Pentefountas’s appointment has come under criticism, as he does not hold any of the qualifications listed in the job description for the position, including experience in the field of telecommunications. He is also friends with several high-ranking members in the Conservative party. The CRTC is an independent regulatory and supervisory body dealing with Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications systems.

The CRTC states on its website that it aims to serve the Canadian public to ensure access to “high-quality Canadian programming” and are mandated to “reflect Canadian creativity and talent, our bilingual nature, our multicultural diversity, and the special place of aboriginal peoples in our society.” The CRTC makes its policy decisions based on the 1991 Broadcasting Act and the 1993 Telecommunications Act, and is accountable to Parliament via the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

Pentefountas is a criminal lawyer and a partner in the Montreal law firm Silver Sandiford. Most of his work has been predominantly in the public sphere with his involvement in the Montreal Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association.

Pentefountas was also the president of conservative provincial political party Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) between 2007 and 2008, and ran twice as a candidate. Pentefountas is acquainted with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s director of communications, Dimitri Soudas, and Conservative senator Leo Housakos. A press release distributed by Moore’s office on Friday did not mention Pentefountas’ prior political activity or any experience in the broadcasting industry.

Groups such as Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, a non-partisan national volunteer organization, criticized Pentefountas’ appointment. Jim Thompson, spokesperson for the group, said that “nobody would want to see a political agenda at work in deciding which companies [or] points of view get a broadcasting license and which don’t.”

Moore also announced on Friday that Pierre Gingras, ADQ member and former MNA from the Blainville, Quebec electoral district, was appointed to the board of CBC/Radio-Canada.

“This particular government has seen fit to exercise its legal right to give the CRTC direction, and, on occasion, to overturn its decisions, on a frequency that is extraordinary and I would say unprecedented,” said Thompson. “I would also point out that [CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein’s] appointment expires in less than a year, and it has been reported in other media publications that there is pressure on von Finckenstein to vacate his position early in order to permit someone that is more friendly to the government to be appointed to that position.”

In early August 2010, a panel of individuals from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Privy Council Office (PCO) and Heritage Canada interviewed eight short-listed candidates for the Vice-Chair of Broadcasting position. Three of these candidates were current commissioners on the CRTC.

Pentefountas was not among these candidates. Jean-Luc Benoît, spokesperson for Moore, told the Globe and Mail that Pentefountas went through a selection process conducted by the PCO and Department of Canadian Heritage.
During Question Period in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Libby Davies, NDP MP for Vancouver East, said, “Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives raised hell about patronage every time a Liberal was appointed by [Liberal Prime Minister’s] Paul Martin or Jean Chrétien, but now that they are in power all the outrage is gone. Connected Conservatives are appointed left and right, mostly right, to the Senate, to the Immigration and Refugee Board, to the CRTC, and now to the CBC. … [Harper] was very clear when he said: This has got to stop, and when we become government, it will stop. … Why was Liberal patronage a bad thing but Conservative patronage a good thing?”

In the same sitting Charlie Angus, NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay, accused the PMO of nepotism, asking, “How can [Harper] claim that Canadians whose only qualification is being a friend of the government are not in a conflict of interest situation?”

The office of James Moore has rebuffed accusations that the appointment was politically motivated. A staff member from Moore’s office told The Daily that he would not be available for comment.

Arpin’s five-year mandate as Vice-Chair of Broadcasting expired on August 31, 2010, and Moore informed Arpin, who has worked in the Canadian broadcasting industry for 47 years, that his mandate would not be renewed. In an interview with Le Devoir, Arpin said he was “disappointed” that the government did not consider the renewal of his mandate in spite of his interest in continuing the post. Since the end of Arpin’s mandate, he has agreed to join the Université de Montréal’s department of communication as a visiting professor.

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The meeting comes in the wake of Quebec’s announcement of an undetermined tuition increase in 2012. Until then, tuition will rise by $50 per semester. The Ministry of Education has announced plans to hold a meeting in the fall to determine how much tuition will rise after 2012.

The central focus of TaCEQ’s general meeting was the planning and organization of the union’s activities for the coming year, a decisive one for the student movement. TaCEQ’s secretary general, Philippe Verrault-Julien outlined the union’s priorities. “The question of tuition fees will be dealt with,” he said, adding that TaCEQ will “continue to follow the evolution of Bill 38 on university governance.” He also noted that TaCEQ has taken a stand against McGill’s introduction of a self-funded tuition model that will see MBA tuition soar to almost $30,000 in the coming year.

Outgoing SSMU Arts representative Joël Pedneault‎ was elected vice secretary general of TaCEQ, one of the group’s two executive positions.

In addition to SSMU, TaCEQ’s member associations currently include student unions from l’Université Laval, l’Université Sherbrooke. The student association of l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières attended the AGM as an observer.

TaCEQ currently represents around 65,000 students in Quebec, according to outgoing SSMU VP External, Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan. “I think that SSMU is one of the major players in TaCEQ. There are four associations, obviously equally as important, but we certainly are the second-biggest and one of the more institutionally developed, which puts us in an important position because we do have resources that are not disposable to other associations,” said Ronderos-Morgan. “That being said, it is very collaborative and there is an understanding that there are in-kind contributions from each association.”

This weekend’s meeting was the group’s second. Verrault-Julien described the changes TaCEQ has gone through in the past year. “The last year has been a formative year, so there was a lot of time spent elaborating general by-laws and setting up a financial structure, so on very institutional business,” he said.

Following its creation last fall, TaCEQ waged a campaign against provincial Bills 38 and 44, which would have imposed a quota of external representatives on post-secondary institutions’ boards of directors. The campaign was conducted in conjunction with l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante and la Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec. A heavily amended Bill 44 was eventually adopted, and Bill 38 was tabled and has not been debated in Quebec’s National Assembly since.

During the past year, TaCEQ has fought for recognition from the Quebec government as a provincial student association, which would make them eligible for a provincial government bursary. Currently, the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) is the only student federation recognized by the Quebec government as a provincial student lobbying organization.

Ronderos-Morgan outlined TaCEQ’s efforts toward ratification over the past year. “We started off a year ago by simply sending in a request for recognition, and at that point, [the Ministry was] a little bit shocked. They weren’t expecting that there would be another legitimate candidate to recognition,” he said. “We’re completely in the right for pursuing this… We have exactly the same profile as the FEUQ, which is the largest provincial student association, and the FEUQ has been receiving this funding from the government for twenty years, which amounts to a total of about two million dollars of public money.”

Last winter, the Quebec education minister Michelle Courchesne developed a new policy for officially recognizing provincial student associations. Although TaCEQ has requested information on this new policy, they have been informed by minister Courchesne that they would not receive this information until June, after it has been reviewed by the provincial Treasury Council.

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On March 20, 75,000 workers had taken to the streets demanding that a collective agreement be reached by March 31, and marched again on April 8.

Louis Roy, first vice president of the Confédération des syndica nationats (CSN), said that the goal of the demonstration was to force the government to negotiate without resorting to a general strike.

“When we decided to do this demonstration, it was because we told the government last year…if you want to negotiate with us and we are not on strike, they have the opportunity to do that before March 31. The possibility of a strike will come after April 1,” said Roy.

“If we don’t settle the agreement for March 31, we will fall in the usual way of negotiations with maybe a strike in the autumn. If [so], the government will have missed an opportunity to do something new – to settle without a strike and without a decree,” he added. 
Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, treasury board president of the Quebec Liberal Party, said union leaders had set March 31 as a symbolic deadline for a collective agreement – the same day that labour contracts for public sector employees, imposed by the Quebec government in 2005, expire. 
As the union’s symbolic deadline came and went, they decided to continue negotiations until April 20.

“At the latest, on April 20, if sector agreements are still not on the horizon, we’ll depose requests for mediation in view of bringing the two parties together for a final regulation,” Michel Arseneault, president of the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ), said in an April 8 CSN press release.

Through labour contracts, the Quebec government imposed a two-year pay freeze, followed by four two per cent increases in wages, on public service employees. 
The Front commun syndical was created in May last year in order to represent public sector employees in negotiations with the Quebec government. It consists of the Secrétariat intersyndical des services publics (SISP), the CSN, and the FTQ, and represents 475,000 public and semi-public workers.

In a press release responding to the protests, Gagnon-Tremblay said that Quebec is offering a global raise of seven per cent in five years, which corresponds to $2.3 million.

The Front commun syndical is demanding a 11.25 per cent pay raise over three years.

Roy said that the wages of public sector workers, when measured in terms of purchasing power, are decreasing.

“[Public service employees] had two years of frozen wages, in 2004 and 2005, and we are just trying to get back to the level [of purchasing power parity] we were at [before these years].”

Gagnon-Tremblay called union demands unrealistic, predicting that granting an 11.25 per cent pay raise over three years would cost $8 billion.

“I know that these billions of dollars look [like a large amount], but we are working for 500,000 people, and these people are paid less than the equivalent job in the private sector,” said Roy.

Roy said that negotiations will be difficult. “Until now, the government is asking for concessions – and they don’t offer a lot of money for wages. We are still working hard…. This government is not really close to people working in [public] services.”

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The FAFMRQ demanded that the provincial government reimburse Laurin-Dansereau for funds deducted from her student bursary because the government considered child support to be a source of revenue, despite the fact that the law on financial aid to students did not make this clear.

If the court rules in favour of FAFMRQ, Sylvie Lévesque, the director general of the Fédération, said that the province could owe a total amount of $9 million in retroactive funds to 1,500 students.

The Quebec Appeals court made a decision last October in favour of a student who made a similar claim. Although the attorneys-general of Quebec appealed the ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal in February.

On average, child support for single parents amounts to $3,343 per year. In December the Ministry of Education rewrote the law, affirming that all but $1,200 of that money should be considered income and therefore deducted directly from the bursaries of students also receiving child support. This leaves single-parent students with bursaries that are over $2,000 less than what they otherwise would have received.

Since the Income Tax Act of 1997, child support has not been considered as a source of revenue – except in cases of post-secondary financial aid, lodging subsidies, and social aid.

According to Lévesque, “All these dossiers are linked together, and because the amount of funds involved in social aid are more considerable than funds involved in education, so as long as the minister of the Ministère de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale doesn’t take action, the Ministère de l’Éducation won’t take action either.”

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Hours before PGSS Council began, they received a letter from CFS chairperson Katherine Giroux-Bougard, condemning the motion.

The motion states that the referendum would be held over a four-day period, from March 29 to April 1. It also says that the referendum would proceed even if the full Referendum Oversight Committee – consisting of two members of the PGSS and two members of CFS – fails to meet an agreement on the referendum rules by March 10, 2010.

The motion passed with only one objection and one abstention.

Giroux-Bougard’s letter indicated “that any referendum held in contravention [of the federation’s bylaws] will not be recognized nor considered as binding by the Federation.”

However, PGSS president Daniel Simeone claimed that because the Federation is already in a breach of contract due to its violations of its own bylaws, the conclusions of a PGSS referendum would be binding.

“The federation is claiming that it can ignore the bylaws that it wants, and then enforce them later,” Simeone said.

“In a breach of contact situation, you go forward in a way which is appropriate and democratic, and so we are going forward with a referendum to sound out the opinions of the PGSS members on the issue. The conclusions of the referendum will be binding on the PGSS as a corporate body.”

Furthermore, the letter states that “members of the Referendum Oversight Committee have been appointed by the Federation and the McGill PGSS.” However, it was revealed that the PGSS only received the names of those appointed by the CFS to the Referendum Oversight Committee in a letter dated March 4, months after the deadline for appointments as stated by the Federation’s bylaws.

PGSS has been planning to hold a referendum concerning their membership in CFS since October, when the PGSS filed a petition to defederate from the federation.

The CFS letter is seen by some PGSS executives as the next in a series of intimidation and delay tactics that CFS is employing to prevent the referendum from going forward.

“The fact that the CFS presumes that they can prevent Council from making decisions….and that delaying things and imposing procedural hardships on a school can prevent [a referendum from taking place] – I find that absolutely absurd, and quite insulting,” said Ladan Mahabadi, PGSS VP (External). Mahabadi also claims that, in its moves to hold a referendum, the PGSS has followed the CFS bylaws to the best of its abilities.

PGSS Council passed a motion in December mandating the Society to proceed with the referendum process.

The federation only responded in late January, past the 90-day deadline established by its bylaws, without any mention of the dates of the referendum nor of its appointed members to the Referendum Oversight Committee.

Due to what the PGSS considered to be CFS’s violations of its own bylaws, it filed procedures in the Quebec Superior Court to enforce a referendum.

In a letter received shortly before the first court hearing, CFS required that the referendum be held over a period of two days, March 31 and April 1, and, according to Mahabadi, without consultation with the PGSS.

“The PGSS views that any attempt to have a two-day polling period is clearly an attempt to ensure that quorum is not met, and is a stalling and delaying tactic,” Simeone said.

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The poet George Bowering writes that Prince Edward County, in which Ameliasburgh is situated, reminded him of “certain half-abandoned farm valleys of eastern British Columbia.” Purdy’s A-frame, Bowering adds, is composed of “lots of inexpert finishings made up for by the sense of talent and energy, and honest usefulness.” Its charm, apparently, was also appreciated by Bowering’s wife Jean Baird, who described it over the phone as “a true cottage in the sense of old-time Canadian cottages, with the extra cups and saucers from your real house.” It was a project that entailed years of work, and Al called it “the house that was never finished.”

Today, 10 years after his death, this spirit continues in a campaign to preserve this heritage site, one that many argue is an irreplaceable artifact of Canada’s literary and cultural past. Lead by Baird and a number of other contemporary figures in Canadian literature, the program will foster new generations of poets through a writer-in-residence program, providing them with the same creative sanctuary that spurred Purdy’s leap into the Canadian literary canon almost five decades ago.

Some say that Al Purdy was an underdog, or that he was, at least, an ally of underdogs. Al Purdy was a vital voice from working class, anti-authoritarian, and anti-establishment Canada. Bowering writes, “While [Milton] Acorn has found the search for beauty consistent with the proletarian cause, Purdy has supplied the robust humour without which the prol [sic] would be unrecognized as the authentic Canadian item.” Purdy’s friend and poet Dennis Lee has been quoted as saying, “He broke with the old, colonial mode of poetry and recast our imagination, so that it seems perfectly rooted in the place we occupy. No one else in English-Canadian poetry had really done that.” It is difficult to resist mythologizing him as the quintessential Canadian poet, as many literary critics have done. A self-taught erudite with negligible formal education, he was among the many men who rode the rails to Vancouver during the Great Depression. Purdy also served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he wrote his first collection of poems, The Enchanted Echo – work that he retrospectively labeled “crap.” His best work was yet to come.

What began as an empty plot that the Purdys bought for $800 in the late fifties later became the place where Purdy’s creative work flourished. In the early years on the property, Purdy was indigent, foraging through dumps for food – he even admitted to eating roadkill. However, in the years following the construction of the A-frame, Purdy came to see increasing literary and financial success. An archived photo of Purdy from the University of Saskatchewan library shows the writer doing yard work, wearing sunglasses and a plaid shirt rolled above his elbows – apparently, the same way that he read his poems in front of university audiences.

While he was building the house by Roblin Lake, Purdy also immersed himself in Canadian history and began to research Owen Roblin, grandson of a United Empire Loyalist and founder of “Roblin’s Mills” in Ameliasburgh. Purdy had deep roots in the loyalist bastions of Ontario: he himself was the descendant of loyalists and was born in Wooler, Ontario, a settlement near Kingston that has, by now, nearly disappeared. Baird claims that Purdy’s work on the house and his inquiries into the community surrounding Roblin Lake changed him from a “failure of a man” into a prolific poet.

Beyond its importance as Purdy’s artistic retreat, the A-frame famously nourished rising talent in Canadian poetry, a role that Baird and her collaborators hope to re-ignite. Purdy was a notorious host to dozens of guests, including Canadian literary A-listers like Margaret Atwood, Earle Birney, Margaret Laurence, and then-unknown Michael Ondaatje. Despite his open-armed hospitality, Purdy avoided coteries with other writers. Writing to his wife from Ameliasburgh on Milton Acorn, in a letter dated 1969, he writes, “Acorn is not like other acorns, he does not lie still on the forest floor and shut his big yap… [he] stalks thru the house reciting poems, all of which sound like the King James version…. I expect pity by return mail.” When I spoke to Baird, she said, laughing, that Purdy could be a “grump.” Despite this, he was indiscriminate with his houseguests, welcoming both renowned authors and virtual unknowns. On the Montreal poet Bryan McCarthy’s eight-day visit to the A-frame, Purdy wrote in 1966, “We spent two days consuming beer and the rest yak-yak, which consisted of 18-20 single-spaced pages of question and answer by the time he finished.” After Purdy’s death in 2000, the house continues to be visited in what Baird called “the Canadian poetry pilgrimage.”

To maintain this emblem of Canadian poetic achievement, Baird and Howard White, Purdy’s publisher, have attempted to preserve the house by founding the A-frame Trust. Poets David Helwig, Steven Heighton, Karen Solie, and Rob Budde have also designed the writer-in-residence program, in which chosen writers will receive a $2,500 monthly stipend to write while living in Purdy’s former abode. The A-frame Trust is an attempt to raise money to buy the house, make renovations, and establish funds for a writer’s endowment – a project that will cost $900,000 to carry through. If this writer-in-residence project succeeds, it will be one of only a few similar projects that exist in Canada, alongside the Kogawa House and the Haig-Brown House in British Columbia and the Berton House in the Yukon.

Purdy continues to be a name that is oft repeated and resonant in discussions about Canadian literature – but his legacy, hopefully, will live on as a “small whisper” in the woods near Roblin Lake.

The post The house that Al built appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Denis, who began living on the streets at 14 years old, was recruited by documentary filmmaker Daniel Cross to depict his life as a squeegee person. Shooting footage for S.P.I.T. (Squeegee Punks in Traffic), Denis explains he “traded his syringe for his camera” and pinpoints this as his redeeming moment. Since S.P.I.T., which depicted the City’s zero-tolerance stance against squeegee kids, he’s completed two additional films, also charged with a rebellious spirit: Roachtrip and Punk the Vote.

Living on the street comes with a whole host of dangers – health issues, violence, exposure. The police pose an additional threat to this already disenfranchised population. Officers ticket the homeless for minor offenses, and these offenses often accumulate. Because many can’t pay the fines, they can end up in jail.

The lack of adequate housing has meant that homelessness has become increasingly visible in Canadian cities. In turn, a desire to keep poverty out of sight means efforts that indirectly criminalize it. Public poverty has always been heavily subject to the rule of law, and the Quebec Human Rights Commission has pointed to visible signs of poverty and marginalization as a basis for social profiling.

“We justify the criminalization of the homeless people on the basis that they constitute a disruptive presence in the city,” says Celine Bellot, a professor at the Université de Montréal and a member of the Collectif de recherche sur l’itinérance, la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale, a research collective focused on issues related to homelessness. “The presence of marginalized people disturbs other users of public spaces, and so it’s believed that action must be taken to eject these people from public spaces.”

The Montreal police’s tough stance against incivilities has had direct negative consequences on the homeless. Last November, the Quebec Human Rights Commission, in a report entitled “La judiciarisation des personnes itinérantes à Montréal: un profilage social,” called for the district of Ville-Marie to repeal two municipal regulations that unfairly target homeless people. The first municipal bylaw, which closed 15 parks and public spaces at night, has meant that homeless people have had to choose between leaving downtown or defying the law in order to find a place to sleep. The report also called for the repeal of the bylaw that forbids the entry of dogs into Émile-Gamelin Park and Viger Square. These bylaws have had direct consequences on homeless persons’ ability to access essential services: Viger Square is just blocks away from two shelters.

Homeless women tend to be targeted for fines particularly on the basis of infractions related to solicitation. When it comes to policing the disruptive behaviour of homeless women, the focus is largely on sex work, and on issues that are particular to sex workers. “We use their strategy for survival as a means to repress the presence of women in public spaces,” says Bellot.

Bellot found that between 1994 and 2005, ticketing increased at a rate of 696 per cent for public transit infractions and 320 per cent for municipal infractions. Today in Montreal, ticketing is no longer increasing at the rate it once was, notes Bellot. However, she adds, Montreal still tickets more than other Canadian cities.

Denis illustrates the pettiness of common infractions: “Sleeping on a bench is grounds for a $140 ticket, because you’re taking up more than two spaces on a bench.” The homeless have a different relationship with public space. Denis explains that treating these spaces as their home leads directly to criminalization. “When you want to drink a beer, you go into your living room and have a beer – their living room is the park, where it’s illegal to drink.”

The commission found that uneven policing that targets the homeless resulted in the excessive use of courts to deal with the marginalized population. Although the rationale behind a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to minor infractions is that it will reduce the number of serious criminal acts, studies conclude that there is no relationship between the number of incivilities and the level of crime within a neighbourhood. The commission drew statistics from studies conducted by Bellot.

Piper Huggins, borough councillor for the district of Plateau-Mont-Royal, states that “it’s almost easier, possibly, for a government to invest in coercive measures, because you see results immediately – because you’re basically chasing people off the territory – than investing in the more complicated aspects, which is actually confronting the issue itself and making sure that people on the street have an alternative.”

Bellot explains that Montreal criminalizes the homeless in more implicit ways than other Canadian cities, which adopt legislation that targets certain behaviours. “In Montreal, we often use existing regulations, but interpret these regulations in a more restrictive way, and enforce them more severely,” she says. “The Quebec Commission for Human Rights has shown [that] we use legislation that applies to everybody and apply it disproportionately to homeless people.”

Bellot’s studies demonstrate that homeless people who get arrested are unable to enter into a dialogue with the justice system, and are engaged in an administrative process that they do not understand. The Clinique Droits Devant, a mobile judicial accompaniment clinic that serves Montreal’s marginalized communities, reports cases in which homeless people have fallen asleep at the doors of homeless shelters, only to wake up with a notice of infraction in their pockets for public drunkenness, never having had contact with the police officer involved.

While some measures are taken to better equip homeless persons who enter the justice system – such as designated prosecutors and community resources – Bellot says these efforts are disproportionate to the number of individuals who are ticketed. She estimates these efforts aid 50 to 100 homeless people while 4,000 to 5,000 fines are given out each year.

“There are people who are homeless, who live in public spaces, and there are others who are in the process of leaving the streets but are trapped by fines that they receive while homeless. When these people leave prison, there are no resources available to help them find housing. That means they find themselves, once again, in the streets,” says Bellot. “It’s a vicious circle.”

Roach agrees that crime enforcement is counterproductive and notes additional dangers of incarcerating homeless individuals. “Ticketing [the homeless] and putting them in jail [is] putting them in the hands of real criminals,” he explains. “I’m talking from experience. I was in jail for tickets, and I was solicited to sell cocaine by the Hell’s Angels.”

In December, the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld the right for homeless people to set up temporary shelters in public parks. In B.C., the legal question of the right to squat in public spaces came to the fore in October 2005, when the Supreme Court of British Columbia struck down the City of Victoria’s bylaw against setting up tents or other structures in parks.

Many believe that the ruling in Victoria has set a precedent for the use of public space in municipalities across Canada. David Johnston, who has lived in the streets of Victoria and who was a defendant in the case, says that the case provoked many Canadians, because it legally affirmed that people have the right to live in public spaces without paying.

Despite this legal victory, Chris Aung-Thwin, coordinator of Homeless Nation, points out the City’s resistant attitude toward the ruling. “[Municipalities] have no desire to work toward a solution,” says Aung-Thwin.

“Municipalities will have to take into account the demand for the existence of temporary shelters,” says Huggins. “It’s a question of bylaws attacking a symptom that is not part of the underlying problem.”

Bellot explains that the problems associated with people in public places can be met with solutions that work toward cohabitation. “We can offer private spaces to these people, like respite centres, social housing, places where they can be present without having their presence contested,” she says.

The amount of money allotted to social housing is absurdly low, according to Huggins. The total annual budget for social issues in the borough is $64,000 while 3,000 families are on the waiting list for housing. The redistribution formula for funds set aside to combat poverty and social exclusion penalizes the Plateau, because it is calculated partly on the basis of concentration of poverty. Even though poverty is a big problem in the Plateau, it is not concentrated in a particular region, says Huggins.

“It’s a complex problem, because it involves so many levels of government and it needs the backing of society,” says Huggins. “If people have homeless people staying in the park across the street from where they live, they’re going to ask the government to evict these people from the park. They’re not going to ask for a raise in taxes so that the government can reinvest these funds in social housing.”

Denis registers the frustrations of trying to elicit change through the municipal government. “We’ve been trying for years. We were almost there with the Politique en itinérance,” he says, citing a report undertaken in 2008 and 2009, interested in respecting the rights and improving the living conditions of the homeless population. “Unfortunately, Charest won’t listen to us.”

“We need to bring [the issue] to film festivals and to the general population,” says Denis. “The next step is to bring this film to the community and tell them, look, we need to talk to our politicians. We need change now.”

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The eighth annual Homelessness Marathon will broadcast live from the streets of Montreal, and several other locations across Canada, on Tuesday, February 23, starting at sunset and running all night long until sunrise on Wednesday, February 24. Campus and community radio CKUT 90.3 FM will host the hours between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. Topics will include HIV on the streets, policing poverty, and literacy.

The post Policing poverty appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The Kalmunity Vibe Collective was founded with the intention of providing a “voice for the voiceless,” and when you look at spoken word in this light, the responsibility that comes with having a microphone in your hand and a stage beneath your feet is one that’s not to be taken lightly.

Having lived in Africa, Europe, and Canada, Koffy has many things to offer, not least of which is the unique perspective that comes with his tri-continental experiences. He is a living testament to the French colonization of the Côte d’Ivoire. In past interviews, Koffy has mentioned learning French history in his childhood, reading about African history though the lens of French textbooks, and being unable to speak any local languages from Côte d’Ivoire. Consequently, in Poésic, Koffy imparts this thought about his francophone African identity: “Je suis le fruit de la colonisation… alors, je me demande qui je suis à present.” Having moved to Montreal in 1998, Koffy spoke to me about feeling like an outsider both when he returns to his native Côte d’Ivoire as well as in Quebec, because of the way he speaks and dresses, and the colour of his skin. However, despite feeling like he exists in a space of cultural limbo, Koffy is enthusiastically vocal about embracing his Quebecker identity. To him, being a Quebecker doesn’t mean abandoning his unique past and perspective; on the contrary, he believes in integrating into Quebec society, but in a way that doesn’t negate his past. Speaking about the crossroads between art and activism, Koffy denies that he is an activist above and beyond being a poet. But he adds that “The music that [members of the Kalmunity Vibe Collective] play is roots music – music from the African diasporas. It’s funk, hip hop, jazz, blues, afro-beat, reggae, dub…and maybe those kinds of music already have a revolutionary message within.”

On Poésic, Koffy worked with Quebecker musician Guillaume Soucy, who composed all the music heard on the album. At his upcoming show at the Montréal, arts interculturel (MAI), expect spoken word accompanied by bass, drums, guitar, and violin, along with a contemporary dance performance. Koffy says that, ultimately, his poetry is inspired by and comes down to the act of conveying emotion. Through his poetry, Koffy hopes to touch on the humanity we all share. “I want to believe I understand you,” he tells me, “because we’re the same. Knowing me is knowing you, and knowing everybody else. And writing, for me, is a way to get to know me.”

Fabrice Koffy, accompanied by Guillaume Soucy, will be performing at MAI (3680 Jeanne-Mance) at 10 p.m. on January 15 and 16.

The post Slamming cultural boundaries appeared first on The McGill Daily.

First, let’s get some terms straight: net neutrality is the concept that Internet service providers (ISPs) shouldn’t favour certain users or applications over others. There are two ways in which this preferential treatment can manifest: traffic shaping, when an ISP funnels bandwidth to different types of applications (for example, making email faster and peer-to-peer software slower) and throttling, when an ISP intentionally lowers the speed of an Internet connection.

The CRTC decided on October 26 to allow ISPs to continue traffic shaping, but only if they inform users when they do so. The decision also bars ISPs from traffic shaping that would interfere with time-sensitive items, such as Skype or streaming media.

Traffic shaping and throttling is happening – right here, in Canada. Bell, Rogers, and a few other telecom providers have justified slowing Internet connections down at peak times of the day, claiming that a small percentage of customers have been congesting their networks by using peer-to-peer applications. In 2005, a scandal broke out when Telus, then caught up in a conflict with the Telecommunications Workers Union, blocked its Internet subscribers from accessing a pro-union web site. In April 2008, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) and its members discovered that Bell Canada had begun slowing down the traffic destined for the customers of CAIP’s members.

The enforcement of this system depends on complaints that the CRTC receives. In other words, the onus would be on individuals and companies to lodge a complaint with the CRTC. Although this is not a proactive approach, Marc Raboy, the Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill, says that it is not possible for the CRTC to monitor all the traffic shaping and throttling that occurs. However, Raboy notes that the complaints process involves time and resources not often available to the ordinary person.

It is important that government introduce legislation to categorically forbid these discriminatory practices and maintain neutrality on the Internet, so that users, not ISPs, decide how to use it. In a world without net neutrality, user access to Internet content would be up for grabs to the highest bidder. In other words, telecom companies would be able to interfere with the transmission of content, such as TV shows delivered over the Internet, that compete with services the ISPs offer, like cable television. In a situation bereft of strict rules governing net neutrality, telecom companies would be able to extort money from online content and application providers, and favour the web sites and services that they own or with whom they strike special deals. This would essentially stifle innovation, making smaller competitors – like Google was once upon a time – unable to compete and incapable of succeeding despite their merit.

For these reasons, the CRTC should use the power given to it through the Telecommunications Act to regulate retail Internet services, using net neutrality as a guiding principle. The point would not be for the government to regulate the Internet, but to take the ability away from ISPs to interfere or discriminate arbitrarily and with impunity when it comes to Internet access.

Laurin Liu is a U1 History and Philosophy student. Shape her traffic at laurin.liu@hotmail.com.

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The Commission asked that $10,000 be paid in moral and punitive damages to each worker and $5,000 paid to two workers who were forcibly thrown off the company’s premises in plain view of co-workers.

The incident took place in July 2006, when a group of 40 employees were called into a meeting with Calego International’s president, Stephen Rapps. The workers testified to the Commission that Rapps yelled at them, saying, “You Chinese eat like pigs!”

He Yong Han, a former employee and Chinese immigrant now residing in Montreal, reported to The Daily that Rapps told the workers to wash themselves daily, and that they were no longer in China.

He said that Rapps chastised the workers for unsanitary work conditions, warning them not to get urine on the floor when using the toilet.

Of all the employees at Calego International, the Chinese workers were the only ones who were called to the meeting.

He reported further that workers walked out immediately after, returning the next day to demand a written apology from Rapps, a cleaner work environment (workers say that at the time, there were no janitorial staff working), and compensation for what they saw as discriminatory actions. The demands were turned down, leading many of the workers to quit their jobs.

The workers then filed a complaint through the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR).

Calego International is a Montreal-based children’s backpack and accessories manufacturer. Rapps, a supervisor, and Agence Vincent, the placement agency through which the Chinese workers were hired, will share the payment of damages.

Julius Grey, the lawyer who represents Calego International, has denied that the incident took place.

Despite the fact that the fine is the largest sum that the Quebec Human Rights Commission has recommended in a racism case, Fo Niemi of CRARR, who helped these workers file their complaint, stated that the amount is less significant when the amount of damages awarded to each individual worker is considered.

“This may be why discrimination still goes on, because if we had the kind of damages awarded as in the United States, where we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, many people would think twice before committing racial discrimination,” Niemi said.

The former Calego employees have received support from the Montreal Chinese community, in the form of encouragement, assistance, and monetary aid. The Montreal Chinese Cultural Centre helped the workers find lawyers and gather information for their case.

Niemi notes that very few complaints are filed from people of Asian backgrounds, although Asian workers are a large number of the immigrant workers who are often forced to work in substandard conditions.

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