Delivering this year’s Beaverbrook Annual Lecture in a packed Pollack Hall, Greenwald, who won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his coverage of Edward Snowden’s leak of government surveillance documents, said Canadians shouldn’t be surprised by Wednesday’s shooting in Ottawa.

“There is a huge gap between how a citizenry perceives of its own country and the reality of what its government is doing in the world,” he said. “The [citizenry] has been led to believe some pleasant version of the truth about itself that is actually completely at odds with the reality of what its government is engaged in.”

“When you don’t hear anything about who your government is killing […] then it is very easy to believe that most of the violence is directed at you, and that you are the victim of that violence and not the perpetrator.”

Greenwald said Wednesday’s reaction to the shooting echoed the U.S.’s response in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Canadians, like Americans, he said, should question their government’s policy in the Middle East rather than speculate about the motives of the perpetrators.

“If you go to the Arab and Muslim world and ask people which country poses the greatest threat to peace […] they say overwhelmingly, two countries that are among the staunchest allies of Canada: the U.S. and Israel,” he said, referring to a worldwide opinion poll conducted last year by WIN/Gallup International.

Greenwald sparked controversy this week when he wrote about the October 20 hit-and-run attack on two Canadian soldiers for The Intercept – an online publication founded by Greenwald, filmmaker Laura Poitras, and journalist Jeremy Scahill, and funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar – arguing that Canadian military action was to blame for the attack. He acknowledged at Thursday’s talk that his comments might have been seen as offensive, but said that his role as a journalist wasn’t to “comfort people.”

“I wrote what I wrote as a corrective to this very distorted discourse,” he said. “When you don’t hear anything about who your government is killing […] then it is very easy to believe that most of the violence is directed at you, and that you are the victim of that violence and not the perpetrator.”

Greenwald also spoke at length about the importance of privacy and described the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)’s mission as storing and “collecting all human communication.” A series of investigative articles has revealed the massive scope of the NSA’s surveillance program, with the information coming from documents leaked to Greenwald by Snowden over 15 months ago.

More documents would be published soon, Greenwald said.

The post Glenn Greenwald warns to expect backlash from Iraq bombings appeared first on The McGill Daily.

If this is “the best deal we [can] get” as the not-so-aptly named website “Save our SSMU” claims, then what is the point of unionizing, anyway? Few, if any, other student associations in Canada pay rent for their student centre, and meanwhile, at McGill, the issue threatens to hollow out student life. The administration, it seems, can do as it pleases without a whimper of protest from student politicians.

Like a recurring nightmare, the Shatner building fee referendum is back.

Ripping a page from last year’s playbook, the current executive has been quick to warn students of the consequences of voting the wrong way. Most of the campaign revolves around hammering home the message that a “no” vote is bound to be followed by draconian cuts – cuts which SSMU seems all too ready to implement. The website for the “yes” committee reads like a litany of worst-case scenarios and fails to mention the absurdity of paying for a quarter of the building’s utilities costs, on top of an already hefty rent. It almost seems as if the whole ordeal had been unavoidable from the get-go; the sky is about to fall on our heads, and there is nothing we can do.

It is the lease – and not the fee – that ought to be on the ballot. Instead of talking blithely about our “love [for the] building,” as SSMU says, we should be looking into ways to terminate the agreement. A lawsuit from McGill is far from certain, and if SSMU is probably willing to spend what is tens of thousands of dollars on the Tariq Khan court case, then it should consider setting aside a sum to fight the lease. I would rather pay for a yearly legal fee than settle for such a fundamentally bad deal. If nothing is done, then it is doubtful that SSMU will ever stop paying for the building’s utilities, even if the University suddenly found itself in a less financially precarious position. Backing out of the lease now might save us money in the long run.

It is the lease – and not the fee – that ought to be on the ballot. Instead of talking blithely about our “love [for the] building,” as SSMU says, we should be looking into ways to terminate the agreement.

Admittedly, the “yes” campaign is right when it says that SSMU needs to be saved. It needs to be saved from executives who have so far failed to stand up for student interests and, more importantly, from an administration that is all too eager to impose new costs on students while chipping away at the quality of their education.

While I am not encouraging students to vote one way or the other, a successful “yes” vote should be no cause for celebration. The lease and the new fee will help cement a precedent that is becoming increasingly difficult to reverse: a shift in costs from the University onto students.

Laurent Bastien Corbeil is a U3 student in Political Science and a former Daily news editor. He can be reached at bastiencorbeil@gmail.com.

The post It’s not too late to cancel the lease appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Never mind, it seems, that other student associations in Canada only pay a $1 symbolic fee for their rent. For Katie Larson, the SSMU president, the problem is not the lease, but the referendum question. Last week, she told the McGill Tribune she hoped students would reconsider their vote in a special referendum on the issue. In other words, last week’s vote was meaningless; SSMU will have its way, one way or another. And this time, to prevent the vote from swinging the wrong way, SSMU even brandished the threat of cutting back on some of its services, including Gerts – essentially a bluff, since the bar is one of the student association’s few ventures that generates enough income to break even.

This is the sort of politics we’ve grown accustomed to in the real world, but it is especially troubling when we see it replicated on campus.

SSMU’s solvency, we are told, hung on the outcome of a single question, and nobody budged. Apparently, it was easier to be sanctimonious in hindsight than plan for a successful referendum.

Joey Shea, SSMU VP University Affairs, went as far as to declare that she felt ashamed by the results of the vote. “Students [of McGill] don’t understand the ramifications of their actions with this vote,” she told the Tribune. But the vote was destined to fail. While SSMU dithered back and forth on Brian Farnan’s apology email, the lease and the referendum went on the backburner. Not a word was said on the fee increase until after the vote took place, and nobody, it seems, questioned the wisdom of including such an important issue on an already cluttered ballot.

Where were the posters, the flyers, and the Yes and No committees? And where were the executives and their smug speeches last month, before the voting period began? SSMU’s solvency, we are told, hung on the outcome of a single question, and nobody budged. Apparently, it was easier to be sanctimonious in hindsight than plan for a successful referendum – not that the question deserved to pass anyway.

Like many of you, I voted against the measure. I was angry at SSMU for signing such a piss-poor lease and angry at the University for even suggesting one. Four years of talks, and our student association is in an even more precarious position than before. If this is the sort of deal McGill can foist on us, then why bother negotiating? The lease could have been signed years ago.

Unfortunately, it is unclear if SSMU can rectify its mistake. When it comes to rescinding the lease, the contract’s language is clear: “The University accepts that the ASSOCIATION may terminate the lease due to financial concerns with a minimum of three (3) months prior notice sent by letter to the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning). […] At the end of the notice period, the SSMU shall vacate the building and terminate all activities therein.”

The University knows that the new lease will likely drive SSMU into bankruptcy with its current structure, and it implicitly threatens eviction if we fail to increase our fees. But would McGill follow through on its threat? The move would certainly be unprecedented, and the question is worth considering. At this point, none of our options are particularly attractive. But the next time our student association gets to sit down with the administration, it could at least pretend to have a backbone.

Laurent Bastien Corbeil is a U3 student in Political Science and a former Daily news editor (2012-13). He can be reached at bastiencorbeil@gmail.com.

The post The lease is a disaster and should be terminated appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Inna Sharf, a professor of mechanical engineering at McGill who leads the school’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) research group, has been awarded three such contracts since 2004, exceeding the sum of $500,000. The sponsor, Canadian research facility Defence Research and Development Canada in Suffield (DRDC-Suffield), previously worked with Sharf on the development of the Platform for Ambulating Wheels (PAW), a four-legged ground robot developed at McGill.

Sharf’s current project, a contract entitled “Autonomous Support for UAVs” valued at over $380,000, intends to provide UAVs with the ability to land autonomously on static and moving targets, thereby reducing the operator’s workload and enhancing their capabilities for “data collection and surveillance missions.” The research is part of an overall plan by DRDC to develop “small, highly maneuverable UAVs for deployment in urban environments.” DRDC has been fostering intimate ties with universities, including their “academic partners from McGill University.”

DRDC-Suffield’s request for proposal, under which Sharf secured the contract, reads, “[UAVs] must not compromise operator safety but provide battle-space awareness that provides a force multiplier to the dismounted soldier unit.” Once completed, UAVs equipped with this technology will be able to “track and intercept” moving targets for autonomous navigation purposes.

Preliminary flight tests were carried out indoors in the Aerospace Mechatronics Laboratory, located in the Macdonald Engineering building, and the software was developed using computers from the Centre for Intelligent Machines Laboratory in the McConnell Engineering building. Fields at Macdonald campus were suggested as a potential outdoor takeoff and landing site due to their “access to a hangar, secluded open areas, and low rise buildings.”

In an interview, Sharf denied the military applications of her research. “My work focuses on making landing and taking off for UAV vehicles more autonomous,” she said.

While the technology could be applied to any type of UAV, Sharf emphasized the potential of her work in the civilian world. “There’s many applications: fire surveillance, harvest surveillance […] Police forces are using UAVs to help them with search and rescue operations. A couple of years ago, there was a successful use of UAVs to locate a person that had a car accident and that went out into the woods,” she said. “Without UAVs, they wouldn’t have found them.”

The research is still at an early stage, and the technology, Sharf noted, is not yet ready for outside use.

“I’m hoping more civilian companies will make use of this research. […] The commercial development of UAVs is still nascent, and we don’t have big companies in Canada that would be interested in funding this research, but ultimately, they will be the beneficiary of this research.”

Under the terms of the contract, the federal government owns the intellectual property rights to the work performed at McGill. Sharf, and the team under her supervision, can only use the product of their research for publication and academic purposes. DRDC-Suffield is not responsible for the potential applications of the technology it develops, and only the Canadian Forces can determine how the research is used. But Sharf, along with Michael Trentini, a DRDC-Suffield researcher who is listed as the contract’s technical authority, have written about the potential applications of unmanned vehicle research.

In 2006 Sharf and Trentini co-signed a paper addressing the utility of Unmanned Ground Vehicles “if they are to be used in military relevant roles and environments.” “[Unmanned] Ground Vehicles will be called upon to enter unknown city blocks to keep soldiers out of harm’s way,” they wrote. “[Unmanned Ground Vehicles] will contribute to homeland security, search and rescue, and peacekeeping roles abroad.”

At McGill, professors and graduate students are responsible for initiating the majority of the school’s research collaborations.

“Research contracts, on the other hand, can be initiated by third parties – often because the third party is seeking university researchers’ input to solve a problem or issue,” Rose Goldstein, Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations), wrote in an email.

“In all cases the researchers have complete freedom to decide if they want to engage in a research collaboration project or a service contract,” she wrote.

“McGill researchers conduct research with integrity and adhere to the highest ethical standards,” Goldstein said.

Two weeks ago, a group of protesters blocked the entrance to laboratories in the Macdonald Engineering building. The action was part of the ongoing Demilitarize McGill campaign, an effort by students to disrupt military research on campus. Last year, members of the group filed several ATI requests to obtain information on the University’s defence research.

In October, the Commission d’accès a l’information ruled against the University in a legal dispute in which the University alleged that it had been subject to a “complex system of repetitious and abusive requests” by students and journalists.

The ATIs remained unanswered for over a year until January, when the University settled with the respondents.

The post Documents shed light on campus drone research appeared first on The McGill Daily.

A cache of around 400 documents, most of them from the past six years, provide a look at the inner workings of McGill’s department of Development and Alumni Relations (DAR), including detailed profiles of the University’s top donors, and proposal for partnerships with some of the world’s largest companies.

The documents, made available yesterday by McGillLeaks, are a sampling of the daily traffic between University administrators and researchers working for Alumni Relations.  They chronicle the trips of senior administrators abroad and their meetings with potential donors and partners from across the world.

The leaks depict an administration that is eager to make inroads with new economic partners such as Canada’s growing oil and gas industry and willing to go to great lengths to foster its relationship with its donors. The anonymous group McGillLeaks sent the documents from the SSMU Internal account to all SSMU members on Monday night.

The email, sent around a quarter to 9 p.m., contained a link to troves of documents obtained by the group from anonymous sources. McGillLeaks released similar documents more than a year ago containing donor and corporation profiles, correspondence pertaining to corporate funding, and industrial partnerships.

In their latest email, McGillLeaks stated that they received “hundreds of University documents, many marked confidential or strictly confidential pertaining to McGill’s corporate funding efforts.”

“In March 2012, we released to the public about one third of the documents in our possession. McGill University took legal action that delayed our release of the other documents. These focus on McGill’s fundraising activities in the oil and gas, mining and financial sectors,” the email continued. “We are pleased to now make public these remaining documents…”

McGilllLeaks wrote that their objectives are to provide “a clear account of corporate university’s inner workings,” “supplying accurate information on the university’s relationship with the private sector,” and to create “transparency within the university.”

SSMU President Josh Redel and SSMU VP Internal Michael Szpejda sent an email shortly afterwards apologizing for the mass email. “It was done so without the knowledge or permission of the SSMU VP Internal,” the message read.

They also noted that “no personal information beyond your McGill email is stored in MailChimp” – SSMU’s mass email server.

On Monday night, Redel told The Daily that he would notify SSMU’s lawyer of the situation. He clarified the next day that the VP Internal account was not hacked. In fact, SSMU’s MailChimp account was accessed by someone with knowledge of the password.

“We changed all the passwords [… and implemented ] a new IT policy to make sure that we rotate passwords more often and also work on communication in the passwords and whatnot, how we store them and all that,” Redel said in reference to new security measures.

Redel said that they have received a “decent” amount of emails responding to the incident. “The most unfortunate thing about this is that like in this software people have the option to remove themselves, so we’re seeing a lot of people unsubscribe from the listserv. So that’s an unfortunate fallout,” he said.

Vice-Principal of External Relations Olivier Marcil told The Daily in an email that the University was “aware that confidential documents belonging to the University and containing personal information were stolen and published on the Internet without our consent.”

“It’s the second time that McGill has had to deal with this type of incident. The police are investigating and we are doing our best to limit dissemination of the documents in question,” he continued.

In 2012, following the first leak by the anonymous group, Marcil released a statement to The Daily saying that the actions were “an attempt to hurt the wellbeing of the University, and hurts individuals whose only intent is to support our students and professors. We deeply regret this invasion of their privacy.”

The post McGillLeaks releases confidential documents through SSMU email appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In a letter to the PGSS Board of Directors obtained by The Daily, Salamon and King alleged that some members of the PGSS executive routinely engaged in “sexual harassment, psychological intimidation, and discriminatory behaviour.”

The meeting was the culmination of a year-long conflict between members of an executive team where mistrust and divisions run so deep that officers regularly record each other’s public and private conversations without prior knowledge.

“It seems as if that these days, everybody is recording things. […] I feel like I need to practice what I’m going to say,” a member of the executive told The Daily.

The hostility pushed several members – including Salamon – to seek external help.

“People are extremely upset. […] We see each other every day and it has been getting worse and worse every day,” the same executive added.

For nearly an hour, several executive officers argued with Salamon over the validity of his claims.

According to Salamon, an officer on the executive team exposed themselves and masturbated in front of him and another executive officer after a meeting in June. “I was appalled, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe anyone would do that, especially in front of someone [they] didn’t actually know very well,” Salamon told The Daily.

The executive officer in question said they only removed their pants.

“We were drinking, we were socializing. It was not PGSS business […] there was some consumption of marijuana by some people, and during that time, I did remove my pants, that’s true, but I never exposed myself, I never took out my genitalia,” they said.

The executive further alleged the claims were fabricated in response to disagreement that erupted between the two over a motion to censor Salamon at Council.

“I was willing to entertain alternative solutions to a censor motion, […] during this meeting [Salamon] stated ‘I will retaliate’ if a censor motion was brought forward, stating that [he] would accuse me of sexual harassment…”

For Salamon, the June incident marked the beginning of a series of inappropriate sexual conducts from the same executive member, including making sexual advances at Salamon prior to the team’s departure to the executive retreat in Mont Tremblant and sexualized comments that were uttered toward another PGSS member who sat on one of Salamon’s committees.

“We’re talking about ten months of discomfort. […] I feel so uncomfortable. I’ve been bullied throughout this term,” Salamon said.
Other members of the executive team also made additional sexualized comments toward Salamon, he said. In one instance, an executive officer asked Salamon why he had not considered sleeping with the executive officer who had allegedly exposed themselves.

In another instance, Salamon alleged that another member of the executive team threatened to reveal his relationship with a member of Divest McGill before an endorsement vote on the divestment campaign. According to Salamon, the threat was made in an attempt to sabotage the campaign. The allegation was denied by the executive officer in question at yesterday’s meeting.

Salamon is currently on a leave of absence, citing hostility with his co-workers.

The post PGSS rocked by accusations of sexual harassment appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The crowd, numbering around 60 people, gathered at Place Émilie-Gamelin at 8 p.m. where police immediately prevented them from beginning a march down Ste. Catherine. Protesters did not divulge their itinerary beforehand.

SPVM mediation officers mingled with the crowd to explain the reasoning behind the police’s decision to stop the march. They noted that the day’s earlier snowstorm factored into concerns about safety.

“We’re stopping them here for their safety and because of the weather. It would be a safety risk if we allowed people to walk through the streets with all the plowing going around,” a mediation officer told The Daily.

“The police will always find an excuse to repress and to prohibit the right to demonstrate, so this is complete bullshit,” Pierro Desbois, a protester, told The Daily in French.

After being rebuffed by police several times, the crowd poured into a nearby subway station and continued the protest underground. Chants reverberated through the Berri-UQAM metro station as demonstrators made their way toward the nearest train

“I’m not sure if this is the first time we’re [demonstrating] in the subway, but this is my first time and it’s a great thing,” Desbois said. “We’re very respectful. We want the people of [Quebec] to understand we’re not against them. We’re on their side.”

Protesters then crowded onto an orange line train in the direction of Montmorency before disembarking at Mont-Royal station.  From there, the demonstration continued west on Mont-Royal.

Dozens of police cars closed in on the protesters shortly thereafter.

The march turned south on St. Laurent toward riot police, who were lined up in anticipation of the protesters’ arrival. Soon after issuing muted warnings, another police formation descended on protesters from behind, trapping them in a kettle near the intersection of St. Laurent and Rachel.

Police investigator and SPVM Chief of Police Station 21 Alain Simoneau identified protesters within the kettle and made targeted arrests under by-law P-6. The other detainees were held for around two hours before being searched, arrested, and processed by the police.

A bus from the Société de transport de Montréal was later brought in to carry the 45 detainees to the police station.

Simoneau told The Daily that protesters would be released in “a few hours,” after being issued a fine for violating P-6.

This is the second time in a week that the police have enforced P-6 through mass arrests. Last week, police used the same tactic to arrest 250 protesters at a march against police brutality.

[flickr id=”72157633038653745″]

The post Night demonstration leads to mass arrests appeared first on The McGill Daily.

240 people were arrested out of the approximately 300 who attended. Last year’s march saw a similar number of arrests, but the protesters were in the thousands.

On Thursday, SPVM chief of operations Pierre Brochet vowed to strictly enforce P-6, a municipal by-law that prohibits masks and an assembly of more than fifty people unless dates, times, and route are declared to police beforehand. The organizers of COPB have never declared their route to police beforehand, in protest of the restrictive laws surrounding protesting in Montreal.

Several protesters were targeted for violating by-law P-6 before the start of Friday’s march at 5 p.m. Police then charged to disperse the small assembled crowd.

Protesters regrouped on the intersection of Clark and de Montigny before being pushed again toward lines of riot police on Ste. Catherine. The crowd was kettled shortly after.

Other groups of protesters began clashing with police to free their comrades but were eventually pushed away by clouds of tear gas.

Nearly 150 people were arrested in the kettle, including two journalists from The Daily and Concordia’s the Link. Three people were released and taken to an ambulance after they began having a panic attack. Protesters cried out in French that the kettle was “too tight” and that they were not given enough space to breathe.

Two buses from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) were later brought in to transport the protesters to the police station. Arrestees were detained for several hours before being handed a ticket for violating P-6.

The journalists from The Daily and the Link were eventually released with the threat that criminal charges would be brought against them if they stayed at the demonstration. Journalists from the Montreal Gazette and the Concordian faced a similar situation minutes later.

Police later kettled another group of protesters near the intersection of St. Denis and Ste. Catherine. Targeted arrests were made throughout the demonstration, including the violent arrest of a protester made at Berri and René-Lévesque at 6:45 p.m., in which five police officers pushed one demonstrator to the ground.

The COPB founded the Montreal March Against Police Brutality in 1997 as a day for people to publically pay respect to those who have experienced police brutality, and to draw attention to the systemic targeting of marginalized members of the community by police.

The post Anti-police brutality march dispersed from the start appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Because of its status as a student service with a levied fee, SACOMSS must run a referendum to renew its non-opt-outable $0.75 fee every three years.

SACOMSS is a volunteer-run organization and, according to a spokesperson, is the only sexual assault centre in Montreal that offers its services to people of all genders and sexualities under an anti-oppressive mandate.

“Having a sexual assault centre operating under that framework is really important […] especially on a university campus,” Lily Hoffman, an external coordinator with SACOMSS and co-chairperson of its ‘Yes’ committee, told The Daily.

“A sexual assault centre that’s available for support to people who experience sexual assault, or who have people in their communities who do, is really valuable to creating a safe community where people can feel they can talk about their experiences,” Hoffman said.

While SACOMSS would continue to exist even if it lost its referendum, the loss of student funding would jeopardize its ability to offer services.

According to its Facebook page, the $0.75 fee goes toward supporting its phone line, drop-in services, support groups, education campaigns, and advocacy and accompaniment services.

According to Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures & Equity) Lydia White, the University also provides services to survivors of sexual assault along with SACOMSS.

“The University offers a variety of services to students in crisis, including those who have been the victims of sexual assault,” White wrote in an email to The Daily. “These services include: the McGill Health Services, McGill Mental Health Services, McGill Counseling Services, McGill Security Services and McGill Chaplaincy Services.”

As for whether it was appropriate for a sexual assault centre to be subject to referenda, White noted, “It would be inappropriate for the University [to] comment on the SSMU referendum question, or the appropriateness of the fee renewal or increase.”

When asked about the inclusion of McGill Security Services as a resource for survivors of sexual assault, SSMU VP Club & Services Allison Cooper spoke to key differences between the two organizations.

“That speaks to the expertise that students have in running these services, because SACOMSS is so powerfully different than Security Services or those other services,” she told The Daily. “It speaks to a misunderstanding of [the issue].”

For Cooper, the notion of holding referenda for student services – especially for SACOMSS – is absurd. SSMU is currently looking into placing SACOMSS under the SSMU base fee so that it could avoid facing the ballot box every three years, she said.

The SSMU base fee accounts for the operating budget of the student union. It pays for administrative fees, governance, operations, campus events, and the upkeep of the Shatner building.

The post McGill’s Sexual Assault Centre faces fee referendum appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The 3 per cent tuition hike is based on the work of economist Pierre Fortin, a former professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). According to one of his papers presented at a preliminary summit meeting in December, the 3 per cent yearly increase stemmed from the hypothesis that average household disposable income will grow at an average of 3 per cent a year from 2012 to 2018.

“In effect, we see that the indexation of tuition to household family disposable income…either maintains the financial contributions of students at its current level or increases it slightly,” he wrote in French.

By 2018, tuition will grow by around $421 and reach $2,589 per year, according to Fortin. Conversely, a tuition freeze would have kept fees at $2,168 and diminished students’ financial contribution.

“To freeze tuition in a world where the cost of a university education increases constantly would gradually bring the system toward free education over the long term,” he wrote.

According to Fortin, a tuition freeze would lower students’ contribution to 6 per cent of the cost of their education by 2022 and 4 per cent by 2032 if the cost of a university education increases by 3.5 per cent per year.

“Evidently, someone at some point will try to bring back their contribution to 8 per cent to solve the issue of underfunding and by doing so, create another social crisis,” he wrote.

The government has not specified whether the 3 per cent increase will remain in effect beyond the 2018-2019 period outlined in Fortin’s paper.

The committees are tasked with specific mandates, each reflective of the four themes discussed at the summit.

The first committee will be in charge of drafting a loi-cadre,  outlining the mandates of universities in the province, while the second will look into creating a mandate for the National Council of Universities, a new government body created during the summit. According to the government, the council’s role will mostly be advisory and will revolve around assessing the quality of higher education in Quebec.

In an interview with The Daily, Jérémie Bédard-Wien, a spokesperson for the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), a student federation representing 70,000 students, expressed skepticism toward the government’s plan.

“We’ll see for the council. It remains to be seen who will have a seat and whether or not it will be composed of exterior members,” he said in French. “The Education Minister loves to pepper his declarations with vague promises.”

According to La Presse, the committee tasked with defining a mandate for the council will be headed by Claude Corbo, the former rector of UQAM.

The other committees will seek to improve CEGEPs across Quebec, reassess university financing, and increase student aid and bursaries.

The post Tuition set to rise $421 by 2018 appeared first on The McGill Daily.

This skepticism grew after the Minister of Higher Education Pierre Duchesne asked universities to retroactively cut $124 million from their budgets by April. McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum also said that the summit was a “farce,” and called the meeting “choreographed” in an interview with Le Devoir two weeks ago.

Last year during the student strike, the PQ showed solidarity with the movement and opposed the Parti libéral du Québec’s (PLQ) proposed tuition hike from $2,168 to $3,793 over the course of 2012 to 2017. The PQ won the provincial election on September 4, and immediately scrapped the proposed tuition hike and began planning the education summit.

On the second day of the summit, the PQ announced that they would be increasing tuition fees by 3 per cent annually, starting September 2013. According to Marois, this is the “most just” and “fairest” solution for society. The increase would amount to $65, although many media outlets have reported a $70 indexation. In fact, the $70 figure is an average of the increases over the next five years.

During the Summit discussions, demonstrators took to the streets both days to show their grievances with what is perceived to be the government’s empty gesture. Violent clashes between riot police and demonstrators ocurred both days, with the use of tear gas, pepper spray, and flash-bangs. Altogether, 14 demonstrators were arrested.

Day One

Inside the Summit, which was held at the Arsenal, a contemporary art gallery in Griffintown, civil society groups, student leaders, and representatives from professors’ unions and administrative bodies tackled the four aforementioned areas of discussion during the 12-and-a-half hour meeting.

Corine Trubiano, a student at the Collège de Maisonneuve who was at the protest, told The Daily in French that she did not feel the Summit represented the student population fairly.

“I’m here because I’m angry that the idea of free education is being excluded from the Summit. The ideas they are talking about have been pre-determined; I find that this isn’t including the entire population. ASSÉ and other student associations are not represented here today,” she said.

Over 1,500 protesters took to the streets to protest the two-day summit. The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) declared the protest illegal before it started marching south from Cabot Square, where protesters gathered at 4:30 p.m. Riot police and police on bicycles flanked the march almost immediately, along with buses filled with more riot police.

The march snaked through residential streets in St. Henri before arriving at the Summit. SPVM and Sûreté du Québec (SQ) officers filled the parking lot in front of the Arsenal, blocking the entrance. A helicopter circled above, while peaceful protesters chanted anti-police slogans.

La Presse reported on Sunday that the SQ was present at the summit at the behest of Premier Pauline Marois and would be called on if the SPVM felt it needed reinforcements.

“The police presence is completely absurd here. We aren’t living in a police state. Their huge numbers are just increasing people’s anger. It’s brutal, and it’s creating a violent image for our society. That isn’t necessary,” Trubiano said in French.

According to SPVM spokesperson Jean-Bruno Latour, one person was arrested for armed assault after launching a projectile at police. Two people were fined – one for refusing to disperse, and another for putting stickers on a building.

While the SPVM had no information regarding the types of projectiles used, CTV speculated that the projectiles could have been snowballs and paint-filled ping pong balls.

Police chased protesters down to Place des Arts, where some were shoved aside from the Complexe Desjardins and held for a short time. At one point, police fired a sound bomb, also known as a flash-bang, to try to get protesters to scatter.

There were reports that an SPVM officer was injured by tear gas, but the SPVM did not comment on this by press time. Several journalists, including a Concordia University Television (CUTV) correspondent, were pepper sprayed.

The majority of protesters dispersed by around 7 p.m.; however, a group of around 100 protesters regrouped at Place Émilie-Gamelin and started another march east along Ste. Catherine. This protest was immediately declared illegal, and police announced over loudspeakers that everyone had to walk on the sidewalk, or would be “broken up.”

By around 7:15 p.m., this small protest scattered at Beaudry metro. Here, riot police took a break at a local fast-food restaurant and were met with jeers from onlookers.

Day Two

In a significantly larger protest organized by ASSÉ, 10,000 students rallied against the government’s plan to raise tuition annually and were met with rocks, teargas, and flash-bang grenades.

“The Summit was definitely a failure,” Jérémie Bédard-Wien, a spokesperson for ASSÉ ,told The Daily in French. “It failed to answer some of the questions that were raised during the Maple Spring and lacked any sort of depth.”

The demonstration was immediately declared illegal by the police. Approximately 3,000 protesters began to march despite warnings, as the crowd eventually grew to around 7,000.

Starting in Square Victoria, protesters marched peacefully past McGill University and up St. Laurent, before turning east on Pine. Fights flared after demonstrators proceeded down St. Denis and launched snowballs at lines of riot police. Police responded violently and clashes continued near Square Saint-Louis, where demonstrators fought back by linking their arms in a human chain and advancing on police lines. Heavy reinforcement from the SQ intervened to disperse the crowd.

Demonstrators from multiple groups were present, including McGill’s Art History and Communications Studies Graduate Students Association (AHCS GSA). AHCS GSA originally voted to boycott the summit in solidarity with ASSÉ. It was the only student association at McGill to do so.

The protest eventually dispersed, and 13 arrests were made.

3 per cent?

The numbers and words being used by the PQ are misleading. The proposed 3 per cent indexation that many media outlets have reported is linked to the hypothesis that disposable household income will increase by 3 per cent per year. This will lead to a $65 increase next year, but the increase for the following years would be greater. By September 2018, the yearly increase will be at $75, and the total increase in tuition fees will be close to $421.

[flickr id=”72157632866324741″]

The post The Education Summit appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The demonstration was organized by the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), who boycotted the summit after the government announced the two-day event would not discuss free education.

“The summit was definitely a failure,” Jérémie Bédard-Wien, a spokesperson for ASSÉ told The Daily in French. “It failed to answer some of the questions that were raised during the maple spring and lacked any sort of depth.”

The demonstration, which began in Square Victoria two hours after the summit ended, was immediately declared illegal by the police. Approximately 3,000 protesters began to march despite warnings, as the crowd eventually grew to around 7,000. Organizers estimated attendance at around 10,000 at its peak.

Protesters marched peacefully past McGill and up St. Laurent, before turning east on Pine. Fights flared after demonstrators proceeded down St. Denis and launched snowballs at lines of riot police. Police responded with baton-charges, tear gas, and flashbangs.

Clashes continued near Square Saint-Louis as demonstrators fought back by linking their arms in a human chain and advancing on police lines. Heavy reinforcement from the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), Quebec’s provincial police, intervened to disperse the crowd.

Demonstrators from multiple groups were present, including McGill’s Art History and Communications Studies Graduate Students’ Association (AHCS GSA). AHCS GSA originally voted to boycott the summit in solidarity with ASSÉ. It was the first student association at McGill to do so.

Tyler Braun, a member of AHCS GSA, stressed the importance of bringing McGill into the student movement. “I think McGill should have a very important role [in the movement],” he told The Daily. “I think it’s unfortunate that McGill has played such a small role so far. Hopefully more departments will get on board as the strike progresses.”

Other groups touched on the government’s exclusion of various student associations from the summit as a larger reflection on its position toward free education.

“We asked to be invited, we asked to be included, and the government never responded, so this is our way to advocate for free education,” Nadia Hausfather, a council director for Concordia’s Graduate Student Associaton, told The Daily. “It’s of course disappointing that the summit excluded free education as a realistic option before it even started.”

Louise Gavard, of Le syndicat des chargees et charges de cours de l’UQAM (SCCUQ) – a 30-year-old part-time lecturers’ union at the Université du Québec à Montréal – echoed similar sentiments.

“When I think about the fact that we are not [at the summit], that we do not have a seat there, it’s quite hard to swallow,” she told The Daily. “At UQAM we teach 60 per cent of the freshman class. It’s hard to swallow that they’re holding a summit on higher education and we’re not there.”

Despite the diversity of groups represented at the demonstration – including student’s and teacher’s unions from universities and CEGEPs, political parties, and worker’s unions – many shared a general consensus toward the PQ’s perceived mishandling of the summit.

“I think [the summit] is a maneuver on the part of the PQ,” Roy Semak, a protester with Québec solidaire and a McGill alumnus, told The Daily. “They went back against their own declared position. They can’t say one thing and do another. It’s two-faced and it’s unacceptable.”

13 people were arrested, police said.

[flickr id=”72157632866324741″]

The post Students clash with police as summit ends appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The document, titled in French “Committed together toward a knowledge society,” proposes the creation of a new government body to advise the minister of higher education and ensure “coherence in the development of the university system.” In particular, the university council would be tasked with harmonizing the delocalization of university campuses, but would lack the teeth to enforce its decisions.

In an interview with The Daily, President of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) Martine Desjardins said she was “not surprised” by the content of the document.

“We are only surprised by what the [document] does not say, [and] the absence of a plan of action,” she said in French.

FEUQ and the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) favoured a different approach, whereby the council would have the power to probe university finances and curb wasteful spending. The government, however, pledges to “ameliorate university accountability.”

The document also fails to mention free education, one of the goals of last year’s student strike and a key demand for the 70,000 members of the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ). Instead, the government will broach the topic of indexing tuition to inflation and university administrative fees.

Administrative fees are additional fees that are added to tuition. At McGill, those fees amount to around $900 per year, compared with $63.45 per year at the Université du Québec à Montréal and $127.50 per year at the Université de Montréal.

As for accessibility, the government mentions increasing student aid and bursaries and reforming tax credit on tuition.

The government, however, does not elaborate on its propositions in the document, and plans to reveal the bulk of its plan the first day of the summit on February 25.

The post Government releases summit discussion topics appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The government told the University that it will withhold $32 million in grant money if the University fails to cut $19 million from its budget by the end of fiscal year 2014.

“This is clearly a devastating picture from the point of view of managing our University,” Masi said. “For anyone to argue that McGill or universities in Quebec aren’t underfunded is just ridiculous.”

The report outlined several strategies that would allow the University to meet their new budgetary constraints. These include targeted cuts, reduced headcounts and salaries, and a reduction in raises coupled with attempts to increase revenue through higher enrolment.

“There’s bound to be some effect on courses, number of courses taught, and the support given,” Masi said. “We can’t make a commitment now that some things are totally a sacred cow. Some of everything will have to be cut, and some will be hurt more than others to protect the core mission.”

“We want to protect the quality of that mission, but the quality of life surrounding it will have to be affected. I don’t mean to be cute on that,” he added.

Principal and Vice-Chancellor Heather Munroe-Blum noted that salaries and benefits constituted 75 per cent of McGill’s core operating expenses. Pension plan liabilities, post-retirement liabilities, and pay equity were also highlighted as “on-going pressures” to the McGill budget in the report.

The idea that students could hold a referendum to decide whether to increase tuition or the amount they pay for services was floated at the meeting. Masi thought this would be a good idea.

“Go for it,” he said.

Senator Graham Bell of the Faculty of Science expressed concern over a decrease in the quality of services and said that his faculty could lose nearly “75 per cent of its TAs.”

“Our mission in research and teaching should be protected, the damage might not be obvious, but it may be real,” he said.

Asked if administrator’s salaries might be affected, Masi said that targeting those expenses would be “symbolic.”

“The last time there was a cut was in 2009, and everyone took a cut,” he said. “If all administrators took a 5 per cent cut, it would barely amount to a quarter of a million dollars.”

A more detailed plan should be available sometime after the government’s summit on higher education, planned for February 25.

“When will we know? We’re working day and night on a bunch of scenarios, we’re looking at all the options but I don’t think it would be fair to come up with a plan without hearing what the town halls, focus groups, have to say,” Masi said.

The post McGill $200 million in the red by 2015 appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Security certificates grant the government power to deport foreign nationals suspected of posing a threat to national security with limited review from a federal court.

Mohammad Mahjoub, one of the panelists, was arrested in 2000 after the Department of Justice issued a security certificate against him for his alleged ties to the Vanguards of Conquest, an Egyptian Islamist group. A federal court ruled in December, however, that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had obtained its evidence against Mahjoub through torture.

“A day after September 11 [2001] happened, I was taken from the general population and put in segregation for two months and a half,” he said. “I was on suicide watch, in a dark cell without windows […] it was severely cold.”

Mahjoub alleged that he was subject to abuse and humiliation from his jailors and said that he was regularly strip-searched, sometimes “up to ten times a day.”

“The Canadian official tried to sexual[ly] assault me, they strip searched me at any moment. I kept fighting for my rights,” he said. “When they tried to sexual[ly] assault me, I went on hunger strike for 24 days.”

A GPS system attached to his ankle was cut off on February 1 after five years of surveillance.

“My family couldn’t take the house arrest any longer. My eldest son tried to commit suicide,” he said. “His phone was tapped, his mail was tapped, his internet was tapped. They didn’t leave anything to us.”

“My family told me, ‘we can’t accept you anymore.’ I became like cancer. We ended up separating, divorced,” he added.

The Canadian government has issued five security certificates in the last ten years, according to Patil Tutunjian, a panelist and a lawyer involved in a security certificate case. Two certificates were struck down in 2009, and the remaining two are currently subjects of a court case, she said.

Mohamed Harkat, a native-born Algerian and permanent resident of Canada who was arrested in 2002, has a certificate pending review before the Supreme Court.

“You can’t imagine the amount of money they spent [on me],” Mahjoub said. “They tortured me for 15 years mentally. It’s worse than to torture physically, because the pain doesn’t go away.”

Tutunjian noted that staff at the Department of Justice seized documents belonging to Mahjoub’s defense, and that CSIS had admitted to wiretapping conversations between him and his lawyer.

David Austin, another panelist, said the security certificate controversy is linked to a system of racial profiling that is endemic in Canada.

“We’re living in a dark moment in the history of humanity, especially for Arabs and Muslims or people who can be confused of being both,” he said.

The harassment and profiling of black people by police is “not separate” from Mahjoub’s case or the experiences of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, he added.

“We need to understand the continuity, [the] different forms of a similar process, which are not new by any stretch,” he said.

The post Former detainee speaks out on CSIS abuse appeared first on The McGill Daily.