The results may be contested until March 1, and will be made official on March 2. According to PGSS Chief Returning Officer Colby Briggs, a complaint against one or both of the candidates is currently under consideration.

The position became vacant following the announcement of previous Secretary-General Juan Camilo Pinto’s resignation on January 20. The resignation followed a November 13 motion of censure against Pinto passed by the Board of Directors, and a vote of no confidence by the executive on December 10.

“I’ve been a PGSS councillor for [two and a half] years, and I’ve previously considered getting more involved,” said Bresler in an email to The Daily. “When this situation arose, I felt that I could be well-suited to fill this interim position given my existing knowledge of and a rapport with the PGSS.”

“The recent disturbances at PGSS [have] impeded the society from running smoothly,” Bresler wrote in his campaign statement, emphasizing the need for “greater support and coordination from the secretary-general.”

Bresler indicated that he had no plans to run for the position again next year, and would focus on “realistic” short-term goals. He told The Daily that he planned “to work with and help the current team in their various portfolios to try and get as much as we can done; work to increase transparency, between the various bodies of PGSS and to our members; and to represent graduate student interests broadly, and in particular in relation to the planned austerity measures.”

“I’m certain I’ll have no shortage of things to learn, but I believe that my experience will allow me to integrate quickly,” added Bresler. “I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know and working with the current team through PGSS Council, and I look forward to collaborating with them more in this capacity.”

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“The idea of the marathon is really to engage a broad discussion across the country about the deeper issues of homelessness and housing,” CKUT Community News coordinator Aaron Lakoff told The Daily.

The initiative began in 1998 in Geneva, New York, with the goal of raising awareness about the housing and homelessness crisis in the U.S.. CKUT brought it to Canada 13 years ago, and hosted the event for 11 years before passing the torch to Edmonton-based CJSR last year.

“The homelessness crisis is a capitalism crisis.”

This year, CKUT will be broadcasting part of the marathon from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. from the Native Friendship Centre on St. Laurent. A community dinner open to everyone will also take place before the event, starting at 6 p.m. at the same location.

According to Lakoff, the marathon is a consciousness-raising rather than a fundraising broadcast, and as such is intended to challenge “this idea that if you drop a couple of coins into the Salvation Army’s bucket, that’s going to somehow alleviate the problem of homelessness.” Instead, the broadcast will provide an opportunity for people who are homeless and their allies to speak on the radio and, at the same time, allow a nationwide discussion on issues facing people who are homeless and their possible solutions.

“The homelessness crisis is a capitalism crisis,” said Lakoff. “It’s a crisis of our economic system, and it’s going to take a deep discussion and deep action to solve the problem, as well as privileging the voices of people living on the street themselves, who are the best ones to recount their own experience of life on the street.”

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The three defendants, along with 291 other people arrested on March 22, 2013, were fined $637 under article 2.1 of bylaw P-6, which prohibits demonstrating without providing a route to the police. The judge ruled that this provision could only apply to the organizers of the demonstration, and further noted that failure to comply with the article did not create a penal offence, making it legally impossible to convict people on this basis.

“[The decision] is going to have a huge impact on the other P-6 cases that are still moving through the court,” said McGill student and member of the Legal Committee of the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ) Kevin Paul in an interview with The Daily.

Although the City of Montreal attempted to argue against the decision, stating that 1,200 people arrested under the bylaw would have to be acquitted, Richmond dismissed this argument, stating that “justice must be served in spite of the consequences.”

In his judgement, Richmond also expressed strong criticism of the SPVM’s handling of the distribution of the statements of offence, which were all signed by the same police officer to expedite the process, even though she had not witnessed the violations.

“Justice must be served in spite of the consequences.”  

“The trivialization of this violation of the law by senior SPVM officers is staggering,” Richmond wrote in the judgement, in French. “It seriously undermines the confidence we can have in the documentary evidence that is used every year in thousands of criminal proceedings.”

“This part of the decision gives further backing to the claim that the SPVM arbitrarily arrested thousands of protesters since the student strike,” ASSÉ stated in a press release sent out on February 10.

For Paul, Richmond’s decision was not a surprise. “Anybody who witnessed the police procedure for mass arrest and ticketing of protesters would not be surprised by the decision to throw out the tickets on the grounds that the accusations were falsified by the police,” he said.

Paul was ambivalent about the effect that the judgement would have on future police behaviour.

“It’s hard to say how the police practices [will] change,” said Paul. “What we learned over the last few years is that the police will always adapt to […] repress demonstrations, and we need to be ready for whatever new laws or measures or police practices arise in response to this decision.”

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