I moved to Toronto from South Korea at age 13 without my parents. Now I’m 24, but still, I am neither a Canadian citizen nor a permanent resident. Although I overcame numerous obstacles to feel “Canadian” – the cultural and the English language barrier – I still face other challenges that prevent me from obtaining “Canadian” status. I want to talk about one thing in particular that has added to my sense of alienation: the complexity and inaccessibility of resources and information about the French language courses that international students should take as they try to immigrate to Quebec.

In the summer of 2014, I applied for an internship at one of the English TV networks in Montreal. On my first day, the director welcomed me with a string of questions about why I was in Montreal when I couldn’t speak French. There was no chance of me finding a journalism job in Montreal, since knowledge of French is essential. For instance, a conversation with a police officer on the phone is usually conducted in French, and a lot of documents available online are offered only in French. Yet, discouragingly, there is a complete lack of support from both McGill and the government, in terms of providing accessible information about learning French for immigration purposes after graduation.

Four things are required from international students to apply for a Quebec selection certificate (CSQ) through the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ): $765, a Quebec university diploma, an application form, and an official document demonstrating an “advanced intermediate” knowledge of oral French (level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference). Yet, until late 2014, McGill’s International Student Services did not provide a document stating which French courses available at McGill satisfy the French level requirement. Between 2009 and 2014, I took eight French as a Second Language (FRSL) classes at McGill, including FRSL 302 and FRSL 303. Despite having the prerequisites, I did not take FRSL 321 or FRSL 325 (Oral and Written French 2), not knowing that only those classes and more advanced ones are recognized by the Quebec government as meeting the language requirement.

I emailed the Ministère de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion (MIDI), and received confirmation that it would not recognize the eight French classes I took at McGill as sufficient. I was left to fend for myself, and spent the next year taking two TCFQs (Test de connaissance du français pour le Québec), one French course at Centre Saint-Paul, and ultimately, FRSL 325 at McGill. Saint-Paul, run by the Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSDM), is a free language school that accepts non-Canadian students only if they have a certain type of work permit. In January 2015, I started a course at Saint-Paul, but in February, I was asked to leave or pay over $1,000 at the next session of class. My post-graduate work permit was not acceptable, the school said, and it had enrolled me by mistake.

Some days I feel so dejected by all the hurdles I have to jump over, the walls I have to turn away from, and the confusion I have to swim through due to a sea of misinformation that I just want to throw in the towel and call it quits.

So I went back to McGill. While browsing McGill’s website in March 2015, I found a recently uploaded document about French courses that meet the B2 level requirement. But since I was no longer a McGill student, I was registered as a independent student and asked to pay $3,500 for that one French course. Due to the failure of McGill, the MIDI, and the CSDM to equip international students with the skills and information necessary to adapt themselves to Quebec’s linguistic expectations after graduation, I had to pay for their mistake, wasting not only time, but also a lot of money, which could be a significant burden for many people.

I have learned a lot in the past year; working part-time as a waitress for an entire year while I was taking the additional classes – with the knowledge at the back of my mind that I owed my parents roughly $200,000 – made me proud of myself and boosted my self-confidence. Nevertheless, I would like to make some recommendations to help students avoid my mistakes and some suggestions to McGill offices and Quebec policymakers.

To international students who want to apply for permanent residency: first, take the necessary French course at McGill and apply for a CSQ as soon as possible, as the level of French required for immigration has only been getting more difficult. It’s currently the advanced intermediate B2 level, while. In 2013, it was the intermediate B1 level. Before that, only a one-on-one interview with an MIDI official was required.

Second, if you have not yet obtained a CSQ at the time of your graduation, apply for a year-long working holiday visa instead of applying for a post-grad visa. This will allow you to take French for free at one of the CSDM schools – in fact, you can even take free classes at some of these schools with your student visa.

Finally, after obtaining your CSQ, apply for permanent residency right away. Usually, it takes less than a month to get a CSQ, and although it takes a year to two to get your permanent residency, you will be given a number in two to four months after applying. With your CSQ and that number alone, you can start taking French full-time while receiving at least $115 of government aid per week.

As for the Quebec government and institutions offering French classes, what I would most like to see is transparency. I was given new – and sometimes contradictory – information at every turn. I think that the confusion among language schools and governmental offices is due to a lack of transparency on behalf of the government regarding the regulations. For instance, to my great confusion, I was given three different answers each time I called the MIDI. The first time, I was told to contact the CEGEP du Vieux Montréal to set up an appointment to evaluate my French proficiency in order to take French classes for free with my CSQ. The second time, I was told I should apply online and then mail other documents to be tested by an evaluator from the MIDI. The third time, after my application had been rejected, I was told I could take French only part-time. I asked a lot of questions to gain as much information as I could, since details are not available online. At the end of that conversation, I asked for a document that had the information I needed, but I was told that they could not give me a document. But why not?

As a recently graduated international student, I want to stay in Montreal even if that means I have to take time off from looking for a job to invest time in learning French. I personally see this as a great opportunity rather than a burden. However, some days I feel so dejected by all the hurdles I have to jump over, the walls I have to turn away from, and the confusion I have to swim through due to a sea of misinformation that I just want to throw in the towel and call it quits. No one should have to jump through this many hoops to meet the basic language requirements for immigration.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that one could apply for permanent residency through the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ). In fact, the PEQ is a selection program for obtaining a Quebec selection certificate (CSQ). The Daily regrets the error.

June Jang is a recent English Literature graduate. To reach her, please contact joo.jang@mail.mcgill.ca.

The post Let them learn French appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Five Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) executives resigned during the 2014-15 academic year, with three citing personal issues, and two citing the working environment at AUS, as reasons for their resignation.

The first resignation came from former VP Finance Kateryn Kim in late August, and was due to personal reasons; the second resignation was submitted by former VP Internal Leila Alfaro at the end of September because she was going on exchange for Winter 2015; the third was former VP Social Kyle Rouhani in November, as a result of duress experienced in the role.

The fourth AUS executive to resign was former VP Internal Roma Nadeem, Alfaro’s replacement, who left at the beginning of the semester due to health problems, and passed away on March 9. The last to leave was former VP Finance Li Xue, who joined to replace Kim, and resigned at the end of February citing the work dynamic within the AUS.

“The work dynamic that I experienced within the AUS and the decreasing meaningfulness of the work I found myself having to do was very alienating,” stated Xue in her resignation statement to AUS.

“In the end, I could no longer justify such a large time and energy commitment to something that made me unhappy.”

“In the end, I could no longer justify such a large time and energy commitment to something that made me unhappy.”

Alfaro noted that, while she had indeed left her job due to “external circumstances,” there were problems she saw in the work dynamic during her time at AUS. “I felt great relief to be freed from the pressure of being part of the AUS executive, as I had to deal with some unpleasant situations throughout my term,” Alfaro told The Daily in an email.

She continued, “[F]rom my own experience, I can say that there was a lack of cohesiveness within the team, priorities in terms of operations were not always necessarily shared, and there lacked efforts for open-mindedness and understanding of others’ perspectives and realities – and it was very hard for me, personally, to have a sense of belonging.”

In the email to The Daily, the current VP Academic Erin Sobat mentioned that the unusual number of resignations this year, while rare, was likely exacerbated by external factors.

“I think that it is unfair to phrase the events of this year in the context of a poor working environment at the AUS,” wrote Sobat. He added, “we have had an incredibly difficult year, largely due to circumstances outside of our control, and have done our best to deal with the results of this.”

President Ava Liu concurred, stating that three of the resignations this year were purely bad luck.

“Last year we got two [resignations]. It depends on every year. Three of them are just bad luck and last year we had two,” Liu told The Daily.

When asked to comment on Rouhani and Xue, who did not leave for personal reasons, Liu remarked that Xue resigned because of team dynamics and Rouhani due to his inability to perform the work.

“First, [Rouhani] resigned because of the lack of ability to perform on the job – that was what happened due to personal incapability, and not due to [the] dynamic at AUS,” Liu explained. “[In the case of Xue], it was because of personal dynamics, I’ll give it that.”

“I think that first of all, the year ends at the end of April. Term ends at the end of April and not at the beginning of March. So it’s not really acceptable to resign real close to the end of the year [when] there’s not really anything left to do,” she added.

According to Grant Whithan, the executive assistant at AUS, in contrast to Xue’s claim, he found the AUS work environment to be very friendly. “I totally agree with the sense that I don’t know where this hostility […] is coming from, because I found the environment at AUS to be very supportive.”

Because no one ran for the VP Finance position for next year, the AUS Legislative Council has been empowered to fill the position by appointment.

“The nature of the job is very hard; but the environment, the people and dynamic is not the problem,” Liu noted. “Everyone is very supportive. But because of the job, everyone [works] at their own pace.”

Alfaro noted that while she was thankful for the support she received in certain instances from her fellow executives, there are still many ways that the work environment of AUS could be improved, including more attention to self care.

“It is imperative for future executive teams to keep in mind the wellbeing of the individuals executives in order to foster a welcoming and inclusive work environment, which would in turn facilitate operations and efficiency rather than perpetuate shallow and often useless debate,” she wrote.

As of press time, Rouhani has yet to respond to requests for comment.

The post AUS executives reflect on high turnover appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Reinstatement fees for de-registered students

McGill Graduate Sociology Students’ Association (MGSSA) representative Jason Jensen introduced a motion for PGSS to advocate for the suspension of existing tuition policies for students who exceed the time limit to complete their thesis and are thus de-registered from the university.

Under the current policy, de-registered Masters and PhD students can submit their thesis within two years of de-registration, provided that they pay reinstatement fees equal to a retroactive charge for all semesters between the time limitation and the thesis submission.

“This is patently unreasonable, because it’s asking us to pay for services, i.e. student status, which we do not benefit from. You can’t benefit from student loans, you can’t benefit from bursaries, as well as student services on campus,” said sociology student Leslie Cheung in a presentation to Council on the topic.

“A lot of people are not aware that this policy exists,” added Cheung.

“This is patently unreasonable, because it’s asking us to pay for services, i.e. student status, which we do not benefit from.”

PGSS Health Commissioner Elizabeth Cawley commended Cheung for her presentation to Council. “I think that’s one of the best issues that’s been brought to Council this year,” she said.

In response to a question, Cheung noted that the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (GPS) unit has recognized the need to revisit the policy, but is hesitant to take a stance against it for the moment.

“From what I can see, the position is that [GPS is] just willing to revisit it, but it may or may not end in the status quo,” said Cheung. “They do not take the position that [the policy] is unreasonable. Although individually as members, [Associate Provost (Graduate Education) and Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Martin] Kreiswirth, Dean [of Students André] Costopoulos, [Associate Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Heather] Goad, as well as the ombudsperson [Dimitrios Berk] have all taken personal positions against it.”

The motion, which passed, calls on PGSS to advocate for the immediate suspension of the current policy, to motion for its suspension at Senate, and to “work with McGill on creating new time limitation policies which are fair.”

Secretary-General resignation, solidarity with Mexican students

Council accepted Pinto’s letter of resignation, submitted on January 20 following a Board of Directors motion of censure against Pinto on November 13 and a vote of no confidence by the executive on December 10.

The new Secretary-General is to be elected on February 24. Pinto indicated that he will assist the new Secretary-General for a week without pay to ensure a smooth transition.

“I’ve been concentrating on organizing all the documents, ensuring that the interim Secretary-General has a smooth transition and there’s no breakdown of communication,” said Pinto.

Council also passed a motion in solidarity with the 43 Mexican students who disappeared in the city of Iguala in September, presented by Association of Postdoctoral Fellows representative Illa Carrillo Rodriguez.

The motion mandates PGSS to write a letter of solidarity with the families of the victims and work to raise awareness of the issue.

Update on the acquisition of the Royal Victoria Hospital

Vice-Principal (Communications and External Relations) Olivier Marcil gave a presentation on McGill’s situation in the process of acquiring the Royal Victoria Hospital.

“We are struggling to find some new space […] to meet our academic purposes and enhance students’ life on campus. It is clear that on campus right now, we are really landlocked,” said Marcil.

A year ago, McGill officially informed the government of its interest in the hospital site, which is roughly a million square feet in size. Marcil said that, as of April 2015, the site will be empty and “might become an urban ghost.”

Marcil also shared his vision of creating a “green hospital” and converting roughly 50 per cent of the parking lots into a part of the Mount Royal Park.

“Since McGill is a green campus, and our students are walking, our profs do not have cars […] we don’t need all of those parking lots and we can give them back as green spaces to the mountain, and that will be the biggest enlargement of the Mount Royal Park [… in] a long time.”

If everything goes as planned, McGill will launch work on the site in 2017 and the site will open in 2021.

The post Post-grads decry “unreasonable” retroactive tuition policy appeared first on The McGill Daily.

“Basically, the goal of the camp is to be right in the face of the government, and say, ‘look, the more you cut back, the more people will live in the street – and here we are, we are not going anywhere,’” Fred Burrill, community organizer at the Projet d’organisation populaire d’information et de regroupement (POPIR), a FRAPRU member organization, told The Daily.

About 140,000 low-income housing units exist in Quebec, with over 40,000 people on waiting lists across the province; however, both the provincial and federal governments have failed to renew expiring government subsidies for social housing. As of this year, 25,000 social housing units in Quebec will lose long-term federal subsidies, which will result in rent increases of up to $300 per month, according to FRAPRU.

“We really want to put the focus back on the issue that everyone deserves things like housing.”

“Right now we are seeing two different levels of cuts. The federal government is cutting the long-term subsidies to co-op and non-profit [housing…] and at the same time, in Quebec, we are seeing that [in] the AccèsLogis program, which is a program the government invests in to actually build the units for social housing, they decided to cut back,” Émilie Joly, community organizer at FRAPRU, told The Daily in an interview.

“For people living in co-ops funded by the federal program, we are actually seeing several people recently lose their subsidies entirely,” added Burrill. “So their rent can go from $200 a month to $600 or $700.”

FRAPRU’s decision to set up an occupation camp aims to give visibility to this issue and push the government to guarantee the right to accessible housing, according to Joly.

“We are going to have different kinds of workshops, whether it be on housing issues, on tenants’ rights, on how to build a co-op, and then the larger portrait: everything regarding the environment, for example, the construction of pipelines and Indigenous land rights. We’re really trying to have a broad perspective,” said Joly. “We really want to put the focus back on the issue that everyone deserves things like housing.”

In 2011, Occupy Montreal protesters occupied Square Victoria for more than a month, before former Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay ordered that police dismantle the camp.

According to a Montreal Gazette article published on January 13, current mayor Denis Coderre has not indicated whether or not he will allow FRAPRU’s camp to exist.

“We really hope that the city understands we are trying to convince the government to invest in municipal building and development, so the city should see us as an ally in this fight,” said Joly.

The post Housing rights activists to set up occupation camp this spring appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In a press release sent to The Daily on January 1, the Front commun des personnes assistées sociales du Québec (FCPASQ) – an organization representing people who receive social assistance – denounced the low indexation rate as insufficient in comparison to increases in prices of consumer goods, which averaged 3.1 per cent for food and 1.6 per cent across all sectors over the past year. Hydro-Québec electricity prices, meanwhile, increased by 4.3 per cent last April.

“People on welfare are finding themselves in a more and more precarious situation, they are going deeper and deeper into poverty,” Cathy Inouye, community organizer at Project Genesis and FCPASQ spokesperson on the issue, told The Daily.

Intended as a form of “last-resort financial assistance,” the social assistance program dispenses $1.4 billion yearly to over 319,000 households, the basic monthly rate being $616 for an individual. When the program was first established in 1969, the monthly payment was $217, which would correspond to over $1,300 today when accounting for inflation, according to a document published by the FCPASQ.

Jean Lalande, coordinator at the Welfare Rights Committee of South-West Montreal, spoke to the insufficient amount of payment in an interview with The Daily.

“It would be very important to have a social program that ensures that those basic needs [such as food and housing] are covered, that the benefits are calculated to cover the basic cost of living,” said Lalande. “We thought it would become a priority [over the years] but it has not happened.”

Although beneficiaries with “severely limited capacity for employment” qualify for “social solidarity” payments, which amount to $937 monthly for a single individual, Inouye noted that about 60 per cent of people who receive the base rate of $616 are also unable to work.

“Welfare has a long history of punishing those who [the government feels] should be working, even though they know that there is a high unemployment rate, so a lot of people can’t find work,” said Inouye. “Poverty and health go hand in hand, so a lot of people – they might have depression, or anxiety, or even people who have major illnesses like cancer – these people might also be on the base rate even though their sickness is such that they are not able to work.”

Lalande echoed Inouye’s concerns, asserting that the welfare program has become “merit-based” over the years, since it takes into account the beneficiary’s ‘employability.’

“It makes [people on welfare] even less and less employable [when their needs are not being met],” said Lalande. “It becomes even harder to look for work.”

In its press release in French, the FCPASQ recommended that the government restore previously repealed fiscal measures to increase revenue and be able to “support the development of a more egalitarian society in which everyone can live in dignity.”

Inouye also suggested that the government lift undue restrictions on access to welfare, and allow beneficiaries to supplement their income without fear of having a potion of it deduced from their welfare cheque, as is current practice.

“It’s also about people’s inherent dignity, and their ability to make it to the end of the month and still have food in the fridge,” she said.

The post $6 welfare increase falls short of inflation rate appeared first on The McGill Daily.