About 70 delegates from universities across Canada attended the conference, where they participated in workshops with industry leaders, listened to two speeches, and attended a sustainability fair with campus groups.

In his opening keynote Thursday, Steven Guilbeault – a founding member of Equiterre, a Montreal based-environmental organization,and former Greenpeace spokesperson – said that the effects of human-induced global climate change on the Earth could be even greater than scientists previously anticipated.

“It’s entirely up to us as a global society to decide how much climate change we are willing to live with, along with the consequences,” he said.

According to Guilbeault, humans need to immediately attack the root of the problem – greenhouse gas emissions – to adapt solutions to address the global rise in temperatures that 150 years of carbon emissions have already locked in.

“Adaptation is an important thing, but there are those people who say all we can do is adapt,” he said. “I’d like these people to go and explain to the population of Miami how they should adapt to a two-metre sea level rise.”

Praising the developments of renewable energy and sustainable transportation initiatives around the world, Guilebeaut reminded the audience that even greater shifts in thinking must take place in order to substantially cut global greenhouse gas emissions.

“Even if everyone is driving a hybrid in 2011, there will be 9-million of us then. That’s a lot of cars, and that’s a lot of metal,” he said. “We have to rely on more transit; we have to rethink the way we build our city.”

On Friday night, Robert Weese, the Vice President of Government and External Relations at General Electric Canada (GE), presented his company’s “ecomagination” program, which outlines measures to help GE and its customers reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other impacts on the Earth.

A central tenet of that program is to raise GE’s annual revenues from “ecomagination” products to $25-billion by 2013. According to Weese, his company’s primary motivation for researching and building sustainable products is its financial incentive.

“Green is green, and we don’t make any apologies for that,” he said, referring to the returns made on green products. “We’re not in this business because it’s a responsible thing to do…. We wouldn’t be in it as a company if we couldn’t make money out of it.”

The company’s program also includes goals to reduce company-wide absolute greenhouse gas emissions by one per cent and use of water by 20 per cent by 2013.

Weese stressed that his company’s ability to adapt to a constantly changing market has allowed it to survive for over 130 years.

“I think ‘ecomagination’ is our latest adaptation to a changing world,” Weese said.

The annual conference was organized by a team of students from the Management Undergraduate Society.

The post Conference examines sustainability with money in mind appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The MFSP aims to unite disparate campus research in order to maximize the ecological, social, and economic sustainability of McGill’s food systems, according to Dana Lahey, one of the group’s organizers.

“We’re trying to engage the McGill community, get research done on campus, and help that research drive change,” Lahey said.

Lahey lamented that much student research never makes it out of the classroom. He hoped that the MFSP can bridge the gap between classes like “social context of business” and campus decision-makers.

“With a structure like this we can help fit all of the little pieces together,” he said. “If we can get research done through classes that are already happening, then we can put that information together and make concrete recommendations for changing things.”

At the meeting, Bill Pageau, director of McGill Food and Dining Services also highlighted his “Martlet social responsibility” program, which includes multiple sustainability projects.

Pageau pointed to successful initiatives, such as the adoption of fair trade coffee in most outlets and the implementation of a wet waste filtration system, as examples of sustainable solutions that succeeded because they were supported by strong economic drivers.

“I think that the ends have to justify the means when we’re looking at the environment,” Pageau said. “When asked, students support the environmental initiatives, but when asked if they’ll support them financially, the support isn’t there.”

Pageau also heralded the success of the McGill Farmer’s market, making note of the abnormally fast pace at which the project cleared regulatory hurdles with the administration.

“It really showed for once how administrators and student groups can really work together to achieve a common goal,” he said.

In closing, Pageau suggested that students get involved in groups such as the MFSP and the McGill University Student Dining Advisory Committee, and take an active role in bringing sustainable change.

“People have to legislate less and participate more,” he said.

Contact the MFSP at mcgill.foodsystems.project@gmail.com.

The post Administrators, students present appeared first on The McGill Daily.

A series of negative evaluations of McGill’s food service operations dating back to the 1980s prompted the change, according to Morton Mendelson, Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning).

“There was a sense in all of these reports that we should have integration [of food services],” he said.

McGill Food Services received a “D” ranking in The Globe and Mail’s Canadian University Report this year. Other reports have criticized the University’s decentralized approach to food services, and recommended integrating the various services into one system.

Currently, McGill has two food operations: Residences Food Services – which runs the Bishop Mountain Hall, Royal Victoria College, and Douglas dining halls, as well as small snack bars in the Burnside and McIntyre Medical buildings; and McGill Food and Dining Services, which administers the Martlet meal plan and operates numerous locations across campus. Each operation also runs a catering service.

“We have two catering services, a hodgepodge of food on campus, and a hodgepodge in residences,” Mendelson said.

Under an integrated system, students on a meal plan could use their meal card at any of the locations on campus. Presently, only students living in New Residence hall have that ability.

Bill Pageau, director of McGill Food and Dining Services, said centralization could smooth out operations.

“We think integration will bring an increase in portability and efficiency that will benefit all students,” Pageau wrote in an email to The Daily.

Residences Food Services Manager Susan Campbell agreed that the changes could bring positive changes for students.

“I think the consolidation will be a very good move,” she said.

Mendelson stressed the need for open consultation with students, and noted that the new director will hold a seat on the Student Life and Learning executive team – so that student concerns about food will be heard by higher level administrators than before.

“We are 100 per cent committed to having ongoing consultation with students…. It can’t just be window dressing,” he said.

The new director will decide what to do with McGill’s current food outlets, especially those that are run in house. According to Campbell, he or she likely won’t make any immediate changes to Residences Food Services that are obvious to students.

“There are no plans to change the meal plan right off the bat,” she said. “We have unions in place, and many different locations.”

Unlike Residences Food Service workers, however, employees at McGill Food and Dining Services’ cafeterias are not unionized.

The student-managed Architec-ture Café is also unlikely to see immediate changes despite their affiliation with McGill Food and Dining Services, according to Mendleson. He made it clear that new student-run food services will not be brought into the campus food system.

“We’re not contemplating handing [any more] locations over to students,” he said. “It is quite possible, however, to have an integration across the University food services and the SSMU cafeteria if the student groups are willing to engage in the necessary agreements to do that.”

But SSMU VP University Affairs Nadya Wilkinson said that any integration between SSMU and the University’s food services is unlikely, given the organization’s push to bring student-run food options into the building.

“We know that it’s inconvienent for people who are on [McGill meal plans], but we’re weighting that with the benefits of having more [student-run] food in the building, and that’s what won out,” she said.

Also unclear is the influence that corporate-run food services will play in the re-aligned system.

“When it comes to the question of corporate concentration, we know that students are interested in diversity, variety, quality, sustainability, and low prices. All of these goals are not always compatible,” said Pageau. “We could use a model that has all out-sourced operations, an in-house operation or a mixed of both.”

According to Mendelson, how the University proceeds with in-house and outsourced food options is a decision for the new director to make.

“The person coming in will have to evaluate and figure out what its going to look like…. We dont have plans to change anything very quickly before it is evaluated,” he said.

Both Mendelson and Pageau maintained that the University’s goal is to serve students a variety of high quality and sustainable food options.

“We want to provide the best possible service to people given the resources we have,” Mendelson said.

The post McGill centralizing food services appeared first on The McGill Daily.

According to the current SUS VP Finance Jordan Doherty, last year’s VP Finance, Eva Kong, left the University unexpectedly in February without submitting a letter of resignation or returning several documents and personal cheques to the organization – which have since expired.

“She just left [and] we had no idea where she was,” Doherty said. “Finances essentially broke down for the second semester.”

In August 2007, Kong helped SUS file approximately five years of unpaid taxes with Revenue Quebec, which convinced the SUS executive that they were in good standing with the government, according to Spencer Ng, the 2007-2008 SUS President.

“Our file was closed; we were 100 per cent certain,” Ng said.

According to emails The Daily received from sources who wished to remain anonymous, payments amounted to $29,050, including $5,463 in interest.

But after Kong’s departure in February, the SUS executive received another letter from Revenue Quebec, requesting another large payment.

Fearing the loss of its corporation status, which is a requirement of SUS’s Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with the University to receive student funding, the executives chose to pay the amount Revenue Quebec requested, and seek explanation for the additional levy after any holds on SUS were cleared.

“We had no idea how strictly [Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning)] Morton Mendleson was planning to enforce the terms of the MoA this year, and we knew there was a very legitimate chance that we’d be denied student funds,” Ng said.

Kong’s absence resulted in a breakdown of day-to-day financial business within the SUS, as no executive stepped in, and equalization payments to student departments – determined by a formula that considers the number of students in a department and the revenue that the councils make from fundraising – were never allocated.

According to Ng, no equalization payments were made in Winter 2008 because only some student departments returned requests, and it would be unfair to apply the formula funding to a select few. Instead, Ng opted to give doubled equalization payments for Fall 2008 – covering both Winter 2008 and Fall 2008 – and ensured that the SUS account held a balance of close to $20,000 at the end of Winter term.

But by Doherty’s account, this year’s SUS executive inherited numerous debts dating back to November 2007 totalling approximately $20,000, including unsettled payments to insurers, beer companies, and office supply firms.

“When you factor in the extra $10,000 in equalization, we took a hit that was closer to $30,000,” Doherty said. “We found ourselves paying for the sins of other people.”

Doherty explained that despite a profitable Frosh and this term’s student fees, which balanced the remainder of the expenses from last year, departmental organizations should not expect to receive the promised Winter 2008 equalization payments.

“When you’re $30,000 behind where you should be, something has to go; we can’t honour that commitment that [last year’s council] failed to follow up on,” Doherty said.

However, SUS has funded Fall 2008 payments in full, following the guildelines set forth in its constitution.

Nick Avdimiretz, VP of the Physiology Undergraduate League of Students (PULS), wrote in an email to The Daily that SUS must be held accountable for the missteps, and not its departmental organizations.

“This is money that the Physiology students pay, expecting it to go straight to PULS. Instead, this money was lost with last year’s SUS,” Avdimiretz wrote.

SUS President Neil Issar reiterated his organization’s position on the missing equalization payments.

“We’re not in a financial position right now to recoup the losses of last year’s council. It has had no effect on this year,” Issar said.

Issar encouraged departmental groups needing extra funding to apply to the SUS Special Projects Fund, which was expanded this year.

The post Financial missteps squeeze SUS groups appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Students already pay the library to access academic material online, and linking course reading lists to the library’s databases could reduce dependency on course packs that still haven’t made it online because of copyright rules.

Right now, professors can direct students via WebCT to readings in the library’s digital collection of journals, historical documents, and e-books. Materials not included in those databases would be sold in a small course pack.

SSMU VP University Affairs Nadya Wilkinson hopes the direct linking system would save students money and reduce the use of paper.

“In the short term, we want to get the [printed] course packs as small as possible,” she said.

The library spends more than

half of its $14.5-million budget on a constantly growing bank of online materials according to Diane Koen, the library’s Associate Director of Planning and Resources. Students can access 40,000 e-journals and 1.2-million e-books through the library’s database.

“The library holds far more journals online than in print,” Koen wrote in an email statement to The Daily.

Koen estimated that hundreds of professors are using the direct linking system this semester. The size and volume of course packs decreased this year from an average of 340 to 333 pages, according to course pack coordinator James Warne.

On the scale that McGill prints course packs, that’s 700,000 pages of material.

Warne explained that administrative expenses – acquiring material, scanning pages, and reporting use of each page to publishers – accounts for a large portion of the ten-cents-per-page fee that students pay for course packs.

Most of those tasks are outsourced to Eastman systems – a Montreal company contracted by McGill to obtain copyright clearances for all content and deliver an electronic file back to the University for printing.

Eastman also collects an additional copyright fee for readings that use either 25 pages or more than ten per cent of their original source material.

According to the company’s president Craig Park, Eastman has been ready to put McGill course packs online for six years, but haven’t been able to because a scanned image of a page and a paper copy of the same material are treated differently under copyright law. Publishers are reluctant to grant digital distribution rights, and when they do agree, they charge exorbitant rates.

“I think the best thing to do is to change the copyright legislation, which would make digital copies the same as printed copies – they’re the same thing, why are they treated differently?” said Park.

This alternative approach to electronic course packs is shared by Warne, who explained that with a digital distribution system, copyrights still needed to be cleared with publishers for the content’s distribution.

“Obviously if you move to digital, you still have to do the entire reporting step,” Warne said.

Arts Senator Zachary Honoroff who is exploring the option of electronic course packs, said that putting entire course packs online was a long-term goal. For now, he hopes that students will encourage their professors to use the Library Databases that they already pay for.

“We just want to give students a choice,” Honoroff said.

Barry Schmidt, the General Manager of the McGill Bookstore, said that while course packs represent about 25 per cent of his textbook sales, he’d still like to see them be available to students digitally.

“If they’re available online through the libraries, and it reduces the cost of course materials to students, I’m pretty much in favour of it,” he said.

The packs are sold with little markup – only enough to cover the operating costs of selling packs and handling rain-check slips, according to Schmidt. He added that students will likely still want to purchase the printed material, as a matter of convenience.

“If it’s on WebCT, you can’t read it on the bus, or take it on the train, or read it in bed,” he said.

With the University’s contract with Eastman up next summer people are already discussing the future of course packs at McGill.

“Everybody wants to do what’s best for the students,” Warne said. “I don’t think anything is out of the question.”

The post Course packs go digital through library appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The document will commit planners to a set of nine principles, including mandates to expand mixed-use space, revamp current buildings, and construct new structures according to stringent green standards.

In an email to The Daily, Associate Vice-Principal (University Services) Jim Nicell stressed that this part of the Plan does not detail specific actions.

“The principles indicate the wish of the broader community about where we want to land at some point in the future,” he wrote.

According to the Plan’s introduction, administrators will now draft a demonstration plan, detailing specific developments on both campuses. Unlike the planning and design principles, the demonstration plan will not be made public.

Master Plan Coordinator Radu Juster said he expects the demonstration plan to be completed by the end of the year, with project outlines and analysis drafted free of financial considerations.

“That way, as [funding] opportunities arise, much of the analysis work will already be done,” said Juster.

A task force began working on the Master Plan in 2005, with input from McGill administrative and planning groups, outside consultants, and environmental representatives.

Student councillors and senators attended a consultation session on the document in October, but SSMU president Jake Itzkowitz was disappointed with the turnout.

“It wasn’t as well attended as we could have had it be,” he said. “It was a combination of apathy and poor publicity.”

The meeting was advertised just one day in advance in an email sent to councillors.

Nevertheless, the principles and their objectives do guide the University’s physical development toward impressive goals.

Pedestrians are given priority in the Plan’s principles for campus accessibility, with directives to improve the network of large, barrier-free pathways both indoors and out. Eventually, traffic on lower campus will be limited to service and emergency vehicles only.

Nicell said that objectives like a car-free campus are worth striving for, but need to be looked at with respect to other affected operations.

“We need to reflect on the fact that parking represents an important source of revenue that is currently devoted to enhancing our teaching and research programs,” he wrote. “Before we are in a position to move to a car-free campus, we need to ensure that we can meet the fundamental and ever-growing needs of our programs.”

Itzkowitz agreed, saying that a car-free campus would be a great step forward that needs to be more closely examined.

“[A car-free campus] is great in terms of sustainability and encouraging people to actually use the public transportation,” he said, adding, “There are some human resources impacts and some personal impacts that have not been evaluated very well yet.”

In addition to the emphasis on pedestrian paths, the University will implement more parking and amenities for cyclists – like accessible showers and locker rooms.

Another objective calls on the University to follow environmentally friendly building practices, and designs for improved energy and water efficiency, lower waste, and resource conservation.

While the Master Plan does include provisions for the eventual expansion of athletics facilities and the purchase of additional residences, Juster made it clear that development would not encroach on the mountain.

“There is no plan for any construction north of Pins,” he said.

The document also encourages planners to design buildings that integrate teaching, research, and administration.

According to Nicell, the University may have reconsidered the design of the Trottier and Life Sciences buildings with the Plan in place, because they are only used for teaching and research, respectively.

Nicell shared his hope that the entire document will help influence McGill’s development efforts for many years to come.

“It is very important for us to come to agreement as a community on the fundamental principles concerning the development of our campus,” he wrote.

The post BoG set to approve Master Plan today appeared first on The McGill Daily.