Thevar came to Canada as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, in which Canadian recruitment companies enlist temporary workers – mainly from the global south – to work in jobs unfilled by the Canadian labour force. These labourers are employed in a diverse array of industries across Canada including agriculture, hospitality, and live-in caregiving, and can stay in the country for a maximum of four years. In 2010, there were over 5,000 migrant workers in Quebec alone.

As migrant workers, they are highly susceptible to workplace abuse like unfair pay, wrongful dismissal, and unsafe working conditions.

At first glance, it seems these workers have access to the same rights as all other Canadian employees. Before an employer brings most temporary migrant workers into the country, they must notify the federal government that the worker’s wage is similar to a Canadian wage in that field, and that working conditions are in line with Canadian standards. Further, constitutionally ingrained fundamental freedoms – like freedom of assembly, which includes the right to unionize – also apply to migrant workers.

However, migrant workers’ ability to stay in Canada temporarily is restricted by their residency permit, which dictates who they can work for, as well as what region of the country and what sector of the economy they can work in. According to a Metcalf Foundation report by Fay Faraday, an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, fear of losing their job discourages migrant workers from challenging unfair employee treatment like pay violations and hazardous work.

The report cites a survey of migrant workers in the Toronto and Windsor area in which 22 per cent of the workers indicated receiving pay below minimum wage.

Faraday’s report also lists a study of migrant agricultural workers in Ontario in which almost half of them were not given protective equipment, despite working with chemicals and pesticides. Additionally, only 24 per cent of these labourers who experienced work-related injuries requested compensation from their employers. When asked about why they didn’t pursue their compensation more stringently, the injured workers cited fear of losing their job and ability to take part in the agricultural foreign worker program.

Migrant workers’ motivation to demand their rights is further inhibited by the fact that, frequently, they live with their employers, which forces many workers into acquiescence of their bosses’ demands. This asymmetric relationship was evident in Thevar’s situation.

The Metcalf report lists 22 suggestions to curb migrant worker abuse. While the report was centred around Ontario, some suggestions have nationwide implications. Faraday calls for migrant workers to receive cohesive information about their rights upon arrival in Canada. In addition, she suggests that the federal government could make tied permits more flexible so that migrant workers can work for a different employer in the same sector or region than originally planned.

With over 300,000 migrant workers in Canada vulnerable to abuse, the provinces and the federal government need to explore suggestions similar to the Metcalf Foundation’s, or else incidents like Thevar’s risk being repeated.

Zach Lewsen is a U3 Political Science student and a former Commentary and Compendium! Editor. He can be reached at zachary.lewsen@mail.mcgill.ca.

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Compulsory labour violates International Labour Agreements that Canada has signed on to. In 1957, Canada, alongside 168 other countries, ratified the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention.  In Article 2 of this agreement, it is stated, “Each Member of the International Labour Organisation which ratifies this Convention undertakes to take effective measures to secure the immediate and complete abolition of forced or compulsory labour.”

China and the United States are the only countries that have ratified this agreement and still make prisoners do compulsory labour.

While one should sympathize with crime victims, we need to move away from simple revenge-oriented  tactics and look at long run crime prevention.

Leah DeVellis, a PhD Candidate in sociology at Carleton University, stated in a Toronto Star article that menial tasks fail to give prisoners marketable employment skills and help to make penitentiaries a “revolving door.” DeVellis suggested that only educational, vocational, and social programming in prisons lead to lower recidivism rates. Unfortunately, Hudak’s platform does not even mention these programs.

Hudak is clearly more interested in winning the upcoming provincial election than he is in understanding the socio-economic determinants of crime.  If the Ontario Provincial Conservative Party was truly serious about fighting crime, they would invest in social programs to help those that commit crimes.

While this issue may only directly affect residents of Ontario, people across the country should take note of compulsory labour. If it is introduced in Ontario, it could become a trend in Canada.  If this country became one of the few to reject the 1957 Convention, it would be an embarrassment to all Canadians.

Students from Ontario should take the opportunity to reject this regressive policy  in the upcoming election, and  all Canadians should question these types of correctional practices.

Zach Lewsen is a Commentary and Compendium! Editor at The Daily and a U2 Political Science Student. The views expressed here are his own.

A previous version of this article incorrectly implied that Tim Hudak was running in a reelection campaign; Rather, he is running in an election campaign. The Daily regrets the error.

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The legislation’s opponents have included Liberal MP Marc Garneau, MPs from the Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois, and research based pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline. The main arguments against the bill include the fact that it violates intellectual property law, creates potential profit losses for research based pharmaceutical companies, and does not address other aspects of the AIDS crisis.

Not only have organizations and MPs communicated their support for the bill, many prominent Canadians, including Somalian born Toronto Hip-Hop Artist K’naan and the Humanitarian Activist Dr. James Orbinski, have stated that they support the bill. The Canadian HIV-AIDS Legal Network also has a petition signed by numerous faith leaders across Canada and another signed by scientific and medical researchers encouraging the federal government to pass the bill.

The main reason so many have campaigned for this bill is to increase Canada’s exportation of Generic Anti-Retroviral (ARV) drugs to Africa for humanitarian purposes. ARV drugs revive the immune systems of those suffering HIV-AIDS. In most cases, these drugs can significantly extend the lives of those living with HIV-AIDS.

As it stands now, India is the only major global exporter of ARVs. Several other countries, including Canada, have the infrastructure to produce and export the drugs in bulk, but have failed to fulfill that potential.

A patented drug is the original drug that a research-based pharmaceutical company produces. A generic drug is the same chemical as the brand name yet has a different marking, colour, and label. The price of a generic ARV drug can be up to 95 per cent cheaper than its brand name competition. This price difference occurs because generic companies do not have to invent the drug the way the brand name companies do.

Currently, the cost of brand name ARV drugs are too expensive for many African countries to afford. Studies have shown that generic production of drugs can reduce the price dramatically. According to Richard Elliot, Executive Director of the Canadian HIV-AIDS Legal Network, “the single most important factor that has driven price levels down has been the ability to get Anti-Retroviral drugs in Generic Form.”

That Canadian ARV exports will increase as a result of C-393 is a near certainty, though the precise extent to which that will occur remains unclear. Following the bill’s passage, Apotex – the largest generic pharmaceutical company in Canada – has additionally committed to producing a drug that is specifically designed for children with HIV-AIDS.

Currently, there are approximately 2 million AIDS deaths per year in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. “Globally roughly 15 million people at the moment out of the 33 million who have HIV-AIDS are in need of antiretroviral treatment,” said Elliot. “There’s a real treatment time bomb here.”

Despite the fact that Africa makes up the majority of the demand for Anti-Retroviral treatment, the developing world makes up a small portion of the demand for brand name ARV drugs. According to Rachel Kiddell-Monroe, the president of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, the developing world is only receiving a sliver of the pharmaceutical drugs produced worldwide. “Ninety per cent of pharmaceutical companies’ incomes come from the developed world,” she said.

In 2004, the Paul Martin government passed a bill that creates Canada’s Access to Medicine Regime (CAMR). This legislation was designed to encourage Canada’s exportation of generic drugs to developing countries for public health purposes like AIDS and Malaria.

CAMR intended to enhance Canada’s production of Generic ARV drugs by allowing the government to issue a compulsory license to a generic company to produce a specific drug needed to treat a public health problem for a specific country.

But CAMR is mired in red tape and legal contradictions that act as roadblocks to improved levels of treatment. Only one batch of generic ARVs (which was sent to Rwanda) has left Canada since CAMR was passed, and this came only after a four-year process of working through government paperwork and negotiations with the patent-holding pharmaceutical companies. By contrast, in 2008 alone India exported generic ARVs to 96 countries.

Kiddell-Monroe said that CAMR is currently “too complicated, its got so much red tape and bureacacy in it that it makes it really diffficult for developing countries to use. … Developing countries themselves have seen that they don’t have the resources to manage it.”

In an article posted on Apotex’s website, Jack Kay, Apotex President stated, “We invested millions in the research and development of the product and legal costs in negotiating with the brand companies, and made no profits in the process. We did it because it was the right thing to do.” Apotex also indicated that they would no longer export any generic ARVs to the developing world unless the federal government reformed CAMR.

Currently, the compulsory license system produces strains on the exportation of generic line drugs. With this licensing system, generic companies can only export one drug to one country for a specific time period. This type of license is ineffective because viruses transfer between various developing countries and many of these countries need the same drugs. Also, epidemics can persist for longer than the imposed time limit. In addition, the time limitations prevent the mass production of generic drugs that can make these a profitable industry.

In addition to the compulsory license, the legislation discourages generic exportation through arbitrary limits. Currently, there is a list of exportable drugs under schedule 1 of CAMR that are allowed to be exported as generics. Not only are there arbitrary restrictions on the drugs that are allowed to be produced, but CAMR only allows specific countries to receive Canadian generic exports. To receive the drugs, countries must be on a list of eligible countries and these nations must declare that they are unable to produce these medicines domestically.

Bill C-393 removes these disincentives for generic production because it will make the process of obtaining an export license a single bureaucratic step. It additionally removes the arbitrary cap on drug exportation.

Under a one license system, a generic drug company will obtain a permanent license for a drug of any amount, to be exported to any country in need.

Bill C-393 will also remove the arbitrary limitations listed earlier. First, the bill would force CAMR to allow all drugs defined by the WTO as treating a public health problem to be exported instead of just the drugs listed in schedule 1 of CAMR. In addition, the list of coutries allowed to import would be extended to all countries facing a public health problem instead of the limited list of countries allowed to import Canadian made generic drugs.

Conservative MPs and research-based pharmaceutical companies have opposed the bill because they believe that increased generic exportation could violate intellectual property rights under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The  agreement, in effect since 1994, set minimum intellectual property protection standards for patent holding companies and individuals.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of Canada’s large research-based pharmaceutical companies that holds copyright on a number of ARVs. GSK opposed Bill C-393 on the grounds that it would infringe their rights as patent holders, potentially leading to a loss in their profitability. In an email, Michelle Smolenaars Hunter, a spokesperson for GSK stated that “the provision of medicines is only one essential element in addressing healthcare issues in the developing world.”

Kiddell-Monroe dismissed the assertion that drug provisions and health infrastructure improvements are mutually exclusive. In describing the role of health infrastructure she said “of course we need all that but this is not an either or situation… you can have a beautiful health centre but if you got no drugs in it what does it mean.”

The Harper government has largely backed the research-based patent holders. Heather Hume, a spokesperson for Industry Minister Tony Clement, stated in an email that Clement is opposed to Bill C-393 because it “would revoke intellectual property rights.”

Yet, the WTO has since reformed its regulations surrounding generic drug exportation. Section 4 of the WTO’s 2001 Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health states, “While reiterating our commitment to the TRIPS Agreement, we affirm that the Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members’ right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.”

Pharmaceutical companies like GSK have also claimed that they have donated a lot of ARVs to developing countries, rendering reforms of CAMR unnecessary. Elliot, however, responded that these “donations are not significantly enough in quantity to actually address the real needs of patients.”

For now, however, people fighting for increased global access to ARVs like Elliot and Kiddell-Monroe are hopeful that C-393 will pass in the Senate and fulfill its objective.

The post Canada and the AIDS Epidemic appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Thus far, the Canadian Boat to Gaza has raised $240,000, with a goal of $300,000. The fleet is set to depart in mid-May.

Ehab Lotayeff, an organizer for Canadian Boat to Gaza, spoke of the necessity of such an endeavor.

“The blockade is unjustified; it’s a punishment towards the people and that’s why we see that sending a boat to Gaza is very important, and challenging the blockade is very important,” said Lotayeff.

“Our number one goal is to challenge the status quo here [in Canada] that the blockade in Gaza is legitimate…another goal is humanitarian aid and moral support. Even though we might not deliver enough aid, [the people in Gaza] need to know that the world is not leaving them alone,” he continued.

Operation Cast Lead, the December 2008 to January 2009 conflict in Gaza, left numerous hospitals, libraries, and schools destroyed. Since the war’s end, Israel has maintained a blockade in the region, only allowing a minimal amount of goods to enter. The blockade was ruled illegal under international law by the 2009 UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. According to the UN report, the blockade violates the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the protection of civilians in a war zone.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) has previously stopped or attacked Gaza-bound flotillas. One of the most violent incidents occurred in May 2010, when the IDF attacked and killed nine activists.

Glyn Secker, an executive member of the Jews for Justice for Palestinians, spoke on March 25 at an event organized by the McGill chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. He described an incident in September 2010, when he was the captain of a boat to Gaza, where the IDF surrounded the boat, tasered one of the crewmembers, and forced the boat to dock in the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Some pro-Israel organizations, including campus groups, fear the security threat from Gaza and do not support ships coming to the strip without being inspected by the IDF.

“There’s a difference between delivering aid into the Gaza Strip and deliberately trying to break a military blockade and endanger Israeli security,” said Zach Paikin, VP External of the McGill Friends of Israel.

Rex Brynen, a McGill Political Science professor who travelled to Gaza in January 2010, said the Israeli restrictions on economic goods were in fact making it easier to get weapons into Gaza.

“I say that because there didn’t use to be so many tunnels,” said Brynen. “The reason there were so many tunnels from Egypt is because Israeli restrictions on imports meant that goods had to be smuggled from tunnels.”

Paikin defended the blockade, saying he believed aid can be sent to Gaza through Israel.

“If [humanitarian organizations] want to bring aid into the Gaza strip they are welcome to do so, yet they just only have to do so through the appropriate crossings…they should not go directly to the Gaza strip because that’s how weapons are transported,” Paikin said.

Brynen, however, described how non-military goods, such as construction materials, were being held up.

“There’s multiple cases where it’s clear that construction materials will be in the custody of the UN and Israel has not allowed it in…if it’s a UN reconstruction program, there’s no risk that those goods somehow leak into paramilitary use,” Brynen said.

“There’s no humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Paikin said. “If you go to the Gaza strip, there are nice beaches, five-star restaurants and hotels, and new shopping malls.”

Lotayeff has visited Gaza twice since Operation Cast Lead in 2009.

“Schools and farms are destroyed to no recognition, there’s lots of damage in Gaza city and more so in refugee camps,” said Lotayeff. “Because of the blockade, the people of Gaza cannot build anything.”

The post Canadians planning return to Gaza appeared first on The McGill Daily.

However, Martine Painchaud, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s office, stated that she thought Bergeron moved too quickly.

“We are very disappointed in that reaction because we would have wished that he would have waited for the Municipal Affairs minister to express himself on this matter before suing,” she said.

Gilles Corriveau, a spokesperson for Jacques Bergeron, disagreed with Painchaud’s assessment. He described the espionage operation by stating, “the whole process is illegal.”

“It doesn’t make any difference. They are mixing apples and oranges,” said Corriveau. “The Municipal minister doesn’t have authority over the Auditor General.”

The recent espionage controversy is one chapter in an ongoing series of corruption incidents, which have plagued Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s tenure. Auditor General Jacques Bergeron uncovered many of these incidents of corruption.

Employees from Comptroller General Pierre Reid’s office – in charge of internal spending – are some of the municipal employees being sued by Bergeron for spying on him.

In a recent article in The Daily, Projet Montréal city councillor Alex Norris said he was not surprised that a city employee who worked to hold municipal workers like Reid publically accountable had been a victim of espionage operations.

Norris stated in an interview to The Daily last week that he believed Tremblay approved the espionage campaign in order to “sideline” the Auditor General by destroying his reputation.

Municipal opposition leader Richard Bergeron (not related to Jacques Bergeron) has issued a formal complaint to the Quebec Municipal Affairs minister regarding the espionage attempt.

Norris applauded the Auditor General’s decision. “It’s not up to the Municipal Affairs minister to settle this issue. The Auditor General does not report to the Quebec Municipal Affairs minister, he reports to the City Council as a whole,” he said. “If Jacques Bergeron establishes that this espionage operation is illegal he will have done a service to Montrealers by having the courts uphold the independence and autonomy of the Auditor General of Montreal.”

The post Montreal Auditor General sues city employees appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Ashton’s legislation, Bill C-635, would provide stricter criteria to ensure the equality of academic standards in institutions across Canada. The bill does not call for more federal funding, but instead increases regulations for the distribution of current funding. Currently, the federal government does not play a significant role in financing post-secondary education; the most significant recent federal policy on this issue has been to increase the number of loans granted under the Canada Student Loans Program.

“The idea here is to see that federal government shows leadership in working with the provinces to make post-secondary education more accessible and affordable for students,” said Ashton. “We view this as something that ought to be a priority of our national government, and the federal government can be part of achieving that by establishing a more accountable and transparent framework for giving funds to post-secondary education.”

The bill has been criticized on the grounds that it would complicate the nationwide structure of post-secondary institutions. A recent Winnipeg Free Press article stated that, “There is such a high level of conformity between universities and provincial governments on this file that any federal legislation might only confuse accountability and add another layer of bureaucracy, while conferring little benefit.”

Ashton responded to these criticisms by saying that the federal government needs to be actively involved in helping provinces make post-secondary education more accessible to all students.

“We ought to have a federal government that is assisting in making post-secondary education more affordable, and working with the provinces to do so,” she added.

Joël Pednault, incoming SSMU VP External, does not see the bill as addressing the key obstacle to post-secondary education.

“I don’t see a policy making education more accessible coming from the federal government,” Pednault said. “Their main goal should be to increase funding.”

Although the bill is no longer moving through Parliament, Ashton is still optimistic that it will play an important role in the impending election.

“What we’re saying is that this is also about generating debate,” Ashton said.

“When I’ve visited with students across the country, I’ve shared the message with them that this is an issue that we ought to be raising with our members of Parliament, our candidates from all parties, and challenging them to look at a vision for post-secondary education that includes the federal government and includes real investment that benefits students.”

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In response to this espionage – and a host of other corruption allegations – opposition leader Richard Bergeron wrote a complaint to the Quebec Municipal Affairs Minister Laurent Lessard. Bergeron and his party, Projet Montréal, believe that Mayor Gérald Tremblay was involved in the espionage.

In the complaint, Bergeron wrote that the espionage constituted a “complete violation of the principles of independence.”

During Tremblay’s time as mayor of Montreal, there have been numerous City Hall corruption scandals.  Montreal Auditor General Jacques Bergeron (not related to Richard Bergeron) was the individual who uncovered many of these incidents. One of these scandals include a city employee taking a holiday on the yacht of a waterworks company who were later awarded a $356-million contract by the City. This contract was then cancelled.

Another corruption charge was the link between Comptroller General Pierre Reid – who is in charge of internal spending – and Telus, while the city was negotiating a phone services contract with the company.

Some city councillors think the Comptroller General was acting in Tremblay’s interest by spying on the Auditor General, which included  reading Jacques Bergeron’s confidential emails. Alex Norris, a Projet Montréal city councillor for Mile End, described the impact of Jacques Bergeron’s findings.

“This is a man who has uncovered irregularities and wrongdoings affecting hundreds of millions of dollars of municipal expenditures by the Tremblay administration,” said Norris. “Mayor Tremblay is trying to get rid of this man, so it’s in that context that we learned that the Comptroller General – who reports directly to the city – authorized an illicit and highly improper espionage operation in which for ten months the Auditor General’s confidential emails were systematically spied on by the administration.”

In a February 17 press conference, Tremblay stated that current conditions in City Hall did not lend themselves to an informed decision on the allegations.

“The decisions that we make must be imbued with a certain serenity. In the current situation it is impossible,” said Tremblay.
Norris discussed what Projet Montréal thinks Reid’s goals were in carrying out the espionage attempt.

“Pierre Reid’s employees were reading the email,” said Norris. “Reid is one of the most senior civil servants in the city and he has publicly defended Mayor Tremblay personally. He is a highly politicized civil servant and from what we can see he’s acting on behalf of Mayor Tremblay because Mayor Tremblay has refused to denounce this espionage operation in no uncertain terms and has refused to fire Pierre Reid. This leads us to believe that this operation was approved by Mayor Tremblay.”

Norris described what he thought were Reid and Tremblay’s goals.

“This [scandal] has consumed a lot of resources from the Auditor General’s offices,” said Norris. “It has forced the Auditor General to divert resources from carrying out investigations into irregularities of the City of Montreal and has diverted resources to uncovering and investigating this highly improper espionage operations.”

In an email to The Daily written in French, Bernard Larin, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s office, said, “The administration of Mayor Gerald Tremblay did not comment following the statement by Mr. Bergeron.”

“This has all the appearance of a hatchet job that can destroy [Jacques] Bergeron’s reputation so he can be sidelined,” said Norris.

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Abunimah spoke in the Bronfman building as the keynote speaker for Montreal’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), co-hosted by nine different organizations from the Montreal and McGill communities.

In making a comparison to the South African apartheid system, which rendered certain individuals second-class citizens, Abunimah outlined what he believed to be inequalities for Palestinians in terms of land rights and access to education.

“Palestinians living in Israel are able to vote and run for office but that’s where their rights end,” he said.

Abunimah described an incident in which state employees denied Arab-Israelis their land rights. “In Jerusalem we continue to see the systematic ethnic cleansing…where there is a house-by-house plan to expel Palestinians from their neighbourhoods and to put them in Jewish settlements.”

Abunimah also spoke to the treatment of people in the Gaza strip as creating an apartheid style inequality between Jews and Palestinians. In particular he focused on the December 2008 to January 2009 Operation Cast Lead attack on Gaza and the current restrictions on the movement of resources to the strip.

“Of the 640 schools in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, 18 schools were completely destroyed  – eight of them being kindergartens – and more than 240 were damaged,” he said. “Not only was Israel content to bomb the schools in Gaza, but since then has not allowed construction materials to flow into Gaza to rebuild these schools.”

Abunimah went on to describe the BDS movement, and why he believes it is an important method of lobbying the Israeli government to change its policies towards Palestinians and Arab-Israelis.

“The three goals of the BDS movement are to end the occupation since 1967, end all forms of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and end the racist exclusion of Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes,” he said.

He went on to state why he believes that other methods of resolving the conflict have been ineffective. He stated that BDS is the only possible option considering the failure of peace initiatives thus far.

“For the past twenty years we’ve had something called the peace process…it has been nothing but an alibi for inaction…when told about the Palestinian condition politicians in Canada and the United States do not do anything because they don’t want to disturb the peace process.”

Opposition to IAW includes the McGill Friends of Israel, who posted articles on their Facebook page criticizing the event, including a statement released by the Prince Arthur Herald’s editorial board entitled “We All Must Condemn Israeli Apartheid Week.”

The Daily spoke with Brendan Steven, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Herald regarding Abunimah’s comments.

“Palestinians living in Israel are given the right to vote and to run for office,” Steven said. “Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East…anyone that claims that Israel is an apartheid state is anti-Semitic.”

An audience member questioned Abunimah about why he did not address the treatment of Jews in Arab countries during his talk.

“I support the full right of restitution to any property that was confiscated from Arab Jews who left the countries and went to live in Israel,” Abunimah responded. “I would like to see Arab-Jewish communities thriving again.”

Aaron Lakoff, an organizer of Montreal’s IAW, spoke after Abunimah’s talk about the goal of the events. Montreal’s IAW ends tomorrow.

“We are trying to open up spaces for dialogue in society and for debate on these issues. We are trying to do so in a pluralistic way,” he said. “I am Jewish and I am an organizer of Israeli Apartheid Week. There’s many Jews who were involved in organizing Israeli Apartheid week, not just in Montreal but across Canada.”

The post Israel Apartheid Week’s keynote address appeared first on The McGill Daily.

On February 4, Christian Paradis, minister of Natural Resources and Conservative MP for Mégantic-L’Érable, and Josée Verner, minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Conservative MP for Louis-St-Laurent, officially announced that the federal government will transfer $275 million to the Quebec government to compensate for its spending on the student loans program in the 2009-2010 school year.

In the government press release, Verner said that the “ announcement clearly demonstrates that our government and our provinces are working together in the spirit of co-operation to achieve concrete results for youth in the Greater Quebec region.”

Currently, the Quebec Student Financial Assistance Program and student aid programs in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories operate independently from the Canada Student Loans Program used by all other provinces. For Quebec and the Territories, the federal government provides alternative payments for their student aid programs. Friday’s announcement represents an increase of $150 million to these payments compared to the 2008-2009 school year.

Payments of $1.6 million to Nunavut and $2 million to the Northwest Territories indicate an increase of over 100 per cent. These recent increases to alternative payments correspond to ten per cent increases in student loans for provinces involved in the Canada Student Loans Program.

VP External Affairs Myriam Zaidi explained that when the federal government abolished the Millennium Bursaries scholarship two years ago, it decided to replace it with provincial transfers – money that would be directed at provincial student loans programs.

“The issue is that although the amounts were increased also last year, the provincial government didn’t reform the student loans and bursaries program in order to reflect the incoming money,” she said.

The allocation of these funds for post-secondary education ultimately fall within the purview of the Quebec government. Esther Chouinard, a spokesperson for Line Beauchamp, minister for Education, Leisure, and Sports (MELS) in Quebec stated that “it is up to the finance ministry to decide where the funds are sent.”

This allocation scheme has left many Quebec post-secondary organizations concerned that the funding may not reach students. These groups include the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) and the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ).

FECQ president, Léo Bureau-Blouin, applauded the federal government for increasing funding for loans and bursaries, but expressed reservations.

“We believe that students will never receive the entirety of the transferred [funds]…[Quebec Finance Minister] Monsieur Bachand said that the whole amount will not be given to Quebec students and we think it is only acceptable that the finance ministry use all these amounts to improve the loans and bursaries program because the needs are chronic…thus we want action taken now,” he said.

Bureau-Blouin was referring to an article published December 3, 2010 in the Journal de Québec. The article explained that the cheque from Ottawa will be in the hands of the Quebec Finance minister, who, according to a spokesperson speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Finance and MELS, “could decide to allocate a portion of that money for other purposes.”

Zaidi claims that “the onus is not only on minister Bachand but also on Beauchamp,” adding that,  “Last year, Minister Courchesne said that she would look into reform but didn’t do anything.”

Bureau-Blouin elaborated on the pressing needs facing Quebec students. “Tuition fees have been increasing for three years now… for example with the McGill MBA; we’re talking about a $40,000 Master’s degree… The Quebec government may announce another tuition increase that could bring our tuition fees to the national average,” he said. “The costs are increasing each year while the [funding towards] loans and bursaries programs is not being increased.”

Bernard Drainville, spokesperson for Intergovernmental affairs, indicated that federal transfers for post-secondary education are still far below former levels of investment.

“Before the cuts of…the Chrétien government in the early 1990s, Quebec would get $800 million more every year. Unfortunately, while Charest said the government would make this issue a priority in 2005, he got nothing, and, worse, now he has totally given up on this issue as yet the issue of funding universities is a major challenge,” Drainville said in a Quebec government press release.

Zaidi expressed that she has “little faith” in the current provincial government.

“This is the same government that cut 103 million dollars from student loans and bursaries system in 2005 … it took 100 thousand students in the street and millions [sic] on strike to put it back,” she said. “I don’t think their priority is accessibility at all… they want to increase tuition as well so we have to keep a close eye on them.”

Due to an editorial error, the Daily failed to obtain an interview from VP External Myriam Zaidi at press time. Her comments are therefore included in this web version only. An earlier version of this story also incorrectly printed that it took millions of students on the street to put back the 2005 students loans and bursaries cuts, in fact it took millions of students on strike.

Esther Chouinard was originally cited as the spokesperson for the Minister of Finance and MELS referred to in the Journal de Québec article. She is in fact the spokesperson quoted on behalf of MELS only.

Bureau-Blouin was originally attributed as the FEUQ president. He is in fact the FECQ president.

The Daily regrets the errors.

The post Feds transfer $275 million to Quebec students appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Bill C-393, which aims to decrease the red tape around Canadian production and exportation of low-cost generic AIDS medications, has reached its third reading in the House of Commons, after being introduced in 2009. After this reading the bill must pass through Senate.

Winnipeg North NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis, who stepped down in April 2010 to run for mayor of Winnipeg, first introduced the bill. Windsor West NDP MP Brian Masse then took over as sponsor of the bill, but recently handed the bill over to Ottawa Centre NDP MP Paul Dewar.

In an interview with The Daily, Masse said “I’ve handed over the bill to Paul Dewar in response to the criticism that I [already] introduced a private member’s bill over the last year.”

MPs are generally encouraged to only introduce one private members bill a year. The Conservatives finally gave their approval to allowing Dewar to be the bill’s new sponsor yesterday. A new sponsor must be approved by all MPs.

One of the bill’s key clauses was the one-licence system, designed to reduce red tape regulating drug exportation. The one-licence system requires generic companies to have just one license to export drugs to countries specified as being in need of affordable medications without a strict quota on the number of drugs.

Under the current system, companies are required to obtain multiple licenses to export drugs. The House Standing Committee on Industry, Science, and Technology, which includes Liberal critic and Westmount-Ville Marie MP Marc Garneau, removed this clause in December.

In a canada.com article, Garneau stated that this approach “would give generic companies too much freedom.”

Rachel Kiddell-Monroe, Pres-ident of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), member of Médecins sans frontières (MSF), and founder of MSF’s Ottawa advocacy office, defended the one- licence clause in an interview with The Daily in December.

“For the developing countries, they would have known that once they received the license they would receive the drug…For the generic companies they know they don’t have to go through years of litigation and negotiations with the pharmaceutical countries,” said Kiddell-Monroe. “It is also a much faster system than the current legislation.”

Other organizations advocating for the passage of Bill C-393 and the one-licence system include the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Stephen Lewis Fund’s Grannies to Grannies Campaign.

The McGill UAEM Chapter has been raising awareness of the bill on campus. Chapter coordinator Rachel La Selva said in an email to The Daily that some of their members “attended rallies in Ottawa…gave announcements to our classes, and [encouraged] people to sign postcards” to their MPs.

According to Masse, “most of the opponents to Bill C-393 have been pharmaceutical companies,” despite the fact that, according to a statement released by the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, “the entire continent of Africa…represents less than two per cent of global pharmaceutical sales” due to developing countries’ inability to afford patented medicines.

Other opponents of the bill criticize it for potentially violating international intellectual property rights. Heather Hume, spokesperson for Industry Minister and Parry Sound-Muskoka MP Tony Clement, said in an email to The Daily that Clement is opposed to bill C-393 because it “would revoke intellectual property rights” outlined in the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). This is 1994 agreement set minimum standards for international intellectual property regulation.

However, Section Four of the WTO’s 2001 Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health also states that, “While reiterating our commitment to the TRIPS Agreement, we affirm that the Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members’ right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.”

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the Prince Arthur Herald.

In an interview with The Daily, Steven described his feelings of exclusion from campus politics and highlighted what he sees as close-mindedness around topics such as tuition.

“The tone of rhetoric about tuition hikes has gotten a little ridiculous. … In the roundtable in Quebec City, when government groups and student groups were talking about tuition increases, many student groups simply walked out and refused to discuss tuition increases of any sort. … There was no negotiation and there is no room for compromise…it’s things of that nature where I think conservative students feel ostracized, and so my hope is that the Herald will provide a space for conservative students to feel safe and to feel that their opinion counts.”

The Herald’s online statement of principles outlines a right-wing mandate that includes “the belief in the limitation of state regulation to only the most fundamentally necessary areas of Canadian life;” “the importance of preventing the unnecessary growth of the public sector to ensure the maximum productive potential of the Canadian economy;” and “a dedication to the free market system that has provided Canadian society with wealth, prosperity and opportunity for all.”

Steven added that “we are a conservative newspaper consisting of many conservative writers, but we also have other writers consisting of [a] former President of Young Liberals of Canada, and another one of our columnists is on the board of directors for Queer McGill. … We have conservatives of all sorts, including Social Conservatives, Social Liberals, Classical Liberals, Old Tory Conservatives, and Libertarians.”

Describing the Herald’s politics section, Steven commented that, “Our politics section is structured as an opinion section.”

When deciding on the name for the Herald, Steven said, “ We settled on Prince Arthur for a variety of reasons, including the symbolic fact that the street Prince Arthur cuts through the centre of the McGill ghetto and we want to be a student-centric news source.”

Currently the Herald’s staff do not have plans to go into print, but are exploring the possibility of expanding to radio. The Herald has low operating costs and is completely volunteer-run; the current sections of the Herald’s website are administrative, campus life, culture, politics, and sports.

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Richler was famous for his Governor General’s and Commonwealth Award winning novels, his columns for the National Post and the Gazette, and his children’s books. His novels Joshua, Then and Now and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz have been made into films, with a film based one of his other bestsellers, Barney’s Version, being released in December.

The petition has received over 600 online signatures since it was released last week, and asks the public for suggestions on how to commemorate the writer.

“Right now we’re at the point where we want to get the public on board in terms of suggestions… we’re interested in what the public has to say and there’s a short comment section on the petition where individuals can put forth ideas for what should be renamed. … So far we’ve received a wide variety of ideas, including nearby parks, streets, and libraries,” said Rotund.

The councillor said that another one of the suggestions was placing a plaque outside the house on St. Urbain that Richler grew up in, which today remains unmarked.

“Richer’s writing signifies Montreal and the experience of its citizens, especially the immigrant experience,” said Rotund. “Thousands of Montrealers can identify with Richler’s themes.”

Despite Richler’s popularity, the petition has a few challenges ahead. Some of Richler’s writings critical of Quebec sovereignty offended Quebec nationalists. Mario Beaulieu, president of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, has described Richler as an “anti-Quebec racist” because of the author’s criticisms of Quebec nationalism.

In response to the allegations, Rotund said, “The majority of Montrealers would still support the honouring of one of the most famous Canadian writers.”

Although there are no formal restrictions applied to Richler’s writings, his novels are rarely taught at McGill. In an interview with The Daily, English Professor Brian Trehearne said, “Richler’s works have been dropping out of McGill course syllabi. … One possible problem is the wealth of [Canadian] authors from the 1950s.”

When asked about the influence that the release of the film Barney’s Version and the possible street renaming would have, Trehearne said that “popular approval of certain authors doesn’t necessarily lead to their work being taught in an academic setting.”

Trehearne added that “another part of people’s unawareness of Richler is that Canadian authors don’t receive the recognition they deserve. … One goes to London or Boston and one is much more aware of the literary figures who used to be there”.

The petition remains open for everyone to submit their signatures and ideas. When The Daily went to print, the petition had collected 647 signatures.

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The shipment is one of the biggest of its kind to be transported in Canada. The 16 generators were to be shipped from the Bruce Power plant in Tiverton, Ontario through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence to a nuclear recycling plant in Sweden. Each of the generators are approximately the size of a school bus.

After receiving the transportation request from Bruce Power, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) investigated the safety of the generators and found that thus far, the proposed transportation method is safe and there would be a minimal amount of contamination if there is spillage from the shipment. The CNSC will make a final decision on the request after it can hear from citizens. In an interview with The Daily, Marc Drolet, Public Affairs and Media Relations Representative for the CNSC, said that the commission should reach a final decision by mid- to late December.

Despite the research carried out by the CNSC, the city of Montreal still has doubts about the safety of the shipments. According to Valérie Desgagné, spokesperson for the city, Montreal’s main concern is the risk of contamination as the “shipment’s radioactive waves would be fifty times higher than the international limit.”

If the CNSC accepts Bruce Power’s request and allows the generators to be shipped through Montreal, then the city could simply prevent the ships from docking in Montreal’s harbour.

Montreal’s decision comes shortly after municipal governments across Ontario voiced their opposition to the shipment. In September, Sarnia, Ontario mayor Mike Bradley stated his concern that a possible spill from the shipments would affect residents’ drinking water. In addition to the municipalities, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility has argued that allowing these generators through will set a precedent for turning Canada’s lakes and seaways into highways for nuclear product transportation.

If the CNSC decides to grant Bruce Power’s request, the power of municipalities to block the shipment’s transportation will be called into question.

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During the talk, Dryden spoke about his recently published book Becoming Canada: Our Story, Our Politics, Our Future, which deals with Canadian identity. He argued that Canadians have the wrong idea of themselves, because they feel that the lack of a homogenous national identity is harmful. Dryden argued that Canada’s diversity benefits the country and is ahead of the global curve.

In an interview with The Daily after the talk, Dryden railed against the federal government’s removal of the long-form census this summer.

“I would have never guessed that we would even have a debate about the census. Power comes from money and information. You don’t limit information; information needs to be there for people to use in lots of different ways. When you start dealing more with rhetoric and less with information, then everybody’s in trouble and that’s what happens when you cut back access to sources of information like the census,” said Dryden.

The former NHL star listed climate change, human rights, and poverty as important political issues, but lamented the lack of Canadian political participation. The root of the problem, according to Dryden, is that many people don’t see the link between issues and politics. Dryden talked about the times he spent speaking to university students, describing how they are concerned by global issues but don’t see politics as a way of tackling them. Dryden blamed this lack of faith on the partisanship and polarization of Canadian politics.

“When I’ve been travelling from campus to campus in different provinces, people are saying the same thing and that’s for good reason, because climate change puts futures in jeopardy and it gets at the fundamental question of how no person has the right to limit the life of anyone else in any fashion whether it’s in conflict or as a result of climate change,” said Dryden.

Dryden also described what the Canadian government could be doing to make post-secondary education more accessible, while also solving the problem of underfunding in universities.

“I think that the way in which we fund post-secondary education is that it comes out of four or five different pockets,” he said. “It’s out of parents’ pockets, out of students’ pockets through part-time jobs and summer jobs, from schools’ funding through scholarships and bursaries, and from government programs set up mainly by provincial governments, yet sometimes federal in terms of basic support. Chances are, that’s going to continue; I think the question is how you can make it less of a stretch for each party. …I think it’s everybody’s job to do a little bit better in order to decrease the stress for all parties involved.”

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