s important to come demonstrate and send a message,” one anonymous attendee stated in French.

Although the Montreal police tolerated the event, they did not consider this demonstration legal, since no itinerary for the march was provided. One protester was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer, three demonstrators were ticketed for allegedly violating a bylaw banning firecracker use, and another for violating bylaw P-6, which among other things bans wearing masks at protests.

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when its current location is taken over by the Desautels Faculty of Management. However, the new location, or whether the store will even exist outside of the internet, has yet to be determined.

About twenty people attended the forum, very few of whom were students. Attendees spouted a range of ideas for the new McGill bookstore including a lounge and cafe, or multiple kiosks and pop-­up stores around campus.

Sales at the McGill bookstore have declined by 16.8 per cent since 2008. According to consultant Bianca Barbucci, this is not a McGill-specific problem.

“Across Canada there’s a decline in textbooks and course materials overall. […] There’s more competition, and there are a lot of new digital materials that are available. People find their solutions elsewhere; they copy, or download,” said Barbucci at the forum. “It’s the same situation with music.”

The only sales category that has been increasing since 2008 is “Clothing and Insignia,” though at a rate of only of 2.8 per cent annually. For some students, this did not reflect the purpose of the bookstore that was most relevant to them.

“Some students mentioned that they felt that the store was existing for the sole purpose of tourism,” McGill Senior Campus Planner Paul Guenther said, relaying the opinions of students from an earlier focus group. “There’s definitely different perceptions on who the merchandise is for.”

One student in attendance questioned the ethics behind the apparel sold at the bookstore.

“I know the McGill athletic store allows the suppliers [of branded clothing] to use sweatshops. I was wondering […] about the suppliers at the McGill bookstore, and if they’re the same ones,” the student inquired.

The stores’ merchandise comes from a variety of locations – however, both stores obtain some products from Adidas, which has faced multiple sweatshop controversies over the past few years.

McGill will continue the consultation process on the bookstore move, which has also included focus groups and an online survey, in the coming months.

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The march, called “Take Back the Night!,” aims to raise awareness of gendered violence and demonstrate solidarity with survivors of sexual assault.

“Once you look around and you see that so many people share some of the same elements that are in your story, you realize that you’re not alone and that your voices together can become stronger, and together you can affect change,” said Lucy Anacleto of the Centre for Gender Advocacy (CGA) at the march.

The CGA hosted the march as part of its “A Safer Concordia” campaign. Since 1975, the march has been held annually in cities around the world. Guests from groups such as Accessibilize Montreal, Women in Cities, Action Santé Travesti(e)s et Transsexuel(le)s du Québec (ASTTeQ), the Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), Quebec Native Women, and the South Asian Women’s Community Centre spoke at this year’s demonstration.

“A lot of women are shamed for talking about what happened to them [during an assault], and I think that just having a huge amount of people come together and march to take back the night shows support for survivors, which I think is really crucial to make people feel comfortable enough to share their stories,” continued Anacleto.

The Reproductive Justice League Choir kicked off the demonstration with some gender-empowering Motown songs. Having rewritten the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love” as “You Can’t Coerce Sex,” the choir led the crowd in chanting that only a “passionate yes” means yes.

Speakers from Accessibilize Montreal, Women in Cities, and Quebec Native Women followed before the march began.

Concordia student Sammy Fogel told The Daily what Take Back the Night! meant to her. “[It’s] a space for women and allies to show that they deserve a space in public to be respected and to be admired as human beings.”

Guest speaker Frances Maychak, an external coordinator at SACOMSS, echoed this sentiment. “For some people, being in a public space can be a dangerous or scary experience.”

According to Maychak, Take Back the Night! aims to “build an awareness for people who might not experience that personally, and who might feel particularly safe in public space, in recognizing that for a lot of people who have experienced violence […] those spaces aren’t safe and we need to be working toward making those spaces safer.”

This year’s march focused heavily on sexual assault policies in Montreal universities. “Few Canadian universities have sexual assault policies, and when they do, they are usually limited in their scope. School administrations must actively promote consent and support survivors of sexual assault, not the perpetrators by turning a blind eye,” Anaïs Van Vliet, CGA Board member, told The Daily before the march.

“We want to take back our campuses to make them safer, but university administrations must also do their job, implementing policies and practices to make such campuses a reality,” added Van Vliet.

A student-led working group at McGill recently released a draft of a university-wide sexual assault policy, something that the university has never had.

The controversy surrounding the recently dropped sexual assault charges against three former Redmen football players was also addressed. “Sexual harassment and sexual assault in public spaces is part of the same system of heterosexist, racist, disableist, colonial oppression and ideology. It all stems from the same place as other forms of violence,” said a guest speaker from Women in Cities.

The efforts to combat rape culture also extended beyond incidents on university campuses. Many demonstrators marched holding signs related to taxis in light of the recent news that 17 women in 2014 alone had been sexually assaulted in taxis by drivers in Montreal. They condemned the response of the police – that women should not take cabs alone at night, especially when intoxicated – as victim-blaming.

One demonstrator explained that her sign was her response to those assaults. “We’re here to say that taxis should be a safe place and there should be no victim-blaming, and we need to put the blame back on the perpetrators.”

Upon reaching McGill, guests from the South Asian Women’s Community Centre, ASTTeQ, and SACOMSS spoke. SACOMSS external coordinator Jean Murray concluded this year’s march by expressing a need at McGill for “a [sexual assault] policy that is survivor-focused […] so that survivors are not left with two options: say nothing or go to the police.”

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