The McGill administration, SSMU, and the Milton-Parc Citizens Committee (MPCC) have together coordinated the Community Action and Relations Endeavor (CARE), and seek to provide a basis for collaborations and consultations between the three groups in the future.

MPCC member Helene Brissone, who made the evening’s opening remarks, emphasized the issues of alcohol consumption and McGill’s orientation week. It was a matter that dominated dialogue at the meeting.

SSMU VP (External) Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan, who helped organize CARE, stressed the importance of first-year students’ attitudes. “Frosh Week is so important because it is the biggest event that happens all year, but it’s also the first impression for thousands of freshmen who are coming in,” he said.

CARE’s framework document, presented at the session, suggested an annual schedule of meetings and recreational activities – including a barbeque and a fair – to increase contact between students and residents. Ronderos-Morgan also introduced the concept of “Frosh street teams,” which he explained might involve pairs of students and willing residents present on neighbourhood intersections to offer Frosh participants directions and water, as well as encourage good behaviour.

SSMU VP (Internal) Alex Brown remarked that it was important to teach upper-year students about showing respect to the community so that younger students might follow their example. She also noted that she was working with the University’s First-Year Office so that new workshops might teach students about the Milton-Parc community and its history.

“It’s going to be a slow education process,” Brown said. “It’s about creating a new culture, not just in the first week, but throughout the year, throughout the community.”

—Jeff Bishku-Aykul

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One of the central law enforcement issues in the borough is the national drug policy, which some claim affects poor and minority youth disproportionately.

Jaggi Singh, an activist with the Montreal immigrant advocacy organization No One Is Illegal, discussed both drug offenders and illegal gamblers, saying that the groups are disproportionately convicted in poor neighbourhoods – despite also existing in wealthier ones.  He added that a police crackdown on a dice game in a park was the first incident leading to the shooting of Fredy Villanueva.

“There’s a whole double standard whereby youth of colour and other marginalized youth are targeted for minor drug offences while police turn a blind eye to middle class drug use, which is just as open and acknowledged,” Singh noted. 
“What the criminalization of drugs does is provide a pretext for the police to practice both racial profiling and social profiling.  There’s a clear phenomenon where prisons are full of youth of colour for minor drug offences, and it’s a cycle which the police help perpetuate,” he added.

According to Eugene Oscapella, a criminology professor at the University of Ottawa, policing and convicted drug offences are closely related, as law enforcement officials often exercise their own judgment in choosing whether to enforce drug laws.

“Police have enormous discretion in enforcing laws,” Oscapella said.  “That’s part of the way the police operate in this country, and most Western countries. They’re subject to direction from above in the police force, but police as a body have enormous discretion. You could be smoking a joint in front of a police officer.  Even if he busts you he may not charge you; he may just take your stuff away.  So much of it depends on the local community,”  he added.

He added that drug offenders are unfairly targeted in poor neighbourhoods as opposed to wealthy ones, because deals in neighbourhoods like Westmount are more likely to take place behind closed doors.

In recent years grassroots organizations such as Montreal Nord Republik have formed in response to increasing tensions between police and the neighbourhood.

Singh hoped that citizen pressure would eventually move the City’s police to change their behaviour. 
“The Villaneuva case is the tip of the iceberg.  It’s a microcosm of what happens on a daily basis.  At least what we have in this situation is a coroner’s inquest.  We’re seeing all the contradictions expose themselves,” said Singh.

 “The Montreal police are notorious for their arrogance and their impunity and their ability to squirm out of any kind of accountability.  But I feel that it’s through the strength of social movements that we can turn the tide,” Singh added.

The Service de police de la ville de Montréal  were unavailable for comment.

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The McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) first learned about the University’s intent to implement such a policy at a June 4 meeting.

According to the union, the University’s administration began urging the Staff Benefits Advisory Committee (SBAC) to cut employee benefits costs by $1 million per year. University officials publicly indicated this position during the fall.

Following a November 23 vote by the University’s Board of Governors approving such a measure, MUNACA released a letter stating that employees already financed half the cost of their own benefit package, and noting that the University’s cuts represented a saving of approximately $1.3 million, a greater amount than their original target.

Upon further discussion in December between the administration and several organizations, McGill agreed to cut employee benefits by precisely $1 million.

Groups involved in the discussion included MUNACA and the McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT), a non-union organization to which approximately 60 per cent of University faculty belong.

In addition, dental coverage for retirees, which had been removed from employee benefits in November, was once again incorporated into the benefit plan.

“They agreed to make any adjustments due to the bad PR they received,” MUNACA president Robert Whittaker said. “I don’t think that they are ashamed or regretful. I think they are just upset for the bad PR they received for it.”

The cuts still stipulate that “out-of-pocket” maximums – the highest possible fee paid by employees for their benefits – have tripled, increasing from $150 to $400 for individuals and from $300 to $800 for families.

However, Faculty of Law professor Richard Janda, president of the MAUT, was pleased with the discussion process, despite the University’s unilateral decision to modify the employee benefits package.

“We did indeed reopen the issue and come back with an agreed-upon solution,” Janda said. “For me the take home lesson is that a faculty association is still operating within a collegial environment.”

Janda also believes that the University’s administration faces a valid challenge from the Quebec government for fear of losing grant money.

“The University has explained for the past two years that in its arrangement with the Quebec government, it must arrive with a balanced budget,” he said. “Unless the University proceeds to balance this budget, it will have less operating budget,” Janda said.

Whittaker asserted that the SBAC must be restructured so as to better defend employee interests. The SBAC is comprised of representatives from MUAT, MUNACA, the McGill Union of Non-Academic Staff Association, and other organizations.

“The structure of the SBAC will have to be looked at and changed,” Whittaker argued. “We sit on a board that is incapable of making a decision. Even if it does, they don’t support the cuts.”

While groups like MAUT can promote faculty interests, professors have not negotiated a collective agreement with the University. In contrast with many Canadian schools, McGill does not have a faculty union. Yet Janda does not believe this necessarily weakens the community.

“Most universities in Canada have become unionized because faculties have concluded that they are, at least for some purposes, in an adversarial position with the administration,” said Janda. “If you believe that the University is this self-governing community – students are participants, faculty members are participants – then you say this operates more like a polity than an adversarial structure.”

Associate Vice-Principal (Human Resources) Lynn Gervais and Secretary General Stephen Strople were unavailable for comment.

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During the appeal, Montreal lawyer Brent Tyler represented 25 families struggling with the law.Despite the widespread description of Bill 104 as closing a “loophole,” Tyler said he did not agree with this perspective. Instead he viewed the choice of parents to send their children to a public school after attending private school as an issue of constitutional freedom.

“The exercise of a constitutional right should never be considered a loophole,” Tyler said. “It’s a question of giving proper priority to the constitution.”

Tyler maintained that many francophone parents also choose to send their children to English schools because the quality of bilingual education is better at these schools. About a quarter of the families represented in his case were francophone, Tyler claimed.

“They want bilingual children, and the French school system is pitiful in teaching English as a second language,” Tyler said.

Enrolment in English schools has dropped in recent years. Like Tyler, the Quebec English School Boards Association, which intervened in the Supreme Court case, believed that Bill 104 is responsible for this change.

The organization wrote an online press release stating that “Bill 104 eliminates access to English schools for at least 500 students per year – primarily in the greater Montreal region. Those students are essential to our system, and the consequential impact on the French school system would be very modest.”

One of the families represented by Tyler includes Montreal mother Audrey Smith, who moved to Canada from Jamaica around two decades ago. Smith believed that the system can be fixed only if both English and French are taught equally.

“You think you’re coming to Canada, and Canada is bilingual. I figured it would be predominantly French here, but that English would be spoken and learnt by all, so that you could function well in both,” Smith said. “It’s extremely easy to fix the situation…to have French Canadians learning English where they will be able to function in English and have anglophones learning French to a point that they will function.”

While Quebec has been busy debating its language laws, the province’s demographics have also rapidly changed. Fewer Quebeckers speak English as a native language than French, but the number of allophones, those whose first language is neither French nor English, is rapidly rising. 75 per cent of recent immigrants, those who arrived between 2001 and 2006, are allophones.

Both Smith and President of the Quebec English School Boards Association Debbie Horrocks hope to be included in the process of determining what legislation might replace Bill 104.

“What a year is going to mean, I don’t know,” Horrocks said. “We don’t have to be included in the process, but we have sent a letter to Premier Charest saying we want to be part of the discussion coming up with the new legislation.”

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The dean of McGill’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Chandra Madramootoo, introduced the event, which featured speakers from Ghana, Haiti, Central Asia, India, Nigeria, and Canada.

Mukuteswara Gopalakrishnan, Secretary General of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, mentioned that the financial crisis has presented a significant challenge.

“India could withstand the impacts of 2008’s economic downturn, particularly with respect to food security…. However, this year, things are going to be much more difficult,” Gopalakrishnan said.

He also said that while India has made progress in areas such as food production and caloric intake, hunger remains a serious problem.

Gopalakrishnan explained that the majority of farms rely on rainfall, and that deficient rain in recent months may cause Indian food production to suffer.

“India has made impressive strides,” Gopalakrishnan said. “But we must also simultaneously admit that the total riddance of food insecurity is still at a distance.”

Victor Dukhovny, director of the Interstate Coordination Water Commission of Central Asia, asserted that Central Asia’s governments must make progress in protecting their farmers financially.

“If you want to have food security, we need to protect the farmer by a proper system of financial support,” Dukhovny said.

Dukhovny argued that the amount of irrigated land in the region decreased following the collapse of the Soviet Union because of a failure to subsidize agriculture appropriately, and went on to cite the European Union and United States as examples of countries with successful agriculture subsidy programs.

Dukhovny also focused on water’s role in agriculture, and suggested the creation of a global campaign to strengthen water rights with regards to irrigation.

Daniel Uza, vice-chancellor of the University of Agriculture in Nigeria, offered a description of his nation’s efforts to ensure food security.

Nigeria, Uza noted, has experienced an increase in food prices as a result of government efforts to subsidize tractors, irrigate more land, and manage livestock.

Uza stressed the nation’s need for improved farming technology and emphasized the Nigerian government’s focus on private-public partnerships to achieve its goals.

“Because of the stable, democratic government which we have had in Nigeria for the past 10 years, we are very hopeful that the food security situation in Nigeria will continue to improve. And it is our desire that in the year 2020, Nigeria will be one of the most developed 20 countries.”

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“That’s how big cricket is in Pakistan,” explained Shreryar Rasool, a U1 Economics student hoping to play cricket at McGill. “I don’t think any other country has an example of such a loyal cricket fan.” One could debate who the world’s biggest cricket fan is. But there is no doubt that the baseball-like sport played on large oval fields and with bats reminiscent of paddles has fans across the globe. While it remains relatively unpopular in North America, the International Cricket Council has 104 member nations and the 2007 Cricket World Cup sold nearly 700,000 tickets. The sport has even inspired a community of fans and players at McGill. Both the McGill Cricket Club (MCC) and the Bangladeshi Cricket Team (BCT) allow students to participate in cricket games on campus. Abu Sayem, a McGill ’08 alum who works with the University’s Centre for Research on Children and Families, has been playing since he was 6 and taking formal lessons since he was in grade 9. Sayem, who grew up in Bangladesh, helped form the BCT in 2005 after meeting members of the Bangladeshi Students Association who played the game.

“Since we have been playing this [game] since our childhood, it’s like a seed inside us,” said Sayem. “Wherever we go, we want to play. We grew up with cricket. There are a lot of memories around it, of winning, of being victorious,” Sayem added.

Aside from some gear donated by the Bangladeshi Students Association in 2007, the BCT buys all its own equipment. They try to hold games four days a week during the summer and early fall.

The MCC gained SSMU club status in 2008, and has continued to attract interest from McGill students from all around the world, including several from the West Indies, England, South Asia, and Kenya. But that doesn’t mean the group’s had an easy time finding places to play. Instead, they resort to using the entrance of the Fine Arts Core Education School opposite the Adams building, as well as some less-than-ideal spots on campus.

“McGill is very small and we don’t have a proper field,” said Sayem. “All we have is the lower field. Throughout the summer the rugby field is closed and in winter it is impossible to play cricket.” Sayem also noted the team has played at the reservoir field, but that the grass is sometimes too long.

The club organizes tournaments twice a semester – usually at the beginning of the fall semester and at the end of the winter semester. Each tournament attracts around 60 players, approximately seven on each team.

The group plays its own variation of cricket using custom rules and a tennis ball covered in electrical tape. And since cricket games can last up to five days, they opt for shorter matches.

The MCC tries to accommodate all players interested in participating. When the games take place can also depend on people’s academic schedules. The club’s Vice-President of Communications, Varum Sharma, U3 Chemical Engineering, uses Facebook in order to keep in touch with players. A large number of cricket fans and players at McGill have a connection to South Asia, where cricket is a major pastime. Despite the game’s introduction in the Indian subcontinent in the 19th century by British colonists, the game has found widespread popularity in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In India, there is even a 24-hour sports network, STAR Cricket, devoted to around-the-clock coverage of the game.

MCC President Usman Khalid, originally from Pakistan (U3 Electrical Engineering) said, “People are passionate about cricket. It’s like if you go to Europe you see soccer everywhere. It’s the same. Cricket is the soccer of Southeast Asia.”

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In the past, McGill professors have collaborated with the American and Canadian militaries, although this may cause conflicts with the policy’s preamble, which states that “[Research] should be used to increase knowledge in ways that do not harm society.”

In the fall, Demilitarize McGill, a student group against military-funded research at McGill, learned that the administration was updating the existing policy, and decided to create their own draft for consideration after reviewing two drafts from William Foster, Associate Provost (Policies and Procedures).

According to Cleve Higgins, U3 Sociology and IDS and a member of Demilitarize McGill, the last draft they received, dated on February 2, is not adequate.

“We’ve [suggested making] it mandatory for research that is funded or in collaboration with a military agency to go to [a review] committee,” Higgins explained.

McGill currently requires professors receiving grants or contracts from military organizations to evaluate the consequences of their own research. The February 2 draft proposal stipulates that military-related projects must receive the approval of a research review committee, although the law gives the Board of Governors discretion to approve or reject all contracts, whether related to military research or not.

However, according to Higgins, professors could choose whether or not to have their work plans approved by a research review committee, something he believes does not fully guarantee the humane application of university research.

“The military is the only institution in our society that is specifically intended to cause harm to people,” Higgins argued. “If this research is for the military, [there] is a flag going off about harm.”

The new draft of McGill’s Regulations on Research Policy also contains a revised preamble that does not address research that might result in inflicting harm.

In a 2007 letter to University of Western Ontario Vice President (Research and International Relations) Ted Hewitt, McGill Vice Principal (Research and International Relations) Denis Therien asserted that it is difficult to trace direct harm to research and explained his opinion that military research can often benefit society. He also indicated his belief that academic freedom must be respected when regulating research.

“Academic freedom demands that, so long as all existing review criteria are met, we uphold our faculty members’ right to pursue research as they see fit and that restrictions based upon whether or not some may find particular avenues of research objectionable should be resisted,” Therien wrote.

In the letter, Therien also stated his opposition to any Canadian body that might provide guidelines for the approval of military research.

In the meantime, Higgins is hoping for increased student interest in McGill’s military research policies.

“For students in general, a research conduct policy on its own seems pretty bland, but when it’s put in the context of military research…then it’s an issue for people.”

Therien was not available for comment on McGill’s research policy.

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This rate is not unusual, according to Dr. Laurie Taylor, the Director of Operations of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute. Nurses fare only slightly better, according to the audit, scoring an overall rate of around 40-50 per cent.

The issue of sufficient hand washing in health professions hits home due to C. difficile, a potentially fatal bacteria that can cause fever and diarrhea. Canada has taken heavy hits from C. difficile; it spread like wildfire through Quebec hospitals and nursing homes in 2003 and 2004, and was responsible for nearly 2,000 deaths.

According to Wendy Nicklin, President and CEO of Accreditation Canada – a national, non-profit, independent organization that helps develop health safety standards – C. difficile has become a bigger problem during the past decade.

“There’s been an increased focus on infection,” noted Nicklin. “We’ve seen an increase in C. difficile and MRSA [another dangerous bacteria that often spreads in hospitals], and because of this, experts in infection prevention and control are trying to understand why. Hand washing has become an area of focus [for] health care organizations to improve their rates.”

A McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) employee, who wished to remain anonymous, was unfamiliar with the source of the data but offered the opinion that the variation in rates of hand washing are due to differences between high stress and low stress areas in the hospital.

“When you have [doctors] running around in the emergency department, these people are working very hard,” the health employee said. “Washing hands 100 per cent of the time is virtually impossible. In some areas, it’s easier than others.”

However, emergency environments such as MUHC’s intensive care units were the areas of the hospital in which 60 per cent of doctors – the highest of any area in the hospital – washed their hands in between seeing patients.

Taylor warned that varying institutions’ statistics can mean different things.

“[It depends] on how the data was collected – you have to be careful about comparing data between different organizations,” she said. “You have to be careful about how many observations there were and what time of the day and night they were being [collected].”

Nicklin noted that any organization with hand washing rates similar to MUHC could be prone to infection problems – though MUHC’s rate of handwashing is average.

“I would say in any health-care organization [infections could take hold]. I’m not sure the MUHC is any different from other health centres. I’m not sure that I would single out the MUHC,” Nicklin said.

Taylor suggested that patients should help themselves by keeping an eye on their doctors.

“You can be your own advocate when it comes to hand hygiene,” she said. “There is nothing wrong with asking your provider if they have washed their hands before they examine you.”

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The ads, published February in The Daily, McGill Tribune, and the Montreal Gazette, accused University administrators of refusing to acknowledge support staffs’ contributions on campus by denying what the union deemed as a fair salary raise while adding five new, high-paying positions to the McGill administration.

Vice-President of MUNACA Raynald Lepage explained that MUNACA would not have a problem with administrators’ high salaries as long as workers received a satisfactory wage increase, something that he saw as entirely possible.

“McGill will always claim that they have no money for political reasons. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have money, it just means they don’t want to use money on this specific demand,” Lepage said.

On February 19, Francois Roy, Vice-Principal (Administration and Finance), responded with an online press release criticizing the ads for misleading readers. The document sought to clarify the context behind the creation of several new positions and defended the large salaries of several McGill administrators – especially those attracting medical research.

“Medical research is one of the major drivers of this University, something that brings with it a significant amount of funding and employment opportunities,” Roy explained in the press release.

Lepage defended MUNACA’s campaign, asserting that disagreements over the validity of the union’s claims were merely an issue of presentation. According to the vice-president, ads were intended to motivate the administration to make progress with the union.

“The ads are only a tool to get a response from the University. They have to serve the purpose that they strike a nerve and we get to talking again….The only thing that can move this administration will be their image. Attack their image and they will move.”

The advertisements are yet another event in a longstanding disagreement between the parties about the University’s proposed salary increases.

MUNACA’s ad in the Gazette cites McGill’s proposed salary increase for the union as two per cent, while the administration’s press release noted that the University has previously offered deals wage increases of two and a half and three per cent over three years.

According to Lepage, the discrepancy in cited figures is due to differing interpretations of wage increase proposals. Such agreements may result in varying wage increases for different employees through the use of both “scale increases,” which apply to all workers, and “automatic progression increases,” which do not apply to the highest earners in the union.

“McGill has made a fair offer, particularly given the economic downturn of the last several months,” Roy wrote.

The 1,700 member union has been vouching for a pay increase since December 2007.

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When discussing the conflict, if you call the situation in Israel “apartheid,” you can be sure someone will pounce on your back. Likewise, if you start talking about the “right of Israel to exist,” there’s no doubt in my mind that someone will note disproportionate civilian deaths in Gaza. And if you bring up the Palestinian women and children who have died as a result of recent Israeli military action, rest assured that others will reference Hamas’s shady history of using human shields. How did we get here?

For Israelis and Israel supporters, it may be a helpful to imagine living in Gaza: the poverty would likely overwhelm, the overcrowding nauseate, and the endless security checkpoints add insult to injury. Meanwhile, Palestinians and their sympathizers must understand how isolated the Israelis are. The nation has no real friends except for the U.S. – and it can be debated whether America’s staunch defense of Israel is heartfelt. Naturally, such an environment will breed Palestinians who feel insulted and oppressed by their neighbours and Israelis that compensate for their insecurities by holding overly aggressive attitudes.

Remember, defending one side in one instance and the other in another does not make you a hypocrite. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not a moral tennis match to see who has wronged more often, but a complicated clash stemming from a wide range of factors including Zionism, Anti-Arabism and Anti-Semitism, resource abundance, the military-industrial complex, and, let’s not forget, history. Though we can google our way to forming any argument our heart desires – and we do ––the reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict is probably more intricate than anything a jumble of one-sided facts can tell us.

Yet there is no need for despair. The human desire for peace is a timeless one, a desire stronger than any government policy that has ever existed. People everywhere must establish that peace in the Middle East is not a luxury, but a necessity. Then all other progress will follow.

After all, the fates of Israel and Palestinian territories are inexorably intertwined. What Palestinians need more urgently than even food or doctors is long-term peace. What Israel needs more than its highly advanced weapons is, again, peace.

In conclusion, I have a suggestion. Maybe it’s a little cheesy, but if Barack Obama can cruise into the White House with “Yes We Can,” then I’ll take my shot at forging peace in the Middle East with my own slogan.

In Hebrew, the word for peace, shalom, serves as a greeting. In Arabic, habibi is an affectionate colloquial term meaning something along the lines of “my dear.” Let’s put an end to the charged rhetoric on both sides and christen a new era in Israeli-Palestinian relations by welcoming one another and saying, “Shalom, Habibi.” It’s a step.

Jeff Bishku-Aykul is a U1 History student and long-time news writer, first time commentator. Send solutions to the conflict to jeffrey.bishku-aykul@mail.mcgill.ca.

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Both the Residences Department and Planning & Institutional Analysis – which is in charge of the physical planning of the University – refused to comment on the possible acquisition, consistent with a McGill policy of not confirming or denying any potential real estate purchases.

The Four Points Sheraton, a twenty-storey, four-star hotel located on Sherbrooke just east of Aylmer, includes 196 guest rooms and 13 meeting rooms.

The property belongs to the Mississauga-based Northampton Group, which owns 17 hotels in the US and Canada. Their CEO, Vinod Patel, did not return email and telephone requests for comment.

Hotel workers associated with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) have been on strike since August 25, 2008 over employee pay and benefits, and more recently, the use of scab workers. On August 29, the Quebec Labour Relations Board ordered the hotel to stop using several replacement workers, some of whom were identified as minors.

According to Lyle Stewart, a CSN spokesperson, the union had no information as to whether or not the property might be sold.

“It’s a rumour that circulated amongst hotel staff even before they went out on strike last summer, but nobody seems to know where it came from,” Stewart said.

Rising first-year demand for residences has led McGill to seek new properties in recent years. The University bought the Renaissance Hotel, now New Residence Hall, in 2003, and the Diocesan College building on University last spring.

According to Michael Porritt, Executive Director of Residences and Student Housing, the University is already leasing 200 spaces for residences due to to high first-year demands – which numbered 2,200 this year spread out across 13 undergraduate residences near the downtown campus. Many of those spaces are at 515 Ste. Catherine, a newly-constructed apartment building that rents exclusively to Montreal university students.

Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Morton Mendelson has previously stated that it is the University’s goal to expand the spaces available in the Residence system in order to accommodate upper year, graduate, exchange and visiting students.

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The updated version of the guidelines – which include an exemption clause outlining how a student may receive permission to visit prohibited country and clearer language describing rules regarding employment in foreign nations during study abroad – were revealed to the McGill Senate on January 21, at which Senators were invited to give feedback, though not their approval, before a finalized version of the guidelines is released by the end of February.

Senate voted to suspend the directive on November 5, demanding that it pass consultation with Senate’s steering committee before being approved, but the adminsitration claimed that the directive did not fall under Senate’s academic purview, and rendered the November vote void. However, a draft of travel guidelines was later sent to select members of the Senate for review over Winter Break.

According to Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Morton J. Mendelson, whose office drafted the travel directive in September 2008 and all of its subsequent updates, the number of students requiring exemptions will likely be so low that McGill can grant exemptions on a case-by-case basis. He cited schools such as the University of Saskatchewan and Duke University as having similar policies.

“In other universities that have this kind of exemption, the number of requests per year is about a dozen,” Mendelson said.

The guidelines follow travel advisories issued by Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) to determine where students can travel, prohibiting travel to countries or regions with a level-three “avoid all non-essential travel” or level-four “avoid all travel” warning. The exemption will only apply for level-three travel in which a student considers travelling to be essential. According to a clause in the present draft, exemptions must first be approved by the relevant faculty’s dean and department chair before undergoing review by the Deputy Provost, who can set conditions on approval.

SSMU VP University Affairs Nadya Wilkinson asserted that the approval process required for travel exemptions contributes toward an unwieldy bureaucracy.

“I know that [the deans and Professor Mendelson] are busy people,” Wilkinson said. “And I know that undergraduate travel to dangerous places is not something they want to [look at too quickly]. There will be less [exemptions], as it’s clear to students that their applications aren’t processed with haste.”

As some travel cases include examples in which a student would be prevented from travelling to their home country because it’s listed by DFAIT, Mendelson indicated that the exemption system could take this into account.

“Students with certain kinds of experience would be in a better position to have exemption than other students in a specific area,” he said.

Wilkinson explained that while the guidelines have become more reasonable, their creation was unnecessary.

“We do need guidelines that make sure students are informed and safe, but there has to be a much more local decision process that respects autonomy,” Wilkinson said. “My main issue with this is that students also care about safety and have the capacity to make informed decisions.”

Mendelson predicted that the finalized guidelines will mostly resemble those sent recently to the Senate for discussion.

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On November 5 the Ontario Highway Transport Board – a quasi-judicial administrative tribunal – ordered PickupPal to pay Trentway-Wagar, a subsidiary of inter-city bus company Canada Coach, $8,500 and $2,837 to the Board for “arrang[ing] the transportation of passengers in public vehicles by persons that are not holders of an operating licence.”

The Board decided that the Ontario- and Barbados-based company’s services did not fall under the definition of carpooling – strictly defined as travelling to and from home and work, with the same people each time, inside a municipal boundary, and with payment made no more frequently than weekly – because they provided “intercity service” in which “payment is made for each individual trip,” among other reasons.

Eric Dewhirst, co-founder of PickupPal, believed that while compensation is something that is privately sorted out by those who use his service, it was never the goal of his company to create a black market bus service.

“[Trentway-Wagar has] bus routes from Toronto to Montreal. The issue is that if people are riding together they are not taking the bus,” said Dewhirst. “What Trentway-Wagar is trying to do and has done in the past is use the definition of ‘carpool’ to shut down organizations such as ourselves.”

Trentway-Wagar hired a private investigator to arrange a ride through PickupPal, who organized the $60 trip that led to the fine.

PickupPal, which operates in 104 countries, allows people to arrange carpools – like other online bulletin boards such as Craigslist, also mentioned in the ruling as facilitating “illegal commercial ventures” – but does not operate any cars. PickupPal makes money solely by advertising on its web site, dropping the seven per cent commission it charged at its inception.

Dewhirst resented Ontario’s carpool laws, which he claimed are some of the strictest regulations anywhere in North America and Europe.

“We knew going in that this was the law. Our position was that if someone wants to take us on, then we’re just gonna fight. Because the laws have just got to change,” Dewhirst explained.

These regulations have troubled other Canadian carpooling services, such as Quebec-based Allo Stop, which was ordered to stop organizing shared rides to Ontario in 2000. Dewhirst said that while he saw the grim fate of carpooling services in the past – five people died in 2000 when an unlicensed bus and minivan operator’s vehicle rolled over after hitting a median on Highway 401 between Montreal and Toronto, prompting Trentway-Wagar to hire private investigators and send out cease-and-desist letters – he felt that using the internet and blogs to publicize PickupPal’s situation could help urge Ontario to reform its carpooling laws.

Bill 118, a “green transportation” amendment to the current law, would allow car owners to drive up to nine passengers between locations once a day, and permit the driver to collect enough money to cover gas costs.

Dewhirst predicted that the law will be amended in four to six months, but regretted that time had to be spent dealing with legal issues.

“[Trentway-Wagar] did not understand our model before they took us to court…. We believe that the bus company provides a vital service, so it would’ve been cool if they talked to us first, but they didn’t.”

Bob Nichols, media spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, would not comment on the current law. However, he indicated that it is the intention of Ontario’s government to make it easier to carpool.

“Certainly the government here is committed to environmentally friendly transportation options for people, and that’s why we’re proposing [Bill 118],” he said.

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Genevieve Fabio, spokesperson of Plateau-Mont-Royal, explained that it is illegal to lock bicycles around trees because the force exerted by the bike on the plant is potentially harmful.

“If its a tree, it’s alive,” Fabio said. “If you do something bad with your lock you ruin the trees. That’s why we have the rule and that’s why we enforce it.”

According to Le Journal de Montréal, the first major crackdown occurred in August when 15 bikes were confiscated. Ten more were seized in the last week of October.

The rule may apply anytime an inspector spots an offense, according to Fabio, and the rule applies everywhere in the borough. As of yet, bikes have only been reported confiscated from Mont-Royal and Parc avenues.

Fabio was unsure whether there was a fine, but said confiscated bicycles can be reclaimed at the pound.

According to McGill Bogdan Smarandache, U1 history, who repaired bikes over the summer at the Cycle Pop bike and repair shop on Rachel, the municipal legislation on locking bikes to trees is typical of the city’s negligence toward bicyclists.

“I do think it’s part of a bigger picture,” he said. “I think the reason that a lot of people are locking their bikes to trees is because there aren’t enough bike racks, or proper designs for bike racks.”

The city recognized the lack of parking spaces for bikes, and pledged to convert 10,000 parking metres into bike racks in the coming years. Whenever the city expands or creates new bike paths, additional spaces to lock bikes must be installed.

Another bicyclist in the Plateau, Harrison Wood, a second year McGill student who bikes in the Plateau area, said he felt enforcing the rule was unnecessary.

“I’ve locked my bike to a lot of trees,” Wood said. “Trees can take a lot, and it seems like the most of the ways that you could find to lock your tree to a bike couldn’t hurt it a lot. From that perspective it seems like a petty measure.”

While Fabio asserted that the rule is publicized and that inspectors are not required to post notices when a bike is confiscated, both student bicyclists were unaware of the rule.

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The house, situated in the former village of Shawbridge, north of Montreal, now part of Prévost, was owned by McGill for 54 years before being put up for sale earlier this year. SSMU informed the MOC of its eviction last spring, and the club left the house during a period of two weeks. While SSMU was able to pay for four months of storage rental for MOC, the organization was not willing to acquire property for just one club.

McGill Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson explained that while the University owns property outside of downtown Montreal – such as the Macdonald campus and the Bellairs Research Institute in Barbados – the MOC house was sold because it was a non-research-related facility serving a student club.

“The lease was up for renewal and when that happened we reviewed the holding. The holding was not on the McGill footprint and the function was not one of teaching or research,” Mendelson said.

“The house was in considerable disrepair and there were renovations that had to be made and so we just felt that it didn’t make sense for us to continue owning the house, and that was the primary reason,” Mendelson added. “The property was for the use of a student club, and as you know student clubs at McGill are independent of the University.”

The MOC established the Fondation plein air de Montreal – a not-for-profit corporation headed by McGill alum Ashley Wynne – to help buy back the house, and to overcome some of the legal challenges involved in acquiring property for a student club.

“Given the high turnover of SSMU and the club it was important to have the house owned and managed by those who would be around,” MOC President Alyssa Holland said.

Holland also noted that the community had long-standing ties to MOC.

“We had a lot of connections with the community in Prévost and…we’ve been there for 54 years, so a lot of people were sad and acted on our behalf,” Holland said.

The club eventually settled on a price of $60,000 for the house, which was estimated to have a value of between $85,000 and $105,000. However, Holland noted that repairs would cost around $50,000. The club will be planning events to raise funds for the house, such as a concert on December 5.

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