Certain quotes have been edited for brevity and clarity

March 7, 2024 marks five months of the war in Gaza. At the time of writing, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 30,000 people, including more than 12,300 children, 1,139 people in Israel, and 411 people in the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, an estimated 1,200 journalists in Gaza continue to be targeted and face precarious conditions as they relay information about the daily events and conditions on the ground. On February 28, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a preliminary investigation of journalist deaths in the violence since October 7. The account showed that at least 88 journalists and media workers were among the more than 30,000 killed since the war began on October 7, making Gaza the world’s deadliest place for journalists.

On February 20, the Critical Media Lab hosted the hybrid panel “Journalism under siege” in collaboration with McGill, the Research Group on Democracy, Space, and Technology, and Tufts University. The panel is part of the “On Gaza’’ speaker series, and panel members included Sherif Mansour, the CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator; Nidal Rafa, a Palestinian journalist and producer; Ghoussoun Bisharat, the editor-in-chief of +972 magazine; and Palestinian journalist and human rights activist Mahmoud Mustafa, reporting from north Gaza. Previous events included discussions on health care and infrastructural ruination.

Dr. Diana Allan, associate professor in Anthropology at the Institute for the Study of International Development at McGill and co-founder of the Critical Media Lab, introduced the event as a discussion on the “war on Palestinian journalism.” Professor Amahl Bishara, the moderator of the panel and associate professor at Tufts University, added that “we all, and not just those concerned with Palestinian and Israeli people and places, but all those concerned with the fate and processes of human rights, decolonization and striving for justice, all rely on the work and words of the Palestinian journalists who are on the ground doing this work every day.”

The Daily spoke with Dr. Allan about her work as an anthropologist, archivist, and ethnographic filmmaker with Palestinian refugees living in the camps in Lebanon. She explained that the “On Gaza” series emerged from conversations with two of her graduate students about “the urgent need for a space on campus in which to discuss what is happening in Gaza.”

She further added that “as is often noted, we have been watching a genocide unfold in real-time — literally, the obliteration of a world and a people, which is unprecedented and horrifying in ways that are hard to describe or bear. And yet, outside of the student mobilizations on campus — which have been so amazing and inspiring — there has been almost no public discussion of these world-transforming events at McGill.”

“In convening these talks the aim has been to open a space for critical discussion about the material conditions of life and death in Gaza today, and the broader implications of Israel’s genocidal war on besieged Palestinians. Beyond simply sharing information, my hope is that these talks can also help to build solidarity and community, which is why they have been in- person,” she told the Daily.

Panelist Sherif Mansour expressed his concerns regarding the unprecedented killings of journalists in Gaza and their consequences. He emphasized that the alarming situation stems from a pattern of violence and killings that goes beyond the beginning of the war in October. Referring to the CJP’s 2023 report “Deadly Pattern,” he explained that there is a “precarious, dangerous and deadly environment, specifically for Palestinian journalists covering Israeli army operations.”

Killings of Palestinian journalists are not isolated occurrences. Since 2001, CPJ has documented at least 20 journalist killings by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

“What we see is that this deadly pattern continues unchecked because we haven’t seen accountability,” asserted Mansour. He explained that the Israeli army only committed to doing an investigation if the journalist killed had a foreign passport or worked for an international media outlet. Even then, “it doesn’t lead to anything: no one is charged, no one is held accountable.”

Such was the case with the Palestinian-American television journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed by the IDF on May 11, 2022. The IDF investigation determined there was a “high possibility” that one of their soldiers “accidentally” shot the journalist while engaging Palestinian gunmen. This announcement came five months after her death. To this day, no accountability has been reached.

Mansour warned that since 90 per cent of the journalists killed in this war were Palestinians, this systematic targeting would compromise the ability of Palestinian journalists to cover IDF activities. “The deadly pattern has not just continued, but has turned what was a chilling effect before this war into a news blackout and forced on the media especially Palestinian journalists that were said to bear the brunt of Israeli fire and bear witness of all journalists worldwide about what is happening in Gaza.”

In late October, Israel’s military told Reuters and Agence France Presse that they are unable to guarantee the safety of journalists operating in the Gaza Strip, due to the ongoing Israeli bombardment.

Journalists in Gaza face immense challenges in carrying out their work. The Israeli army has destroyed around 50 local and international media outlets in Gaza since October 7, as reported by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), in addition to the devastating loss of life. In addition to the killings, reports have also emerged of different forms of violent “incidents” with the aim of reinforcing the “news blackout.” This comprises 25 arrests, various cases of assaults, threats, cyberattacks, and censorship. According to CPJ’s data as of February 27, 19 journalists were reported to be in Israeli custody.

Bisharat asked Mansour about the “horrific arrests of journalists,” which have been “somewhat neglected in this scheme of things.” He explained that every year, CPJ produces a report on journalists who have been incarcerated.

“For the first time, Israel was one of our top war jailers of journalists,” he said. Throughout the war, they have documented 25 arrests with a majority in the West Bank. All were Palestinian journalists put in military trials under administrative detention. “Under those tribunals [journalists] can be held indefinitely [without a trial] for the suspicion that they could incite violence in the future.” He then added that among them, five had been beaten and tortured during their custody. Mansour then explained that these incarcerations were part of a wider pattern of censoring Palestinian journalists.

The families of journalists in Gaza have also been targeted by the IDF. For instance, according to reports from Reuters and The Guardian, eight members of photojournalist Yasser Qudih’s family were killed on November 13 when their home in southern Gaza was hit by four missiles. On October 25, Wael Al-Dahdouh also lost his family to Israeli bombardments, after having moved to a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, where they though they would be safer.

“People didn’t hear the story about Wael Al-Dahdouh when he lost his kids and wife […] If his name was John Smith I’m sure that it would have been a headline in Europe and America,” said Rafa. “It is so sad to see that there is such hypocrisy and such double standards when it comes to this. But this is reality.”

“All of us can only learn journalism from the journalists in Gaza,” declared Bisharat, pointing to the immense challenges and risks taken by the journalists on the ground. She explained that there exist three main challenges in covering what is happening in Gaza. Firstly, “we need to make sure that audiences outside Israel and Palestine understand that history didn’t begin on October 7 […] and that there is a regime of apartheid in full force in Israel/Palestine” she said. The second challenge regards getting the information out of Gaza, highlighting difficulties with the internet, blackouts, and concerns for their safety. “The third challenge is trying to connect the dots,” she explained. +972 continues its efforts to cover simultaneously what is happening in the West Bank in terms of settler violence and the expansion of settlements, but also events in Israel.

She then proceeded to share the story of Ibtisam Mahdi, mother of two children, who “while trying to feed them, does amazing work of journalism.” Her last work was on the destruction of Palestine’s historical sites. She also recalls Mahmood Mustafa, who wakes up every morning to find food and internet while trying to report and take care of his parents.

“They are the heroes of this war,” said Bisharat. “Despite having to take care of their own safety, taking care of their family, they keep doing amazing journalistic work.”

“Mainstream Western media has consistently marginalized and silenced Palestinian perspectives and have served to center and bolster Israeli narratives,” declared Dr. Allan to the Daily.

During her section of the panel, Rafa spoke out about issues in the international media coverage of Gaza. “There is a pattern here, not to put the context,” she explained, adding that “there is no conflict here, by the way, it’s an occupation. But if you don’t use the word occupation, how do you expect our audience to understand what is going on?” Rafa warned that not including the context and explaining the larger unfolding of events is not only “dangerous” but is also done “intentionally.”

“I think terminology is very important […] Instead of saying massacre they will say incident, instead of saying occupation they say conflict […] Things are not done by accident […] the problem is with the narrative, who is telling what, when and who is listening to what when how,” declared Rafa.

In 2002, Dr. Allan co-founded the Nakba Archive with Mahmoud Zeidan, a Palestinian educator and human rights advocate from Ayn Hilweh camp in South Lebanon. This community-run oral history project influenced her formation as a scholar of Palestine. She shared with the Daily the significance of oral history in highlighting the Palestinian experience and challenging dominant narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I think Palestinians are often understood as abstractions — as humanitarian victims, as “terrorists,” but rarely as political subjects with legitimate aspirations for national self- determination, liberation, and the right to live dignified lives in peace and security,” she explained.

As part of the Nakba Archives, Allan and Zeidan recorded around 500 interviews about the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians, during the creation of the State of Israel, with first-generation Palestinians in camps across Lebanon over five years. Their aim in creating this archive is to re-centre Palestinian narratives, including those of Palestinian refugees, and expose the violent history of Israel’s state formation in the Middle East.

“A definitive history of the Palestinian Nakba, as told by Palestinians, has yet to be written.” she added. “Oral histories can fill some of these gaps, shed light on subaltern experience, and challenge settler colonial narratives — refugee narratives also have the power to transform our understanding of history itself — its form, substance and purpose, the matter of who tells it, what constitutes an ‘event’ or ‘truth.’”

While he wasn’t able to attend the panel in-person, journalist Mahmoud Mustafa sent a video describing his everyday struggles in getting news out of Gaza. “No words can describe this agony of life,” he says. While testifying to the inhumane consequences of the warfare carried out by the IDF — the constant worry, hunger, lack of sleep, search for shelter, and so on — we could hear sirens and loud noises in the background. “The Israeli army is trying to mute us,” he asserts, adding that “our rights to be journalists are denied.”

Mustafa responded to accusations made against him for not being neutral. “Why are you asking me to be neutral while my friends have been killed? What do you mean by ‘you have to be neutral’? I am facing the killing and the dangers every day.”

“We need the support of other journalists outside Palestine to complete our work, to amplify our voice,” he concluded.

Dr. Allan told the Daily that “in this moment, when the censorship and silencing of Palestinian voices and those in solidarity with Palestinian liberation is stronger than ever, supporting and amplifying the work of journalists like Mahmoud Mushtaha or Nidal Rafa is really vitally important.”

She concluded by empathizing with many students’ reaction to the McGill administration’s communication since the beginning of the war, highlighting the “unseemly power dynamics” at play in the unequal treatment of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel voices on campus. “These forms of censorship and intimidation are very troubling and are something that all members of our community need to actively challenge,” she added.

Nidal Rafa prompted that “the world has to stop with their double standards and to say enough is enough. I think Palestinians are not asking for much. […] I say it’s very simple. There is an occupation here and Palestinians are asking for freedom and self- determination.”

On a more optimistic note, Bisharat added that “we are witnessing cracks in the international media in its coverage of Israel/Palestine,” referring to the work and fights of journalists such as Chris McGreal from The Guardian.

Sherif Mansour brought the event to a close by saying: “The consequences of what happens to Palestinian journalists are going to stay and go beyond this war, beyond this region. Because impunity like violence does not know boundaries.”

“Poetry as Resistance,” the next event on the “On Gaza” speaker series, is scheduled for March 12. The panel will be held in the Critical Media Lab, Peterson 108, from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. Prof. Rula Abi Saab from IIS, herself a poet and novelist, will be moderating.

The post Journalism Under Siege appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Garvey’s extensive political work led to him to found the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which by the early 1920s included over 700 branches in 38 American states. On 13 February, I made my way to Montreal’s very own UNIA branch to see When Big Man Talk, an art exhibition hosted by the Jamaica Association Arts Centre (JAM Arts Centre) to celebrate the legacy and spirit of Marcus Garvey’s work.

Established in 1919, the UNIA Hall on Notre-Dame Street West is still alive and thriving over 100 years later. Walking through the second set of doors, I was greeted by a warm, cozy room lined with rows and rows of easels displaying the eye-catching, emotive artwork of the exhibition’s four featured artists. I immediately felt myself captivated by the artists’ masterful use of mixed media, bold paints, and dynamic photography. I could have spent hours gazing at these pieces, which each took unique artistic liberties to translate Marcus Garvey’s message into our present and future worlds. 

Garfield Morgan’s work used a multimedia approach, using creative, unconventional materials to add a layer of dimension to his portraits. A didactic to the left of his exhibit listed gift wrap, a repurposed dress, African wax fabric, acrylic, oil paint, plaster, and repurposed plastic among some of the materials used. The exhibition program describes Morgan’s work as “resembling that of Jamaican master Daniel Heartman and the imagination of an Everald Brown.” I was particularly enchanted by Morgan’s striking use of contrast and silhouettes. One of my favourites was titled “Meditation (Echoes of a culture past, present and future)” which captures the serene, yet somber side profile of a young Black man in repose. 

The paintings by Anthony McLennon also included portraits: one was of his grandmother smiling gently, eyes glimmering, and another was of himself holding a wine glass while gazing back at the viewer. On When Big Man Talk’s program, McLennon is described as displaying “an uncanny ability to intricately render portraits, animals, and landscapes with accuracy and depth.” These skills were showcased masterfully in his painting “Can A Caged Bird Sing?” where a beach landscape forms the background for a row of crows, one of which is perched in a cage. His paintings depicting scenes from everyday life stirred even greater emotion. A piece titled “Just a Regular Day” portrays passengers traveling on a bus, including a Black man in the foreground looking down at his phone with a white “X” across his mouth. In an interview for the Daily, exhibit curator and director of the JAM Arts Centre Pat Dillon Moore said that this painting “speaks to how invisible a visible and audible minority can be.”

Daniel Saintiche’s photography was absolutely mesmerizing; the depth of movement, texture, and colour that he fits inside a single image make the contents jump to life before your very eyes. Saintiche’s didactic described his photographs as a window into “Montreal’s Black Community life in the 70s.” Scenes from Carnival showing music festivals, parades, and joyous celebrations were the main focus of the exhibit. The text in his section noted that “the carnival arts at one time boasted over 150,000 predominantly Black people on St. Catherine Street to Lafontaine Park. This was a huge financial contribution to Montreal’s coffers when every hotel room was booked.” Pat Dillon Moore pointed to one photograph in particular, where two women during Carnival in the 1970s are captured laughing with their arms around each other as they made their way down St. Catherine Street. It was truly amazing to experience how Saintliche’s skills allowed for this joyous occasion to transcend both the boundaries of time and space, pulling the viewer into a single storied moment in history. The exhibition program describes his talents best: Saintliche’s “journey is a tapestry woven with resilience, passion for the arts, and an unwavering dedication to capturing the essence of Montreal’s Black community.”

The other historical photographs in the exhibition were truly special to behold. Momentous instances of Black history in Montreal adorned the walls, tables, and complementary slideshow, detailing the rich contributions of Black visionaries in this city. A photograph of Bob Marley performing in Côtes-de-Neiges captures his first visit to the city, while a still from the 1968 Black Writers Congress – held at McGill University – featured Stokely Carmichael at the front and centre. Another image in the back of the exhibition showed Leroy Butcher and Muhammed Ali walking through Dorval airport. Viewing these photographs alongside the work from the contemporary artists beautifully wove together the threads of the exhibit’s thematic material, creating an impactful, fully fleshed-out experience that upholds Marcus Garvey’s message of lifting up Black excellence worldwide. 

The final piece of this exhibit takes this message to another dimension entirely. Quentin VerCetty centres Garvey’s goal of Black interconnectedness in his virtual exhibition experience Inside Garvey Yard. A free viewing experience for all, www.insidegarveyyard.com allows visitors to interact with a virtual Marcus Garvey museum from anywhere in the world. Viewers can answer questions and collect Black Star Line tokens to “reawaken the spirit of Garvey and hear his special message.” Pat Dillon Moore explained that VerCetty’s work “creates a space that speaks to Marcus Garvey’s time in Canada in a way that an intergenerational family – a grandmother and a grandchild – can both participate in. The grandchild can maneuver the joystick, while the grandparent or parent could speak to them about Garvey’s history.”  

The words of Pat Dillon Moore describe the impact of When Big Man Talk best: “I think the larger purpose behind When Big Man Talk is to put history and context behind our presence. And it’s no accident that we did it during Black History Month. In a sense, we are giving you the history within Black History Month. And there’s a lot of history that is hidden as time goes on. However, it’s about making the ties of yesterday to today. And prior to many of the movers and shakers, both men and women, there was a huge, impactful man by the name of Marcus Garvey, who from 1917 through the late 1930s, was here in Canada to improve the lives of Black people wherever in the world they were. And I think that’s important, to break the narrative that Black people, number one, just migrated here and that we take. No, we build. And the association that Garvey built, the UNIA, where we are now, is alive and thriving – and so is his legacy when it comes to improving the lives of Black people.” 

You can see an abbreviated version of When Big Man Talk on 24 February at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall. To support the four featured artists – Garfield Morgan, Anthony McLennon, Daniel Saintiche, and Quentin Vercetty – you can keep up with their work at www.garfieldmorgan.org, @tony_mendez_3219 and @keepgrowingq on Instagram.

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Students are hoping that the strike will foster a powerful sense of collective solidarity. Students from different backgrounds come together, united by a common cause, to draw on strength that lies in numbers. This unity can create a powerful force for change that can echo far beyond the strike’s immediate goals.

The strategic shift towards the strategy of departmental strikes is gaining traction, evidenced by the growing wave of student associations joining the movement. At Concordia, many departments have already held general assemblies and signed onto a strike floor of five participants, with one faculty association, the Fine Arts Student Association (FASA) also voting to strike. McGill, too, is witnessing a groundswell of departmental action, with the Religious Studies Undergraduate Society, the McGill Undergraduate Geography Society, and the Student Association of Sustainability, Science, and Society all voting to go on a three-day strike from January 31 to February 2.

Rising tuition fees at McGill and Concordia threaten to upend Quebec’s long-held reputation as a haven of affordable higher education, potentially rippling far beyond financial impact and into the very fabric of the province’s social identity. As Gaither pointed out to the Daily, “The stakes are incredibly high. This isn’t just about tuition prices; it’s about whether Quebec can maintain its commitment to accessible education for all.” 

These increases, far from being mere financial adjustments, are indicative of a deeper transformation in the province’s approach to funding higher education. For the student body, these hikes are not just an additional financial burden but are perceived as an encroachment upon the fundamental principles of accessibility and inclusiveness in their academic environments. This apprehension is rooted in the fear that higher tuition fees could deter potential students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, thereby diminishing the rich tapestry of experiences and perspectives that form the core of a vibrant university community. The hikes, therefore, pose a threat not only to the financial wellbeing of students but also to the very ethos of inclusiveness and diversity that these institutions strive to uphold.

As of now, out-of-province students already pay three times more in tuition than Quebec residents. With the Quebec government raising tuition fees for out-of-province undergraduate students from $8,992 to $17,000  per year, McGill is set to lose about 60 per cent of its out-of-province students. Soaring tuition fees would force students to rely heavily on loans, potentially saddling them with years of financial constraints and impacting their ability to pursue careers, start families, and contribute to the economy. This debt chain perpetuates inequalities and underlines the urgency of the student movement’s demands. Their fight goes beyond the issue of  immediate financial relief; it’s about safeguarding educational access, preventing debt-driven limitations, and ensuring economic mobility and social justice for future generations. Low-income out-of-province and international students will face a disproportionate burden, their dreams of higher education in Quebec potentially crushed under the weight of increased costs.

Lower-income students, already grappling with financial challenges, face a dire situation. The tuition hike threatens to exacerbate this existing struggle, jeopardizing their access to education and perpetuating the cycle of economic disadvantage. The impact of these disparities extends beyond individuals. The fight for affordable education, therefore, is not just about individual financial relief; it’s about safeguarding access to education as a fundamental right for all, regardless of background or financial standing. It’s about fostering a diverse and inclusive learning environment that reflects the richness of Quebec society. In essence, it’s a fight for a future where education empowers, not excludes, and where talent has the space to flourish regardless of postal code or family income.

Gaither compares departmental strikes to “screwing up the plumbing system,” strategically causing controlled disruptions to force a reckoning with the existing infrastructure. This targeted approach, while not as visually unified as a large-scale strike, still holds the potential to be enormously effective. 

“We are clogging up the pipes of an entire plumbing system, we’re coming from all angles and just screwing it up,” Gaither explained. “I think that gives us a lot more control in terms of like, where we want to strike, when we want to strike, and how long we want to strike for.” This flexibility and control empower students to target specific classes, and more effectively enforce the strike. 

Quebec’s rich history of student activism, dating back to the 1960s and 70s, is crucial in understanding the context of the current unrest at McGill and Concordia. The province has been a historical epicenter for student-led movements, with the 2012 “Maple Spring” protests standing as a landmark event in this legacy. These protests, which garnered international attention, were not solely focused on opposing tuition fee increases. They represented a broader struggle for student rights, educational reform, and societal change. The Maple Spring mobilized thousands of students in a display of solidarity and collective action, setting a precedent for how student activism could influence government policies and public opinion. The movement’s success was partly attributed to its ability to unite diverse student bodies under a common cause, transcending language barriers and institutional boundaries. This historical milestone in Quebec’s student activism highlights the potential impact that concerted student efforts can have on policy and governance.

The McGill and Concordia strike over tuition hikes is set to spark diverse reactions across campus communities. The departments most vocal about striking, as highlighted in the interview with Gaither, include those from the faculties of humanities and social sciences at both universities. Driven by a deep commitment to social justice and educational equity, RSUS is taking a firm stand against the tuition hikes by joining the effort and going on strike. Their stance is that affordable education is a cornerstone of a thriving society and that every student, regardless of background or financial means, deserves access to quality higher education. This perspective aligns with the traditional ethos of student activism in Quebec, where education is not just viewed as a commodity but as a right. However, there has been tension between those who prioritize the university’s image and reputation, and those who believe in the power of collective action for achieving broader benefits.

“We kindly refer to that as like clutching their pearls… that sentiment is always going to exist, particularly in the guild. But we want to always work around that and show that the collective interest does benefit everyone and that we can get wins this way” said Gaither.

The role of media and public discourse has been a critical component in the evolution and impact of student activism in Quebec, a fact that is particularly pertinent in the context of the potential strikes at McGill and Concordia Universities. Historically, media portrayal has played a dual role in student movements – both as a megaphone for acting activism causes and a lens through which public opinion is shaped and, at times, contested. As Gaither reminded us, the 2012 student movement resonated powerfully because it “tapped into a deep, collective yearning for change amidst a global backdrop of socio-economic and environmental crises, offering a narrative of transformation and renewal that was both appealing and mobilizing.”

The student strike isn’t merely a closed-door battle within the university walls; it’s a carefully orchestrated performance to spark public discourse. This understanding of the power of public discourse shapes the current movement’s strategy as well. Social media serves as a critical tool amplifying voices, mobilizing supporters, and generating real-time updates. 

“The overall strike tactic is like, rather than begging or lobbying or asking for something, we are directly negotiating and using our power,” Gaither explained. “Someone described this to me as a staring contest, either with the administration or with the government, and it’s to see who blinks first.” The aim, as Gaither emphasizes, is not simply to garner attention, but to spark crucial conversations about the affordability and accessibility of education. The movement seeks to shift the public narrative, challenging dominant assumptions about the value of higher education and its role in a just society. By framing the strike as a fight for everyone’s future, not just a select few, they hope to build a broader constituency and garner public support for their demands.

The strike, therefore, is not just about demanding change from the Quebec government. it’s about mobilizing a public conversation about the future of education in Quebec. By harnessing the power of media, social platforms, and open dialogue, students aim to shift the public narrative, garner support, and hold the government and university institutions accountable.  

The student strike represents a fraction of a wider struggle, a single cause which shares interests with many others. The movement gains strength from organizations like the Coalition of Resistance for a United Student Movement (CRUES), which brings together various student associations to enable collaboration and collective action. Gaither emphasized CRUES’s potential role in enhancing communication, strategizing, and amplifying the collective student voice. While not having a part in organizing the strike, CRUES could still contribute significantly to the movement. This collective spirit not only strengthens the movement but also creates a legacy of collaboration and mutual support. Students learn to advocate not just for their own concerns, but for the broader well-being of their peers, building a culture of empathy and shared responsibility.

Reflecting the spirit of unity and the resolve to make a significant impact, the potential strikes at McGill and Concordia serve as both a testament to and a catalyst for this evolving tradition of student activism. By standing together in these departmental strikes, students are not merely protesting tuition hikes; they are actively participating in a broader, historical movement towards creating a more inclusive, accessible educational system. As these students mobilize, they are setting the stage for a dynamic and transformative chapter in the pursuit of equitable education, signaling that the struggle for affordability and accessibility in higher education remains a vibrant and urgent cause.

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After months of brainstorming, organizing, and arranging the details for this event, Wang said, “We’re just really excited to put it out to the world. Not only are we following this TED tradition of platforming interesting, compelling, innovating ideas to foster a community hub of free exchange, but it is also just a moment to bring the community together.” 

TEDxMcGill, founded in 2009, organizes a yearly showcase to continue the TEDx legacy of “ideas worth spreading.” This year, they are presenting the theme “Kaleidoscope,” based on the instrument designed to display varying patterns through refractions of light, shifting in colour and design. The TEDx program was initiated to promote and encourage people from all across the world to speak on experiences, new ideas, or contrasting perspectives to shift our understanding of reality. Most often, speakers provide a space for breakthroughs or new innovations in research, but their talks are meant to spark productive conversation across global communities. Thus, the theme “Kaleidoscope” is meant to express everything that TEDx stands for: the exploration of beauty and diversity among the societies we live in. Nanami Haruyama, VP Memberships for the organization, commented on her brainstorming process for this theme. 

“Originally I thought of ‘Kaleidoscope’ to try to think of a simile or an analogy to what TEDx represents,” she explained, which she found to be “a combination and a platform for so many different ideas [and] people from different backgrounds and walks of life.” Rather than settling on a distinct idea, TEDxMcGill sought to reimagine what it feels like to engage in such bustling academic discourse, where anything and everything is possible. This theme also gives audiences a hint as to what they can expect to feel coming out of the event. Haruyama believes “that if you shift the Kaleidoscope, you have an entirely new perspective, and we wanted TEDx to represent that Kaleidoscope – a shift in perspective. That if you come to our event on February 4, you will leave having a new idea, a new perspective that you haven’t thought about.” 

This year’s application and recruitment cycle for TEDxMcGill was especially difficult due to the sheer number of people who applied or reached out to participate. Haruyama reflected on the process of looking through each applicant’s video and blurb about their speech topic to decide on who would be chosen. In total, there were 90 applicants – a large pool to select from. In addition to those who applied, many interested parties contacted TEDxMcGill themselves. She said, “It was so exciting just to hear the different possible talks that it was really hard to narrow it down to the final nine that we ultimately chose.” Despite the wide variety of options and topics that the team was presented with, they still tried to reach out to people who they felt would bring something unique and special to the TEDx stage. Wang in particular discussed their selection of McGill professor Oran Magal, who she was influenced by after taking two of his courses. She felt that his ideas were extremely compelling and worth sharing with the public. This once again relates to the goals of the TEDx organization: to find people who have voices that need to be shared, who would greatly contribute to the sphere of academic discourse. 

“We look through all of these videos, look at all their talks, and then we start to narrow it down in terms of the quality, the potential that we see, and the topic that they’re talking about,” said Haruyama in discussion of what the team has to do in choosing their final lineup. Wang described how ambitious the team was this year to seek out people who perhaps did not apply but who the team felt would bring so much to the table.

“Recruitment through application is great and all, but what we find a lot of the time when it comes to opening the doors and letting anybody come in and give us their ideas is that people try to exploit the name of TED, seeing it as a pedestal to boost their own careers or their personal agendas,” Wang stated. “That’s why curation and the membership team is just so important in terms of closing those floodgates and really actively crafting a speaker list that is not just ideologically oriented or politically driven, but actually idea-based – or talks that are action-oriented, that seek active solutions, and you’ll find that in all of our speakers this year.” The organization wants to be a space where true productive conversation can ignite; instead of simply platforming theory or new research, they want to highlight personal experience and real struggles – stories which can inspire change.

TEDxMcGill is also committed to delivering one-of-a-kind thoughts that not only pertain to the world but are special to the McGill and greater Montreal communities. They seek to provide a space for young people, who are often bypassed in favour of adults or those with more life experience, to voice their ideas. 

“This year we’re really emphasizing undergrad. We feel that undergrads feel like they should not – or cannot – talk for some reason,” said Wang,, speaking about what she believes to be one of the most important things to come out of this year’s conference. Of their nine speakers, four are McGill undergraduate students, each with their own perspectives to share. The program finds itself unique in its ability to offer such an important stage to these students who are passionate and well-versed in their area of study. 

Hanna Eik, one of the team’s Speaker Coordinators, also said, “I think it’s nice to see a lot of younger voices on our stage. When you see people who look like you on stage, it makes you think ‘Oh! I can do the same.’” The team believes that, in order to foster curiosity and learning, it is imperative to have this sort of diversity presented at their conference. Over the years, students have become inspired by the TEDxMcGill event to apply and get a chance to present their own ideas, Eik added, which she finds is one of the most important things this organization can offer to aspiring students at McGill. Ultimately, she believes that “one of the big beauties with TED is the circular nature of being an active viewer and wanting to be a TEDx speaker.” 

The TEDx program’s goals are to highlight the importance of seeking knowledge within various communities across the world. Different localities may present a diverse array of ideas special to that particular location, and hearing from the voices that occupy our communities is so critical to giving TEDxMcGill its own unique sparkle. The upcoming presentations offer perspectives not only on their particular research areas but also on their personal experience and culture. Thus, TEDxMcGill becomes a focal point for the cumulation of research, self-exploration, and representation of the Montreal community. When discussing with a few of the executive team members, speaker coordinator Roberto Concepcion expressed excitement to hear from Elaine Xiao. 

“Her talk focuses on overcommitment and burnout, and it’s something that I feel like a lot of us recognize,” he said. Although geared towards students, the all-too-familiar loss of motivation or exhaustion from overwork is something that everyone can resonate with. Concepcion added that Xiao “is able to bring in a lot of research and her own personal experiences.” The ability to tell individual stories is what makes each TEDx speech unique.

The TEDxMcGill team also believes that having these spaces for public speaking, active listening, and academic discussion are so important to preserve the flow of imagination and creativity in our everyday lives. It is not often that one can engage in conversations pertaining to the common struggle or to new innovations that are designed to create an impact on the listener. For this reason, TEDxMcGill succeeds at preserving the integrity of what TEDx stands for. 

“It goes back to that old adage of ‘think global, act local’ in terms of whether that’s building relationships or exploring how certain thoughts can be made into actions,” Wang concluded. “Being in an environment where that is not just encouraged but is the point of that environment is really empowering. That feeling you get when you’re there is unlike anything else.” 

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Walking through the exhibition, one can recognize shapes and forms that are commonly associated with tableware and architecture. Large round bowls are accompanied by vases and tall ceramic sculptures that resemble edifices. However, each sculpture’s colours and textures reveal an interpretation that subverts these initial comparisons. Different shades and hues appear on closer inspection, seemingly hand-painted — giving insight on the artist’s creative process. In addition, Prairie purposely designed her sculptures to allow viewers to look inside them. Depending on the abstraction of her pieces, each artwork either features a crevice or is completely laid open for viewers to engage with both the inside and the outside of each sculpture. 

Le contenant comme métaphore presents works by Prairie ranging from different periods of her career, guiding the viewer into an intimate understanding of her knowledge and artistry. She challenges conventional ceramics as a utilitarian craft and as a tool to occupy space. The viewer is compelled to reconsider their understanding of artistic spatial rendering by integrating negative space as a key part of each sculpture. She refuses to consider space as a void that must be filled, and instead invites it to be part of her work. 

As such, the viewer is offered different perspectives on our individual perceptions of space. Usually, no one thinks to imagine the inside of an object or sculpture. However, in this exhibition, Prairie compels viewers to reflect on the void within each sculpture – as reflected by the title of the exhibition. Prairie turns her sculptures into transformative experiences that push the boundaries of what ceramic sculpture can represent, expanding our understanding of art and our environment by encouraging viewers to explore the spaces that surround us. 

Throughout her career, Prairie has moved from studio to studio. This constant migration compelled her to adapt her projects to different environments and develop new skills, which in turn has allowed her to create distinct and innovative works of art. By never having the same kilns, tools, or materials, she can explore many different styles and ideas. The insight she has gained from this process has distinguished her as a true fixture in the field of ceramic technology. Eager to share her knowledge, she has been teaching the theory and practice of color at the Centre de céramique Bonsecours for 30 years.  

Her approach is reminiscent of the way the studio artist Robert Piepenburg writes about space: “Without this intentional interaction with that visual void there is no interconnected dynamic of resolution — no final state of contentment — where all of the work’s design elements come together and exist as a cohesive whole.” Prairie’s sculptures invite viewers to reflect on the relationship between artistic form and operative space, urging us to recognize that both of these concepts can be considered in different ways than we are accustomed to. 

Prairie reflects on the idea of perspective by purposely creating sculptures that allow the viewer to peer inside each sculpture and understand how a ceramic form can render space more tangible. In this regard, her sculptures are not simply aesthetically innovative due to her choice of color or texture. For instance, the bowls placed at the entrance captivate the viewer’s eye due to their prominence in size and colour.  But beyond beauty and brightness, she also reflects on the interactions with space that render her sculptures. By experimenting with the way artistic forms mold our impression of the spaces they both do and don’t occupy, Prairie’s work not only transforms our understanding of negative space but compels us to engage with it. She offers different manners of viewing the inside of her sculptures, pushing our boundaries through  familiar forms.

Upon entering the exhibit, the viewer is met first with a series of large bowls in orange and yellow tones, deceptively utilitarian in their shape and figure. Upon closer inspection, however, subtle details in texture and form begin to emerge: throughout the exhibition, imprints left by the artist’s fingertips can be noticed on each sculpture. 

Prairie’s sculptures use the method of coiling, a traditional pottery technique in which clay is rolled into long thin cylinders to be combined by hand into larger shapes. This method adds a distinct texture to her ceramics, in addition to allowing for subtle asymmetrical between the sculptures that Prairie displays in pairs. These asymmetries are born from the human touch – a reminder of the actual and deeply physical relationship between the human sculptor and the “spaces” within her artwork.

Prairie says about this characteristic of her sculptures: “The exhibition demonstrates how each corpus feeds the other.”  These slight variations from each sculpture remind the viewer of the organic variation introduced by the artist’s touch.

Prairie’s experimentation with innovative materials and techniques is also showcased in her collection. The unconventional choice of using encaustic as a medium for colour in her sculpture distinguishes her from most other ceramic sculptors. A medium normally used in paintings, the technique consists of heating wax until it takes on the artist’s desired coloration. Once heated, the wax becomes incredibly sensitive and hardens almost immediately once it comes into contact with ceramics, capturing any momentary variation in the material. Over the years, Prairie has perfected her technique using this blend of beeswax and pigments to control the intensity of color on her sculptures. 

By using encaustic, she also renders all her sculptures non-functional. Since the pigment is toxic, any tableware coated in it would not be suitable for contact with food. In eliminating the possibility of using her ceramics for their respective “functions”, she instead invites the notion of interpreting each container as a metaphor. By decentralizing the aspect of functionality in her ceramics, she allows viewers to reflect on the vessels based solely on their appropriation of space.

Through these artistic choices, Prairie encourages a new kind of thinking  about form and function as they relate to each other. By leaning away from the common preconception that function in ceramics supercedes form, she reveals the limitless artistic possibilities that come with this change of perspective. 

Prairie further engages with the viewer’s understanding of space by mimicking architectural forms in her sculptures. Shown here, she makes use of shapes and proportions customarily associated with buildings, in addition to applying a brick-like pigment to the ceramics. Curiously, she also leaves an empty space within each sculpture. In doing this she invites the viewer to look inside and consider the validity of spatial dichotomies such as the interior and exterior, or the private and the public – notions often found within architecture. The inclusion of hollow spaces inside these sculptures  imbues each one with additional meaning. 

Whether they may be bowls, vases, containers, or even abstract forms of clay, each of Prairie’s sculptures retains a central space. Her philosophy and the theme it addresses are reminiscent of the work of another Canadian artist, Rolland Poulin, who shares her fascination with the possibilities offered by our conception of space. Poulin once stated: “Le sol n’est pas un espace nature: c’est l’espace que la sculpture et le spectateur partagent.” (The ground is no longer a neutral space: it’s the space that the sculpture and the viewer share). His observation is sympathetic to what Prairie aims to express with her exhibition, emphasizing the power of space as well as its relationship with – and impact on – the viewer. 

In Prairie’s exhibition, the audience are not simply spectators but active participants in her transformative discourse where they are invited to inquire within about their preconceptions and engage in introspection. Le contenant comme métaphore fosters a deep appreciation for the relationship between space and form, allowing for her artistic brilliance to shine due to the subtle and delicate details in each of her sculptures. Claude Prairie’s work is not simply a testament to her mastery in the realm of ceramics, but a subtle reminder that within our imagination is the potential to shape our ideas and create our own realities. 

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From “pedagogical cinema” to the Fifth Generation

Ever since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, cinema was destined to have a unique place in China’s cultural space. Film production was incorporated into the state’s vision for the economy; annual meetings dictated the agenda of upcoming film releases and funding for studios came directly from the state. Popular performance art, with their entertainment value, came to be used as a means of political and ideological expression. The films made with government support and funding include “model plays” such as Red Detachment of Women (1960). While they are intriguing in their social and artistic significance, they nonetheless remained “art of the state.”

In 1978, the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of an era of reforms marked a new period in Chinese culture and economy. The filmmaking scene was no exception to this economic and social change. The state’s diminishing involvement in the cultural arts, and the political opening provided by the CPC’s admission of past mistakes allowed filmmakers to address previous years of strife, albeit often indirectly. The emerging directors of this era, most of whom were students at the Beijing Film Academy, also became exposed to the potential of film as an expression of their individual visions in a way that the previous generations did not. The result was a cinematic discourse that made it possible for filmmakers to direct their films in ways that moved beyond the pedagogical function of cinema that had characterized much of Chairman Mao’s regime. This generation of directors, commonly referred to as the fifth-generation, produced films that recorded Chinese modernity, and were subversive in the sense that they displaced the grand “national narrative” envisioned by the previous generation by turning to personal memories and local histories. These fifth-generation films, the most famous of which include Yellow Earth (1984), Blue Kite (1993) Horse Thief (1986), and Red Sorghum (1987), are typically set in the pre-revolutionary period but comment indirectly on the post-revolutionary era. They are often characterized by their intricate and complicated relationship with history, echoing the directors’ memories of the turbulence of their own youth.

These themes can be seen, for instance, in Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth, which follows a communist soldier on a mission to gather folk songs from the countryside. This film drew upon Chen’s experience as a “sent-down” youth to the countryside, retold through the soldier’s realization of the immense disparity between the narrative of party salvation that he had been told in his urban upbringing and the reality of rural villages still rife with poverty and exploitation. This focus is also shown in Farewell My Concubine (1992), a film rich with exploration of gender roles, the relationship between individuals and history, tragedy, and fate. Throughout this era and after, the lives of the marginalized — queer people, thieves, and prostitutes — were beginning to be depicted on the big screen in ways that they never had before.

Space and Creativity

The cultural and political space of the 1990s and early 2000s can be encapsulated by two events: the 1989 Tiananmen protests and Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour. The tone of the new decade was set by Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour, during which it became clear that China would reorient away from the old command economy and towards marketization. China’s intellectual and business exchanges with the international community soared, and cultural producers started initiating their own projects instead of waiting for government assignments. Yet, the civil society that arose from the reform era was still constrained by past institutions. All this is encapsulated in the other part of the political junction: just a few years earlier, the 1989 Tiananmen protest and its subsequent governmental response clearly indicated the existence of certain red lines, and foreclosed the possibility of visible oppositional culture in China. Chinese society and its cultural production was, in the words of Carlos Rojas, haunted by “spectres of Marx, shades of Mao, and the ghosts of global capital.” The resulting artistic and cultural space was one in which economic freedom was offered to citizens in exchange for their political and ideological loyalty at the margins.

The film industry, as a space that operates within and reports upon the nation’s cultural and political environment, has also responded to these historical changes in various dimensions. On one hand, the commercial film industry grew, financing methods transitioned from state-sponsored to private investment, and box office success became much more important than it had ever been. Hollywood made its entrance into the Chinese market in the early 90s: the market beckons, even if this relationship had been characterized by both hope and frustrations. On the other hand, the 1989 part of the political junction meant that filmmakers were still subject to differing levels of censorship.

Both the regulation and bodies of censorship have been an ever-changing process, but the one constant is how inconsistent and arbitrary it has been for the past three decades. While all commercially released films have to be submitted to the relevant film bureau bodies prior to screening, there also existed a semi-shadow industry where China’s independent cinema scene grew. While independent cinema in the West typically refers to films that are not mainstream or not produced by large studios, independent cinema in China refers to films that are not submitted to censorship. While these independent films don’t get released anywhere commercially within China, they were seen and circulated in China in a quasi-underground manner ranging from showings at small film festivals, informal screening venues, or through online distribution. Up until 2017, when the new film law passed, these films occupied the grey zones of Chinese regulation—hundreds of independent documentaries and features were made in this space each year. Some were entered into film festivals overseas, such as Summer Palace (2006), or more recently The Widowed Witch (2017), both of which received successful festival runs but no or limited domestic release. Domestic independent film festivals across the country also provided space for creators to connect.

Pardon, Your Camera is in My Face

The subjects of the sixth-generation cinema and the documentary movement between the 1990s and early 2010s were made up of a heterogenous crew of taxi drivers, migrant workers, prostitutes, KTV hostesses, construction workers — those that bore the brunt of China’s social transition. These sixth generation directors, the most famous of whom include Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Zhang Yuan, concern themselves intensely with the present, if the fifth generation films are primarily concerned with representations of history, then these sixth generation films are cinematic articulations of ways in which socioeconomic transformations were experienced by individuals. These independent films created from the 1990s through the 2010s confront various legal and practical limitations of filmmaking and social life in China on an individual scale, telling stories of ordinary problems being navigated by everyday people. Huang Weikai’s Disorder (2009), which consists of a series of short vignettes of  urban life in Guangzhou, documents the chaotic, absurd, but nonetheless vibrant moments brought by rapid and profound social change. In a similarly quotidian vein, Duan Jinchuan’s No. 16 Barkhor South Street (1996) follows the lives of people in Tibet, de-romanticizing and demystifying their everyday exchanges. Hanjia’s Winter Vacation (2010), set in a frost-bitten Northern China, depicts subjects who imagine their self-identity beyond the confines of their small town. These films follow the thread of China’s cultural and economic transformation, plucking the authentic experiences and memories of the Chinese people from the noise of materialism pervading the nation at the turn of the century. The world as projected by these filmmakers through their subjects’ eyes is a reflection on Chinese modernity itself.

In 2017, the Film Industry Promotion Law came into effect in China, codifying comprehensive regulation on independent domestic films. Screenings of films without a dragon seal — the title card which would appear at the beginning of a film signalling its official approval for release — was banned in theatres and semi-private institutions alike. As international exposure had been crucial to the distribution and reception of the aforementioned independent films, the new law prohibiting these domestic films from being shown in overseas film festivals without the dragon seal became yet another detrimental force in a market already tense with commercial pressures. In this environment, the number of independent film festivals, such as Nanjing’s China Independent Film Festival, dwindled. In the commercial space, while numbers soared at Chinese box offices, the hits of cinema consisted largely of war epics like Wolf Warrior (2015) or comedies driven by star power such as Hi, Mom (2021).

The combination of extensive regulations and pressing commercial influence created immense pressure in the Chinese independent film industry. Yet in spite of these pressures, the impetus for cinematic freedom can still be found in young creators who are still creating with inexhaustible vitality and creativity. That same impetus inspires content, channels, and voices in places that audiences would not normally expect — we need to look no further than the past 50 years of Chinese cinema for humbling reminders of the ways that ingenuity can transcend its confinements.

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The Advisory Committee

The Advisory Committee for the Selection of the Principal and Vice-Chancellor is mandated to create a profile for the role and find qualified candidates to nominate to the Board of Governors (BoG), who ultimately make the hiring decision. The Advisory Committee of 2022 was chaired by Maryse Bertrand and included representatives from the BoG, the Senate, the McGill Alumni Association, the McGill Association of University Teachers, the Administrative and Support Staff, and Student Associations, specifically SSMU and the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS). 

Within the Advisory Committee of 2022, graduate and undergraduate students were represented respectively by Kristi Kouchakji, Secretary General of the PGSS, and Kerry Yang, VP University Affairs at SSMU. Former VP University Affairs Claire Downie had originally been appointed to the committee, but left after resigning from her position in April 2022, leaving the committee without a SSMU representative until Yang took office in June 2022. 

“In principle, all reps from all spheres of university life are to have equal input into the selection or reappointment of the position in question,” Kouchakji told the Daily. “In practice, the inequitable power dynamics that exist across the university are often replicated in these committees as they are anywhere else.” However, she added that “this specific committee is one of only four I have sat on in seven years at McGill that did legitimately hold space for student input.” 

In conversation with the Daily, Yang agreed that everyone on the committee got a chance to speak and express their opinion. He said that the way Bertrand ran the committee was “very fair.” Kouchakji also believed that Bertand did a good job of managing the committee, which she acknowledges is not an easy job. “If the chair is managing things effectively, then sooner or later you come to a point where people understand each other’s constituents’ needs a little bit better, and then the discussions and negotiations and reflections really start getting productive,” she explained. 

The search was done in collaboration with Perrett Laver, an international firm specializing in leadership advising. This partnership was established through a “call to tender,” a process where companies bid for public service contracts worth over $100,000 required by Quebec legislation. Yang describes the firm’s role as a “headhunter,” explaining that they were largely responsible for sourcing qualified candidates.

Community Consultations

In order to get input from the McGill community, the Advisory Committee organized community consultation sessions in April and May 2022 to develop a profile for the new Principal and Vice-Chancellor, outlining ideal qualities, experience, and priorities for the candidate. According to documents obtained by the Daily, in these sessions participants were asked about the priorities and requirements that they found valuable in a potential candidate. Often, these characteristics relate to a candidates’ values, leadership skills, qualifications, and experience. Some of the priorities identified in the final profile included deepening the university’s research capabilities, improving the quality of the student experience, attracting diverse staff, faculty and students, and increasing sources of funding to support projects such as the New Vic and the Fiat Lux projects. Selection criteria also included a commitment to “Indigenization” and reconciliation as well as being fully bilingual and having knowledge of the French-speaking context of Quebec.

The Daily obtained summary notes from these consultations through an access to information (ATI) request. Specifically, the consultations identified many current challenges with regards to the relationship between the senior administration and the students, faculty, and staff. According to the notes, McGill is faced with a “new generation of students with different worldview[s] and expectations,” such as a need for greater mental health support. They recognized that the student body is more diverse than before, and many feel as if McGill doesn’t adequately prepare them for the workforce. The notes also identified a need to be more “faculty and staff-centric,” given an “us vs them” mentality emerging between staff and senior administration. This was demonstrated by staff unions going on strike due to their treatment by upper management, and consultations called for the new leadership to build a better relationship with the unions.

However, representatives from the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) told the Daily that they were concerned that “not enough weight was given to how a candidate interacts with labour unions and associations of the university.” They also added that the underlying issues identified in the consultations, such as “insufficient salaries and cost of living increases, lack of training, lack of sufficient staffing sustainability, and HR transparency and the high employee turnover McGill is currently experiencing,” still remain present.

Kouchakji said that public consultations had a good turnout, being  well attended by staff, faculty, the Board, and senior admin. However, student participation was lower than the committee would have liked to see. She attributes this to suboptimal timing, as the sessions took place during the final exam period when many students would have been busy. In addition, consultations took place between Downie’s resignation and the beginning of Yang’s term, meaning that there was not a SSMU representative on the committee at the time to relay information to undergraduate students. Kouchakji said that the broader committee had no input on when the consultations took place, but assumed it was decided by the Chair and Secretary, who were also responsible for publicizing them.

“At a certain point, when you’ve organized these things to happen over finals and in the days leading up to the final grading deadline, and you’ve publicized them mostly by posting them on an obscure website no one visits and by lumping them in with newsletters no one really reads, no amount of retweeting, sharing, amplifying, [or] mobilizing from student societies is going to save them,” she said when explaining the low student turnout.

The Final Selection

As the McGill community found out in November 2022, the Advisory Committee ended up choosing H. Deep Saini as the new Principal and Vice-Chancellor. Although committee members aren’t allowed to reveal who the other candidates were, they were able to provide insight as to why Saini stood out compared to the rest. 

“Saini was a very good candidate on paper,” Yang explained. “Some of the other candidates did have more pronounced weaknesses [while] Saini didn’t really have any weaknesses [ …] in comparison to the criteria that we set up.”

Yang added that Saini’s knowledge of French was a large asset. As Saini was a professor at the University of Montreal for 18 years, he’s familiar and able to interact with the Quebec government, which is a key strength given the Advisory Committee’s position profile prioritizes maintaining strong relationships with the provincial government. Saini has worked at four of Canada’s U15 universities (Dalhousie, University of Waterloo, University of Toronto Mississauga, and University of Montreal), indicating that he has a good understanding of the funding infrastructure for research-heavy universities in Canada. Yang said that the committee also considered Saini to be someone who was strong in the administrative aspect, able to make tough decisions, and had a good vision for McGill.

While Kouchakji couldn’t say much without breaking confidentiality, she acknowledged that “a legitimate consensus was reached based on the information the committee was provided during the process.”

“He exemplifies the rare mix of strong academic leadership with a wide-ranging and international perspective,” the McGill Media Relations office wrote in a statement to the Daily. “A collaborative and innovative thinker who sees challenges as opportunities and who has the ability to set a long-term vision for the University, Prof. Saini is the perfect choice for McGill as it embarks on its third century.”

Nevertheless, Yang acknowledged that he was aware that many students might have concerns about a situation that arose during Saini’s tenure at Dalhousie. In October 2022, teaching assistants, part-time instructors, and markers represented by the CUPE 3912 union at Dalhousie went on strike after negotiations with the university failed. The union claimed that the current wages for its members were less than at other major universities despite Dalhousie charging some of the highest tuition rates in the country. Saini also received criticism for raising Dalhousie’s tuition fees during the pandemic, despite student protests demanding a tuition freeze. That same year, Saini received a substantial increase in salary, going from $492,001 in 2020-2021 to $558,154 in 2021-2022. Yang said that he, along with other committee members, raised this issue, but the committee eventually came to the consensus that Saini did a good job managing the situation.

Saini’s history is also very concerning to MUNACA, especially given that he left his previous position mid-mandate following the aforementioned labour dispute. “There are many unions who will be negotiating new collective agreements soon or who are already negotiating,” they told the Daily. “Let us see how those go and how [Saini] reacts to them.”

While Yang and Kouchakji were both generally satisfied with the selection process, they both identified areas where it could’ve been improved. For Yang, the main challenge was stepping onto the committee in the middle of the process after Downie had resigned and the committee had been without an undergraduate representative for some time. He said that it would have helped if someone else had been able to step in temporarily to ensure that undergraduates were represented.

When asked about this dilemma, Kouchakji explained that these types of advisory committees “aren’t standing committees who regularly cycle members in and out and can bring new members up to speed with minimal friction; they’re engaged in a specific, ideally linear process, and after a certain point it’s increasingly complicated and arguably detrimental to all to be swapping out members for interim reps.” She added that much of the content discussed in these committee meetings is confidential, making it more complicated to onboard additional members.

“In such scenarios [when one group is not represented], the best whoever is in the room can do is to think about what they’ve observed in their time interacting with the opposite group and what broader issues those observations might point to,” she said.

Kouchakji also expressed a desire for more student and staff representation on the committee. She acknowledged that given the demanding nature of the role, there should be incentives such as academic release, tuition rebates, and paid release time for workers to make participation more accessible. She added that the process should be more transparent to allow the broader McGill community to participate in the final decision. She suggested that they “require final-shortlisted candidates for senior admin roles to give job talks at Senate and on a widely-publicized (within McGill) livestream with an unvetted Q&A session after, and then let Senate vote on their preferred candidate(s) by electronic ballot over a week to give them time to take feedback from their constituents as well.”

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Xylazine is proof of the danger of supply side intervention or drug prohibition. As a result of prohibition, Canada’s opioid supply is becoming increasingly unpredictable and therefore risky. Since the mid-2010s, when heroin and other opioids began to be diluted with fentanyl, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of opioid-related overdoses in North America. This has led many to refer to the spike in overdoses as the “fentanyl crisis.” Fentanyl is a widely prescribed and highly effective painkiller, often given to people recovering from surgery. Since the beginning of the crisis, fentanyl has been the subject of much misinformation and law enforcement efforts, with some going so far as to (inappropriately) call it a weapon of mass destruction. One of the most important protective factors for people who use opioids in recent years has been the increased availability of take-home naloxone kits. Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that blocks the effects of opioids on the brain for a limited period of time, which can temporarily reverse an overdose. 

Xylazine, like fentanyl, is a central nervous system depressant, meaning that too large of a dose will result in the same symptoms fentanyl can produce: lowered heart rate and decreased respiration. Unlike fentanyl, xylazine is not an opioid, meaning that naloxone will not have any effect on a xylazine overdose. It is not, as some have said, “resistant” to naloxone – it is simply a different substance altogether. That said, in the case of tranq dope, the combination of fentanyl and xylazine, naloxone may mitigate an overdose by blocking the effects of fentanyl. People responding are advised to check whether the person is breathing, protect the head and airways, apply naloxone, and call for backup. 

In addition to the risk of overdose, xylazine poses a challenge because it causes painful and dangerous wounds, which can appear regardless of the method of consumption. Even in cases where the substance was injected, the wounds are not necessarily found at the site of injection, often appearing on the shins and forearms. The wounds lead to an eruption of eschar, a type of dead skin. If left untreated, eschars can be quite severe, with some cases leading to amputation. Research into xylazine’s effects on humans was discontinued early in its development, with the effect that very little is known about how it functions in the human body. The drug began to grow in popularity as a recreational substance in Puerto Rico in the mid-2000s, with researchers observing the risk of infection as early as 2011. Doctors remain unsure of what exactly causes the wounds, which resemble chemical burns or skin ulcers and which appear in nearly 40 per cent of people who use xylazine. 

Xylazine was synthesized in the 1960s as a treatment for hypertension and is used extensively by veterinarians as a sedative or anaesthetic, often in conjunction with ketamine. It’s been used recreationally by humans since the early 2000s, making it a relatively new addition to the recreational drug scene, with little research done to investigate its effects on the body. Xylazine was rejected by the FDA for use in humans because of the risk of hypotension, which has led to a dearth of information about its mechanism of action in the human body.  

In the case of tranq dope, xylazine appears to be being used as a cutting agent. A cutting agent is a product used to dilute recreational drugs with something less expensive than the drug itself in order for the manufacturer to increase their profit margin. When a bar sells a mimosa instead of a glass of champagne, for instance, the orange juice is the cutting agent. If the government decided to crack down on mimosa consumption by banning the sale of orange juice, bartenders would be forced to innovate. Some speculate that this is what has led to tranq dope – as political leadership and law enforcement focus on fentanyl, manufacturers may be innovating by adding xylazine to their products in order to stretch their supply.

Illegal substances are impossible to regulate. While legal medications have to meet stringent requirements regarding ingredients, unregulated substances are held to no such standard. This is not unique to the illicit substance market. The nature of the unregulated global drug market often means that a product will pass through many hands before reaching the consumer. At each step of the supply chain, the person supplying has a financial incentive to cut the substance in order to increase their profit. The more links in the chain, and the more often the product has been cut or diluted, the more opportunities for a toxic interaction or undesired effect. 

Suppliers often improvise using products that are affordable, easily accessible, and that mimic the effects and physical properties of the substance being cut. When choosing a cutting agent, the manufacturer usually tries to find a substance that is inexpensive, easy to get, relatively non-toxic, and copies the physical attributes of the drug to be adulterated, such as cutting cocaine with caffeine.  

Supply side intervention is the practice of banning a psychoactive substance in order to discourage its use. In theory, banning the use of drugs will reduce the supply of a particular substance and force people to stop using it. However, the reality is more complex. A myriad of examples demonstrate what decriminalization advocates refer to as the “Iron Law of Prohibition,” which states simply that: “the harder the enforcement, the harder the drugs.” As pressure from law enforcement increases, demand does not decrease. Instead, suppliers turn to more potent alternatives. This is one of the ways that drug prohibition, despite its good intentions, actually increases the risk to public health associated with psychoactive substances. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when opium was first banned, some suppliers began selling heroin, which was both far more potent than opium and odorless, making it harder to detect. As law enforcement tightened border regulations and increased penalties associated with the sale and possession of heroin, suppliers turned to selling fentanyl, which is more potent and synthetic, meaning it can be conveniently produced in a lab. A potent cutting agent is especially attractive under prohibition because the more potent a substance is, the less volume is required to achieve the same effects. Less volume means it’s easier to transport undetected. Evidence suggests that xylazine potentiates the effects of opioids, meaning that less opioid is needed to achieve the desired effect. 

The pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns have also contributed significantly to disruptions in the supply chain for psychoactive substances as much as for anything else. Border closures considerably affected the stability of Montreal’s opioid market, contributing to a significant increase in fatal overdoses beginning in 2020. 

Some might suggest that the answer is to make xylazine less readily available, but experts disagree. Dr. Kim Sue, Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Medicine, advocates supervised consumption sites as a response to the current crisis as well as an end to the stigma surrounding illicit substance use. Sue says, “What kills [her patients] is our society’s cruelly stigmatizing approach to substance use disorders and the lack of safe places they can use and receive immediate overdose supports.” Maia Szalavitz, author of Undoing Drugs, has also spoken out against the use of law enforcement to respond to a public health crisis, as have many others. Locally, Francois Mary, director of Cactus Montreal, called on public health to share data promptly and invest further in drug screening to protect the public. 

Doubling down on supply side interventions is likely to keep producing the same results – more unpredictable and potentially risky innovations by suppliers leading to uncertainty and danger for consumers – and yet Western governments persist in their effort to scare users straight by allowing some of them to die unnecessarily. People who use opioids deserve access to a safe supply. People who use xylazine deserve knowledge and research to make using it safer. Prohibition is not keeping citizens safer. It makes using drugs more dangerous by preventing research and regulation and by making it more difficult for people who use drugs to seek information and support. If the goal of prohibition is public health and safety, then it has been a failure and we need to end it. If the goal of prohibition is to violently coerce the public into “good behaviour” and sobriety, then it has been a failure and we need to end it. If the goal of prohibition is to make the lives of vulnerable Canadians even more dangerous and precarious, then the proliferation of xylazine in the opioid supply is the latest example of its success. 

Urgent action is necessary to protect the lives of people who use drugs in Montreal and elsewhere. It is clear that supply side interventions are endangering our communities. It is inaccurate to refer to this ongoing crisis as a fentanyl crisis – it is a toxic drug supply crisis, and its origin is not opioids but dangerously misguided drug policy. If anyone wishes to learn more or to get involved, AQPSUD – the Association Québécoise pour la promotion de la santé des personnes utilisatrices de drogues – will host an overdose awareness event in Montreal on April 6 at Place Émilie-Gamelin. 

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Despite the organization’s disappointing track record, every March hopeful SSMU executives continue to envision a brighter tomorrow. In studying the past ten years, we have seen platforms fall in and out of favour, such as political neutrality and financial reform. We have also seen election campaigns detail projects that take years, rather than a single term, to come to fruition: notably, a fall reading week and the sexual violence policy, which cropped up many times before being implemented – or, in the case of the fall reading week, partially implemented. 

Process and Caveats

In the following piece, I look at the promises SSMU presidential candidates have made in the last ten years at a quantitative level. Although I was able to access pen sketches dating back a few years, candidate platforms have not been systematically archived. As a result, the keywords I used were plucked from endorsements written by the Daily, The McGill Tribune, and The Bull & Bear. When a candidate attaches a key tenet to their platform, I record the tenet, in a phrase of one to four words, in a spreadsheet that can be accessed on the online version of this article. I select the six most stressed tenets from each candidate unless the candidate has fewer than six tenets. The project is to record the trajectory of the past ten years – to identify promises that resurface time and again – and to contemplate why some concerns are never resolved.

I have merged the terms “sexual assault policy” and “sexual violence policy” into “sexual violence policy” given the recent semantic shift to using the word “violence” in place of “assault.” Some candidates mentioned a desire to hold office hours without using that phrase – I took the liberty of assuming these candidates referred to office hours. My only other amalgamation is “marginalized groups.” Some candidates mentioned specific demographics – for instance, women or racialized students – and since I was interested in capturing the broader trend of advocating for marginalized demographics as a platform, I grouped all relevant uses into the term “marginalized groups.”

I acknowledge that secondary sources are not an ideal way to capture the platforms of candidates. There is the potential for bias on behalf of student newspapers, especially when it manifests in censorship or the undue stressing of a relatively minor tenet. This issue has been somewhat mitigated by using multiple sources, but it will not disappear entirely.

The platforms of candidates sometimes change, and one could not expect to capture all the nuances of a platform in a spreadsheet. That being said, I was surprised while reading the platforms at how easily the candidates’ ideas could be collapsed into a select few phrases. It seems there has been a consistent use of one-word values – take our trio of sustainability, accountability, and communication – without elaboration. 

Results 

In ten years, there have been 25 presidential candidates, meaning each election has had an average of 2.5 students running for president of the union.

There are 99 tenets in total. Some are quite specific, such as “restore McGill’s institutional reputation” (2014, Johnson) and “group therapy sessions” (2016, Ger). Others seem like peculiar strategies: I think of the mySSMU app proposal from Darshan Daryanani (2021), or the 2015 candidate Alexei Simakov, who said to the Daily that rather than politics, he wants to focus on issues that have broad student support, such as how cold the McLennan Library is. (Another gem from Simakov: “I’m not someone who’s been engaged with student government at any point, I’ve always been the opposition.”)

The values that come to the forefront during presidential campaigns are markers of broader issues on campus. For instance, two out of the four mentions of a proposed sexual violence policy  take place in 2017, following the allegations against the 2016 VP External. This increase in attention can also be seen in action; in 2018, SSMU hired a sexual violence policy project coordinator and created the Gendered and Sexual Violence Policy (GSVP). On the other hand, it is disheartening to note that the creation of a sexual violence policy was proposed as early as 2015. The candidate who proposed the policy lost, and the lack of a sexual violence policy presumably contributed to SSMU’s inaction after the allegations. This year, presidential candidate Alexandre Ashkir aims to expand the grocery program, and candidates for other SSMU positions have similarly voiced concerns about food insecurity, a hot-button issue on campus spearheaded by Let’s Eat McGill. 

It’s obvious that 2016–17 was an especially tense year from reading the 2017 candidates’ platforms. Tojiboeva started by acknowledging student distrust, Ogendeji’s platform centered on “rebuilding trust,” and Shannon wanted to introduce more opportunities for students to voice their concerns.

One key takeaway from the timeline of the three most common platform promises is that they don’t follow a linear path. That being said, we see sharp increases in concern over accountability in 2019 and 2020, with every single candidate mentioning accountability. I hypothesize that this is in part due to controversies surrounding a free trip to Israel offered to SSMU executives and a failed General Assembly. Communication falls in favour slightly over 2015 to 2022, perhaps due to its vagueness. Sustainability is in a recent upward trend since 2018, and might be resurfacing in popularity due to increasing interest in environmental  sustainability.  Now, we take a look at the less popular, but perhaps more telling,  values.

Here, we see the partial success of the fall reading week promise, and we can track the advocacy work toward it; fall reading week is mentioned in 2018, 2019, and 2020. The three consecutive years of effort accentuate the inability of SSMU presidents to achieve concrete action within their one-year terms. They also suggest that candidates often borrow from previous candidates’ platforms, perhaps because they are aware that certain issues were important to previous voters. 

Even when participation in the SSMU end-of-year elections was higher, attendance at general assemblies (GAs) was a concern for candidates, first being mentioned by unsuccessful candidate Chris Bangs in 2013. Interestingly, the winner, Katie Larson, held a staunchly opposing stance. She did not plan to modify the structures of either the GA or of SSMU itself, and she was decidedly apolitical. Perhaps students saw her as a more realistic candidate than the Divest McGill activist Bangs, or they didn’t see GA participation as important to campus life. 

Concern for marginalized groups has seen a consistent increase over time. This is perhaps unsurprising, as issues of racism, sexism, and queerphobia have broken into mainstream discourse. We can also track the slow creation of the sexual violence policy over the years. Funnily enough, there is one mention of interest in a sexual violence policy after the sexual violence policy was created in 2017. 

How does a candidate’s platform correlate with their success at the polls? Considering that there have been ten winners, I filtered the successful candidates from the rest and reran the program. Unsurprisingly, similar values rose to the top.

Sustainability, accountability, and communication are over-represented in the winning faction (3/10 compared to 3/15), while prioritizing office hours is less popular among winners (1/10 compared to 3/15). Half of politically neutral candidates win their campaigns.  The first mention of it came from Larson in 2013 (won), then Simakov in 2015 (lost), then Sinder in 2016 (lost), and then Mansdoerfer in 2018 (won). 

 Perhaps most notably, all candidates to mention fall reading week won their campaigns, highlighting the chokehold the issue had on McGillians’ hearts (while also being a concrete and feasible goal). 

Conclusion

This year’s SSMU presidential election is different from any of the previous elections analyzed. We have no choice between platforms and only one voice to define the upcoming academic year. For the first time since SSMU Elections has kept accessible records on election results, a presidential candidate is running unopposed.

Although the results of previous elections reveal a steady stream of nearly identical, often one-worded campaign promises, and although the repetition of these platforms suggests that SSMU presidents are not entirely able to deliver on their assurances, a diversity of voices is essential to a functioning democratic student society.

2022 saw the lowest voter turnout since SSMU election turnout was recorded in the elections archive in 2012. The turnout was only 12.9 per cent of students voting. The 2023/2024 presidential candidate running unopposed is the most recent symptom of mistrust in and apathy toward SSMU. We can’t fault students: SSMU’s rocky history, evidenced by its inaction, by executive missteps, and by a lack of diversity in candidate platforms, creates a (perhaps not incorrect) impression that voting is merely an illusion of choice. A deeper dive into issues of student governance which lead to student apathy can be found in clumsy voting portals, insufficient training for incoming executives, and unpaid labor are some of the factors causing students to give up on SSMU. 

Student participation is mentioned as a platform in three of the campaigns I looked at, engagement in two more. GA engagement is also mentioned twice. It is disheartening to realize that these were central platforms even in times of higher participation and engagement. 

Future Work

This sort of analysis is ripe with potential. The main concern is the small sample size; a sample of ten is not large enough to conduct most statistical inquiries, such as whether any platforms are able to predict the success of a candidate. 

While I’m not qualified to try to solve the incredibly complex issue of voter apathy, I suggest that more concrete platforms, along with recognition of multi-year projects and an attention to our student government history, are essential in rebuilding trust in SSMU.  

The post A Decade of Promises appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Woo’s Early Years in Montreal 

The second son in a well-off family, Willie Woo (also known as William Woo, Woo Ching-Kooi, or Hu Zhengqu) was born on February 26, 1912 in Montreal. His  grandfather left Enping, Canton in the second half of the nineteenth century when the state was still under Manchu rule, and made his first fortune in the Australian gold rush.  

Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, Woo’s father, Woo Chong Kee (Wu Changqi), later made his way to Melbourne to run a tea dealing business. He returned to China after a decade but soon decided to leave due to the numerous uprisings and the looming threat of Western imperialist powers. After a brief venture in California, Woo’s father decided to settle in Montreal at the turn of the century. Despite barely speaking English or French, Woo Chong Kee worked hard to hawk his tea and other goods to locals, and his effort paid off. Within a decade, he had set up his own store on Sainte-Catherine Street. 

Willie Woo grew up in the Golden Square Mile, enjoying a relatively happy childhood compared to his father’s generation. At the age of 11, Woo became a member of the YMCA, the key promoter of basketball worldwide. By his teenage years, his exceptional sports talent became clear. In the 1929-30 season, he  was selected by the Montreal Central YMCA (Central Y) to play for the national junior basketball championship and led the team to the Eastern quarterfinals. Despite the team’s loss, The Montreal Gazette recognized him as the “most effective player [in the team]” and highlighted him as a “Chinese star.” Woo remained one of the most prolific scorers for the Central Y in the next two seasons and led the team to the Quebec finals in the 31-32 season of the premier men’s championship. 

Although basketball was the sport for which Woo was best known, he also  demonstrated remarkable athletic ability in American football. While attending Montreal High School, he stood out as a talented player and was once referred to as a “stellar quarte[rb]ack” by local media. When Woo turned 18 in 1930, he served as the captain of  the Montreal Westwards, the city’s football team at the time. 

Becoming a McGillian 

In Fall 1932, Woo entered McGill University and soon became an active participant in university sports. His previous experiences made him a player that “shows considerable promise,” as The McGill Daily put it, earning him the position of quarterback on the McGill freshman football team.  

In addition, Woo continued to stun sports fans both on and off-campus with his exceptional performance in his top sport, basketball. As an Arts student at McGill, he played for the Arts I team in the Interfaculty basketball league in 1932, impressing a commentator of the Daily with his “usual brilliant play” as a “stellar wingman.” Outside McGill, Woo shifted his loyalty from Central Y to play for the Montreal Notre-Dame-de-Grace Community Team. Despite the team’s 96-46 loss in the 1932-1933 Eastern finals,  Woo still “drew merited applause from the crowd” as a skilled forward. 

Apart from football and basketball, Woo’s talents extended to ice hockey and  softball/baseball. As a “hefty defenseman” for the McGill ice hockey team, he helped  McGill defeat the Loyola team in the Junior Amateur Hockey Association’s 1932 championship. He also played both infield and outfield positions in baseball and  softball. 

Across the early 1930s, Woo’s incredible athleticism across multiple sports resulted in frequent appearances  in the sports sections of Canadian newspapers like The Montreal Gazette, The Montreal Daily Star, and The Windsor Stars. Woo was so athletically versatile that the Canadian media gave him the title of an “all-round athlete.” He was the first Chinese athlete in Canada to achieve such a high level of success and renown. 

In contrast to the copious amount of information about his life on the sports fields,  little is known of Woo’s academic life at McGill, save that he once studied Chinese with Professor Kiang Kang-hu (Jiang Kanghu, 1883-1954), a renowned yet controversial Sinologist and chair of the newly founded department of Chinese studies. Woo’s brief acquaintance with Kiang would be a turning point in his life. 

“Back” to China 

     Just as Woo’s athletic career was on the rise, it was brought to a sudden halt in 1933. According to a news report in The Brandon Daily Sun, Woo’s father, blind, elderly, and suffering from the grief of losing his wife, decided to spend his last days back in his hometown, Canton. This decision resulted from advice from his doctor to move to a warmer climate and encouragement from Professor Kiang to “find his roots at the ancestral home.” Accompanying him was none other than his son, Wille Woo, who had just finished his freshman year at McGill.  

Not surprisingly, this plan was met with strong opposition from the young  Willie Woo, who by then had spent over two decades in Montreal. But eventually, Woo conformed to his father’s wish on the condition that he would stay in China for no more than six months. 

News of Woo’s impending departure soon covered the pages of Canadian  newspapers. Following his final game for Westwards in November 1933,  Woo embarked on a journey across the Pacific Ocean to China, a land in which he had never before set foot. 

Woo first sailed to Hong Kong, and then traveled to Shanghai. In China, he was  welcomed with open arms. Woo’s success in the Canadian sports scene was viewed as an honour to Chinese people, who were often typecast as physically weak and not valuing physical education. His “homecoming” thus took on a nationalistic hue (figure 3). As a  commentator of the Chinese newspaper The China Times (Shishi xin bao) wrote: 

“Given that the situation in China is becoming worse and worse, the crux of the problem lies in the debility and weakness of our citizens […] With his excellent athletic skills, [Mr. Woo] is to generously serve Chinese  sports upon his return to the country and train budding young athletes, in hope of  washing away the humiliation of ‘The Sick Man of Asia’. His ambition is indeed  admirable!” 

Bringing with him some prior coaching experience from Canada, Woo quickly established himself as a highly sought-after coach among universities and institutions in China. In February 1934, he was recruited by the Liangjiang Women’s Sport Institute in Shanghai as a general physical education teacher. Upon his arrival, the school principal, Lu Lihua, held a welcome party for Woo, anticipating that he would bring about changes to the school’s sports teams.  

Woo proved to be not only a talented athlete, but an excellent coach as well. His tutelage enabled the sports teams at Liangjiang school to progress rapidly, achieving remarkable results in a variety of sports. With only two months of training, the Liangjiang softball team was able to defeat a high school team from the United States in a friendly competition. Moreover with Woo serving as coach, the Liangjiang basketball team made history. During the team’s three-and-a-half-month tour of five Southeast Asian countries starting in February 1935, it achieved an unprecedented winning streak, dominating its 28 games against other local women’s basketball teams by wide margins. The Liangjiang team also won six victories in twelve games played against local male teams.

This was no small feat for a young all-female basketball team, whose country was  still mired in war and political turbulence. The young women’s victories left local  audiences awestruck, fueling Chinese people with a sense of  national pride while sensationalizing the entire sports scene in both China and around Southeast Asia. When the team returned to China in May, they were greeted as national heroes, hailed for their remarkable achievement and bringing glory to their country. Needless to say, Woo’s leadership and dedication as the head coach were crucial contributors to the team’s success. 

As a result of his impressive coaching accomplishments, Woo stayed in China for  a longer period than he had anticipated. In 1936, he moved to Hong Kong and began  coaching for the South China Athletic Association (SCAA, also known as Nanhua hui). The SCAA basketball team soon became another display of Woo’s aptitude in  coaching. In 1939, Woo led the team to a hard-fought triumph over the Sing Tao (Xingdao) basketball team, earning them the Hong Kong basketball championship that year. 

Over the following years, Woo worked as a physical education instructor, teaching  both English and sports in numerous institutions across Hong Kong and mainland China, notably Hong Kong University, Canton University, and Zhejiang  University. Despite his distance from North America, Woo maintained a connection with his hometown. He made regular trips to Canada during vacation periods, and in 1939 he even made a brief comeback in Montreal, playing for the city’s basketball team alongside his old friends (figure 1). 

“Back” to Montreal

The  late 1930s and early 1940s saw the steady growth of Woo’s reputation as an excellent coach within China’s sports circle. However, the Japanese invasion of mainland China and Hong Kong brought the nation into chaos and derailed Woo’s career. In August 1942, eight months after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, Woo fled the city to find refuge in the areas not under the heel of Japanese domination, which were collectively known as “Free China.” He lived amongst the masses under the shadow of war and was amazed by their determination to resist the enemy. While Woo’s life in “Free China” allowed him to  survive Japanese aggression during these years, it was by no means easy.  

On January 5, 1943, Woo’s  former  Central Y  teammate, Scotty Brotman, became  concerned by a letter from Woo that described the physical suffering and poverty he was facing. Not only was his health jeopardized by sunstroke, malaria, typhus, and malnutrition, but after losing nearly all his belongings, Woo could not afford to buy the clothes he needed.  

In response to his plight, a committee was set up on Woo’s behalf.  Affiliated with the Central Y and chaired by Brotman, the committee was tasked with devising solutions to Woo’s pressing needs. The Central Y established  the “Willie Woo fund,” created from the proceeds of several benefit basketball games held by the committee and a performance staged by Montreal High School. 

It was reported that Woo received around $350 in September of 1943, equivalent to $6000 today. Having endured various physical and mental afflictions, Woo eventually returned to his birthplace of Montreal in 1944. Perhaps a winding, if not adventurous, journey, Woo traveled via Kunming in Yunnan province, the Himalayan hump, Kolkata, Brisbane, and Los Angeles, all while dealing with his  declining health. 

Upon his arrival in Montreal, Woo picked up his previous profession as a basketball coach. For two years, he brought a remarkable improvement to the Sir George William College basketball team, the Georgians. In the 1944-45 season of the senior  men’s basketball championship, the Georgians went on to the Eastern finals (figure 2). Although the team was ultimately eliminated, Woo was delighted to see the achievements this local Montreal basketball had made. “We’ve come a long way in the playdowns,” Woo said after the Georgians’ victory in the Eastern semifinals in 1945. “[B]ut we won’t be satisfied until we return to Montreal with the title and let the rest of Canada know that Montreal also can produce prominent basketball clubs.” 

Residing at the intersection of different cultures, Woo always saw himself as a bridge builder, not only between Montreal sports and the rest of Canada but also  between Chinese and Canadians. Motivated by this perspective, Woo founded and  presided over the Chinese Athlete Club, one of the thirteen branches of The  International YMCA, in 1945 for the sake of “foster[ing] health-giving recreation for  Chinese youngsters in this area and to stimulate goodwill and understanding between  two races.” It was Woo’s conviction that sports, and basketball in particular, could  bridge the gaps between different races and cultures.  

Post-war Life in Hong Kong 

As the catastrophic war ended in China in summer 1945, Woo, inspired by the will of the Chinese people during his hazardous stay, saw a way to devote himself to rebuilding the country in the post-war period. In April 1946, Woo traveled back to China, and spent much of the rest of his professional life in Hong Kong, which was relatively impervious to the ensuing political upheavals in the mainland. 

In Hong Kong, Woo resumed his affiliation with SCAA, where he served as the coach for both the basketball and softball teams. He also assumed several administrative roles within Hong Kong’s sports circles, serving as the chair of the Hong Kong badminton, softball, and most importantly, basketball associations. 

As the main contributor to the post-war revival of softball in Hong Kong, Woo  acted as both a coach and an ambassador between Hong Kong and the West by  attending international softball conferences and hosting visiting softball teams from  other countries. 

As for basketball, with his rich experience and impressive track record, Woo was  once acclaimed as “the only best basketball coach in South China so far” by the Hong Kong newspaper Overseas Chinese Daily News (Wah Kiu Yat Po) in 1948. Woo proved himself worthy of this title, when his basketball team won three championships in the Hong Kong Basketball League in the 1950s (54-55,  57-58, and 59-60).  

Serving as the Chinese basketball team delegate for five Olympics and the representative for the SCAA and Hong Kong Basketball Association, Woo attended FIBA conferences in Rome in 1960 and in Tokyo in 1964. Through his frequent travels, Woo  recognized basketball’s potential for putting Hong Kong on the map and enhancing its global visibility. “People in the world knew little about Hong Kong in terms of  basketball,” said Woo after his return from Rome in 1960. “I hope one day Hong Kong can reach international competitions.” 

After retiring in the mid-1960s, Woo moved back to Canada, where he enjoyed a comfortable life and maintained his passion for sports by following NCAA basketball  games and hockey competitions. He returned occasionally to Hong Kong to catch up  with old friends and students, many of whom, including Shi Zhenda and Pan Kelian , had become established athletes. 

Chinese? Canadian? Or Montrealer? 

Like any second-generation immigrant or cultural wanderer in general, questions about Willie Woo’s identity were always present. He has been referred to in various  ways such as a “Chinese player [of the team],” “Canadian-born Chinese,” “ex-Montrealer,” and “former local athlete” by Canadian media, and “overseas Chinese”  (huaqiao) or “a member of the national community” (guomin yifenzi) by Chinese media.  To be sure, it is always tricky to say whether China was a place for Woo to “go” or  “return.” 

Having spent his formative years in Montreal, Woo identified himself more as a  Canadian in his youth: “I felt I was totally Canadian, except for the colo[ur] of my skin.” However, in an interview in the 1980s (figure 8), when explaining his rationale for spending most of his time in China, Woo reflected that “[as] much as I loved my boyhood in Montreal, I feel better being one of the majority.” 

To be sure, Woo’s Canadian culture never hindered his  commitment to fostering cross-cultural connections through sports. He utilized his ability and expertise in sports to build bridges between different cultures. He aided Chinese athletes in adapting to the local culture in Canada while introducing novel viewpoints and basketball tactics from abroad to China, using sports as a vehicle to increase China’s global exposure. Unlike George Orwell, who believed that sport “is bound up with hatred, jealousy, [and] boastfulness,” Woo dedicated the better half of his life to demonstrating its potential to promote mutual understanding.  

Woo passed away in Vancouver in March 1990 after battling cancer. In an obituary in The Gazette, Woo was hailed as “the first great Canadian-born Chinese athlete.”  Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, his contributions to the development of basketball were spotlighted in Overseas Chinese Daily News. As it is widely known that  basketball was invented by a McGillian, perhaps it is also worth remembering that another McGillian played an important role in the development of the sport in East Asia.

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Zach Cheung for the McGill Daily (MD): I imagine that writing a memoir is much like having a conversation with yourself. But as much as you have to listen to yourself, I can imagine that there’s going to be a lot of outside noise. So I wanted to ask you, how much of the news — Bill 96, Bill 2, the lead-up to the provincial election — did you have to tune out?

Balarama Holness (BH): So the big thing about this memoir is that it’s not a political manifesto. This memoir is me opening myself up to the world in a very vulnerable way. It’s a way of exposing my life story from the way my parents met, to growing up in an ashram to arriving in Quebec, to finding myself through an identity crisis at a very young age, to living through referendums, to falling off track and finding myself once again through football, to then falling into a level of deep despair with the passing of my mother and then traveling abroad.

But when it comes to the important elements of politics and policy, the book more so explains why I care about these issues. It gives the reader an insight into why I do what I do. And from that perspective, even if Bill 96 never existed, the way that I was treated in the hallways during grade school is indicative of Bill 96. So there’s no surprise to me that Bill 96 has come into play or this linguistic fight continues to engulf the province because I’ve experienced this my whole life. So there was no sense of tuning out the outside noise, but more sense of rediscovering. It’s a conversation with yourself, but when you’re analyzing and looking back to your childhood, you’re actually rediscovering elements of your life and finding common themes that you never even knew existed until you took the time to actually look and uncover, almost like an archaeological expedition into one’s life.

MD: How does the title of the book, Eyes on the Horizon, relate to how you stated that this memoir was an act of rediscovery?

BH: Yeah, Eyes on the Horizon, as a title, is interesting for multiple reasons. Number one, to give you a concrete example, when I announced the petition to require the city to have a conversation on racism, there was a lot of pushback. And because my eyes were on the horizon, I never really felt the negative influence of the people who were pushing back against you. Even when I was running for mayor of Montreal, all of the policies that I cared about were so important to me that my eyes were continuously moving forward. The immediate pushback, whether it was from the media or from critics, was water off my back because my eyes were on the horizon, the vision being so crystal clear that I didn’t care about the immediate road bumps in front of me.

MD: You say in the book: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Was there a single moment in time when you realized the need to organize collectively?

BH: Yeah, there’s this kind of conundrum between individualism and collective organization. I’ve always been an individual because I grew up solo. I had to survive individually if I wanted to be able to be able to function in this community without my parents. But you also have to understand that in the community organization realm and even politics, you need to be able to mobilize a collective. You cannot do it alone. And whether it’s the 22,000 signatures to require the city to have a consultation, or whether it’s Mouvement Montréal or Bloc Montréal, these are all done with a collective of people from all different backgrounds, faiths, ethnicities, skills, and careers. That’s what makes it enriching, and it’s something I’m very proud of.

And when you look at what we built in terms of Mouvement Montréal, a political party that is a true reflection of Canada, of Quebec, of Montreal — that is what parliament should look like. That is what the National Assembly should look like. The policies, more importantly, that we were invoking are what should be reflected in our democratic society, in our view. So it’s not just about the aesthetics of diversity, but it’s about the substance of the policies that’s critically important and that we’re still waiting to have come to fruition. And that’s why the journey continues.

MD: You often mention that education is a source of political empowerment. How do you think activists should use their education to hold institutions accountable?

BH: It’s not just about activists, it’s about minorities at large. And it’s not just about education equating to higher socioeconomic statuses; immigrants and minorities do have equal, if not higher, levels of education but income is not always connected to that because of employment discrimination and other factors. Education should be a way to free yourself from the shackles of desire in this material world and to empower yourself and your consciousness. So it’s not just a question of activists, but it’s anyone who feels as though they’re marginalized or oppressed. It’s that love and that passion for education. It could be through a book, it could be through travel, it could be through conversations, it could be through conscientious awareness and developing that with other people. That is what’s going to emancipate the oppressed from the oppressor, as opposed to simply viewing education as an economic means for uplifting oneself.

MD: What do you see in the future of both Bloc Montréal and Mouvement Montréal?

BH: Well, the next generation plays a large role in continuing the journey. And it’s my job now to stay on the front lines to instruct and guide the next change makers, to ensure a vision beyond politics: a vision of human dignity based on quality access. Similar to the green spaces that I grew up in — obviously we can’t recreate the Appalachian Mountains here in Montreal — we want green spaces in these low income neighborhoods. The sports centers that I used as harbour when I had fallen off track, I want those same sports centers for the next generation right here in Montreal. The same opportunities I had as a leader in a political party, I would hope for proper education to instruct the next generation of changemakers to be leaders in their own perspective, whether it’s in tech, finance, or arts, whatever it may be. All the things that allowed me to be the person I am today, I hope that we can provide the same resources and infrastructure to the next generation so they could thrive and meet their fullest potential.

MD: There is a chapter in your memoir where you recount your travels. You mentioned in specific that you resonated with the idea of “investing in people rather than soldiers” when you learned that Costa Rica did not have a standing army. Does this have any parallels to what Bloc Montréal and Mouvement Montréal stand for?

BH: Yeah, 100%. I was very reticent to include in the book the fact that I distributed marijuana when I was younger. But the reason why I decided to put that in was because it shows that through investing in coaches, sports centers, mentors, and teachers, a productive member of society is able to influence society in a positive way. It’s proof that if we actually go into these neighbourhoods and provide quality services to people, to youth, that great things can come from that. And still, we continue to fight dejected youth with handcuffs as opposed to giving them pens, computers, and footballs.

So imagine if that police officer, when he handcuffed me because I was smoking marijuana, gave me a criminal record and wrote me up — my whole life would have been ruined. But a coach gave me a football, and a teacher gave me access to the computer lab at the University of Ottawa, and the rest is history. And it is my firm belief that the political class, whether it’s the municipal, provincial or federal government, understands very clearly what it would take to guide and instruct minority youth. The reason why there’s no support center in Montreal North, and I mentioned it quite often in the book, is not because there’s no money for the support centers. We live in a G7 country, we have the money. The reason why they don’t is because of explicit and implicit bias, prejudice, and hate towards these communities. For me, if there’s one point in the book that comes up time and time again, it’s that sports center that changed my life. And I think that similar opportunities can help a lot of kids in Montreal North.

MD: Is there anything you learned about yourself when writing this memoir?

BH: Well, it kind of reaffirmed within myself that if an individual, a party, or an institution is not going to offer me the same dignity as the next person, all hell will break loose. In my youth, all hell used to break loose with my fists. And that got transformed into a positive rebellion that is exemplified through community organization, politics, and law. But if I’m challenged, discriminated against, or disrespected, and I see that other people around me are experiencing similar things, we’ll all come together with proverbial pitchforks and torches, and we’ll come for you. And that’s what we’ve done. And we’ve turned it into a positive march. Empowered through my legal and educational training, that’s why I continue to be inspired.

MD: In leading this “positive rebellion,” did you feel like a political agitator when you entered the political scene?

BH: I didn’t talk a lot about this in the book, but I think that why we may have been seen as more agitators than we potentially should have been is because democracy is not open and equitable. We had to fight to get on debate stages. The Chamber of Commerce didn’t invite us on the debate stage. Culture Montreal didn’t invite us. Radio Canada, a public institution, didn’t invite us on the debate stage. Tout Le Monde En Parle didn’t invite us onto their show. When we would send out press releases on our economic policy, it wouldn’t get covered. When we sent out a press release on a cultural general policy, it wouldn’t get covered. The media was extremely biased and it was hard for us to pierce through the Coderre/Plante battle. That’s where this idea of “rebellion” came from.

So what we had to do, in which we probably looked more like agitators than we would like, is that we had to fight back against the media and give them content. That would actually make them publish it, as opposed to us being able on face value, just to publish our platform and to get news based on that. So, we were not there to just agitate, but we were there to get candidates elected.

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According to Tarshia L. Stanley, Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts and Sciences at St. Catherine University, much of the appeal of Butler’s novels stems from her approach to worldbuilding. Butler grounds her faraway science fiction worlds in our current lived reality. She takes a deep systemic problem that is often overlooked and follows it to its logical extreme. Stanley argues that “she’[s] been trying to tell us that if we do not make changes, this is what’s going to happen. She constantly [gives] that message: ‘this is the logical conclusion if we keep treading down this path.’” Butler’s novels frequently act as cautionary tales that warn us against allowing latent systemic issues to grow and eventually fester. In Parable of the Sower, this issue is environmental racism.

Environmental Racism Today

What exactly is environmental racism? Civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis coined the term in 1982 following an eruption of protests in North Carolina that same year. Several nonviolent protests had been organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in response to the local government’s decision to dispose of 40,000 cubic yards of soil laced with carcinogenic chemicals in the Black farming community of Warren County. Pushback from police was extreme, and over 500 arrests were made, including of Chavis himself. Chavis subsequently defined environmental racism as “racial discrimination in environmental policy-making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of colour for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of colour from leadership of the ecology movements.”

Although the term was coined over 40 years ago, environmental racism still exists today. Polluted air and water has disproportionately affected Black communities for decades – and it only seems to be getting worse. According to a 2017 study by the Clean Air Task Force, “Fumes Across the Fence Line,” Black Americans “are exposed to 38 per cent more polluted air” than white Americans, and are “75 per cent more likely to live in communities that border a plant or factory.” In a shocking 2021 study from Science Advances, it was found that Black Americans are exposed to more air pollution than white Americans from every possible source: industry and agriculture, emissions from vehicles, residential sources, and even some restaurants. And as of 2021, Black Americans are roughly four times more likely to die from pollution exposure than white Americans.

Exposure to polluted air wildly escalated health problems in Black communities during the pandemic. According to research from Duke and Stanford University, from the start of the pandemic in 2019 through July 2020, over half of all in-hospital deaths from COVID-19 were Black and Latino patients. In addition, it was found that Black patients were far more likely to need ventilation than white patients. According to Robert D. Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University and the author of Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality, the culprit here is none other than environmental racism. “If your Zip code is buried with garbage, chemical plants, pollution,” he argues, “you’ll find there are more people that are sick, more diabetes and heart disease.”

Environmental Racism in Canada

Environmental racism is not unique to the United States. Although Canada has made attempts in recent years to become a leader in climate action, not all of its promises have been fruitful, as detailed in the Daily’s article “Justin Trudeau’s Pseudo-Environmentalist Agenda.” There have even been attempts to address environmental racism directly, but not much progress has been made. The National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice Act, or Bill C-230, was first presented to the House of Commons in June 2021. It proposed “a requirement for the federal minister of environment and climate change to examine the link between race, socio-economic status and environmental risk, and develop a national strategy to prevent environmental racism and advance environmental justice.” The bill had support from four out of five parties in Parliament but never came to a final vote. Attempts have been made to bring Bill C-230 back to Parliament, but as of 2023, the bill still remains at a standstill.

In the end, legislation such as Bill C-230 is a response to historic wrongs. To look forward, we must first look at our past. The legacy of environmental racism today ultimately stands on the shoulders of historic segregation and institutional oppression. Although laws explicitly decreeing segregation were never passed in Canada, separating communities on the basis of race persisted well into the 20th century. The provinces of Ontario and Nova Scotia had segregated schools for almost a century; the last segregated school in Nova Scotia was closed in 1983. The Maritime provinces commonly had designated areas for white and non-white people. In 1946, Canadian civil rights activist Viola Desmond made headlines when she was arrested for refusing to sit in the section of a Nova Scotia movie theatre designated for Black audience members. These practices produced effects that would be felt for many generations, and they have lasting effects today when it comes to environmental racism.

The effects of redlining – what Cornell Law School defines as “the systemic denial of services such as mortgages, insurance loans, and other financial services to residents of certain areas, based on their race or ethnicity” – persist today. In the U.S. and in Canada, redlining has resulted in majority-Black communities being historically relegated to “less-desirable” areas. In 2016, the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership (NCRP) conducted an analysis of Black rental and homeownership concentration in Toronto and found that “Black communities are largely concentrated to the city’s suburban ends, to the west in Etobicoke and to the east in Scarborough. By contrast, Black people only represent 2% of the homeowners in the city’s downtown core.” These neighbourhoods then become first in the running when local governments must decide where to dispose of toxic waste. Additionally, a 2007 report from York University found that in Toronto, predominantly racialized neighbourhoods were much more impacted by pollution caused by soil contamination, industrial land use, and waste sites than were white neighbourhoods. This practice leads to a vicious cycle in which “less-desirable” areas are essentially created by white-majority governments and imposed on Black communities. And once an area is considered “less-desirable,” it is almost impossible to recover.

Perhaps the most notorious and disturbing instance of environmental racism in Canada is the story of Africville. Africville was a majority-Black community located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that existed from the 1800s until its destruction in the 1960s. The town was originally composed of formerly enslaved peoples and their descendents as well as Black refugees from the War of 1812. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights describes Africville as a “self-sufficient […] thriving, close-knit community.” Yet for the entirety of its existence, the City of Halifax refused to provide Africville with such basic necessities as clean water, sewage systems, and garbage disposal, despite the fact that Africville residents were required to pay taxes to the local government. Conditions in Africville only worsened throughout the early 20th century. The City of Halifax began to place “undesirable services” in the community, including “a fertilizer plant, slaughterhouses, and human waste ‘disposal pits.’” In the 1950s, a massive garbage dump was placed in the community after white residents of Halifax refused to allow it to be located in their neighbourhoods on account of “public health concerns.”

Environmental racism also exists right here in Montreal. According to the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF), Montreal North “has the fourth highest percentage of people identifying as members of a visible minority” of all the city’s boroughs and experiences some of the most extreme environmental challenges. The DSF’s Albert Lalonde reports that Montreal North’s Adélard-Desrosiers Elementary School has the highest poverty rate of all the elementary schools in Quebec and is “bordered on two sides by two underground oil pipelines.” It was reported back in 2017 that these pipelines pose a direct threat to safe drinking water for the entirety of Montreal North, yet no efforts have been made to remedy the situation since then. Albert Lalonde asserts that “Montreal North is living under environmental risks that would likely not be tolerated by the public and institutions if they were experienced elsewhere.” Dalila Awada, a prominent Quebecois anti-racist activist, adds to Lalonde’s claim, arguing that “it’s racism […] because when the risks of pipelines on human health and the environment affect devalued, dehumanized populations, they are tolerated.”

Conclusion

Clearly, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is not a piece of science fiction rooted in groundless speculation. Its predictions on how environmental racism might progress into the 2020s are eerily relevant to our world today. Butler’s novel raises the same question that drives many of her other stories; if we continue this, then what? However, unlike her other works, the foundation of environmental racism upon which Parable’s dystopia stands is not so far removed from our own world today.

Environmental racism is an incredibly insidious form of oppression; it places restrictions on simply existing in your own body. The effects of pollution alone are devastating. In recent years, studies from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have drawn a concrete connection between air pollution and a whole host of heart and lung diseases. And as we all know by now, any preexisting heart or lung condition that impairs breathing in any way greatly increases one’s risk of becoming very sick or even dying from COVID-19. In response to a similar study done by Environmental Science and Technology Letters, Professor Robert D. Bullard said: “This groundbreaking study builds on the solid empirical evidence that systemic racism is killing and making people of color sick, it’s just that simple.”

Breathing is synonymous with being human – with being alive. By selecting which communities should or should not have access to clean air, we are actively dehumanizing one another. And, unfortunately, Black communities bear the brunt of this dehumanization. Although the plea “I can’t breathe” has become emblematic of the Black Lives Matter movement, Benjamin Chavis adds that it “echoes generations of environmental activists of colour.” At 73, Chavis recalls that this cry was also made by the North Carolina protestors fighting against the toxic waste dump back in 1982. “There were public outcries of ‘We can’t breathe’ and ‘I can’t breathe’ by African American environmental justice protesters in Warren County.”

Today’s parallels to Parable are horrifying. We must continue to fight for a better future and honour the memory of Octavia Butler by not succumbing to her fears for the 2020s. Consider supporting the following organizations fighting against environmental racism in Canada: Ecojustice Canada, Environmental Defense Canada (EDF), and MiningWatch Canada. We have the power to create change. As Octavia Butler says in Parable of the Sower, “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.”

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The murder of George Floyd in 2020 by two Minneapolis police officers sparked a wave of protests across Canada and around the world. The outcry from protestors demanded that municipal governments “defund the police” – referring  to a process whereby police budgets would be cut and the funds reallocated to other forms of social services and intervention that would prevent the occurrence of crime in the first place. New research reveals that the “defund the police” protests do not appear to have reduced funding for municipal law enforcement. On the contrary, Canadian mayors have steadily increased municipal police budgets over the past two years. Municipal leaders have justified the expansion of their police forces by citing an increase in the rates of violent crime, which according to Statistics Canada includes homicide, sexual assault, and hate crimes. Greater police presence, they argue, will lead to greater community safety. However, the  available evidence suggests that expanded police presence is an ineffective way to reduce community violence.  The evidence we see instead points to how mayors should have listened to protestors – that cities should invest in people rather than police.

Ken Sim, Valerie Plante, and John Tory – the mayors of Vancouver, Montreal, and the former mayor of Toronto, respectively – have all committed to expanding police budgets in the name of promoting public safety. Sim, whose candidacy was endorsed by the Vancouver Police Union, campaigned and won his bid for mayor on the promise of adding 100 police officers to the Vancouver Police Department. Meanwhile, Plante has called for Montreal to hire an additional 250 new police officers in an effort to reduce an increase in “gang violence” in the suburbs of Montreal. Montreal chose to increase funding at a greater rate than any other city in Canada. Not only did the SPVM receive an increased budget last year but they spent more than was allocated, going over their budget by nearly $30 million. This year, they will receive a $63 million increase bringing the total Montreal police budget to 787 million funded in part by an increase in municipal taxes. Whether Toronto will follow suit remains to be seen. At a recent special budget meeting of the police board in Toronto, Chief Demkiw requested an additional $50-million increase to the Toronto Police Services current budget of $1.1 billion claiming a lack of funding has made it difficult to meet their service goals. Mayor John Tory was poised to approve the request, which he believed was the only way to address violent crime in the city.

Across the country, in 2021, Canada saw a five per cent increase in the rate of violent crime as measured by the Crime Severity Index compiled by Statistics Canada. The Crime Severity Index measures several different kinds of crime including assault, homicide, sexual assault, and hate crimes. The recent increase of violent crime has been driven primarily by two factors: an 18 per cent increase in the rate of sexual assault cases reported to police and a 27 per cent increase in the number of hate crimes. There was also a three per cent increase in the homicide rate. The messages that municipal politicians create from crime statistics are incredibly pliable. Tamara Nopper, abolitionist and professor at Rhode Island College, notes that “[i]n the end, crime data is always a tool of police propaganda. If crime is low, the police are doing their jobs. If crime is high, we need to give more money to the police. The police always win.”

There are three important questions to ask in order to determine whether investing in expanded police presence is the best response to the increase in violent crime in Canada: 

1. Does expanded police presence effectively address the increase in different types of violent crime (homicide, sexual assault, hates crimes)?

2. What are the social ramifications – especially for BIPOC communities – of expanded police presence?

3. How does policing compare to other options when it comes to addressing violent crime?

Homicide

Although the National Post claims that “Canada’s rising murder rate is the most reliable indicator yet of a Canada that is continuing to experience an across-the-board surge in violent crime,” homicide in Canada is relatively uncommon. While the homicide rate did indeed increase by three per cent, it accounted for only less than 0.2 per cent of all police-reported violent crimes in 2021. In the same article, the National Post concedes that despite the increase, Canada’s homicide rate is amongst the lowest in the Western hemisphere. This ultimately undermines the extent to which the country’s homicide rates may constitute a “reliable indicator” for a “surge” in violence. 

The National Post article goes on to raise the alarm regarding gang violence. According to the summary of the Statistics Canada report on crime in 2021, gang violence accounted for one quarter of the 788 homicides in Canada last year. In the same year, Mayor Plante allocated funding to hire 28 new police officers working specifically to address “gang violence.” The term “gang violence” itself is worthy of further examination. First of all, there is no clear and consistent Canada-wide definition of the term “gang.” Secondly, mobilizing policing on the basis of “gang violence” moves focus away from other factors that contribute to the homicide rate – such as domestic violence and poverty – and risks contributing to racial profiling of Black and Brown youth. Some have questioned whether the term is a dog whistle, much like the phrase “inner city crime” before it. Benoit Décary-Secours, a researcher at the Centre de recherche sur les inégalités sociales à Montréal (CREMIS) found that “for the past 30 years in Quebec, the ‘street gang’ has been used as a type of scapegoat to justify police spending and intensive and aggressive policing of minorities living in poor urban areas.” Finally, the scale of “gang violence” in Canada has not been firmly established. The statistics on gang violence in the Statistics Canada report are inconsistent. While some sections of the report indicate that almost a quarter of all homicides in 2021 were gang related, another table of the same report shows that homicides linked to “criminal relationships,” which include gang violence, accounted for only 10 per cent of all homicides in 2021. The reason for the discrepancy is unclear. 

The vast majority of homicides are interpersonal or the result of domestic violence – committed by either family members or acquaintances, rather than someone with whom they had a criminal relationship. It is therefore not surprising that evidence is mixed regarding the effectiveness of reducing the homicide rate by expanding police presence on the streets. A 2020 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that adding more police officers can reduce the homicide rate, not because of increased arrests, but because police presence acts as a deterrence to street based violence. That said, the research added several caveats. Among other things, researchers concluded that their findings did not hold true in cities with large Black populations. When it comes to preventing street-based crime, police presence is only impactful when “vigilance is linked to articulable behaviours of suspected crimes occurring.” This is to say that crime rates do not go down when police look to scan civilian populations for something specific and identifiable instead of simply patrolling a given area. Stops that were effective were those possessing “probable cause:” where officers observed actions indicative of individuals engaging in drug transactions or violent crimes. Stops were not effective when based on furtive movements, objects carried in plain view, evasive actions, suspicious bulges, or crucially, someone “fitting the description.” The phrase “fits the description” has become shorthand for racial profiling because of the frequency with which it is used by police officers as an excuse to stop Black men in particular.  

Hate Crimes

Compared to the homicide rate, according to Statistics Canada, the rate of hate crimes in Canada rose significantly last year, increasing by 27 per cent. The definition of hate crimes in Canada includes both physical and non-physical aggression aimed on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. Mayor Ken Sim referred specifically to the increase in hate crimes against Asian Canadians in his bid to expand Vancouver’s police force. A survey by the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTO) and a grassroots organization called Project 1907 found that anti-Asian hate crimes overall went up 47 per cent in 2021. Black Canadians remain the community most likely to be the victims of hate crimes and are targeted more often than any other racial or religious group. 

Regarding hate crimes, analysis done by Arizona State University concluded that law enforcement responses alone do not constitute an effective response. They found that the most effective approaches included a combination of increased police presence and public education but also changes within police departments such as prioritizing hate crimes and offering special training to police officers. Simply deploying more police officers has a limited impact on the prevalence of hate crimes given that they are  motivated by complex social power dynamics rather than financial gain or interpersonal conflict. A police officer in the right place at the right time might be well situated to interrupt public hate-related assaults, but will be ineffective in preventing other types of hate crimes such as workplace harassment. Hate crime prevention is another question altogether requiring a solution that addresses the root causes of these complex crimes. 

Sexual Assault

The single largest contributing factor to the rise in violent crime in 2021 was the increase in the rate of sexual assault. The rate of sexual assault reported to police increased by 18 per cent in 2021. That said, it is only seven per cent higher than in 2019. Women account for 80 per cent of those reporting sexual assault and domestic violence in Canada. Indigenous women, disabled women, queer women and immigrant women are especially likely to experience domestic violence. 

Evidence for the effectiveness of policing as a method of reducing rates of sexual assaults is also mixed. Of sexual assaults reported to police, only one in nine are likely to result in a conviction. Additionally, sexual assault is most often committed indoors and by someone known to the victim in contrast to other crimes which might be deterred by increased police patrols. Whereas a burglary or robbery might be interrupted as part of a probable cause stop, whatever “articulable behaviours” might precede a sexual assault are likely to happen out of public view. The relational context in which sexual assault generally occurs further muddies the water. Eight of ten sexual assault victims are acquainted with their attackers. In a third of all cases, their attacker is a current or former romantic or sexual partner. 

Additionally, the increase in sexual assault rates may be attributable to police behaviour rather than an actual increase in violence. Over the last five years, the number of reports of sexual assault dismissed by police as “unfounded and baseless” (as opposed to “unfounded and false”) has dropped by half. A claim of sexual assault is dismissed as unfounded when police believe a case does not meet the elements of a crime or was improperly coded as a sexual assault. Cases dismissed as unfounded are not included in Statistics Canada reports, meaning that the statistics may not reflect the total number of sexual assaults reported to police but rather the total number of sexual assaults reports that the police agreed to investigate. Therefore, increases in the rate of sexual assault according to Statistics Canada could reflect an actual increase in sexual violence but may also reflect the increase in the number of cases which were not dismissed by police. 

The Potential Ramifications of Increased Police Presence

In determining the effectiveness of increased police presence to address the rise in violent crime, it is important to consider the impact of expanded police presence on the lives of racialized Canadians as well as rate of crimes committed by the police or police on civilian violence. The NBER research found that increased police presence could act as a deterrent to homicide in cities without large Black populations, but also found that more police meant more traffic stops and arrests for “low level” crimes, both of which are deeply harmful to marginalized communities. The association between traffic stops and racial profiling is well established. BIPOC are disproportionately likely to be the subjects of “random” traffic stops. Whether this is the result of conscious or implicit bias is unclear. A recent ruling by a Quebec judge went so far as to say that traffic stops are unconstitutional. A similar relationship has been established between racial profiling and arrests for low level crime – racialized Canadians are disproportionately impacted. 

Black Canadians are the community most likely to be the victims of a hate crime but also the most likely to experience violence at the hands of the police. A 2020 report found that Black Torontonians are twenty times more likely than other residents to be killed by police, accounting for 61 per cent of all police shootings in Canada’s largest city. 

Between 2020 and 2021, the number of Canadians shot by the police went up by 25 per cent. In 2021, police killed 37 Canadians. Of police shooting victims, 40 per cent were Indigenous and another 25 per cent were members of other racialized communities. These statistics had to be compiled by The Canadian Press as Canada does not keep race-based statistics about police violence at a national level. Some of these deaths occurred during violent confrontations with police but civilians have also been killed in cases where police had been sent to check on their safety. For example, Chantel Moore, a young Indigenous woman, was shot to death by police during a wellness check. Furthermore, Statistics Canada data shows that homicides where the victim was a racialized Canadian took longer to solve, particularly if the victim was an Indigenous woman. 

The analysis done by Arizona State University regarding how to reduce the rate of hate crimes also mentioned the importance of monitoring hate groups. This is significant for Canadians as a 2021 report by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism found that highly organized transnational white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups were recruiting active or former military and police officers in Canada. Significant rates of participation by police officers in white supremacist groups calls into question the effectiveness of policing as a response to racially motivated crimes. 

Research from the United States found that sexual violence is the second most common type of reported police violence and that its victims are disproportionately Black women and girls. A national study in the United States found victims of sexual crimes by police were typically minors. Police officers are also disproportionately likely to be perpetrators of domestic violence. Domestic violence occurs in roughly 28 to 40 per cent of police households compared to 10 per cent in the general population. 

It therefore comes as no surprise that calls for police abolition and defunding are led by members of Black and Indigenous communities and advocates for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. These groups argue that there are more effective ways to address the sorts of violence that their communities experience. 

Alternatives to Policing 

There are options other than policing for addressing community violence both as it happens as well as through prevention via upstream approaches which aim to reduce violence by addressing the root causes of community violence such as poverty and trauma.

These approaches are not punitive or carceral in nature and most do not involve law enforcement. Instead they focus on creating opportunities for inter community support through training and education as well as on meeting the basic material needs of the most vulnerable members of society. Given the ubiquitous presence of policing, it is difficult to evaluate alternative approaches but there has been promising research into several upstream interventions. Community-based violence intervention programs, summer jobs programs, raising the minimum age to drop out of school, greening vacant lots, more streetlights, more drug treatment, better gun control, and raising the alcohol tax have all been found to reduce crime rates. So have Medicaid expansion, access to mental health care, and guaranteed basic income programs.  

Many of these programs focus on the prevention of crimes by attempting to address poverty. Addressing the presence of crime at its source is an approach outside the scope of most law enforcement, which is why increasing police budgets is a band-aid solution. Being a victim of or witnessing violence is a major factor in whether one goes on to perpetrate an act of violence oneself. Violence that is associated with property crimes such as mugging is closely associated with poverty; perpetrators are not violent by nature but commit these crimes in order to meet their material needs. Stress and isolation due to poverty also increase the likelihood of domestic violence. Domestic violence in turn contributes to poverty: the fear of physical abuse is a primary cause of homelessness. As a result, it stands to reason that addressing trauma and poverty is an effective way to reduce the rate of violent crime. 

With community support, solutions that address poverty can be wildly successful in reducing community violence. Research done on gang activity in Canada demonstrates that the most effective interventions are not police related but the ones that address childhood abuse and childhood trauma broadly. The youth at the highest risk of gang involvement are those who are in foster care and/or have survived abuse or sexual assault. Programs that offer support rather than punishment such as mental health counseling, youth drop in centers and youth employment programs. One extremely successful example of such a program is social enterprise organization Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles-based program which offers youth employment in exchange for ending their gang affiliation is the largest gang rehabilitation program in the world. Homeboy Industries has supported thousands of youth in their transition from gang life to employment over the course of the last thirty years and have been an integral part of transforming a city once notorious for gang activity. Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago succeeded in reducing shootings and killings by 30 per cent after implementing Cure Violence programs in which community members are trained to interrupt street violence. Chicago’s CRED program which offers at-risk youth counseling, life coaching and employment saw a 50 per cent reduction in gun-related injuries in its participants. 

Upstream solutions work for other, less street-based, forms of violence as well – specifically in cases involving discriminatory workplace harassment. The CCNCTO report on hate crimes found that more than 80 per cent of the hate crimes victims who responded saw public education, collective action or policy reform as desirable solutions. None of them wanted their aggressors to face punishment. In this way, anti-discrimination policies can help protect marginalized employees while public anti-hate education programs may work to prevent the occurrence of hate crimes in the first place. Programs similar to the ones developed to prevent street violence such as bystander intervention training programs can help equip community members to address street harassment and verbal assaults. 

Finally, regarding sexual assault prevention, one campus-based program called “Enhanced Access, Acknowledge, Act” was developed at the University of Windsor and offered to first-year women. Women who participated in the program were 46 per cent less likely to experience a sexual assault than their peers. The program has since been offered at two other universities. The program focuses on empowering participants by training them to recognize and react to signs of danger. It does not involve law enforcement. Perpetrators of sexual violence are rarely punished by the judicial system and whether or not they are, survivors often require psychological support for the trauma they’ve incurred. That’s why many survivors of sexual assault are disinterested in carceral solutions and advocate instead for mental health support for survivors and funding for organizations such as Take Back the Night which work to prevent sexual violence through activism and education. 

The pattern is clear: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure. Preventing violence before it happens protects potential victims and frees perpetrators from cycles of violence. Until municipalities are prepared to dedicate the same amount of funding to upstream solutions as they do to policing, our options will remain limited. In 2023, the SPVM will possess a budget of $787 million, more than 10 per cent of the total municipal budget for the year. Montreal does have a non-police mobile unit but they are set to receive a total of only $10 million in funding to be spent over the next five years. Meanwhile, the same budget allocated only $480 million to be spent on affordable housing over the next ten years. 

Upstream interventions receive a fraction of the financing dedicated to expanding police presence, which is disappointing considering their relative potential to bolster the well being of residents. Hiring more police officers can be an effective way to address some forms of crime under specific circumstances but comes with major costs both financially and to the safety of BIPOC and other vulnerable Canadians. Without significant action taken to address violence against marginalized communities and women at the hands of the police, expanding police presence in Canadian cities may cause as many problems as it hopes to address. 

Politicians, by virtue of our political system, are not focused on the future. They invest in solutions which will show short term results which can be pointed to during election periods regardless of long term consequences. In the absence of forward thinking political leadership, the responsibility falls on community members to apply pressure to invest in longer term, less destructive and, most importantly, evidence based solutions. This requires engagement – with politicians as well as with each other to advocate for and then implement proactive, preventative responses to violence. We know that upstream solutions which focus on public education, empowering community members and addressing the financial and social needs of vulnerable community members will not only address violence more effectively than policing but will improve the quality of life in Canadian cities across the board. 

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In 2021, a group of tenants organized the Montreal Autonomous Tenants Union (SLAM-MATU) to serve as a platform for tenants across the city to coordinate actions against landlords infringing on tenant rights. The union formed when McGill students renting in Milton-Parc decided to unionize against the illegal actions of landlords across the city. SLAM-MATU aims to work towards a world without the need for landlords, and therefore, without the need for collective actions that advocate for tenants rights. Despite these initiatives, Montreal tenants – including many university students – continue to endure hardships in dealing with landlords, often having their rights infringed upon.

At McGill, students who have completed their first year of studies are provided with very few opportunities to live on-campus. According to the Student Housing Market Report Canada, which has collected data on 14 student cities, student accommodation provision in Canada stands at 12  per cent. This number reflects the total number of purpose-built student accommodations in relation to the total number of students at the university. To rent an apartment near McGill in the Milton-Parc neighbourhood, students can pay upwards of $1,000 for a one-bedroom apartment. By failing to provide affordable student housing, McGill fails to provide students with adequate protection from exploitative landlords.

Difficulties Signing Leases

A Facebook group created in 2015, McGill Off-Campus Housing, currently boasts 52,947 members and serves as a place for students to browse rent listings, schedule showings, and post advertisements for subletting agreements. The group has seen roughly 10,000 posts in the past month, creating a copious amount of listings for students to sift through with no way to verify the legitimacy of the landlords. Because of this, some students have turned to a Reddit page titled “Landlord Blacklist,” which details students’ experiences with Montreal landlords, particularly in Milton-Parc.

Users of the Reddit page warn that landlords who have listings near McGill’s campus often seek to take advantage of out-of-province and international students who are looking to rent but lack the necessary know-how to avoid being exploited. One user wrote, “[I]n my experience the more a building advertises to out-of-province students, the more likely they are to [take] advantage of international students who don’t know their rights. Landlords of smaller buildings outside the [McGill] ghetto are used to dealing with tenants who actually know their rights and are typically not as bad.”

Charging often-illegal fees is a common tactic used by landlords to exploit students from outside of Quebec. Requiring security deposits from renters in Quebec is illegal, but it is common for landlords in Milton-Parc to ask tenants for a security deposit or rent payments in advance. An out-of-province second-year student told the Daily that when signing a lease with roommates (who are international students), the landlord acted unethically. “Right before signing our lease, our landlord said he wanted a $1,000 deposit. He said he knew it was “technically illegal in Quebec […] but that he asked for it anyway and expected it before we signed the lease. He did express that we’d get it back after our lease ended.” Another student posted that their landlord had charged a security deposit and did not give it back, instead trying to “charge us money to repaint and fix things that we allegedly broke (which we didn’t)” at the end of the lease.

On the other hand, some landlords will outright refuse to lease apartments to international students. One McGill student from France described this experience with the Daily, recounting a time when they tried to sign a lease with a landlord in Milton-Parc. “On the day my roommates and I were going to sign the lease, the landlord said it would not be possible.” According to the student, the landlord was only willing to rent to students from North America, despite it being illegal in Quebec to discriminate based on national origin. “I think it was xenophobic. I even have family living in Canada, but [they] were like: ‘no,’ because I’m French.”

Outside of the McGill area, newcomers to Montreal also face challenges when signing leases. In an interview with the Daily, Verdun resident Riham Al Bakouni shared her experience of immigrating to the city in 2016. “[…] it was impossible to sign a lease. I tried hard to rent a studio or a one bedroom apartment but it was impossible as they requested a guarantor to sign.” Many landlords will request that people applying to rent find a guarantor if they do not have Canadian credit history, pay stubs, or work experience. For those who have recently moved to the city, these expectations can be difficult to meet and often result in lowering their living standards.

Without being able to sign a lease, Al Bakouni endured further challenges as a tenant. She told the Daily, “I was new to the country and I did not know anyone here […] I first rented Airbnb rooms in shared apartments until I finally rented a room in an old lady[’s] apartment. After literally two weeks she changed her mind and kinda kicked me out. There was no lease signed, so she just returned what [was] left of the rent ($250 covering the 2 weeks left of the month).”

Challenges as a Tenant

Problems for tenants do not end once they sign a lease. Quebec law states that landlords are responsible for attending to repairs for the apartment at no cost to the tenant. However, tenants in Montreal will often live in hazardous conditions at the hands of negligent landlords who have not kept up with repairs. A renter in Milton-Parc posted, “When we refused to pay $170 for [the landlord] to paint one of our walls that was damaged, [they] locked my roommate in [their] office and threatened her, eventually saying [they were] going to deduct the money from her account (which they had access to for direct deposits of the rent).”

While it is not uncommon for landlords to charge tenants for repairs, some landlords will disregard the need for repairs entirely. This year, tenants living in townhouses in Berri were sent a letter from their landlord on October 7, 2022 that cited the danger of the building’s foundation, and were subsequently forced to evacuate by October 23. This came after their landlord repeatedly failed to adhere to the tenant’s initial complaints of damages to the building and repair needs. “To come to us with such little time that we don’t have the ability to react, to find housing or basic needs, to put us in this compromised (situation) because [the landlord] just didn’t act, for me that’s negligence,” one tenant told CityNews.

In the case that tenants are not evacuated and housing is not up to livable standards, tenants are susceptible to increased health risks and a lower quality of life – especially those living in low-income areas. In one case, the housing corporation, the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM), took over the management of a building in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-De-Grâce neighbourhood in 2019. SHDM moved trash in the courtyards, closing the garbage rooms and garbage chutes. This introduced many flies, cockroaches, mice, and other pests to their building complex, affecting tenants’ living standards.

In Milton-Parc, tenants have experienced plumbing issues, ant infestations, and safety hazards such as a lack of working smoke detectors. A student-renter posted, “we had a plumber called in after the sewage line was blocked, and were told the pipes hadn’t been touched in ~10 years. He was supposed to have them checked once a year.” Landlords have little incentive to adhere to the repair requests of tenants, as turnover rates and competition for rents are high in Montreal. Many have been known to impede inspections, though fines for blocking this work can start at $1000.

While housing quality remains a struggle for many tenants, landlords are raising the cost of rent. In 2022, the average rate of annual rent increase as a whole was 10.9 per cent, following a 1.6 per cent average annual rent decline in both 2020 and 2021. Housing costs are already high in Montreal, and for many, there is a short time frame for finding affordable housing. It is highly competitive close to university campuses in Montreal, and in some cases, people are ‘making proposals and trying to sell themselves to landlords,’ Laurent Levesque told CityNews. Levesque adds that amidst this steep competition, bidding wars will sometimes occur between students for rent prices, contributing to inflation. With excess demand for housing in Montreal, especially near universities, landlords are given more power in who they choose to rent to and how much they charge.

Renovictions

Thousands of tenants in Montreal have been forced to leave their homes at the hands of landlords. According to the Montreal Gazette, although forced evictions with the purpose of renovating are illegal in Quebec, landlords are buying an increasing number of Montreal buildings to empty them out and renovate them in order to charge double the rent.. Landlords often get away with this, deceiving tenants who are unaware of their rights. Al Bakouni told the Daily that she was able to move apartments in 2017, however “[…] in April 2021, a new landlord purchased the building in an attempt to evict everyone, do surface-level renovations, and rent out the apartments for double the price.” Al Bakouni explained that in Verdun, there is a trend to ‘renovict,’ meaning that landlords will attempt to evict tenants to renovate apartments to increase what they can charge in rent. She told the Daily that her landlord initially offered $5000 to each tenant in her building as a means of renoviction. “He was deceptive – he did a door knocking for all tenants saying that the other tenants are leaving and this person is the only one left. He offered them $5000 to leave and gave an ultimatum of one month. Then the offer is off the table.” The tenants who chose to accept the money from the landlord are prohibited from discussing further, as they are “legally not allowed to,” according to Al Bakouni.

Tenants in Al Bakouni’s building began to discuss with each other and share their experiences with their landlord. “[The landlord] kept telling lies, lies and more lies. We had [a] roach infestation because of the renovations spread all over the building! We had to empty our apartments for the extermination team to spray the apartments. We had to take time off from our work, and keep packing/moving stuff, and all this was with no compensation whatsoever! This infestation took almost four to five months to end!” The landlord’s renovictions affected Al Bakouni to the point where she had to involve the city. She told the Daily, “During renovations, [the] noise was too loud and they used to work late after 10 P.M. – I contacted the city hall and the inspector sent a letter to the landlord, so they limited their work period to what is allowed by law.”

After these renovictions, Al Bakouni’s landlord charges nearly double her rent for tenants in the renovated apartments. “My rent is $750, while the apartment next door was rented out for $1,350 after the so-called renovations – which is outrageous,” Al Bakouni explained to the Daily. Their landlord attempted to increase their rent last year, but could not after they refused it. This year, Al Bakouni says, “I am going to refuse. I am just stalling until around the end of the 30-day delay period.” Unlike Al Bakouni, many tenants are unaware of their rights and are subjected to illegal tactics by landlords. According to Maxime Roy-Allard in an interview with The Link, landlords in Montreal send fake eviction notices to tenants, obtaining signatures under false pretenses and forcing renovictions. The landlords will also offer money to renovict tenants, which Al Bakouni describes happened in her building.

Al Bakouni told the Daily that one tenant in her building was offered $4000 (less than what they had initially offered) and afterwards signed a non-disclosure agreement. She added that another tenant “moved out because of the stress and he got a similar offer.” She also experienced harassment by the landlord. “When [the landlord] wanted me out – I said NO – he kept insisting on why I do not want to move! He offered that he [will take] care of packing stuff and moving expenses. He said I will provide you with compensation for years to come,” Al Bakouni told the Daily.

After Al Bakouni’s continued refusal to be renovicted, she has experienced legal pressure from her landlord. “The landlord kept threatening me because I have a business at home – although he is aware that it is purely online, and I do not have clients at home, neither I have a room dedicated to this purpose, no office set-up, yet he insisted on intimidating me and even opened a file at TAL [the city courthouse]. He was asking to end the lease! He has no legal basis and no rights yet he kept the case open until this date.”

As a result, Al Bakouni was forced into a hearing – the first in December 2021. Within the case, the landlord was requiring that she provide tenant insurance. “[M]y lease and the building regulations, NOTHING indicates that I have to get one! It basically gives me the option to purchase one, but it is not obligatory.” At a second hearing about the same case, Al Bakouni’s landlord did not show up: “Well, either there was a reason or he just felt it [was] a lost case.” Al Bakouni continues to fight a legal battle against their landlord.

To learn about tenant rights and protect against landlord exploitation, refer to the Daily’s article, “Renting 101: Montreal Tenant’s Rights.” You can also go to educaloi.qc.ca to find helpful information for navigating housing and property law. To contact an informations clerk regarding concerns about landlords, applications, and documents, reach out to the Tribunal administratif du logement.

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