Corruption

With corruption front and centre at the start of the debate, both Denis Coderre, currently polling as the front-runner, and Marcel Côté, who is polling dead last, were on the defensive.

Coderre’s party, Équipe Denis Coderre, includes 25 ex-members of Union Montréal, the now-defunct former ruling party that saw two mayors go down in corruption scandals. Côté’s Coalition Montréal includes eight ex-Union members.

“Who was the leader of the caucus of Union Montreal? It was Bernard Blanchet. He is with you. Who was the leader of the majority on the floor of the city council? It was Marvin Rotrand. […] How can you change the situation with the same people?” Projet Montréal’s Richard Bergeron asked Côté, before adding slyly, “Though it’s not as worse with you as it is with Mr. Coderre.”

Côté insisted that an “unresponsive bureaucracy” rather than party-wide complicity allowed corruption go on. “It’s a question of good management,” he said.

“The reality is that [corruption] is not that deep – we had the inquiry, we had UPAC,” or Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, claimed Coderre. His platform includes the creation of a City Hall-appointed independent inspector general. “You know, if the roof is leaking, you don’t throw the house down.”

Le Vrai Changement pour Montréal’s Mélanie Joly, who plans to combat corruption by making all of the city’s documents available online to the public, earned laughs from the audience when she retorted, “It’s not only the roof, but also the foundation of Montreal that is leaking.”

Transit

Vastly diverging views about the city’s transportation goals emerged as the discussion turned to the economy and transit system, with Joly and Bergeron presenting ambitious plans for public transit while Côté and Coderre cautioned against “politician[s’] promises.”

For Bergeron, an urban planner, combatting the urban sprawl that is sending 22,000 Montrealers into the suburbs each year will be key to revitalizing the economy. His plan is to invest heavily in new housing and modern public transit. His program’s hallmark is an electric tramway network for the city, with between 10 and 15 kilometres (km) operational by 2017.

Joly, for her part, wants to create a fully operational 130 km bus rapid transit (BRT) network by 2020, with 62 km, including a loop between McGill and Griffintown, operational within her first term. BRTs are bus-based mass transit systems that mitigate sources of bus delays by providing dedicated lanes and pre-pay stations.

A BRT would cost “eight times less than the tramway of Mr. Bergeron, or 40 times less than a metro,” Joly said, “and it would have the same impact in densifying the territory.”

Coderre, on the other hand, plans to update existing structures in more conservative ways. “Instead of expending a lot of money, there’s already a plan from STM that we should put forward,” he said.

According to Bergeron, the number of cars in the Montreal region jumps by about 35,000 each year – an unsustainable pattern, he said.

He insisted that keeping traffic flowing would be “impossible” when taking into account the massive rehabilitation projects needed on major thoroughfares such as the Turcot interchange, and required substantial investments in transit encouraging Montrealers to choose public transport.

Côté retorted that “bashing the automobile” wouldn’t solve congestion, and that “the cheapest and fastest” way of improving transit would be to create dedicated bus lanes – a project for which the provincial government has already set aside $75 million.

 Tapping into commuter frustration at lingering, empty construction sites, he quipped, “Montreal is the orange cone capital of the world,” and promised several times to expedite public construction by making workers come in on weekends.

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The major win for the union will be the length of the contract – two years, instead of the three originally requested by the University. According to AGSEM bargaining committee member Sunci Avlijas, the union thinks it will be able to make more gains for its members – especially where pay is concerned – in their second collective agreement negotiations, when the union will have recourse to striking.

The University and the union have been in arbitration since September 2012, which means that a provincially-appointed arbitrator has been overseeing negotiations with the power to impose a contract on both parties. The arbitrator also had the power to order the union back to work should it have gone on strike.

AGSEM requested arbitration as early as December 2011 following what they say were deliberate delays in the negotiation process on the part of the University, including a series of last-minute meeting cancellations. “[The University] behaved a lot differently” once an arbitrator was appointed, Avlijas told The Daily.

Arbitration sped up the process, but for AGSEM it also meant lowering the union’s expectations. Any contract imposed by an arbitrator must be in line with industry averages for first collective agreements.

“If McGill felt that an imposed agreement gave invigilators better than average working conditions, they would have the opportunity to appeal the case to the Labour Commission,” AGSEM Grievance Officer Jamie Burnett told The Daily in an email.

“This isn’t what we think is fair, or what we think is great, but it’s what we thought we could get in arbitration,” Burnett told his members at the union’s General Assembly last Wednesday regarding the 65 cent raise the union wrangled for its members – a disappointing figure compared to the $5.25 it originally demanded.

As soon as the contract is signed, invigilators will receive $10.65 an hour – $11.08 including 4 per cent vacation indemnity pay – which will put them at the lower end of provincial and Montreal averages. Including vacation pay, the Université de Montréal pays its invigilators $12 an hour, and the Université du Québec à Montréal pays theirs $13.61. On the other hand, Concordia pays its invigilators a flat $10 an hour.

Another major concession for AGSEM concerns working conditions. Avlijas told The Daily that despite Enrolment Services always receiving enough applications for invigilation positions, Deputy Invigilators often have difficulty actually filling the available shifts, making it hard to follow established internal policies

The union did a survey of those invigilators who quit after the fall semester, and found that most cited the work as being too stressful for how low the pay was as a reason for not returning.

According to that same survey, 73 per cent of respondents felt that it was at least sometimes the case that “there were too many students and not enough invigilators to ensure that Academic Integrity is respected.”

For this reason, AGSEM argued in negotiations that student-to-invigilator ratios are an integral part of working conditions, and asked the University to include a clause to maintain a “reasonable” ratio.

The University refused to include a clause. According to Comeau, “McGill is of the opinion that this is a management concern.”

Nevertheless, the union is happy to finally have a contract – especially one that does establish a few important improvements.

The contract guarantees a paid 15-minute break for every four hour shift, paid overtime and training, minor improvements in bereavement leave, and protection from penalties in the case of sick leave. It defines the length of a shift, the application process, as well as hiring practices and priorities (anyone may apply to invigilate, but experience will be favoured).

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When the McGill University Non-Academic Staff Association (MUNASA) executive, which represents roughly 500 non-unionized workers on campus, met with human resources last Tuesday, they were told point blank that wages and hiring would be frozen, and that workers would be offered early retirement packages.

“It was presented to us as what the University was going to do,” MUNASA President Ron Critchley told The Daily. “We looked at [these measures], and we said, ‘In no way can we support this, this is going to really hurt our membership.’”

The decision to freeze professors’ salaries was made by the McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT) executive along with a joint MAUT-administration compensation committee, and was never brought to the association’s council or membership.

MUNASA released a bulletin to its members Tuesday saying that the association “strongly [opposes] the approach put forward by the University,” which it believes will “have a profound effect upon all McGill staff and on services to students.”

“It is our conviction that not enough options have been explored to provide for an equitable solution that would have much less impact on staff morale and the operations of the University,” the bulletin continues.

In dealing with provincial cuts, McGill is taking some of the most drastic measures of Quebec universities, reiterating in several messages to the university community that it will have to slash its expenses to match government cuts in full.  In her latest message to the McGill community, Principal Heather Munroe-Blum also added September’s cancelled tuition hike to the administration’s calculus, pushing what the University needs to cut to $43 million, rather than $38 million – the actual amount withheld from McGill for this year and the next, following December’s cuts.

Université Laval, which was dealt a similar blow – $36 million in cuts for this year and the next – is taking a different approach. They will trim $3 million this year, $6 million next year, and deduct the remaining $27 million from the $1.7 billion reinvestment the province has promised in two year’s time.

A recent Montreal Gazette article quoted Laval’s vice-executive rector Éric Bauce saying that cutting $36 million would have been “impossible and unreasonable.”

Administrators say that McGill is unwilling to postpone cuts until they can be nullified by the reinvestment because it is conditional on Quebec’s economic situation.

Concordia is waiting until the end of April to make any decisions, and the Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM) will be dipping into its capital funds to offset the cuts – something McGill has previously said it cannot do with such high deferred-maintenance costs.

MUNASA also takes issue with the manner in which information about the cuts and the University’s financial situation has been relayed to the community. They are “really troubled,” according to Critchley, by the $1.1 million jump in non-salary savings reported by the University in their latest message to the community.

“The lack of detail in the numbers driving these decisions troubles us greatly,” MUNASA’s statement reads.

In response to MUNASA’s bulletin, Vice-Principal (Administration and Finance) Michael Di Grappa reiterated in an email to The Daily that these measures were intended to mitigate the need for layoffs in a second round of cuts.

“This is a very difficult situation for everyone, and we understand that these measures will cause distress for some members in our community,” he said.

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The McGill administration met with representatives of employee groups from across the university last week to discuss a series of cost-cutting initiatives, including hiring and wage freezes, and early retirement packages.

According to interviews with employee group representatives, the administration is seeking across-the-board wage freezes for the 2013-14 fiscal year.

The McGill Association of University Teachers (MAUT) executive has met with the administration regarding a wage freeze for professors. MAUT President Alvin Shrier declined to comment further until the matter had been brought back to the association’s council.

Several employee group representatives interviewed by The Daily, however, said that human resources had told them that faculty had already accepted a wage freeze for 2013.

The McGill University Non-Academic Staff Association (MUNASA) executive met with human resources on Tuesday.  Because the meeting took place “in the strictest confidence,” according to MUNASA President Ron Critchley, he would not comment on the details of the administration’s proposal.

Neither MUNASA – which represents roughly 500 workers across campus – nor MAUT are unions, which means that they do not have the legal protection afforded to campus unions through their collective agreements.

Their only recourse, according to Critchley, will be “moral suasion.”

For unions, wage freezes would mean re-opening collective agreements in order to cancel or defer previously negotiated scheduled pay increases.

The McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA), which represents 1,700 workers across campus, met with the administration on Tuesday. According to MUNACA VP Finance David Kalant, the board of representatives has already decided to refuse to re-open the collective agreement.

The administration’s proposal would have cancelled a 1.5 per cent wage increase due in June, as well as scheduled pay-step increases.

“They want employees to take this wage freeze, and certainly the cuts from the government are ridiculous, but on the other hand, McGill has become top-heavy in the last few years,” Kalant said.  “The number of layers of upper administration seem to be growing […] when they say there’s no fat at the top. There is.”

Those with job security will be protected, according to Kalant, but those roughly 100 MUNACA members who don’t “are very vulnerable.”

AGSEM – McGill’s Teaching Union’s Teaching Assistant (TA) unit was also asked to re-open their collective agreement. Their membership will vote on the proposal during their March 27 general assembly, though AGSEM Vice-President Justin Marleau said the AGSEM executive will recommend they reject the proposal, which would have cancelled 1.2 per cent wages increases due next January.

“The admin are saying that everyone needs to be contributing equally to sacrifices. But we did not benefit during the good years – our pay rates have barely kept pace with inflation,” Marleau said. “Why should one of the poorest employee groups be making the same sacrifices?”

The Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE) was asked last Friday to re-open their collective agreement to cancel the 2013 pay increases.  Though she “doesn’t want to speak for their membership,” the union’s president, Jaime MacLean, said that it’s “highly unlikely” that will happen.

According to several employee group representatives interviewed, the administration is offering a 3 per cent cut on all upper administration and Dean salaries.

Director of Internal Relations Doug Sweet declined to confirm the 3 per cent cut, saying only that “a message about this package of measures will be sent to the entire McGill community, and that message could come as soon as early next week.”

In late February, the province rescinded a monetary penalty for not trimming university budgets immediately, extended the timetables for administering cuts over five- and seven-year periods, and promised a $1.7-billion reinvestment in 2014-2015.

The McGill administration is saying that this will make little difference, and that waiting to implement cuts later rather than sooner will only further balloon the University’s accumulated deficit.

Citing that this reinvestment is contingent on economic conditions in the province at that time, VP Finance Michael Di Grappa said that the University “cannot responsibly count on this investment,” in an internal memorandum to the community.

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Since 2001, a relatively new provincial law has mandated McGill – as well as employers across Quebec – create internal pay equity models to assess and redress differences in compensation for persons who occupy positions in predominantly female job classes.

The McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA), whose membership represented the largest number of female-dominated job categories at the University at the time, contested the pay equity model developed in 2001 by McGill.

“The model they chose was not in fact legal. They made an alteration to the line that made no sense that reduced the amount they had to pay out,” MUNACA VP Finance David Kalant told The Daily.

The original payout totaled close to $6 million, according to MUNACA President Kevin Whittaker.

MUNACA and several of its members lodged complaints with the Quebec Pay Equity Commission, who decided in October 2004 to investigate the McGill pay equity model without first formally hearing the complaints out in court.

According to MUNACA’s lawyer, Johanne Drolet, McGill immediately filed an injunction with Quebec’s superior court, arguing that the Commission could not independently decide to investigate pay equity models.

MUNACA waited over four years to be heard by the superior court, and just a few weeks shy of their hearing, the Quebec Equity Commission offered McGill and MUNACA to mediate a conciliation process. In the winter of 2009, both parties agreed, and since have been at work on hashing out a new equity model.

According to Drolet, McGill was not the only large employer – and not the only university – to make these types of contestations.

“Especially when it’s a new law, employers will try the law, and try and see if their interpretation could be the correct one,” she said.

The new pay equity agreement will see more employees in female-dominated positions receive compensation than the 2001 plan, and additional payments made to some female-dominated positions that were already adjusted under the original plan.  The University will be responsible for compensating anyone who held these positions from 2001 until 2009 – including those who have retired from McGill.

The University is required to make these payments within 12 months.

The University will not have to pay interest on these retroactive payments, something that MUNACA considered contesting, but decided not to in favour of expediency.

Interest on $5 million is “globally probably a large number, but for each individual it’s not worth waiting another ten years,” Whittaker told The Daily.

The administration has repeatedly pointed to pay equity as a burden on the University’s operating budget in the context of provincial budget cuts, a point of view for which Whittaker has little sympathy.

“I’m sorry that the University has to pay that out now during these financial woes but this was something that they did to themselves. Had they paid it out when they should have, 12 years ago, or at least discussed it, we wouldn’t be in this mess that we’re in.”

The Pay Equity Act also requires that employers perform audits every five years to determine whether pay equity is being maintained. The audit performed in 2010 by the University was also contested by MUNACA, both on the grounds that it was calculated according to an illegitimate pay equity model, and that the lack of information relayed to employees about the audit process and the adjustments themselves put McGill in violation of the Pay Equity Act.

“They put numbers up, but it wasn’t maintenance,” Whittaker said.

MUNACA is currently in conciliation with the administration about re-doing the 2010 maintenance according to the new pay equity plan, and hopes to resolve the issue before the end of the year.

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If a new lease is not signed and approved by Council by April 30 – which this year’s executives admit is a possibility – lease negotiations will be passed on to a new executive for a third consecutive time, marking the fourth year of such negotiations.

They conceded in their letter “that running such a building has a cost [and] that the University is facing tough financial decisions,” but insisted that the University acknowledge the “massive value” of student life, and its responsibility to help SSMU achieve its core mission.

Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson told The Daily in an email that he doesn’t “disagree with anything in [the executives’] letter,” but that “unfortunately, the University Centre is an extremely expensive building to run, and McGill can no longer afford to support it as much as it has in the past.”

“McGill, like other Quebec universities, is unexpectedly facing extreme budget compression along with uncertainty about funding for the years ahead,” he continued.

But according to SSMU VP (Clubs & Services) Allison Cooper, since the provincial budget cuts, the proposals for the lease put forth by the University have not really changed. Instead, she says, the University’s “discourse” has changed.

“It’s meant more excuses,” Cooper said.

SSMU President Josh Redel sees a certain irony in the arguments McGill has been making to the government following cuts to university budgets, especially when contrasted with its plans for SSMU.

“Yes, we’re in a financial reality on planet Earth in Canada; in Quebec that requires cuts across everything,” he told The Daily. “[But] the University’s response has been, ‘Do you realize that these cuts threaten…the core mission of this University?’”

Noting this tone, Redel said some demands made by the University would “very much threaten the core mission of SSMU.”

SSMU executives are also frustrated with how drawn-out the process has been. The uncertainty that comes with operating a building without a master lease has become increasingly problematic, they argue. It entails nine-month subleases with second-floor tenants, postponed renovations, and a hesitancy to invest in long-term projects, such as a student-run cafe.

The content of lease negotiations are confidential – an added source of frustration, according to the executives’ letter – but the main points of contention have been a rent increase, the length of the lease, and the implementation of a cost-sharing system for the building’s utilities.

Despite the terms of the lease being far from complete, Redel believes that the Society will “very likely” have to hike the non-opt-outable fee it levies from students, and SSMU has already begun to tighten its belt.

In November, SSMU released a budget with a $211,320 projected deficit, which SSMU VP (Finance and Operations) Jean-Paul Briggs attributed in large part to estimates of future shared utility costs with the University.

To reduce the deficit, SSMU abolished a series of “non-essential” expenditures, cut the position for one full-time building manager, and dipped into the Student Life Fund.

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“I just signed up for something to do on the side, I had no idea what I was getting into,” Rutter told The Daily. “I don’t care about student politics. I’m getting as far away from this as I can.”

Rutter was hired by the Society in January as their Chief Returning Officer (CRO) to oversee their upcoming March referendum to elect a new executive and run an accreditation vote.

Tensions arose in the middle of the week when several PGSS members – including one executive – raised concerns about the nomination period not being extended given that all of the candidates, four of which were incumbents, were running unopposed.

A debate between candidates erupted in a shouting match on Wednesday between Rutter and PGSS members concerned about potential bylaw violations, as well as the fact that the CRO was unelected, and instead appointed to his position.

PGSS External Affairs Officer Errol Salamon believes that PGSS has had trouble keeping CROs this year, partly because the position was changed from an elected position to a part-time, contractual one. “The position [used to be] taken more seriously,” he said.

The elections process has been delayed indefinitely until a new CRO is found, although Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney told The Daily that the Society had already received some applications.

The accreditation vote, which would make PGSS the legal representative of graduate students at McGill if successful, will go on as scheduled.

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“You people are ridiculous. You aren’t fit for this university, you aren’t fit for society,” Rutter said as he walked out of the meeting amid chants of “Hey, hey, ho, ho. The CRO has got to go!”

Rutter was hired by the Post Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) to oversee their elections of next year’s executive and a vote to accredit the PGSS as the representative of graduate students to the provincial government in a March referendum.

At the time of the debate, the society’s Appeals Board was convened in an emergency meeting to consider whether or not to postpone the executive elections, and the possibility of Rutter’s termination as CRO.

The Appeals Board released a report late that same night stating that the CRO had “acted correctly and without error,” but that “in the light of conflicting and confusing language” in the bylaws, the election nomination period would be extended to February 28 and the elections postponed accordingly.

The Board meeting was called following a series of emails between Rutter and PGSS Equity Commissioner Gretchen King, in which King requested that Rutter extend the election nomination period.

According to the Society’s Activities Manual, the PGSS electorate will be notified of “an extension of the nomination period for one week for any position attracting one candidate or less.” Because all five candidates – including three incumbents – were running unopposed, King argued that an extended nomination period was required.

However, the report released by the Appeals Board notes that this section “does not purposively refer to actual extension of the nomination period, rather it refers to the communication of such an extension should it take place.”

The manual reads elsewhere that the nomination period will be extended “in the event of no nominees for the candidacy of any elected position.”

Rutter told King that there were “conflicting” bylaws, and while he welcomed any nominations she knew about which were underway, he “could not spend any more time on this right now,” and the election schedule would remain unchanged.

When King insisted that the process be re-opened and advised Rutter that she would be recommending his termination to the Appeals Board, Rutter sent an email to King which read, “Please check your email security settings. I am afraid you might have been hacked as it seems some asshole is sending emails from your accounts.”

The PGSS Board of Directors will meet next week – if not earlier, according to PGSS Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney – to decide whether or not Rutter’s email would merit termination.

Rutter told The Daily he had decided not to reschedule the elections both because of the cost and inconvenience, but also because he was under the impression that it was imperative for the society to hold its referendum by March 15 – the final date set by the provincial government for accreditation votes.

The timetable for the elections has been changed once already, and moved forward a week – after a different date was publicized to the electorate – when the Society’s executive realized that the schedule would put them behind the government’s deadline. A new election schedule was then publicized.

According to Mooney, the executive had originally decided not to split the accreditation vote and the executive elections into different referenda to encourage voter turnout, though the Appeals Board decision will mean that they have no choice in the matter.

“You want to minimize the number of times you ask people to vote,” Mooney told The Daily. “With the exec elections, there’s sort of a baseline [turnout] that you already have to build on.”

In order to be recognized by the government, accreditation requires that 25 per cent of the electorate votes “yes” to accreditation. PGSS traditionally gets about half that much – if not less – in terms of turnout.

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The AHCS GSA, which represents 86 graduate students, will be the first student association at McGill to affiliate themselves with ASSÉ, the most progressive of the three major provincial student federations.

All graduate students and post-doctoral fellows at McGill are affiliated with the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) through the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS). The AHCS GSA, whose parent student association is PGSS, will also keep their previous affiliation with FEUQ.

“FEUQ is really good at lobbying, but ASSÉ is much better at educating and mobilizing its members,” said PGSS Communications Studies Councillor Gretchen King, who brought the affiliation motion to the GA.

ASSÉ has threatened to boycott the upcoming summit on higher education, where their main proposal – free education – has effectively been taken off the table. It has also planned a demonstration for the last day of the summit in downtown Montreal, and encouraged its members to vote on a one- or two-day strike during the summit.

As of February 10, ASSÉ reported that five student associations, representing a total of 10,000 students, had already voted for a one-day strike during the summit, which will be held on February 25 and 26.

ASSÉ has warned that its members would again protest and go on strike, should the outcome of the summit be a tuition hike or the indexation of tuition to inflation.

Following suit, the AHCS GSA voted to boycott the summit, and will hold an emergency GA next Tuesday to vote on a two-day strike during the summit in order to “actualize” their boycott, King said during the meeting.

At the upcoming GA, the AHCS GSA will also consider the possibility of an unlimited general strike should the outcome of the summit be either a tuition hike or indexation.

Affiliation to ASSÉ will cost the AHCS GSA $3 per member per year, and the student society will have to make amendments to its constitution to make evident that the GA is its highest governing body, something which King says is “already true in practice.”

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In a series of ever-changing directives from the government, the administration received the news last Friday that the University would lose its $32-million conditional grant should it fail to cut at least $9.6 million from its current budget by April.

The government had already told the University that it would be receiving $38 million less in operating grants between this fiscal year and the next, but this latest announcement means the University cannot simply absorb the loss of revenue into its accumulated deficit. Instead, it must show that it has cut spending by the equivalent of 50 per cent of this loss in revenue – roughly $19 million – before April 2014.

The government is waiving certain accounting rules in an attempt to help universities deal with the budget cuts recently imposed, but McGill is emphatic that these measures will not help.

Higher Education Deputy Minister Chrystine Tremblay told university administrators last Friday that universities would now be allowed to shift money from their previously restricted capital budgets to their operating budgets, according to the Journal de Québec.

The reverse has been standard practice across the province – and at McGill – for over a decade. In the 2011-2012 fiscal year alone, universities shifted $275 million from their operating budgets to their capital budgets.

Operating budgets are traditionally earmarked for teaching and day-to-day operations, whereas capital budgets pay for building and infrastructure costs.

VP (Administration and Finance) Michael Di Grappa told The Daily that McGill is not considering shifting money allocated for capital projects back into its operating budget.

“We have so many demands, and such a shortage of capital funds that that really wouldn’t do anything to transfer money. It would just put a deficit on the other side… I don’t think that’s something that’s [suitable] for McGill,” Di Grappa said.

McGill estimated $647 million in urgent maintenance work in its most recent budget.

The province has also temporarily lifted restrictions on conditional grant deficits, and Di Grappa admitted that “there was no question” McGill would in fact  run a deficit this year.

Administration officials told union presidents at a meeting Wednesday morning that “headcount scenarios,” in which staff numbers could be cut, would be released in the upcoming days.

Administrators floated the idea of closing the school, the library, or certain community services such as the dental clinic for a week in a symbolic gesture against the government’s actions, according to people at the meeting who spoke to The Daily.

“There are all kinds of unpleasant scenarios in trying to meet a cut of this size…. Everything has to be on the table, because the University’s long-term survival depends on [it],” Provost Anthony Masi told members of the University community at a Town Hall this Tuesday. “This is unprecedented, it’s an assault on higher education in the province.”

Masi also noted that cuts to Quebec’s three main research councils would hit McGill – a research-intensive university – especially hard. This would remove one possibility for “indirect cost recovery,” since McGill would be unable to obtain additional research grants.

Although Masi did not give his Town Hall presentation “to announce a package of bad measures” he did reiterate several times that 75 per cent of the University’s $590-million operating budget is spent on salaries and benefits.

Masi did not consider in his presentation the list of suggested measures the provincial government had recommended to universities just this Friday, and only made mention of the operating grant.

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Women only represent 21.9 per cent of the undergraduates in Physics at McGill and about 13 per cent of those enrolled in Honours Physics.

The report follows a 14-question survey conducted by MSPS in response to a Commentary article published in The Daily in October (“Fine Men, Sexist Pigs” October 11, 2012, page 7), which highlighted the negative experiences of a female Physics student at McGill.

“The MSPS made it its objective to investigate further to see if other females and/or students in the department were experiencing similar situations,” read a statement provided to The Daily by the MSPS executive.

The survey was conducted online over a three-day period, and a total of 124 of 346 undergraduate Physics students responded. Twenty-eight of the respondents were female.

The MSPS report also noted that “several students referenced the hypothesis of [former] Harvard University President, Lawrence Summers, that there is an innate difference in mathematical and computational ability between genders.”

Citing confidentiality concerns, the MSPS declined to share the results of the survey with The Daily.

According to associate professor Tracy Webb, who sits on the department’s newly-formed Women in Physics Committee, and who has seen both the survey results as well as the report, the outcome is of no surprise.

“These are issues that women in undergraduate Physics face everywhere,” she told The Daily. “These problems, like a lack of female role models, aren’t just at McGill.”

Webb is one of the six women in the Physics department – a number which she says is actually quite high compared to other universities – and according to her, the department is making a concerted effort to be female-friendly.

The department “recognizes a need for more female role models,” and “all things being held equal,” this is being implemented in its hiring practices, she told The Daily. “Offers are being made and accepted.”

The Women in Physics Committee has begun a mentoring program, hosts talks, and plans events aimed at building a better community for women in the department.

Despite the department’s efforts, the survey indicates to Webb that the culture among undergraduates – and certain undergraduates in particular – needs some updating.

“A few people are clearly making the atmosphere unpleasant,” she said. “There also seems to be an issue with the student lounge, which should absolutely be a safe space.”

According to the report, several female students responded in the survey that they had been the victims of “obnoxious” behaviour in common areas, particularly the Physics students’ lounge.

“In reference to derogatory language and gender specific comments in common areas, the MSPS believes it can be addressed by increasing the awareness of acceptable conduct followed by peer reinforcement,” the report says.

The report, which identified gender equality as being a “social issue,” rather than an “academic” one, concludes that “the MSPS believes there are no official actions required by the Physics Department or the [MSPS] in response to the article ‘Fine Men, Sexist Pigs’.”

A problematic methodology? 

SSMU Equity Commissioners Justin Koh and Shaina Agbayani take issue with the survey’s methodology.

According to Koh, it is problematic that many of the questions were “ideological,” and not instead aimed at investigating “personal experiences of discrimination.”

In equity surveys such as these, “you need to look at people’s particular experiences in order to get the bigger picture,” he told The Daily.

Questions from the survey included “Do you think males and females have a different capacity of intelligence?” and “Which gender do you feel is the cause of sexism?”

“The survey was not constructed to be informative, but rather to identify a general opinion [among undergraduate students] to decide if corrective action by the department and/or the MSPS was necessary,” MSPS executives told The Daily by email. “It is for this reason that not all of the questions were formulated with extreme diligence.”

The report presents “generalized conclusions” made by the MSPS about the survey, but not “rigorous statistical analysis” of those findings.

This is another problem for Koh and Agbayani. “There is no presentation of the overall statistical findings, just selective presentations of what the MSPS deems, from their perspective, the most notable or ‘shareable’ results,” they told The Daily in an email.

The report says that uniformly negative answers to the question “Has a sexual or gender directed comment led to a decrease in your self-confidence at school?” reveal that students’ academic self-confidence has not been impacted by “gender-related remarks.”

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The University’s latest demonstration guidelines do not adequately protect rights of association and assembly, and reflect no substantial changes from the protest protocol that was withdrawn two weeks ago, representatives from prominent national and provincial civil rights groups said this week.

Following the protocol’s hasty withdrawal amid mounting off-campus criticism, the administration released two new documents this Monday. The first, a statement of values, will be based on the protocol’s uncontroversial preamble. The second consists of “operating procedures” defining acceptable forms of protest.

Like its predecessor, the operating procedures defines when a protest will be “deemed to be peaceful” according to the metrics of “intensity, intentionality, duration and location.”

According to Cara Zwibel, a director at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), who authored the CCLA’s statement last month denouncing the University’s demonstration protocol, “the same concerns remain.”

“They recognized in the preamble language that some measure of inconvenience is expected, [but] the nuts and bolts of the protocol seem to suggest that really any interference with everyday activities […] might not be tolerated. That problem of not establishing a high enough threshold still exists with the new operating procedures,” Zwibel told The Daily.

For Philippe Robert de Massy, a spokesperson for Quebec’s Ligue des droits et libertés, a prominent provincial human rights group, the operating procedures are too ambiguous, and grant too much discretionary power to the administration to determine whether a protest is acceptable.

“The responsibility is put on protesters to conduct themselves in a manner which is respectful of non-participants, but at the same time somebody else gets to determine when the party is over, and according to very subjective criteria,” he told The Daily in French.

De Massy plans on bringing the University’s new guidelines to the Ligue in order for them to determine an official position on the matter, he told The Daily. De Massy noted that the Ligue was currently studying similar measures at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

The administration will hold two consultations – one downtown, and one at Macdonald Campus – this month to solicit feedback on the documents. Although the statement of values will be brought before Senate and the Board of Governors (BoG) for final approval, the operating procedures will not be ratified by either body.

Student groups and campus unions also say the new operating procedures are more of the same, and have expressed serious concern that the operating procedures will not go before Senate or the BoG before permanent adoption.

This is “shockingly undemocratic,” said McGill’s teaching union (AGSEM) President Lilian Radovac, who added that, “AGSEM has not had faith in the administration’s consultation process. And given the divorce between that process, and the ultimate means of implementation, it seems we have reason to have even less faith.”

“I wasn’t aware that this was a dictatorship,” McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) President Kevin Whittaker told The Daily in response to the administration’s decision not to bring the operating procedures to the University’s governing bodies.

MUNACA, which represents the 1,700 non-academic workers at McGill, has a representative on the BoG.

The University’s graduate students’ society (PGSS) executive noted some positive changes reflected in the operating procedures following consultations with administration, but believes the document “still [puts] too much power in the hands of McGill security personnel, with little oversight or accountability, and a vague sense of how they should make decisions,” according to their External Affairs Officer, Errol Salamon. “Who will measure the ‘intensity’ and ‘duration’ of actions, and how will they measure these criteria? Can these criteria even be measured?’”

The provisional protocol regulating campus protests, released in February 2011 following a five-day occupation in the James Administration building, will remain in effect until the adoption of both documents.

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A ‘Yes’ vote for the DPS means that the society is able to renew its Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with the University – which dictates distribution on campus – as well as continue collecting student fees, which account for half of the DPS’s total budget.

Since 2003, the University has required independent student groups on campus such as CKUT, QPIRG, and the DPS – which publishes both The Daily and Le Délit – to hold existence referenda every five years as an indication of student support.

Voting began on January 23 with a hiccup when all 27,606 electors were sent a defective email ballot. Within an hour, DPS Chief Electoral Officer Faraz Alidina had received over 150 emails alerting him to the problem.

“I doubt it affected turnout,” he told The Daily. A corrected ballot was immediately sent out, he explained, and reminder emails were sent out to electors who had not yet voted the following Saturday and Tuesday.

Quorum was met within a few hours on the first day of voting. Ultimately, voter turnout totalled 18.8 per cent, with 5,202 votes cast.

The DPS received similar results in its last existence referendum five years ago, when 80 per cent of the 5,729 votes cast returned a ‘Yes’ vote.

The post DPS wins referendum with 76 per cent appeared first on The McGill Daily.

As water continues to pour down University, the city is denying the existence of a second break, saying instead that the last valves connecting to the broken 48-inch diameter pipe which unleashed yesterday’s flood have yet to be closed.

“We’ve stopped about 95 per cent of the flow, but there’s about 5 per cent left,” City of Montreal press representative Philippe Sabourin told The Daily. “We’re in control of the situation.”

The Montreal Gazette quoted another city official, Jacques-Alain Lavallée, as saying earlier that there was in fact a second, smaller break in a 54-inch diameter main connected to the McTavish reservoir.

A phone call to Lavallée by The Daily was re-directed to Sabourin.

McGill, on the other hand, has reported that the water flowing down University emanates from a break in an 8-inch pipe near the site of the original broken water main.

“We continue to have water flowing on to the campus from this second leak, which is being joined on the roadway in front of the Wong and Rutherford buildings by water being pumped from flooded buildings,” school officials posted to the McGill website this morning.

“I spoke to the Service de l’eau, to the borough of Ville-Marie, and I don’t have any information regarding a second break,” Sabourin said. “Maybe there’s confusion because there is still water flowing, but there is no second break.”

At McGill, classes were cancelled in both the Birks and Wilson buildings, and classes in the Wong building have been relocated elsewhere on campus. The north entrance to the McConnell Engineering building has been closed, although classes are not cancelled in the building. School officials warned students to avoid the Milton Gates entrance to campus, as University remained flooded, and to enter instead via the Roddick Gates.

Service Point, the Welcome Centre, and the James Administration building are closed, and the monthly Board of Governors meeting scheduled for today – where a new principal was to be elected – has been moved to February 12.

At a press conference on Tuesday, VP (Administration & Finance) Michael Di Grappa told reporters that the damage incurred by the flooding could result in costs of “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“Some buildings will be re-opened by the weekend, other buildings, such as the annex of the James building, might take months before people can [go back to work],” he said in French.

Approximately 80 classes were cancelled, according to Di Grappa.

SSMU has announced that the Shatner building is open today, and that a rescheduled SSMUfest will go on.

—with files from Laurent Bastien Corbeil

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