The demonstration was organized by the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) and B. Refuge – a working group of QPIRG-McGill – as part of the Canada Can Do Better Campaign, an advocacy effort for non-citizen youth in Canada.

The bill seeks to crack down on human smuggling into Canada by expanding the government’s ability to detain and prosecute those involved in smuggling operations, including a measure authorizing mandatory one-year detainment. Organizers of CCR and B. Refuge’s campaign worry that the law will result in more detainment of children and separation of children from their families.

Organizers had announced that the flash mob would take place in Gare Centrale, where participants would sing and gather signatures for a petition calling for reform of Canada’s laws regarding detainment of non-citizen children. However, when the flash mob arrived Friday afternoon, they were told by security that they could not hold their demonstration in the station, despite having received prior approval from the police.

“I explained to them that it’s like I’m going to go dance in your house at 3 a.m.,” a security guard at the station said. “It’s a good cause, but it’s private property.”

According to the guard, the station’s main concourse is owned by Canmarc, a real estate investment trust based in Montreal.

After a discussion with security, the group headed to Phillips Square and marched about a

block on Ste. Catherine, singing lyrics calling for a stop to C-4 to the tune of “Frère Jacques.”

Olivia Dogget, a U3 Cultural Studies Honours student who is handling public relations for the campaign, expressed some disappointment about security’s decision not to let the flash mob occur in the train station, but said she thought the demonstration had achieved its goal.

“We still got the message across, even if not in the original form,” she said as the march halted on Ste. Catherine.

“I think a lot of people are unaware that Canada has immigrant detention centers. They’re overcrowded and don’t meet family needs. How can you expect [children] not to have a traumatic experience?” she asked.

At least one bystander sympathized with the cause. Chantal Khoury, a Concordia Fine Arts student in her fourth year who was sitting with a friend nearby, said, “we just found out about it. I’m all for stopping it [Bill C-4].”

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The plan will undergo public consultations run by the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM), beginning with information sessions on November 1. Submissions to the commission will be heard beginning on November 30.

The plan aims to reduce Montreal’s landfill-bound organic waste by 60 per cent by 2020.

The OCPM will hold its meetings in the neighbourhoods where the developments are planned: the boroughs of Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension and LaSalle, and the cities of Dorval and Montreal East. At the time of press, the four boroughs where sites are planned could not be reached for comment.

Currently, the City’s composting efforts consist of pilot projects across boroughs including Verdun, the Plateau-Mont-Royal, and Westmount.

Valérie de Gagné, a spokesperson for the City, described the new plan as a major advancement. “We think all buildings of eight apartments or less deserve treatment of organic matter, so, yes, it’s a big jump.”

In an email to The Daily, David Morris, executive coordinator of McGill’s Gorilla Composting service, said, “Montreal will be playing catch-up to major Canadian cities such as Toronto, Ottawa, and Edmonton.”

According to their websites, Toronto, Edmonton, and Ottawa have had citywide composting programs since 2000, 2007, and 2009, respectively. Toronto had aimed to reduce its landfill contribution to 70 per cent by 2010, while the City of Edmonton’s website states that 60 per cent of waste is already diverted from landfills. Equivalent numbers for Ottawa were not available.

Tye Hunt, the co-founder of Compost Montréal – a compost collection operation that serves about 1,000 commercial and residential clients throughout the city, including McGill’s MORE houses and Midnight Kitchen – noted that not all compost avoids landfills.

“If you end up with compost of B-grade or less it will still end up in landfills. I know Toronto’s is B-grade, and a lot of it ends up in a landfill anyway. It has to be A or AA to be food safe,” Hunt said.

AA-grade compost can be used by itself as fertilizer, while A-grade must be mixed with soil and B-grade heads to a landfill.

Montreal’s plan involves a process of biomethanisation, which produces methane from the organic waste broken down during treatment.

Morris noted both the dangers and potential benefits of producing methane. “The uncontrolled release of methane in landfills is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, because methane is 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. However, methane, essentially natural gas, can be harnessed and burned to generate electricity.”

Regardless of the results of Montreal’s own composting efforts, Hunt said that the first and biggest step toward citywide composting was the establishment of treatment centres.

“If they’re getting treatment sites down, that’s half the battle. My experience with treatment sites is that no one wants a treatment site in their neighborhood. They’re going to have to pick a site where no one objects,” he said.

Speaking to the prospect of resistance from the communities where these developments are planned, de Gagné said, “We will present the project to the citizens. We are there to inform and to take questions.”

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An email sent by Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson advised all course instructors to display a copyright symbol on their course materials. The Daily recently obtained the email.

In the message, dated September 23, Mendelson writes, “recent cases of students posting the entire course content from WebCT has raised questions about the possibility of copyright infringement,” and that “persistent infringements will likely lead to disciplinary procedures under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures.”

The students – who, according to Mendelson’s email, were “ignorant of the issue” – were notified that their posting was an infringement of copyright and told to remove the materials, which they subsequently did.

One specific website – wikinotes.ca – is mentioned in the email. Founded and run by McGill science undergraduates Clarence Leung and Santina Lin, along with a small group of other science students, Wikinotes states on its website that it “strives to provide free and open student-generated course content through a publicly-edited wiki.”

Most of the content on Wikinotes currently applies to large U0 and U1 science courses, with six arts courses documented on the site.

In an interview with The Daily, Mendelson said an instructor complained that some of his materials had ended up online.

“If an instructor creates notes and posts that on WebCT, it’s copyrighted material. It’s not permissible to take that and do what you want with it,” he said.

In an email to The Daily, the board of administrators for Wikinotes wrote that student-generated materials comprised most of the content available on the website, but that instructor-generated materials would be useful to post as well – provided students get permission from the creator of the work.

The members of the board added that the McGill administration had recently told Wikinotes to remove images uploaded from textbooks and links to lecture recordings. Both were removed, though the members of the board wrote that they did not consider links to lecture recordings a violation of copyright, as the recordings are already available on the McGill website. They added that similar content would not be permitted on the site in the future.

Mikkel Paulson, leader of the Pirate Party of Canada, wrote in an email to The Daily that his group “takes the position that all information is power, and must be shaped and channeled to empower the weak and protect them from exploitation by the strong.”

Paulson said the copyright issues with university note sharing were more cultural than legal and political.

“Professors have the ability to unilaterally license their course material under Creative Commons or other copyleft licenses, regardless of the administration’s opinions on the matter,” said Paulson.

“Using copyright as a club is particularly hypocritical for academics, given that our present academic culture was built through hundreds of years of free sharing of ideas and information,” he continued.

Chemistry Professor David N. Harpp, who helps run Courses Online, a website established by the McGill Office of Science and Society to freely distribute recorded lectures and presentations, said that he hadn’t paid much attention to Mendelson’s advice to display his copyrights. “I’m not putting any copyright on anything… I haven’t even really looked into it, but [Mendelson’s] probably right to look into it,” he said.

Harpp said he had no problem with students or others posting and using his materials online, but noted differing attitudes throughout the University.

“We’re all in a different environment, I’m not sure how I can emphasize to you how different they are. There may be a culture within a faculty or a department that whatever they put out there, you have to pay for it. My best guess is that my own colleagues in Chemistry would have a similar feeling to my own.”

In regard to enforcing copyrights online, Harpp said, “This is a giant quantum step from a textbook, and, even with a textbook, it would be difficult to do.”

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Objections were raised to a resolution opposing McGill’s recent court injunction limiting the campus picketing activities of the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) strikers.  The resolution, proposed by VP Finance Nicolas Chatel-Lamay, was amended to address the injunction while focusing primarily on support for “the right of McGill workers to express themselves through a peaceful picket line.”

Discussion revolved around whether picketing on the downtown campus had been conducted peacefully before McGill had won the injunction.

Chatel-Lamay noted a difference in tone between the MUNACA demonstrations downtown and those held on the Macdonald campus. “What’s happening on this campus is security guards are smiling and taking coffee with the workers. That’s not happening downtown,” he said.

Hesitance to fully condone downtown strikers’ activities led Council to amend the resolution, which passed unanimously.

McGill originally sought the court injunction, which restricts the size, location, and noise level of pickets, on September 23. It has now been extended until October 13.

Two representatives from McGill Food and Dining Services (MFDS) won a unanimous MCSS endorsement for their sustainability policies, which include efforts to better incorporate local, organic, sustainable and whole foods into their operations and increase purchasing from the Macdonald farm to supply both McGill campuses. Council agreed to endorse the policies, with a verbal assurance that student-run food operations would not be curtailed as long as they observed MFDS sustainability standards.

Darya Nanova, a representative for the Ukrainian Canadian Students’ Union’s nationwide food drive effort, spoke about the initiative and requested space on the Macdonald campus. The group is organizing the food drive to raise awareness about the Holodomor famine of the 1930’s, which killed several million Ukrainians. Proceeds will be donated to local food banks in early December.

Council also reviewed and approved new club constitutions, club funding requests, and the fall budget.

Preparations were discussed for halloween celebrations and for the Thanksgiving Hoe-Down party, to be held in a barn on Macdonald campus over Thanksgiving weekend.

The post Macdonald Campus Council supports strikers right to peaceful picketing appeared first on The McGill Daily.

At the entrance to the campus, which houses McGill’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the School of Dietetics and Nutrition, a picket line has formed every day since the strike began on September 1. The group is made up of MUNACA members who work at Macdonald Campus, as well as downtown employees who live in the West Island.

David Kalant, MUNACA VP Finance, explained that the impact felt at Macdonald is similar to that at McGill’s downtown campus.

“I have no good way of comparing the campuses, but I suspect it’s similar. In both cases the normal functioning of the University is impossible without us,” he said.

Macdonald’s Career Planning Service (CaPS) office is one of the many services at the campus affected by the strike. Callers to offices are temporarily being greeted with a recorded message that redirects them to the downtown receptionist.

Susan Smith, the Office Coordinator for CaPS, expressed regret over having to leave her job and did not see a fast resolution as likely.

“I’m not under any illusions – this is going to go on for awhile,” she told The Daily. “I’m not seeing any lack of resolve on the picket line, and I think it’s just a sad situation. All we need to do is get together and talk.”

Some picketers, although reluctant to comment on the strike, pointed to the suspension of inter-library loan and difficulties in Macdonald’s IT department as signs that their absence is having an effect on campus services.

Students who take classes at Macdonald expressed differing views on how the strike is affecting them, including some who said they haven’t noticed much of a difference at all.

Elodie, an Agricultural and Environmental Sciences student, said,  “It hasn’t really affected me in any way in particular. I can still go to class and do my labs,” although she did add that she had to wait longer than expected for her doctor’s appointment. Like many offices on both campuses, the Macdonald Student Services Center’s hours have been cut as a result of the strike.

Chris Borkent, a graduate student in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, said his day-to-day life was unaffected, but expressed concern about who would handle his thesis submission if the strike continued into December.

“I know that that paperwork stuff is being handled by some administrators here,” Borkent said, “but of course they’ve got to do it for everybody and I won’t be the only person submitting, so it might get a little snaky.”

Sunny, a U3 Arts student taking a course at the Macdonald Campus, explained that she supports MUNACA and stood on the picket line with the strikers for a day, but that she is concerned that her fellow students do not appreciate the strike’s significance.

“I’ve been quite ashamed of [McGill] University during the strike, and with the lack of solidarity from other staff at McGill,” she said. “I was hoping for more support, and I’ve seen none – if [anything] I’ve seen sort of anti-strike attitudes, which I find really scary.”

In an interview with The Daily, chief technician at the Montreal Neurological Institute and MUNACA member Farah Jalili was asked by a passerby why MUNACA members don’t work for themselves or another university, rather than go on strike.

“McGill goes from 20 to 19, 18 to 17 [in university rankings],” answered Jalili. “We are part of that strength, that McGill is ranking higher and higher,” she said.

Her companion, Aghdas Zamani, a course coordinator for the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, characterized the strike as an unfortunate necessity.

“MUNACA is not pro-strike, and we do not want to put McGill into chaos or shut the University down. McGill put us here. They didn’t give us our rights for a long, long time and we decided that enough is enough.”

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The changes reflect Kenney’s statement in an interview with CTV to “give faster protection to real refugees while sending the message to bogus claimants that you’re not going to be able to use the system in Canada anymore.”

The overhaul would significantly shorten the decision-making period for refugee claimants. Government appointees would screen initial asylum claims before their claims reach the independent Immigration and Refugee Board. The minister would also have the legislative authority to categorize countries as safe or unsafe countries of origin. This designation would restrict the ability of claimants from “safe” countries to appeal a rejection.

The current system involves a 19-month wait with about 60,000 backlogged claims. Overall, the ministry has said the reforms would reduce the cost per failed claim from $50,000 to $29,000.

Critics have taken issue with Kenney’s priorities for reform. A press release from the advocacy group Canadian Council for Refugees criticized Kenney’s continuing use of terms like “bogus” with regard to claims as “extremely damaging,” and went on to add that “not everyone who makes a claim needs protection but that doesn’t make them ‘abusers’.”

Janet Dench, executive director of the Council, characterized the bill as overly reductionist. “The bill is based on the assumption that it’s clear and easy to tell between those who need protection and those who don’t. Our position is that refugee determination is quite difficult.”

Dench said the government is trying to group claimants on the basis of nationality and other characteristics, while refugee status should be determined on a case-by-case basis, especially to account for discrimination in countries otherwise deemed respectful of human rights.

“The minister is giving himself the power to declare some places safe. In the case of gays and lesbians in places like the Caribbean, these are often claims that are successful although they come from countries that are considered safe and peaceful. They won’t get the opportunity to appeal that claim,” said Dench.

Melanie Carkner, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said in an email that Canada’s current asylum system was “crippled by long delays” and a “cumbersome process” that resulted in claims taking years to resolve.

“The proposed reforms are balanced and fair and would increase support for those in need of protection while discouraging many of the unfounded claims that now burden the system,” said Carkner.

Moreover, claimants would be restricted from filing an appeals case for one year after receiving the decision on their application. The proposal to enforce timely removals, however, would see most failed claimants deported before that time is up.

Stephen Green, chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s Citizenship and Immigration Law Section, acknowledged that under these time restrictions, claimants would not have adequate time to file humanitarian claims.

The government has also proposed a pilot program to offer financial assistance and incentives to those about to be deported, and $54 million for a resettlement assistance program that helps refugees from camps and urban areas throughout the world settle in Canada.

NDP MP and citizenship and immigration critic Olivia Chow echoed many of the concerns.

“The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has stated that even in democracies there are still grounds for persecution based on gender or sexual identity,” said a statement on Chow’s web site. “For example, Mali may be a democratic country, but they still practice genital mutilation. We simply can’t assume a country is free from all forms of persecution.”

Even under the current system, there have been cases where those not granted refugee status have returned to their country of origin only to face the threats they had originally fled.

In 2007, Enrique Villegas, a gay Mexican citizen whose application for refugee status had been denied four years before, was found dead in his Mexico City apartment. Last year a deported 24-year-old anonymous Mexican woman known only as “Grise” was murdered after having twice been denied refugee status in Canada.

Previous efforts to expedite the refugee claims process included visa requirements for Mexican and Czech citizens starting July 2009, in a bid to keep potential refugee claimants from entering Canada for economic reasons.

Canada’s refugee acceptance rate typically hovers between 40 and 50 per cent, while the U.K. and France, whose immigration models these reforms resemble, both have accepted about 30 per cent in recent years.

“It should be noted that only certain provisions in the proposed bill would take immediate effect if the bill is passed,” said Carkner. “Most changes would occur 12 to 18 months after the bill receives Royal Assent.” Green noted that while the reforms do address current problems, he was concerned that power will be in the hands of ministers and not open to legal scrutiny.

“The word ‘safe’ is not in the legislation, so we don’t know how a country will get on that list. Will it be political reasons that get a country on that list?” asked Green. “The government has recently passed laws that are bare bones and the meat is in the regulations. We just saw a skeleton and we don’t know how things will really operate.”

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