“When I came to Canada I thought I found a safer space, but I found that the violence was just more subtle,” said Sophia Starosta, originally from Brazil, and a member of Action Santé Transvesti(e)s et Transsexue(le)s du Québec (ASTT(e)Q). “As a woman, as a trans* person, as an ex-sex worker, I encounter violence made by men against all kinds of people who are not men and that’s why I’m here to try to bring awareness to that.”

The Reproductive Justice League Choir opened the demonstration with songs on rape culture. Families of Sisters in Spirit, ASTT(e)Q, Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), and Women in Cities continued with speeches on gendered violence.

“We spend so much energy answering what rape culture is that we often miss out on opportunities to ask what would a world free of rape culture look like.”

“About one in four students experience sexual assault during the course of their post-secondary experience. About 80 per cent of these are women and so we realized that there was this epidemic of sexual violence,” said Bianca Mugyenyi, Programming and Campaigns Coordinator for the Centre for Gender Advocacy.

Rape culture was a highlighted topic at the demonstration. “I think rape culture is the culture of disbelief of the survivors, victim blaming, and systemic sexism,” said Julia Nadeau, an advocate for the Safer Concordia Campaign.

“The more widespread these marches and other awareness campaigns become, the greater the challenge there is to rape culture,” said Mugyenyi. “People are talking more about rape culture, and realize that it’s not acceptable to normalize, minimize, excuse, and condone sexual assault.”

Aurélie Lanctôt, a member of the McGill Law Feminist Collective, also felt the demonstration was an important step towards combatting gendered violence. “It’s important to manifest in public spaces, to remind people of issues that might not be apparent but still exist.”

Aimee Louw, another demonstrator at the event, also brought up the issue of gendered violence towards women with physical disabilities. “Over 60 per cent of women who have disabilities will experience some form of gendered violence. […] There is often a feeling that women with disabilities will take any form of sexual attention they can get and that is […] a stereotype that is damaging to a lot of women.” Louw told The Daily.

The controversy regarding McGill’s silence over the sexual assault scandal involving three football players was a topic of interest to several of the demonstrators. “Obviously gender violence is a huge issue and it’s largely ignored by the McGill administration. […] Misogyny manifests itself in so many ways and there’s a need to keep discussing that,” said Kai O’Doherty, member of the Union for Gender Empowerment.

“People are talking more about rape culture, and realize that it’s not acceptable to normalize, minimize, excuse, and condone sexual assault.”

Another demonstrator, Sabrina, felt the University could play a larger role in addressing gendered violence. “I think [universities] should have rigid rules in place where there is zero tolerance for assault at any time. In order for people to feel safe, they have to know that if something [happened] to them it would be dealt with.”

Jordana, a representative of SACOMSS, told The Daily, “We spend so much energy answering what rape culture is that we often miss out on opportunities to ask what would a world free of rape culture look like. […] We come together and march for a world free of fear, where the world belongs to everyone.”

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Located on the downtown campus at the Guy-Metro building, the new centre will offer “crisis intervention, advocacy, accompaniment, a resource room, referrals, volunteer opportunities and educational outreach,” according to Drummond.

She also said she hoped that the centre would “provide students, staff, and faculty a space for support, discussion and learning,” in order to create “a culture of respect and consent on campus.”

Julie Michaud, Administrative Coordinator at the Centre for Gender Advocacy, described Drummond’s approach as “very survivor-oriented,” as she “help[s] survivors take the steps that they feel are right for them, whatever those may be.”

The Centre for Gender Advocacy, which offers services and resources to the Concordia and greater Montreal community in addition to campaigning for social justice causes, is at the center of the two-year long push. Their petition received over 1,000 signatures, pushing the university into action back in April 2013.

Michaud highlighted the importance of a resource like this on campus. “Sexual assault centres should be in place at all [educational] institutions because around one in four students will experience some type of sexual assault during their post-secondary education.”

“The fact that a quarter of all students go through this is obviously very concerning, but even if the rate were lower it would still be worth addressing,” Michaud continued, adding that the definition of sexual assault is not limited only to rape, but “all unwanted sexual contact.”

Michaud says that the statistic “is hard to believe because we tend to think of sexual assault as a penetrative act that is perpetrated by a violent stranger in a dark alley.” In reality, she said, “over 80 per cent of survivors know their perpetrator, and it doesn’t have to [involve] physical violence.”

Survivors often face many other problems when dealing with sexual assault, such as skepticism and victim-blaming when deciding to share this information with friends or family. “Survivors learn quickly not to speak out” for fear of not being helped or even taken seriously, she said.

“It’s the unfortunate reality of living in a rape culture,” Michaud said, adding that it was “essentially the knowledge of [these] fact[s] that motivated [the Centre for Gender Advocacy] to campaign for the creation of the Sexual Assault Resource Centre.”

Unlike the administrative support for Concordia’s sexual assault centre, McGill has the Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), a volunteer-based centre located inside the Shatner building. SACOMSS has run on student fees since the 1990s.

Michaud pointed out that there are similarities and differences between the two resources. “Like SACOMSS, the Sexual Assault Resource Centre will offer meaningful volunteer opportunities, but unlike SACOMSS, it will not put the burden of running the centre on volunteers.”

Drummond’s full-time position, according to Michaud, “will provide an important degree of reliability in the availability of service – something that can understandably be lacking in volunteer-run centres during busy times for students.”

Staff and volunteers from the Centre for Gender Advocacy will also be lending support to the Sexual Assualt Resource Centre.

“The opening of the centre is a very important step forward for Concordia, and I believe [it] will have a positive impact on the health and well-being of the entire Concordia community,” Drummond told The Daily.

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This month’s panel focused on Line 9, a pipeline owned by Enbridge Inc. that runs across Ontario and Quebec. The panel came a day before National Energy Board hearings on Enbridge’s proposal to reverse and expand the flow of Line 9 wrapped up in Montreal.

Line 9 was originally built in 1976 and flowed eastward to Montreal, but was reversed in 1998 to flow westward. It was built to transport traditional crude oil, but the proposed reversal will include the transportation of bitumen from the Alberta oil sands.

“[Bitumen] is already even more corrosive than traditional oil [and] the superheated pipeline system used to transport it makes it unconventional,” said Cameron Fenton, Director of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. Fenton also pointed out the allegedly elevated cancer rates in citizens living near the pipeline.

Reports have found that Line 9 is prone to spills, a fact that Amanda Lickers, a member of the Onondaga nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and an organizer at SwampLine 9 – a project that aims to stop the construction of Line 9 – is an act of “genocide and climate change” against Indigenous people. The pipeline is primarily constructed within and around Indigenous lands in Canada.

Cindy Spoon, campaign director for the Texas Tar Sands Blockade against the Keystone XL Pipeline, offered similar concerns, arguing that pipelines “disproportionately affect people of colour.” Spoon explained that companies reach out to poorer communities in order to achieve what she called a “facade of consent” in order to legally seize communities’ property to build pipelines.

These communities are less likely to resist such actions, said Spoon. She also designated the actions of Canadian and American oil companies – toward Indigenous people and minorities, respectively – as environmental racism.

“Oil and everything that is supported by oil is so ingrained in our lives that we don’t realize all the ways that we pay for it. When we keep saying that oil is just more convenient, I think we are disconnected from the fact that we’re all here to increase our well-being, but oil is not it.”

According to Fenton, the environmental impacts of the pipeline will be immense – a statement that the panelists agreed on. “It could hold upwards of 400 gigatons of recoverable carbon, which is almost the planet’s entire carbon budget,” Fenton stated, adding that this was over 25 times Canada’s carbon budget. “[Enbridge’s pipelines] have already spilled and broken over 800 times over the past decade, which comes out to about ten spills per month.”

Fenton also raised concerns about the nature of bitumen spills. “There is actually no proven way to clean up a bitumen spill, especially in a body of water.”

The panel discussion shifted from condemning the pipeline to condemning the oil and tar sands in general, and how energy is acquired in a capitalist society. According to the panelists, the current method simply secures too much profit to be changed.

“Oil and everything that is supported by oil is so ingrained in our lives that we don’t realize all the ways that we pay for it,” said Melissa Fundira, a McGill student and programmer at CKUT. “When we keep saying that oil is just more convenient, I think we are disconnected from the fact that we’re all here to increase our well-being, but oil is not it.”

Another student, Marie Dageville, was optimistic, stating, “We can come together and find a solution [but] it is just a matter of making that first step.”

Lickers said that mobilization was the way to divest from oil usage. “Direct action costs them money, and the more expensive we make it for them, the closer we get to winning.”

The panel was also broadcast on CKUT. The next event of the series will be held on November 14.

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Both Greyson, a filmmaker, and Loubani, an emergency room medical doctor, were arrested by Cairo police on August 16 as they were en route to the Gaza Strip through Egypt. According to family and friends, Loubani and Greyson were travelling to Gaza to work together on an academic and medical collaboration between the University of Western Ontario and Al-Shifa hospital, the main hospital in the Gaza Strip.

As the pair stopped at a local Egyptian police station to ask for directions, according to a website set up by friends and family in support of Loubani and Greyson, they were promptly arrested with no solid charges and put in the Tora Prison, just outside of Cairo.

More than 140,000 people have signed an online petition calling for their release, while high-profile stars took up the cause at the Toronto International Film Festival. Despite the surge of support, including rallies elsewhere in Canada, and media attention, the two remain imprisoned.

Two attendees at the rally, Debbie Margetson and Martha Newbigging, are both friends of Greyson and Loubani, and voiced their disbelief that either of the men would do anything to be arrested.

“We know them personally,” Margetson said, adding that she believed that they were doing nothing but travelling to Gaza to work on the collaboration. “So it’s all the more frustrating and infuriating to know that we know for sure they’re being held without just cause. They weren’t going to do any harm to Egypt, it was a cross-over to get to Gaza.”

According to Justin Podur, the duo’s close friend and emergency contact for the trip, who spoke at the rally, the response from the Egyptian government has been disappointing.

“I think what’s going on in Egypt right now […] there’s an emergency law. They’ve arrested dozens of people. It’s a climate where they’re in a very aggressive kind of mentality and they are not seeing any cost to them for imprisoning people for any period of time. It is not a concern for them,” Podur told the press in an interview.

As of September 16, both Loubani and Greyson have been on a hunger strike in order to pressure both Egyptian and Canadian authorities for their release – but have had little success so far.

According to speakers at the rally, Egypt’s deputy Prime Minister will be in Toronto on a private visit this week to discuss Canada and Egypt’s economic relationship. Supporters of Loubani and Greyson questioned why the government was not making the arbitrary detainment of the two Canadians a major issue.

At the rally, Michael Dworkind, a doctor and colleague of Loubani, asserted that the lack of action was political. “Because they were going to Gaza in an attempt to publicize against injustice in the occupied territory, they are seen as anti-Israel and our government is pro-Israel, so they are turning their backs on [John and Tarek],” Dworkind said at the rally.

At the rally, speakers such as Cecilia Greyson, John Greyson’s sister, colleagues of Greyson and Loubani, and Manon Massé, a member of Québec solidaire (QS), called for increased action from both the Canadian and Egyptian governments.

Among the speakers was the award-winning filmmaker Michel Marc Bouchard, a colleague of Greyson. Bouchard’s eloquent speech in French summed up the general feelings of the crowd: “What kind of nation allows one of its most significant artists to be left in such a situation? What kind of nation lets a doctor, who has dedicated his life to helping people, rot away in one of the worst prisons in the world?”

Massé also announced that QS would be presenting a motion to the National Assembly later in the week to support Loubani and Greyson, and to further pressure the federal government to continue pushing Egyptian authorities to release the two men.

Friends and family vowed that if the two were not released, there would be further protests in solidarity.

“We will not stop fighting for their human rights,” said Andrew Jones, a friend and colleague of Loubani. “We will not stop demanding for their immediate release. We will not forget them. We will only get louder.”

With files from Dana Wray.

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