Since 2002, Afghanistan has been the largest recipient of Canadian development assistance, but what the Canadian public most often sees of this effort are Canadian Forces in uniform, bringing home our dead. The general public knows very little about our country’s mission; our government has done too little to ensure otherwise. The apathy, misunderstanding, and ignorance that this cultivates is dangerous.

When Stephen Harper’s 2011 deadline comes, I expect many Canadians will be eager for a hasty exit from Afghanistan. Political rhetoric suggests that our military mission may end then, but that our engagement in the country will not. As it stands, Canada is in a poor position to make a wise decision about the nature and extent of this continued engagement. Our voters don’t understand our mission and we lack a coherent purpose and strategy.

Little public discussion preceded Canada’s 2001 entry in Afghanistan, and this silence persists as Canada has become gradually more and more entangled in Afghanistan’s most dangerous province, Kandahar. Along with the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands, Canada is one of the most heavily invested international presences in the country. But you wouldn’t guess it from the occasional minimalist rhetoric and the wavering commitment of our national leaders. Canada’s projects keep a low profile both at home and abroad.

The myth that Canadians are not a nation that likes war, that we are a peacekeeping people, reinforces our collective illusion that we have been peacekeepers since Pearson’s day – and it stops us from imagining new and effective foreign policies. We are fighting a very real, very violent insurgency. But our military does more than fire guns. We talk less about the military’s co-operation with civilian workers and with Afghans, perhaps because we are not comfortable or convinced by this contemporary use of the Canadian Forces for reconstruction and development.

The purpose of Canada’s mission, at least in policy terms, has been built on three pillars – defence, development, and diplomacy. As Harper and Obama recently conceded, the insurgency cannot be beaten by foreigners; therefore, if we say that we’re fighting the insurgents as a matter of national defence, our efforts are in vain, and our logic flawed. However, Canada can make a meaningful contribution by focusing on development and diplomacy and by increasing synergistic civilian-military co-operation.

The military is working to create the safety and security prerequisite for Afghan-defined and civilian-led reconstruction efforts like Canada’s Signature Projects – building the Dahla Dam, eradicating polio, and building schools. In co-operation with civilian police, diplomats, the RCMP, and development workers, Canadian Forces are training the Afghan army and police. They gather intelligence by creating relationships with Afghan elders and their communities. Forces secure pockets of stability to create safe spaces for investing in women, educating children, and distributing food. Though worthy projects, each of these endeavours is imperfect and incomplete.

We have invested lives, resources, and time, but assessments of progress, security, and future prospects remain unclear. Understandably, this makes us wary. But it does not give us permission to be fatalistic or apathetic.

Some will argue that we have no business in Afghanistan, that remaining implicated will do little more than further protract a conflict that needs to be resolved indigenously. To this I say, too late. We signalled to Afghans that we noticed their circumstances, we suggested that there is a better way, and in so doing, bound ourselves to their fate.

If we do not start planning for 2011 now we risk making the same mistake we made in 2001: slipping into a decision whose implications we did not understand, with little inquiry or discussion, and with a high degree of detachment. Ten years later, Canadians now have the opportunity to be proactive and to shape our engagement so that we may speak about it with dignity. There is no American scapegoat on which to blame a hurried, uncalculated decision. Our ethics and strategy require brainstorming and debate in every sphere of society, business, and government. Should we use our military and if so, how? Which locally-owned projects need our help? How can we boost co-operation between civilian and military agencies?

Start talking – or history will judge us harshly for our narcissism and lack of creativity.

Hayley Lapalme is a U3 IDS and Political Science student, and still a people-person. Send her an email at hayley.lapalme@gmail.com,

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Like CDAS, ISID will continue to be committed to multidisciplinary research, but with renewed emphasis on accountability and evidenced-based policy-making. It will eventually become home to undergraduate programs in International Development Studies, African Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and Latin American and Caribbean Studies, as well as a new Development Studies option at the Master’s level.

Phillip Oxhorn, the ISID Director, stressed that the energy of youth interested in development figures centrally in the new institute.

“ISID brings under one roof what universities can uniquely do while also capturing the energy and commitment of young people,” he said, explaining that the institute is a response to changes in the global order.

Among those present was David Malone, President of the International Development Research Centre welcomed the launch of the institute by emphasizing the importance of their goal.

“Development is a dead serious business and should be treated with the seriousness it deserves,” he said, adding that it would be important for the ISID to break from Canadian precedent by sharing its success stories and disseminating its work more widely.

The evening’s visiting keynote from India, Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, pointed to the timeliness of the ISID given the rise of China and India.

“It will not be a shift without conflict,” he said. “Both have a sense of growth and entitlement, they are not negligible.”

Mehta expressed hope that development policy-makers and practitioners to be more critical of the various assumptions held within the field, and called on the development community to be more aware of state actions.

“The most representative and participatory states are not necessarily the most responsive,” he said.

Other attendees at the Institute launch include McGill President Heather Munro-Blum, McGill Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi, Canadian International Development Agency President Margaret Briggs, and International Development Research Centre President David Malone, the Right Honourable Joe Clark.

Roughly seventy people – mostly academics and practitioners – were present for the opening ceremonies at the Omni Hotel, with more joining in on Tuesday panels offering perspectives from donor agencies, non-state actors in development, various development institutions, and from youth practitioners, lasting throughout the day.

In his keynote address, Save the Children CEO David Morley acknowledged the privilege of speaking about poverty while conference delegates enjoyed a decadent three-course catered lunch.

Adam Matheson, U3 International Development studies commented on the elegance of the lunch.

“I understand the need to have a professional, formal conference to attract important speakers and guests; but a lavish 3 course meal while we listened to statistics on world hunger and squandered aid money seemed a little ironic.”

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The voice came from one of 50 students organized by Students Taking a Stand for Medicine and Peace, (STAMP) a grassroots organization of McGill medical students that arose spontaneously in the last two weeks.

STAMP member and McGill medical student Myrill Solaski explained that the organization staged the protest in direct response to the recent cholera epidemic

“Our focus is on medicine. It’s an awareness campaign to fight cholera, which is spreading through Zimbabwe and even across neighbouring borders.”

Over 3,000 Zimbabweans have died from cholera in an outbreak that began six months ago, and infection rates are now approaching 70,000. Treatment costs roughly ten cents per person per day, and consists of oral rehydration therapy – a simple water and salt (or sugar) combination.

In addition to raising awareness about the crisis and funds for Medecins Sans Frontieres’s immediate medical relief response, STAMP is also petitioning Stephen Harper to join the humanitarian response to the crisis.

STAMP’s petition describes the cholera crisis as a Man-Made disaster, fallout from the Zimbabwean government’s failure to serve its most basic state functions for its citizens, according to a report released by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). In their petition, STAMP claims “endless political neglect” is fuelling the crisis.

The list of collapsed systems in Zimbabwe is long: basic sanitation, clean water, and health services; the monetary and economic systems; the system of food supply; a free media; and not least of all, an accountable system of democratic governance.

Foreigners and Zimbabweans alike hope that a new government coalition will provoke response to the health crisis. Yesterday, Morgan Tsvangirai allied his political opponent, long-time President Mugabe, becoming Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, in a controversial and highly anticipated power-sharing arrangement. They have yet to settle the hotly contested ministerial divisions within the arrangement.

Zuwa Matondo, a Zimbabwean and U3 McGill Political Science and International Development Studies student present at the rally, warned against simplifying the problem in his country by blaming only Mugabe.

“The causal links are wrong or are incomplete. It is so frustrating as a young African to see what people here are told about Africa. It’s not as simple as pointing a finger at Mugabe.”

Matondo exclaimed, “What does little Mugabe have to do with thirteen million people [who live in Zimbabwe]?” He insisted that Zimbabwe’s economic and health problems can not be unequivocally linked to just one man.

President Mugabe has been in power since the nation declared independence from Britain in 1980. He has repeatedly been accused of corruption, thuggery, and violence.

Mugabe has vowed not to leave power until the land was reclaimed from the white, European settlers and returned to the black majority. Drastic land reforms pursued, which forced white farmers off the land they cultivated.

“There is no denying mismanagement,” Matondo explained, “But you cannot draw a simple causal line.” The spurious logic Matondo warned against says that if Mugabe vanished so too would the epidemic. Instead, Matondo pointed to geography climate, colonialism, and dictatorship, as factors in addition to the rule of Mugabe that have combined to create the cholera epidemic and poverty in Zimbabwe.

STAMP co-founder Hannah Thomas admitted, “We are ignorant of the larger political issues. There are a lot of factors responsible for the suffering of Zimbabweans.”

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Sung-spoken in the soft, deep voice of my dad, these words lulled me to sleep during my childhood. This Christmas, on a frozen lake in the northern Ontario bush, I struggled to recall these once-familiar words.

The children and grandchildren of my Grand-Papa Jean-Louis and Grand-Maman Réjeanne are all gathered around the makeshift double-table at my Matante Julie’s home. Tortière, a traditional French Canadian meat pie, is settling in our bellies. In happy disorder, my dad and his four sisters launch into song with their parents. They are searching for the music of their childhood. They catch threads of old French folk tunes mid-verse, stringing them together like patchwork. With the exception of during the “chansons à répondre” songs, in which I echo my Grand-Papa’s voice, I am rarely able to sing along. I haven’t learned as many of these songs as my cousins, who remained around Sudbury. Like much of my franco-Ontarian identity, familiar words dissolve into a nostalgic fog. At 22 in Quebec, my francophone identity feels weaker now than it did when I was running around the playground of my French elementary school in southern Ontario.

My sister Kate and I are the tenth generation to follow the son of a Parisian couple, Barthélémie Janson and Jeanne du Voisin, to find a home in Canada. My grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-papa (that is seven generations of grandpas), Pierre Janson, arrived in Quebec in the 1680s. A mysterious name change and a few generations of craftsmen later, the family moved west to settle in the bilingual, nickel-mining villages surrounding Sudbury.

There is still a strong francophone presence that extends west of Quebec, populating the northern parts of Ontario and Manitoba. These pockets of “francophonie” outside of Ottawa, nestled amid the blueberries, barns, and wood-burning stoves of the north, are often forgotten, I suspect. They become vivid to me only a few times a year – usually, when some occasion to celebrate gathers our family to my dad’s childhood home: the massive and myriad weddings of my Dad’s fifty-odd cousins; or the holidays that are marked by infinite quarts of wild blueberries Grand-Papa Jean-Louis picks from his backyard bush, as well as the 100th anniversary of La Grange Lapalme, the barn built by my arrière-arrière-Pépère Israel and his second wife Luména Desgroseilliers in 1901. Of their 12 children, it is my father’s Pépère Adéa and Memère Éva who took over the farm where my own Grand-Papa Jean-Louis was raised.

Raised in southwestern Ontario as the daughter of a bilingual father and English mother, I sometimes feel distanced from my roots. The francophone community in Waterloo is not very audible. My bilingual home does not mix languages in the “franglais” style of immersion programs so much as through regular battles between the two tongues. My mom encourages us to preserve our second language, but becomes justifiably frustrated when we speak in French while she’s in the room. My dad objects to his daughters’ lazy reversion to English if the alternative is to flounder in French. This linguistic struggle became more pronounced when I graduated from a unilingual francophone elementary school into an immersion high school. Subsequently, the bilingual fluency of my stroller days was lost to too-complicated ideas that flourished more quickly than did my slowly maturing French vocabulary. My decision to come to Montreal is an obvious attempt to renew this fluency.

In Quebec, however, I am defensive of my franco Ontarian identity. I admit that my grammar would make my Grand-Maman Réjeanne cringe if she wasn’t such a good Catholic, but still, I’ll never shy from a debate with a separatist. Neither the Quebecois cashier at the dépanneur, nor my Parisian neighbour recognize my accent. Both insist on switching to English to relieve me of what they perceive as a feeble attempt at their language. “Temiskaming, Algoma, Sudbury, Cochrane… là aussi ils parlent français!” I want to remind them of Ontario’s vibrant francophone communities. They respond with a correction, “En ces lieux, vous faites quoi [avec votre langue]?”

Nevertheless, I am happy to continue butchering the language with my dirty dialect and garbled grammar. I may be an ordinary white protestant anglophone – but I am also the daughter of a long line of brave and rugged craftsmen, lumberjacks, and Kings’ Daughters who make me fiercely grateful to claim French as a language of my own. Sometimes I romanticize that there was enough magic in the northern bush to grant me ties to all three of our country’s founding fathers.

Our cultural diversity is precious, and I cling to mine with growing curiosity, searching for a sense of self. Above all, no matter who was born to whom or who touched what first, this is what makes me Canadian: the ability to celebrate the folk songs, the meat pies, and the barn parties of every people, in a country that is shared. I am afraid that until recently, I have undervalued my own identity while admiring the exotic ones of Pakistani, Kenyan, Bajan, and Chinese friends. I will never turn down an invitation to dance to Salam-E-Ishq at Khushali, but it is about time I sort out the lyrics that fill the lungs of my northen Ontarian relatives with breath and song.

I have asked my dad for Christmases consecutive to record the lullabies he sang to me as a girl. So far, he refuses. But I am French – I will persist.

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Initiated on December 15, 2008, the service, known as the respite program, provides a small, private room to guests refused elsewhere for a period of 72 hours in an effort to reintegrate them back into the general shelter system. The urgency of such a program is marked by the death of André Gagnon, who died on a park bench from sub-zero temperatures in late December, days after the program began.

The Réseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinérantes de Montréal (RAPSIM), a coalition that defends homeless rights, hopes that the inclusive nature of the respite program will attract those who previously avoided city services.

“The minimum is to offer a place where they can spend the night out of the cold…and to help them to take more long term steps,” explained RAPSIM member Patricia Viannay.

While emergency mechanisms have existed since 2003 to guarantee a bed to anyone who requests one, according to Cyril Morgan, Director of the Welcome Home Mission – an organization that reaches out to the homeless – many still choose to sleep outside or are refused access to shelters.

“We found that many times, men get turned away because they were not received properly or because they have trouble getting their story across. They need somebody who will sit down with them and will say, ‘look, what’s your problem, how can we help you, and where will we go from here?’” Morgan said.

While intoxication, violence, disorderly behaviour, and drug use are often-cited reasons for refused access, RAPSIM suggested that the homeless are often refused for reasons more complicated than these labels suggest.

“[Refusal] is related to a combination of problems: substance abuse issues are mixed with mental health issues,” explained Viannay, adding that compound problems complicate the shelter’s response to their case.

Morgan explained that the respite program aims to improve the allocation of city beds, since most nights they are left empty as Montrealers prefer to sleep on the street.

“I don’t know of anybody who has requested a bed in Montreal, and [for whom] none were found,” Morgan said.

To date, the respite program has seen the Pavillion Patricia MacKenzie add two beds for women and Welcome Hall add four more for men to provide the respite service. Roughly a dozen people have used the service so far.

Jacques Bertrand, also of RAPSIM, regretted that economic constraints have prevented the creation of a new location catering specifically to the needs of respite guests, thus requiring an intensification of existing infrastructures instead.

“What we did was less spectacular. The work was done quickly,” he said, adding that city institutions consulted only briefly before taking action.

According to Viannay, there are few real alternatives to shelters in Montreal. Inadequate fallbacks include cafés, open stairways, bus shelters, park benches, garbage dumpsters, heating vents, or the underside of sandwich boards. There exists no legal way to force the homeless into shelters if they decline. The city seeks to catch part of the population neglected by the shelter system with the respite program.

Rejent, a man living on the street since his wife died six years ago, expressed no desire to seek shelter in a city institution, describing them as depressing. He was not convinced that the public is concerned with the circumstances of the homeless.

“We die like flies, and the world doesn’t care. We are a disposable community,” he said.

Funding for the respite program – provided by the province and the city – will expire at the end of the winter, but Matthey Pearce of the Old Brewery Mission, a shelter in Old Montreal, stressed the need for it to be extended indefinitely. “While it may be true that you won’t die of the cold on the streets of Montreal in July, there are other reasons why you might be victimized and assaulted, and at risk in the summer. So we think this service should be yearlong,” he said.

The city resurrected the model for the respite project from L’Echelle, a pilot project run by the Old Brewery Mission a few years ago. L’Echelle ran out of funds and closed operations at the end the end of the winter, and the respite program will likely go the same way.

Click on the audio link above for the audio version of this report produced in collaboration with CKUT!

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Wente argues, “We have romanticized indigenous culture so much that it is often described (especially in native studies courses) as morally superior…. Anyone who questions the widespread belief that aboriginals originated in North America (rather than Africa, like the rest of us) is bound to be accused of disrespect and cultural insensitivity.”

Her piece was met with a knee-jerk objection from a Facebook group “Fire Margaret Wente (and Dick Pound),” that describes the article as “racist screed” and swelled rapidly to include over 3,000 members. The group’s description reads, “Wente’s right-wing commentary has long been inflammatory and notable for its scant regard for serious research or facts, but this column has taken her over the edge.”

I am startled by this reaction to a controversial piece of journalism. Why should Wente be the scapegoat for our own inability to discuss the circumstances of indigenous people today? Lambasting Wente’s piece and demanding that she be fired are red herrings; rather than prove the point that we shy from critical examination of ourselves, we should instead find a way to have a politically important debate in a respectful and constructive way.

Wente’s piece creates this opportunity and signals the urgency for us to take it. Wente called our ability to assess and respond to tough issues into question. And our natural reaction is to silence the woman because we disagree? This can’t be right.

While controversial, the piece dared to challenge the constitutionally embedded stance toward the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, that they are equal but different. The only reason to silence Wente is if we want to remain recoiled behind our romantic claims of “equal but different,” a distinction not void of meaning but void of obligation.

“Equal but different” is intended to recognize the authority of aboriginal peoples’ claim to a separate political status, but it shouldn’t negate all Canadians from engaging in a discussion about a future that is nevertheless shared, no matter how different we may (not) be. If we treat this phrase as an escape clause, then our complacency with the status quo will be paralyzing.

Diversity and complacency are not ideal bedmates. To abstain from questioning whether our romanticism of aboriginal culture is damaging or to avoid a dialogue about the nature of aboriginal engagement in the “modern world” only pigeonholes indigenous communities to their historical expressions. Our first peoples are not an asterisk in history, once thriving communities we recall with nostalgia, they are alive and living – and Canadian history unfolding has fundamentally distorted their ability to thrive in the conditions of the globalized, modernized world.

I am worried that as Canadians we are developing some bizarre, neo-xenophobic fear of offending an “other” with whom we are not sure how to interact, but the best way to preserve our diversity is not to shield it from critical discussion. We need to find new ways to nurture aboriginal communities rather than to idealize their past and allow them to stagnate. The same is true of Western culture; no belief system is excluded from the need for constant reevaluation if it wants to flourish.

We discount our intelligence if we perpetuate a habit of underutilizing our brainpower or if we click “Join Group” in a moment of superficial agreement with some of the key phrases (“racist screed”) that jumped out at us from the screen.

No debt will be serviced by firing a journalist. All this accomplishes is distance from two problems. First, we are afraid of what we might say because we don’t know how to say it in an informed and respectful way. Second, Western values have chiseled away at aboriginal culture so persistently that it is becoming impossible to preserve a traditional way of life – and we are afraid of admitting this. So, what comes next? And why do we let this question make us so squeamish?

It will be intelligence and sensitivity – not sensitivity and silence – that will allow Canadians to have a conversation that is 141 years overdue.

Hayley Lapalme is a U3 IDS and Political Science student currently enjoying the Barbados Field Study Semester. She can be reached at hayley.lapalme@gmail.com, and would like to thank those who provided feedback on the piece. She’s a real people-person.

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Aynsley Merk, Ian Vogel, Tim Dowling, and Johanna Paquin have planned their diet exclusively around food coming from an area bounded by Burlington, Vermont to the South, Jean Baptiste to the North, Ottawa to the West, and Sherbrooke to the East. An online blog tracks their experience.

“I don’t think about what we can’t have, but what we can have,” said Merk. “I look forward to what will come into season, and it changes every week.”

Eating locally both saves on fossil fuels burned to import food and supports fair payment for farmers. Supporters of the movement swear that local food just simply tastes better; naturally-grown produce arrives fresh in comparison to fruits and vegetables cooped up during long-distance travel.

The Greening Mcgill group was inspired by Vancouver duo of Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, who documented their year-long experiment with local food in the bestseller The 100 Mile Diet.

McGill’s experimenting locavores searched for local food by metro, foot, phone, and on the Internet.

Participants found it challenging to make time to buy produce directly from local farms and expanded their food diversity beyond an initial reliance on eggs and potatoes.

Vogel explained that misleading food labels made it difficult to be sure that products were made locally.

“Foods are often labelled ‘Produit du Quebec,’ but it might just be the processing that is local and not the ingredients,” he said.

While all four admitted to spending far more time in the kitchen than normal, they maintain it’s possible to adapt to local eating.

“As long as you are willing to change your lifestyle and diet a bit, you could do this diet at any time if you wanted,” Dowling said.

The group avoided processed goods and mega stores like Provigo, which tend to carry imported and long-distance products.

The students explained that local eating doesn’t break the bank. They could afford pricier goods like honey and local, organic Liberty dairy products with the money saved by cutting out caffeine and take-out. All participants saved money due to the near-impossibility of eating at restaurants.

For good sources of local foods, the group suggested FrigoVert, McGill’s Organic Campus, Jardin de la Renaissance, community garden projects, networking and meal-sharing with other locavores, and dumpster diving.

Matthew Hawco, a volunteer at Organic Campus, suggested the group’s weekly food baskets as a convenient source of local produce. The baskets are stocked with fruits and vegetables from Farm True Food Ecostere, a family farm an hour outside of Montreal.

“Through the winter we have root vegetables and even apples, which can be stored in a cold room,” Hawco said, explaining that basket orders wane from almost 100 to about 30 through the cold months, when favourite produce items like leafy greens are no longer available.

While none of the students are planning to commit strictly to the diet once the experiment is up, there is a consensus that they are more willing and better equipped to seek out local foods in the future. Greening McGill will amass the tips and experiences of these students in a distributable form.

“I haven’t eaten this well since I got here in September. The meals have been wonderful and often the four of us will meet and make meals,” said Dowling. “Now it is sort of becoming routine, I don’t even feel like I am being challenged, because I have it figured out enough.”

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