The first RP focused on the needs of refugee and immigrant youth in Montreal, with around f40 representatives from various backgrounds in attendance. “Even though we called it ‘Refugee Parliament,’ ‘refugee’ is a loaded word legally,” Moreau told the Daily. “Asylum seekers, displaced people, migrants can all have that refugee experience as we imagine it,” she added. In recruiting participants, her team understood that “you [didn’t] need to have a specific legal UNHCR refugee status to be able to participate [in the RP].” While some participants were second-generation refugee claimants, others were first-generation immigrants or refugees, which brought diverse perspectives to the table. 

One of the topics covered in the RP was the issue of the French language, a highly relevant discussion amidst Premier Legault’s agenda to reverse the decline of French in Quebec. Earlier this month, the Legault government tabled an immigration plan that would require thousands of temporary workers to pass an oral French exam when they apply to renew three-year-work permits. Under this tentative plan, if temporary workers fail the Level Four exam, which requires conversational French, they cannot remain in the province. In a November 1 news conference, Legault reiterated the goals of this plan: “The message will be very clear, as much for students as workers… In the future, if you want to come to Quebec for more than three years, if you want to stay as a permanent immigrant, you will have to speak French.” This would further expand the Legault government’s direct emphasis on migrants in its efforts to promote francization. In a February 2022 letter obtained by Radio Canada, Legault stated that “[t]he massive arrival of tens of thousands of migrants in the Quebec metropolis, a significant proportion of whom do not speak French, greatly complicates our francization goals.” 

Passed in May 2022, Bill 96 currently requires newly arrived immigrants to learn French within a six-month grace period for “particular situations” including getting health care and instances of public safety. After that period, the government begins communicating with immigrants in French in an effort to foster integration into the province, with no exceptions made for refugees and asylum seekers. In regards to francization policies like Bill 86, Alina Murad, a representative from the Refugee Centre, an organization that works to support the integration and unification of refugee and immigrant communities in Montreal, told the Daily that “at the Refugee Centre we see the client demographic we receive shift as policies change.” Murad expressed the need for increased opportunities for newcomers to learn French — “the government needs to acknowledge the arduous process that is seeking refuge, and as such there should be more opportunities to provide language classes for newcomers.” At the RP, representatives discussed how the government’s goals of retaining Quebec’s culture and language could be better translated into a more welcoming and accessible, rather than exclusionary, policies.  

The Quebec Government’s plan to raise tuition for non-Quebec and non-Canadian students at anglophone universities, combined with its ongoing anti-migrant rhetoric, directly affects McGill refugee and immigrant students. According to Nika, a U0 student originally from Russia and a participant in the RP the disregard for the immigrant and refugee community of Quebec in an attempt to preserve the French language is misguided. At the RP, she and her peers echoed the need for accessible resources to learn French and integrate into the Quebec community. “I came here [from Vancouver] specifically to learn French – that was a big motivator to me choosing McGill,” she told the Daily. “When I got here, I was caught off guard by the lack of resources for students who are willing to learn and who really wanted to, and also [felt] the government’s pressure to learn.” 

Noting the lack of resources for new students to integrate into the community of both McGill and Montreal, another focus of the RP was the need to build community spaces for immigrants and refugees. “One huge part of the Refugee Parliament that we found was that [many participants] were interested in finding people like [themselves],” Moreau told the Daily. “Making the city feel more comfortable” through events like walking tours (which have been done by organizations like WUSC McGill and the Refugee Centre), and building up events and spaces for sharing experiences and information about McGill and Montreal, were some of the solutions brought up in the Parliament. Through attending these events, “you could meet that group, that support system, or even that one person that you connect with for the support you need,” Moreau added. Thus, the calls to action constructed by RP representatives at the conclusion of the first RP highlighted building up organizations that provide resources for immigrants and refugees, as well as community spaces for learning French. Another aim was to distribute pamphlets containing information for recent immigrants and broadening the reach of existing refugee organizations’ resources. 

Moreau hopes this event will kickstart a broader movement, pushing McGill to give more importance to refugee and immigrant experiences in decision-making and urging the provincial government for increased funding and support. Though the first RP’s focus was on the experience of refugee and immigrant youth, the team aspires to eventually expand its reach to the broader immigrant and refugee community of Montreal in future events. The first event was really “…a start of a conversation,” Moreau told the Daily. “ I think the participants were very aware that…where we’re at right now is smaller-scale, it’s not representative of everyone — in terms of impact, we’re not relying on changing anything [huge] yet.” What the event succeeded in doing, however, was “changing hearts and minds, putting [their needs] on people’s radars” — whether it is giving ideas to organizations already working in the refugee space or to McGill administration — giving refugee and immigrant students a place to gather and speak about their experiences with the hopes of one day being heard. 

If you are interested in joining the Refugee Parliament, contact refugeeparliament@gmail.com or fill out their form to represent your community or volunteer.

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Following the CAMSR’s meeting on March 16, the Board’s decision on the question of accelerating a review of its current socially responsible investment (SRI) practices will take place on April 20. If current plans are kept in place, any changes to the university’s position on divestment will not come until the spring of 2025. 

For students who have been involved in the fight for divestment, the days leading up to April 20 are crucial. Alex Foster, a member of Divest McGill, told the Daily that “this is kind of the last chance for divestment for a while,” which places pressure on Divest to convince the board to take action now. “It feels pretty urgent… having these reconsiderations out of nowhere,” says Foster.

Divest members participated in the Board’s community session at their February 8 meeting and handed out flyers to Board members beforehand that laid out the importance of institutional divestment and its implications for climate policy, the environmental consequences of not divesting, and financial arguments for divesting. “As we arrived at the community session, [a Board member] said that they were just having a heated discussion about divestment before we got there,” Foster told the Daily. “It’s good if it’s heated because it means there are people who are passionate on the Board in one way or another.” 

The last time that the Board considered the question of divestment was during a two-year review period between 2018-2020. This review resulted in the implementation of a plan to decarbonize the university’s endowment fund through a “prudent yet ambitious strategy that includes divestment from highly carbon-intensive companies, including those within the fossil fuel industry,” according to an email sent from McGill Communications on February 27. 

In a question addressed to the Board, a community member noted that McGill is the only major university in Montreal that has not announced a commitment to divestment. They also listed a number of major universities that have committed to total divestment from the fossil fuel industry, including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Toronto. Indeed, over 100 US schools and ten Canadian schools have made partial or full commitments to divest from fossil fuels, which advocates of divestment at McGill see as a clear indicator of the university falling behind in terms of its commitment to sustainability. Foster sees the rising number of universities committing to divestment as a hopeful point toward convincing the Board to follow suit – “it’s different now that universities like [University of Toronto] and prestigious American universities [have divested]. Now that it’s coming closer and closer to home – I think that’s what matters to them.” 

The April 2023 announcement has presented a crucial opportunity for Divest to take action, calling for changes in campaigning and messaging. A principle argument that Divest and other proponents of divestment have used relates to the term “social injury,” which is listed in the CAMSR’s mandate as “the grave injurious impact which the activities of a legal person is found to have on consumers, employees, or other persons, or on the natural environment.” The CAMSR has denied a finding of social injury based on their investments in fossil fuels, which would be required for their official divestment. Considering Divest has focused on this argument in the past, Foster says that the campaign may need to change strategies to achieve its goals. “[The Board] had no discussion of social injury in their report. That’s not really what they were looking at,” she told the Daily. Based on the Board’s lack of acknowledgment of social injury in the past and focus on financial consequences instead, “even if they change [their] mind now, nothing has changed in terms of social injury — that would show that it’s not about social injury.” 

Instead, Divest is beginning to look toward potential financial gains that may come from divesting from fossil fuels to support its campaign. Taichi Saito, another member of Divest, spoke on Divest’s potential shifts in strategy to target the Board’s interests: “there is more and more research about the financial aspect of divestment, so we plan on talking to management professors,” he told the Daily. “There’s been a lot of improvement in renewable energy sources and technologies such as solar panels in the last decade… We often hear arguments about how Canada has a lot of oil and gas in its territory, but I think the faster we stop exploiting these resources, the faster we’ll be able to shift towards renewable energies and be independent of oil and gas markets.” 

Foster expressed her frustration at the Board’s handling of the session and their general unwillingness to listen to the rest of the McGill community on the matter of divestment: “they’re running out of excuses,” she told the Daily. “After the occupation last year, the realization that the university doesn’t really care about what the students think, and that even if we manage to get the whole student population aware of divestment, it wouldn’t really affect the Board. It’s been a bit disheartening.” Foster references Divest’s occupation of the Arts building last year in support of decolonization, democratization, and divestment. The occupation lasted for over two weeks, making it the longest occupation of a university building in McGill’s history. 

For Foster and many other members of the McGill community, the fight for divestment has further revealed the need for a democratization of McGill. “It’s a shame that at this specific moment where they make this decision [about whether to divest], it will be equally influenced by Board members or other universities [placing pressure on McGill to follow suit]. If the union was democratic, we would have divested already because the Senate and the students have already voted for it,” she told the Daily. 

“The fundamental problem of the university being undemocratic and not caring about what the students or staff want — that will just keep coming up again and again, whether it’s divestment or not,” Foster added. 

Regardless of the decision that is made on April 20, there is still a long way to go for Divest and other student movements that have been a part of efforts to divest. Foster notes that even if McGill commits to partial or total divestment in its endowment fund, it will likely continue to fund fossil fuel companies through its pooled funds. “McGill needs to divest from ‘actual’ fossil fuel companies, but [a large proportion of] McGill’s investments go into pooled funds, which have loads of problems on their own. That’s a whole other avenue for Divest to go down,” says Foster. “Divest will still need to exist – it just might not look the same as it did before.” 

The post Board of Governors to Decide on Revisiting Divestment appeared first on The McGill Daily.

As of November 10, 17 out of 21 Montreal emergency rooms were over capacity, according to Index Santé, Quebec’s Health Index directory. Montreal’s children’s hospitals have been particularly hard-hit, with an influx of children with Respiratory Syncytial Virus (R.S.V.) and other viruses contributing to overflowing emergency rooms. R.S.V., a virus that infects the lungs and breathing passages, does not usually reach high infection levels until later in the fall and winter. Laurie Plotnick, Medical Director at the Montreal Children’s Hospital (MCH), told the Daily these unusually early spikes in R.S.V. patients are likely related to the fact that people haven’t been exposed to many viruses since the start of the pandemic. “Both kids and adults have less immunity [since 2020] — pregnant women were not exposed to viruses, so they weren’t passing on antibodies to their newborns, and children, infants, and toddlers haven’t been exposed as frequently to viral illnesses,” said Dr. Plotnick. As a result, “they’ve lost some of that immune capacity to fight viruses in a more effective way.” 

Since the last week of October, the occupancy rates at Montreal Children’s Hospital have remained over 150 per cent capacity, leading to extensive wait times and forcing some parents to leave the hospital without their children receiving care. With talk of a winter “tripledemic” combining the Flu, R.S.V., and COVID-19, these numbers are likely to increase before they get better. In response, hospitals are turning to the COVID-era pandemic strategies that have been in use for the past two and a half years. “We run— and rerun— the same pandemic strategies, we go back to the same principles,” Dr. Plotnick told the Daily. “The difference now compared to the beginning of the pandemic is that we now have healthcare staff who are fatigued, tired, chronically stressed, on sick leave, or have left the profession.” 

Hospitals across Canada have faced staffing shortages and overcrowded emergency rooms since the start of the pandemic, forcing many hospitals to announce temporary reductions in services, including in their emergency rooms. The overcapacity rates experienced with R.S.V. in pediatric emergency rooms this season are equivalent to overcapacity experiences in adult hospitals during the COVID pandemic, according to Dr. Plotnick. “The issue now is that we don’t have the same staff pool that we had back then to be able to rally together [in the same way] because we’ve been doing it for two and a half years already.” 

In particular, increased demand for family doctors has left emergency rooms with high numbers of patients that could have been treated elsewhere. Dr. Plotnick told the Daily that ideally, the MCH would transfer stable patients back to a community hospital that is able to continue hospitalization until the patient is ready to be discharged — but shortages of community clinics and family doctors has made this difficult. “What we’re seeing in the hospital is being seen in the community too,” said Dr. Plotnick. “The family doctors, they’re working hard. The community practitioners are overwhelmed by sick children, lots of viral illnesses, and lots of children with fevers. I just don’t think we have enough community healthcare practitioners right now to best serve our population.” 

A McGill student recounted his experience with the Montreal hospitals to the Daily after he fractured his ankle in late September, demonstrating how difficult it can be to access even a short consultation. After being denied by a clinic because their x-ray room was closed, he went to Lachine Hospital, where he was forced to walk through multiple corridors on his injured ankle for purposes of paperwork. “It took me at least an hour and a half to be seen by a nurse just for her to fill in very basic info about where I was hurt and how bad it was from 1-10, and then I was told that it would be at least a 9-hour wait. I wasn’t given ice, medication, or anything”, he told the Daily. “Rather than waiting, I booked an appointment with an orthopedic specialist for the next day because I just needed an ankle expert to tell me how severe my injury was. That specialist canceled on me.” 

In the end, the student was able to get a cast book for a next-day surgery at Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montreal (CHUM) hospital, but only after a 6-hour wait. Despite the lengthy wait time, he told the Daily that his experience at CHUM was much easier than other hospitals since all the initial stages of seeing the nurse and doing paperwork were accessible with his injury. His experience may have been a lucky one: on November 10, 28 patients had been on stretchers for 24 hours or more at CHUM and nine patients had been on stretchers for 48 hours or more. 

The Legault government has recently expressed the urgency of reducing experiences like his. At an October 25 news conference, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé termed the situation “unacceptable” and announced the creation of a crisis team to address long wait times in Quebec’s emergency rooms. The team’s plan includes a goal to open a pair of clinics in Montreal run by nurse practitioners to accommodate patients without access to family doctors. It also aims to extend access to the “one call, one service” phone line to pediatric patients in order to provide consultations without having to go to the emergency room. Dubé added that the Health Ministry will continue to work with partners to provide more appointments through family medicine and pediatric clinics, as a lack of access to these doctors leads patients to emergency departments for treatment that could have been provided elsewhere. According to Dr. Plotnick, there needs to be more access to community clinics and healthcare professionals who specialize in pediatrics to prevent overcrowding in pediatric hospitals. “The [government’s] crisis task force is a good start, but funding is huge. Nurses need to be adequately compensated and incentivized for what they’re doing,” she told the Daily. “It’s about improving access, and increasing the number of healthcare professionals, whether it be nurse practitioners or physicians in the community.” Referencing the reinstitution of the “one-call, one-service” hotline, Dr. Plotnick said that “we don’t yet have the number of clinics available as they were when the initiative was running a year and a half ago.” 

Currently, there is a limit on the number of physicians that the MHC is permitted to hire, and like at other academic hospitals, MCH’s physicians are required to take on an educational role as well as providing patient care — “an impossibility in this kind of crisis,” said Dr. Potnick. “More students need to be trained in medical schools — [we need to] enable more medical students in universities, more residency positions, and more positions for residents to work in after training. It’s a real pipeline that’s been limited over the years and has been decreasing.” 

McGill’s Student Wellness Hub, where McGill students have access to a variety of healthcare services as a part of their tuition, has not been immune to overcapacity issues faced by the rest of Montreal. According to Giovanni Arcuri, Associate Director of Operations at the Student Wellness Hub, “during the pandemic, 50 per cent of our doctors were redeployed to the public system. Some have returned; however, some are currently on extended leaves.” In order to meet the rising number of students requesting care, and due to the limited scope of its nurses, the Hub is actively recruiting family doctors — however, this is a challenging task due to provincial regulations determining how these doctors spend their time. “Hours worked in university clinics are not recognized by the government, so our doctors are putting in time beyond their government-mandated requirements,” Arcuri told the Daily.  

Healthcare professionals working at the Wellness Hub echo the difficulties faced in the profession as a whole as they face overcapacity. Dr. Hashana Perera, Medical Director of the Student Wellness Hub, expressed the burden on the providers that have stayed at their jobs; “with fewer providers, the burden is higher on the providers that remain,” she told the Daily. “This is compounded by the challenges accessing testing and specialist consultations within the public healthcare system due to staff shortages, where more senior doctors are retiring earlier and more staff are on medical leave.” 

Overcapacity and staffing shortages at the Student Wellness Hub have left many students to turn to more expensive alternatives for urgent care. One student spoke with the Daily about her experience in 2021 with the Wellness Hub: “as an international student who is required to pay for International health insurance as a student at McGill, both my parents and I have been extremely disappointed in the quality of healthcare offered here.”

Another student spoke of her experience trying to get a test for Celiac disease: “I was sent in circles trying to get an appointment and once I finally got a hold of someone, I was told to call at 8 a.m. on a Monday. I wasn’t able to make an appointment online, so I used Maple Telehealth services and was referred to a clinic not associated with McGill. I ended up having to pay $200 for testing and didn’t receive my full result for 4-5 weeks.”

The Wellness Hub’s website states that it does not take students who are symptomatic with flu or cold symptoms “to ensure staff and student safety, and in accordance with McGill policy and the new circumstances,” leaving students to turn to other means of overcrowded healthcare services for the treatment of these widespread illnesses. According to Dr. Vera Romano, Director of the Student Wellness Hub, the Hub is now “examining and reviewing” the directives restricting the provision of care to students with COVID-19-like symptoms as the pandemic evolves. 

Reduced access to healthcare and issues tied to the pandemic have exacerbated preexisting inequities in the healthcare system. Among the most impacted are Canada’s Indigenous populations. Findings from Statistics Canada data show that during the first year of the pandemic, “disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were evident” in studies of the impact of pandemic-related difficulties and delays in receiving health care services. First Nations people and Metis were more likely than non-Indigenous people to say that these delays caused them pain. 

In September, a report was leaked regarding the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) detailing testimonials of racism experienced by patients and staff at the Centre, including many recounts of mistreatment towards Indigenous patients. The report came after the death of Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, who recorded a live Facebook video exposing her abuse by nurses leading to her death in September 2020. The MUHC is Montreal’s largest hospital network and has made the treatment of Indigenous peoples a part of its mandate. The MUHC report, a two-year-long effort, was published following repeated claims by Premier Legault that systemic racism does not exist in the province of Quebec. 

On October 25, SSMU’s External Affairs team hosted an Accessibility Town Hall, where students were invited to express difficulties accessing healthcare, academic accommodations, and culturally-specific support at McGill. In the event’s description, SSMU wrote that “[t]he McGill Student Wellness Hub [has continued] to fail in delivering its promised basic health services.” It also noted that “Student Services has cut the BIPOC Local Wellness Advisor,” a position that previously worked to provide specific support to students who identified as Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour within a therapeutic context. 

Dr. Perera expressed the Hub’s gratitude towards students “for their collaboration and feedback,” emphasizing that the Student Wellness Hub is “actively working to improve the things we can control and are communicating more effectively about the parts that are outside of our control.” 

As overcrowding issues continue to worsen, healthcare professionals emphasize the urgency of the situation: “[t]his is not sustainable. We’re concerned because we already feel like we’re at a breaking point in many respects,” said Dr. Plotnick. Many of the issues behind the abundance of overcrowded hospitals, like staff shortages and a lack of resources, “[a]re just widening the cracks that were already there pre-covid.” Fixing these cracks, says Dr. Plotnick, will require systemic changes to address staff shortages and a lack of access to healthcare. In the meantime, she calls for a return to some of the easier community solutions learned during the pandemic: “wash hands, wear a mask, stay home if you’re sick.” 

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Since its announcement, Chinatown residents have expressed concern over the design of the REM de l’Est, a $10-billion electric light rail project set to connect downtown Montreal with the eastern neighborhoods of Pointe-aux-Trembles and Montréal-Nord. Among its 23 stations is one planned to occupy Chinatown’s only remaining vacant lot, located at the corner of René Lévesque and Saint-Laurent. 

The REM de l’Est, the second phase of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), is set to “become the ‘backbone’ of transportation in the east end of Montreal” with a fully automated electric light rail car system connecting eastern Montreal to the downtown core. The proposed railway will double the coverage of the metro network in eastern Montreal and connect to existing public transit networks, utilizing driverless train cars running on elevated tracks. 

The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) emphasizes REM de l’Est’s economic and environmental benefits, notably its potential to move residents away from solo driving, reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 35k tonnes/year, and generate $6.3 billion for Quebec’s GDP during construction. However, many residents have expressed concerns about the introduction of such obtrusive infrastructure into their neighborhoods, calling it a “scar in the city’s landscape.”  

On March 17, CDPQ Infra announced that it would delay hearings by Quebec’s environmental law agency, the Bureau d’Audience Publiques sur l’Environnement (BAPE). This was to be the next step in the process before beginning construction and ultimately finishing the light rail by mid-2029. Now, this timing will be skewed, rendering its completion date unknown. 

The Chinatown Working Group, a community-based collective that played a large role in advocating for Chinatown’s heritage designation and is now involved in the public consultation for bylaws protecting the neighborhood from future development, first raised concerns about the project last August. In a letter to CDPQ, they called REM de l’Est “detrimental to the integrity of the living and built environment” of Chinatown. Among a list of recommendations, the letter called for the inclusion of the Chinatown community in the planning process and for an underground option to be privileged over an aerial railway and ground structure. They ended their letter by expressing the potential of REM de l’Est to “contribute to the improvement of Montreal’s quality of life,” so long as the CDPQ considers their proposed changes.

On March 13, CWG echoed its August recommendations in a second letter, emphasizing the project’s need to respect Chinatown’s heritage through a “holistic integration from a design and planning perspective.” It emphasizes the significance of prioritizing an underground track, claiming that “an elevated track and road closures would have a huge impact on Chinatown’s community and its future development, especially so close to [the institutional core] of this area.” Though a revised project was released following their August letter, CWG writes that CDPQ still has not addressed their previously stated concerns: “the updated version of the REM de l’Est is unacceptable and prejudicial to Chinatown and its community.” 

Donny Seto, a member of CWG and lecturer in the Geography, Planning, and Environment department at Concordia University, told the Daily that the project – if completed as currently planned – would effectively corner off the northern sector of Chinatown. This is significant, he notes, “given that Chinatown [already] has three barriers on the east, west, and south side.” 

Building the station underground, Seto says, “will reduce the physical impacts on Chinatown in terms of cutting it off from its surroundings.” He points to some of the major development projects that have left a mark on Chinatown in the past – “from the Guy-Favreau building, Palais des congrès, and now the CHUM hospital – we don’t want additional heavy infrastructure [in Chinatown],” Seto told the Daily. He refers to the Complèxe Guy-Favreau, which replaced a cultural center in 2019, and to the recently constructed Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) hospital which is located partially in Chinatown and partially in the Quartier Latin. Chinatown “has survived in spite of these efforts – but it won’t if this is going to continuously happen,” says Seto. 

CDPQ has responded to CWG’s second letter with the offer of having a conversation about the project and its impact on Chinatown, says Seto. However, at the time of our interview, they had not responded to CWG’s calls for the promoter’s presentation of the project in front of the Chinatown community followed by an open discussion. 

Despite interim controls put in place to protect Chinatown from development in January, Seto says that since the heritage bylaws are still in process, “we don’t necessarily know how they will impact the project in the future.” However, he says that the heritage protections will dampen the real estate speculation that could come about if the REM was confirmed – “if they weren’t in place, a lot of developers would start buying out land without second thought […] so they will dampen the development pressures in Chinatown and give us a moment to reflect on how to properly protect and envision the future of Chinatown.” 

Seto says that CWG has been in contact with Mayor Plante and other city councilors regarding the project’s impact on Chinatown. The group’s advocacy, along with calls from east-end residents, has influenced the city to rethink its strategy and ultimately for the expert advisory committee on the project to request changes. Montreal Mayor Valorie Plante has expressed support for REM de l’Est, saying that “the progress of transportation in Montreal and in the east end depends on it.” However, Plante has also been vocal about the need to reform the project, demanding that the city be given a seat at the table in the planning process and adding provincial funding to integrate the aerial rail into the urban landscape. 

Seto emphasizes that the REM de L’Est has low social acceptability so far, not only in Chinatown but among commuters and city residents in other affected neighborhoods: “those [who] would seemingly draw the most benefit from the line itself are [the ones] who are the most concerned about its impacts,” he says. 

A new report by a city expert advisory committee working to ensure the project’s integration into its surroundings expresses “strong worries” about the large gap to be created between de Bleury and Saint-Urbain streets, where trains would enter an elevated track from an underground tunnel. The committee also asked for the layout of René-Lévesque to be “fundamentally revised” to keep the area around the elevated track livable and accessible. 

Christian Ducharme, vice-president of engineering at CDPQ Infra, said that the company’s new designs, released last week, address “more than 80 per cent” of the concerns raised in the city’s report. The new designs include an “urban lookout” overlooking the tunnel entrance on René-Lévesque to make the area pedestrian-friendly. It also suggests the use of transparent glass-like materials in locations where sound barriers up to four meters tall are necessary on tracks close to buildings, which Ducharme says will be “less heavy in the [surrounding] environment.” Ducharme added that two options remain for a small section of the project’s route through the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough: one that would run along Sherbrooke and connect with the Honoré-Beaugrand Metro station and the other that would run further south, along de Souligny. 

According to Seto, Ducharme’s words are “empty promises to make the project look socially acceptable, when in reality [the new design] has no teeth.” He and his CWG colleagues disagree that the new design shows improvement: “when we saw the plan…there was some beautification, but the plan itself hasn’t changed very much – it didn’t address any of the concerns that we had posted in our letter to CDPQ,” he added. Although promises to include green spaces and biking infrastructure were included in the design, Seto says that they would not be funded by the project – instead, these additions would be left up to the city. Seto, whose academic focus is on sustainable development and urban planning, says that while the current analysis focuses on the project’s potential in terms of economic returns on investment, “in terms of its social, environmental, and health impacts, I don’t think that work has been done thoroughly.” 

Originally from Quebec City, the vulnerability of Montreal’s Chinatown to threats of infrastructure development is sentimental for Seto. “I witnessed Quebec City’s Chinatown disappearing with the development of highway infrastructure and [the expropriation of land] that housed many Chinatown residents…It disappeared pretty much overnight,” he told the Daily. “I don’t want to see this kind of event happening again [in Montreal].”

The REM de l’Est’s process has a long way to go, and for its critics, this pause signals the potential for reflection and the creation of a design that best suits all of Montreal. “[CWG] will definitely be vigilant in terms of what happens [with the project]. Hopefully, we will be invited to comment and consult on how this project could benefit Chinatown into the future,” says Seto. 

In the meantime, CWG continues to push for its demands to be met. “The fight isn’t over,” says Seto. “CDPQ Infra should take this time to reflect on what the ultimate benefit of this project is, and who is benefitting the most.” 

The post Montreal’s Chinatown Community Calls for Changes to REM de L’Est Light Rail appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The newly assigned heritage block houses the historic British and Canadian School building, which is still in operation today as Wing Noodles, the oldest running business in Chinatown. The company is run by the three grandsons of Hee Chong Lee, an immigrant from China who started the business in 1897. The S. Davis and Sons cigar factory, built in 1884, will also gain heritage status, along with the historic city block which surrounds the two buildings. The area continues to serve as a cultural hub, home to active community organizations, a Buddhist temple, senior housing, and small businesses.  

This announcement comes alongside the City of Montreal’s adoption of interim measures which require any new construction projects to respect new specifications regarding the density and height of buildings, as well as increase historic Chinatown’s boundaries. May Chiu, a member of the Chinatown Working Group (CWG) and the Progressive Chinese of Quebec (PCQ), told the Daily that these new specifications are perhaps more significant than the province’s heritage designation as they will effectively “put a gel on many construction projects” threatening the community. 

Emphasizing the importance of these interim measures, Chiu cites nearby St. Laurent Boulevard, which was given heritage status by Parks Canada in 1997: “[there weren’t] any laws or regulation to underscore what historical protection meant – that’s why you see so many modern high rises on St. Laurent.” In contrast, the measures protecting Chinatown will regulate economic activity and specify what kind of development projects will be allowed to ensure the same doesn’t happen there. 

Though temporary measures until bylaws are established, these interim controls will serve as a moratorium to development that community members have been seeking since 2018, when Chinatown’s main cultural centre was lost to an outside creditor. This sounded alarms for many community members who feared the further loss of their neighbourhoods, leading to the creation of organizations like the CWG, a solidarity group originally stemming from the PCQ. In April 2021, the CWG released a detailed action plan to protect Chinatown and its heritage. The plan called for official heritage status, along with concrete actions such as the construction of affordable housing and the promotion of community gathering spaces.

A multi-level committee comprised of Chinatown community members and representatives from the Quebec and municipal governments was tasked with outlining the heritage protections to be accorded to Chinatown, an eight-month process spanning from October 2020 to June 2021. A final report compiled from these consultations resulted in the January 24 announcement. Chiu notes that it was important to make sure the whole community was involved in the consultation meetings – “[t]he Chinese community is very diverse, coming from a variety of different sectors, including small businesses, social service organizations, low-income residents, and seniors. When we talk about the plan for Chinatown, we have to take into consideration the needs of all this diversity”. 

While many community members see the new protections as significant steps in the right direction, a likely lengthy process towards a finalized plan lies ahead. At a January 24 outdoor press conference, activists and community organizations gathered to advocate for the immediate rights of residents to a better quality of life in Chinatown. Organizers held signs reading “Chinatown is not a museum,” referencing the need for heritage designation to encompass both tangible and intangible culture. “It’s about more than just streets and buildings,” says Chiu. 

“The Chinese community is very diverse, coming from a variety of different sectors, including small businesses, social service organizations, low-income residents, and seniors. When we talk about the plan for Chinatown, we have to take into consideration the needs of all this diversity.”

– May Chiu

Residents spoke of the impacts of ongoing construction on their quality of life – “the dust, the smells, the noise […] it’s relentless […] I can’t even use my own yard,” said Kent Chong, an organizer and Chinatown resident. In the middle of the press conference, a construction worker came to ask the residents to move, stating that standing under the construction site raised safety concerns.  

According to Chiu, deeming Chinatown a historic site and pushing for all-encompassing heritage protection “doesn’t mean that it becomes a shell and that we let buildings dilapidate.” Instead, she argues for a “living heritage: people have to be protected, housing has to be protected, social services need to be provided.” 

The only remaining historic Chinatown in Quebec, Montreal’s Chinatown has fought development projects threatening the area since its establishment. In the 70s and 80s, Chinatown lost a significant amount of territory to real estate projects like the Guy Favreau Complex and Palais des Congrès.  

Developments continue to encroach on Chinatown’s neighbourhoods, including the REM project, an automated rail network criticized for supporting residential construction around its routes. CWG voiced opposition to the project, but its cancellation has not been confirmed. As community members continue to push against unabated development, they work against the rhetoric of big developers and contractors. “It will be really easy for the big developers to come in and say, we need to put in luxury, high-rise condos because we need to keep the economy running, and if we have more rich people [in the neighbourhood], it will keep the economy running,” Chiu told the Daily.  

[Chiu] argues for a “living heritage: people have to be protected, housing has to be protected, social services need to be provided.”

“We have to push for a human vision of development, and the challenge will be how to make everything economically viable,” she continued. Chiu says that the city is currently focusing on building social housing units, a call from the CWG’s action plan. 

During the January 24 press conference, Montreal mayor Valérie Plante echoed the sentiments of community organizers. She said that while heritage protection is a “big step,” it is not the only one, pointing out that Chinatown’s increasing prices have been pushing out its current residents.  

The fight for Chinatown is multigenerational, encompassing family, community history, and deep connections to culture and language. Says community member Parker Mah, “…although a temporary moratorium is in place, the war is not over. A public consultation on the proposed changes will take place in the spring.”  According to Chiu, community organizers are currently mobilizing different sectors to participate in the public consultation towards the finalization of bylaws, along with specifying the roles of the many organizations working towards this goal. 

Regarding the upcoming consultation process, community members are preparing for a challenge. “We know that the huge developers with all their trillions of dollars are going to try to pack the consultation,” says Chiu. 

If you are interested in making submissions to the public consultation, which will be announced in the spring, you can contact the co-coordinator of the Chinatown Roundtable, Andy Vu, at andy.vu@faubourgstlaurent.ca.

The post “A Living Heritage”: New Heritage Protections for Montreal’s Chinatown appeared first on The McGill Daily.

This decision follows those of many other universities across Canada and the United States in the past few years, including Concordia University in 2019 and Harvard University this past September. In 2017 Laval University in Quebec became the first Canadian university to commit to full divestment from fossil fuels, but reneged this promise two years later. As of 2021, approximately 220 postsecondary institutions have divested from the fossil fuel industry. 

UofT’s decision was motivated by its perceived role as a leading academic institution to meet the “urgent challenge” of the climate crisis and its responsibility for the detrimental effects that will “disproportionately fall on students and generations of future students and children around the world.” In a letter to the UofT community, President Gertler said that the hope in divesting is to influence other investors and “government actors at home and abroad” to “intensify their efforts to tackle the challenge of climate change.” 

While this decision was celebrated by UofT students and staff as well as climate activists across Canada, many claim that it comes far too late. In an open letter signed by a lengthy list of UofT professors in subjects ranging from astrophysics to environmental science, critics pointed out the university’s failure to divest from fossil fuels when its own expert advisory panel suggested targeted divestment six years ago. Further, they claim that UofT has violated its own policy by continuing to invest in firms that cause “social injury” – that is, harming consumers, employees, and others through company activities – up until its announcement to divest. 

Similarly, members of Divest McGill, an organization that has been fighting for McGill’s divestment in fossil fuels since 2012, claim that McGill violates its restriction of investment in firms “causing social injury” by refusing to fully divest from fossil fuel firms.

In 2015, representatives of Divest presented a 150-page research brief to McGill’s Board of Governors (BoG) in hopes of achieving a complete and transparent divestment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies. Their petition was rejected by the Committee to Advise Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR), who claimed in their 2016 report that “continuing to explore or refusing to keep unburnable reserves underground does not directly have grave injurious impact on individuals or the natural environment.” This was the second occasion in which the CAMSR was faced with petitions and demands to vote for divestment, the first being in 2013. In both cases, no recommendation was made to the BoG based on this finding, though their reports influenced the  Board’s endorsement of an expanded action plan to address climate issues.

While remaining resistant to calls for full divestment, McGill is pursuing a “responsible investment” charter that considers environmental, social, and governance factors in investment decisions and focuses on reducing the university’s carbon footprint. Their policy includes the long term targets of becoming zero-waste by 2035 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2040, and affirms a “responsibility as members of the global community [to] do what we can to achieve these goals to reduce our impact on climate change and contribute positively to the sustainability of the planet.” McGill’s commitment to decarbonization comes alongside the COP26, which concluded with global leaders’ commitment to the accelerated decarbonization of cities and industry. 

The university board’s decision to decarbonize its investment portfolio rather than to divest its nearly $50 million invested in fossil fuels has come as a disappointment to many students and professors. In January 2020, philosophy and environment professor Gregory Mikkelson resigned from his tenured position in response to the university’s inaction. McGill’s $9.2 million investment in fossil-fuel-free funds as of December 2020 is “a wholly inadequate, token response to Divest McGill’s remarkable and nearly-decade-long organizing effort,” Mikkelson told the Daily.

Indigenous nations and communities are among those impacted by investments in fossil fuel industries. According to mcgillinvests, McGill’s investment profile includes holdings in fossil fuel companies such as Enbridge Inc., which has operated several large crude-oil pipelines in the US and Canada running over the land and communities of countless Indigenous nations. Notably, Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota has been met with fierce opposition by the Ojibwe tribe, whose waterways, land, and ways of life are threatened by its construction. 

McGill is also invested in TC Energy, the owners of the Coastal Gas Link pipeline which the Wet’suwet’en people of British Columbia have been fighting to stop since 2008 in the face of police brutalization and a 2020 Supreme Court injunction barring members of the Wet’suwet’en nation from obstructing work on the pipeline. As Mikkelson notes, the Canadian government’s failure to move away from fossil fuels mirrors that of McGill: “the same ruling class that stymies ecological progress at the national level does the same at the organizational level, for example through its dominance within the McGill Board of Governors.” Mikkelson refers to the BoG’s composition, consisting of eight elected board members – two on the behalf of the student body – and the rest of the 25 total members coming mainly from “the corporate world.”  Divest notes, for example, that previous CAMSR chair and current board member Cynthia Price-Verrault worked for 20 years in the petroleum industry. 

Divest’s 2015  proposal to the BoG suggested a preliminary strategy from only Enbridge and Shell, citing environmental and social injury caused by both companies. The proposal was denied. 

The movement for divestment is tied to advocacy from students and staff for a more democratic decision-making process from McGill. On Friday, November 19, members of Divest McGill and the broader McGill community gathered in the Arts building for an assembly on the democratization of McGill’s governing board. The assembly concluded in a unanimous vote for the formation of a new coalition to democratize the decision-making body. This new coalition comes after nearly a decade of continuously being blocked by the BoG, leading Divest McGill to “reach a boiling point:” “We are now fighting for a democratic university: a change in the governance structure as the only way to change McGill’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry,” the organization said in a statement prior to the assembly. Lola Milder, a Divest McGill member who attended the assembly, says that McGill’s statements claiming to work towards “a holistic and intersectional understanding of our environment” and to consider equity as a part of its sustainability plan are contradictory: “Statements like that are intended to satisfy and quiet movements of dissent, but we aren’t satisfied or quieted.”

While the focus of many climate activists is on the role of business corporations in fueling the climate crisis, colleges and universities have drawn significant attention and pressure to take action. This is not the first case in which McGill’s board has found itself faced with pressures to divest in order to be “on the right side of history,” as Mikkelson puts it: in 1985, McGill announced its decision to divest from companies with business in apartheid South Africa – only after disruptive student protests and four years of hesitation. Says Mikkelson, “It seems like sheer obstinacy for the university’s bosses to continue holding out at this late hour,” given that so many Canadian universities have announced divestment. 

Regarding the distinct role of educational institutions in this fight and in other social crises, Mikkelson claims that “universities’ investment decisions [hold] greater symbolic power and hence political impact – for good or ill, depending on whether those decisions come down on the right side of history or not, regarding such issues as apartheid, smoking, and fossil fuel.” 

The IPCC Working Group 1 report released in August 2021 stated that climate change is irreversible and that no “safe” threshold for climate change exists; the planet would not cool down again upon reaching net-zero carbon emissions. The “net-zero” target prominent in the media signifies that ongoing emissions released will be “balanced” with emissions reductions by other countries or institutions, as opposed to “gross zero” emissions, which would eliminate carbon emissions altogether. The International Energy Agency has found that “ensuring we add no more CO2 emissions to the atmosphere than we remove is considered to be essential” to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. According to the study, this is possible, but only with some drastic changes, including no new sales of fossil fuel boilers by 2025 and no new oil and gas fields approved for development by 2021, an immediate demand. 

For advocates of fossil fuel divestment and climate action, these facts make the fight ever more important. “In the case of fossil fuels, divestment has also begun to hinder the industry’s access to funding,” says Mikkelson. The BoG’s decision to withhold from divestment, he says, does not “bode well for [McGill].” 

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Laval University had fully divested from fossil fuels, and that 1,300 postsecondary institutions have divested from fossil fuels. The article has been updated to be more accurate.

The Daily regrets these errors.

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