After a couple of hours at a party at Sam’s* house, two weeks after Frosh, we all decided to go to a club. On the way, I talked with Sam, my Frosh leader – getting my foot in the door, as they say. He was cute, and in all my naiveté, I imagined that moment to be the beginning of a trusting relationship with someone I thought to be funny, charming, and honest. We flirted, and by the time we made it to the bar, he had asked to come home with me. My words slurred through the several drinks that I had, but I firmly told him “no.” He kept asking me, urging me to “get out of there” with him. I told him I didn’t want to have sex; I wanted something serious, and he was only looking for something casual. Finally, in agreement that we would not have sex, I obliged to let him come home with me. In my mind, I pictured a romantic night cuddling, and the next morning, he wouldn’t be able to resist taking me on a date.

When we got home, my roommate was there, and I stumbled in the dark over her clothes to get to my bed. He got in with me, as planned, and we continued to kiss. All of a sudden, he became very passionate, taking our clothes off. He got a condom, and without me knowing what was happening, we both ended up being naked. I didn’t know how to say ‘no’ to him anymore. I was drunk – I trusted him. I figured if he, my Frosh leader, was telling me it was okay, I should trust him. I was drunk – what did I know? But a little voice in my head kept telling me, “Why are you letting this happen? This isn’t what you signed up for.”

For months, I lied to myself and everyone else about what had really happened. I felt so ashamed, as if I had been weak. I had ‘let him’ do that to me, despite my own wishes. But how could that be rape? I trusted him, I knew him. My roommate was there, and I had flirted with him that very evening. None of these things added up to what, in my mind, was rape. But something was wrong; I got really depressed and anxious. I couldn’t trust anyone, and now more than ever, I was terrified of being too close to men. My self-esteem took a nose dive, and I developed body dysmorphism, which is an excessive preoccupation with a perceived defect of physical appearance. On too many occasions, I sat in front of my toilet wondering if I would really make myself throw up to be thin. I started hating my roommate, who I subconsciously blamed. She was there! Why didn’t she know that I was too drunk? Why didn’t anyone say anything? Why didn’t I say anything?

The truth is rape is not just something that happens in dark alleys, sometimes it happens in your own home with people you trust.

The symptoms I experienced were only a few of the many ways sexual assault can rob victims of their lives for months, or even years, after the incident. The aftermath manifests itself in both short-term and long-term mental disorders. Some of these include depression, anxiety, overeating, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for many survivors of sexual assault, according to the website of the Office on Women’s Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

It wasn’t until January that I realized what had happened was wrong. I spent whole nights sobbing, wondering why this had happened to me. After four months of therapy, I admitted to myself that it was not my fault. I had said no, and he had overstepped a boundary, taking advantage of the fact that I was too drunk to notice what he was doing. I finally told someone what happened; at first I was terrified, though. I thought people would tell me I was lying or exaggerating. To this day, I’m mortified of what happened that night. No one should have to feel like they’ve been stripped of all self-control, that others are entitled to their body, or that the violation of that boundary is somehow their own fault.

The truth is rape is not just something that happens in dark alleys, sometimes it happens in your own home with people you trust. Rape Victims Support Network states that “80 per cent of assaults happen in the victim’s home,” and “70 per cent are committed by a perpetrator who knows the victim.” Additionally, approximately half of rapes occur on dates. Knowledge of facts like these can allow for sensitivity to the reality of rape culture and sexual assault that are frighteningly present in society today, as it makes people realize that sexual assault is not only the preconceived notion that many understand it to be. Assault happens when you scream no, and you kick and bite; and it happens when you’re too drunk, too shy, too embarrassed, or too disempowered to say anything at all.

I would like to establish a norm of enthusiastic consent. Not begrudging or silent consent. A lack of a “no” does not mean “yes.” Rape culture is when society takes rape lightly, making jokes about it, mocking it, or even encouraging it. Rape culture is blaming victims, making them feel guilty and ashamed for things they aren’t responsible for. It’s when people like the Steubenville rapists get sympathy in the media and online because their football careers are now over. It’s when McGill football players are accused of assaulting a girl and get to keep their varsity status.

As an alternative, I’d like to suggest a culture where survivors’ voices are heard, and consent is enthusiastic. Where jokes about rape and the oppression of women and minority groups are not responded to by laughter, but by dismissal and acknowledgement of the real struggles people face. Although a reality of acceptance, enthusiastic consent, and support are perhaps far from the present, we can start to create such an environment by sharing our stories and giving people the space, comfort, and respect they need to be honest about their experiences. We can provide support and give hope to past, and regrettably future, victims.

SACOMSS is a confidential, non-judgemental, free organization, open to anybody, McGill student or not. They can be reached at (514) 398-8500 or at main@sacomss.org. For more information, go to sacomss.org/#contact

*Name has been changed
Author’s name has been changed

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“This is really the last stage of what has been an immensely long project, starting from the early 2000s and beating so many obstacles along the way [such as] lack of institutional support [and] lack of faculty support. It was really a big student push that catalyzed this.”

Claire Stewart-Kanigan, Arts Senator

After around a decade of advocacy and struggle, McGill finally approved the Indigenous Studies minor at a Senate meeting on February 19. The minor, which will start being offered in the 2014-15 academic year, will provide a chance for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to learn about history, culture, and worldviews, and develop a broader understanding of contemporary issues. Student groups have supported the minor this year, such as when the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) passed a motion regarding support for an Indigenous Studies program, but this is not the only support it has garnered.

Since the early 2000s, advocates have been pressing for the establishment of an Indigenous Studies minor, but were constantly faced with hurdles, such as lack of support from both the University and the Faculty. Since many other universities around Canada have comparable programs, some established as early as 1969, the creation of this minor is a long-overdue step at McGill. The University is complicit in colonialism, which is still ongoing: investment in resource exploitation plans in Northern Quebec is one example. Proponents see this minor as a first step toward a better relationship with Indigenous people, whose rights are still abused by the government and many institutions to this day.

—Joelle Dahm

“It’s not about doing more with less. It’s about finding things we don’t need to do anymore.”

Christopher Manfredi, Dean of Arts

2013-14 saw continued debate over the People, Processes & Partnerships initiative, the Arts faculty plan that would restructure Leacock and adjacent Arts buildings in order to consolidate administrative positions within the faculty. The discussion began in 2012-13 when the faculty unveiled plans to create administrative “hubs” within the Leacock building, though it has since backed down from its proposal to turn the third floor of Leacock into a reception area. This year has seen a continuation of question-and-answer periods and presentations to AUS Council, coming on the heels of last year’s complaints that the faculty had not done enough to elicit feedback from the Arts community.

Critics of the plan, including students, faculty, and non-academic staff, have cited failed examples at other universities. They have also expressed doubt over the feasibility of increased workload for administrative staff, if they were to become responsible for several departments instead of a single department. The administration continues to cite the context of austerity and the Quebec provincial government’s imposed hiring freeze on administrative positions as reasons for moving ahead with the plan. As of November 2013, the plan includes creating two administrative hubs in the Leacock building.

The proposed changes to the departmental structure and organization within the Leacock building are set against the backdrop of parallel changes made at the Ferrier building and 688 Sherbrooke. The Department of East Asian Studies was moved out of its rowhouse on McTavish last summer to 688 Sherbrooke, and the Department of Jewish Studies is expected to follow suit by moving into the Leacock building.

—Anqi Zhang

“A diagnosis can have a major impact on the way one lives, and yet here we have groups of people who can’t access resources if they don’t fit into the proper category.”

Ethan Macdonald, Inclusive Mental Health Collective

The past decade has seen a dramatic major increase in students seeking help at the McGill Mental Health Services (MMHS), following the larger trend of increased mental health issues among university students. Attempts have been made in recent years to improve services at MMHS, with the implementation of non-medicinal anxiety treatment, mindfulness groups, and an eating disorder treatment program. Yet, MMHS’ shortage of staff and expedited care require additional funding and structural reconfiguration in order to address the needs of students who may require long-term care.

Moreover, both Mental Health and Counselling Services, which receive funding from Student Services, have recently suffered a loss of almost $500,000 as a result of the university-wide budget cut. These cuts have put additional strain on an already struggling system. As a result of this, a $20 registration fee for Mental Health and Counselling services was implemented in September 2013. It was removed later in the month after being brought forward to the Fee Advisory Committee in September, since the fee was not approved in a student referendum. Officials from the Mental Health Counselling Services, however, noted that this would not have an impact on the quality of mental health services within McGill.

This February, a new mental health policy focused on creating a mental health network of student resources was adopted by the SSMU Legislative Council. The adopted policy includes a five-year plan, which aims to hire a SSMU mental health coordinator, improve student-accessible resources on mental health, and increase awareness and advocacy of mental health on campus.

—Diana Kwon and Alice Shen

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BDS and Montreal
McGill’s own complicity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is quite obvious if examined. The university underwent weapons research for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that directly contributes to Palestinian oppression and Israeli apartheid. According to an article published on McGill’s website on September 14, 2012, McGill has signed memoranda of understanding with multiple universities in Israel. One of these is Technion University, which conducts arms research that furthers Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and has the highest number of graduates enlisted in the IDF in comparison to other Israeli universities, according to a report published by Tadamon! in October 2010.

It is hard for many professors to speak out in favour of academic boycott of Israel at McGill given the University’s standing toward the state, but underground support does exist. Paul Di Stefano, educator, researcher, activist, and a member of Tadamon!, wrote in an email to The Daily that, “There is a lot of support for BDS among activist collectives in Montreal. We see this collaboration during Israeli Apartheid Week where different groups, focusing on different issues, come together to organize a week dedicated to exposing Israeli apartheid.” Tadamon! is a “Montreal-based collective which works in solidarity with struggles for self-determination, equality, and justice in the ‘Middle East’ and in diaspora communities in Montreal and beyond,” according to its website.

In another email to The Daily, Michelle Hartman, associate professor of Arabic Literature at the Institute of Islamic Studies, asserted, “One thing that we have seen recently, however, is [that] more and more scholarly and student associations, unions, and other groups, are supporting the Palestinian call for BDS and this is inspiring.” On the topic of activism in Montreal, she wrote: “Locally in Montreal there are groups like BDS Quebec working on specific issues, like drawing attention to companies like SodaStream [which operates within the occupied West Bank]. There are also a number of professors and other workers at local universities and CEGEPs who meet in a group called College and University Workers United (CUWU), one of whose aims is to support BDS locally and beyond.”

Human rights or academic freedom?
“If we do not apply or support the boycott, we are advocating normalization and, with normalization, Palestinians will always lose. Normalization is all about accepting the humanity of Israelis, while denying the Palestinians their own. This framework also improperly casts the relationship as symmetrical when it is, quite obviously, not,” Di Stefano said.

In her article “Israel/Palestine and the Paradoxes of Academic Freedom,” published in Radical Philosophy, Judith Butler, American philosopher and gender theorist, warns that, “When academic freedom becomes a question of abstract right alone, we miss the opportunity to consider how academic freedom debates more generally – and here I would include both pro- and anti-boycott debates – deflect from the broader political problem of how to address the destruction of infrastructure, civil society, cultural and intellectual life under the conditions of the Occupation.” Butler’s words should be heeded, and people should never forget the intersectionality of the conflict itself when discussing issues of boycott and divestment. Yet, what is more important to remember is that academia is also dissent if utilized as such, and can have a tremendous effect as a result.

Ethics of a boycott
The academic boycott of Israel is underway, it is alive, and it is growing. That is not the question. The question being debated at the moment is if the boycott is ethical. Noam Chomsky, professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and well-known pro-Palestinian activist, has come out against the boycott, stating that academics should concentrate on their own state’s complicity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (for example, as of 2010, 28 U.S. tax-exempt institutions raised $33.4 million in funding for illegal settlements in the West Bank) as opposed to boycotting other academics.

Typically, people who disagree with the academic boycott cite the hindrance of freedom of education, and discrimination, as reasons not to endorse it. According to a January 2014 Jerusalem Post article, as many as 92 American universities have rejected the academic boycott of Israel, in response to the recognition of the boycott by the American Studies Association (ASA). The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called the ASA’s measure “discriminatory and unjustified,” while Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, issued a statement shortly after the decision stating that “such actions are misguided and greatly troubling, as they strike at the heart of academic freedom […].” Prominent institutions that have rejected the boycott include Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, New York University, Yale, and Dartmouth. The U.S. Congress has also put forth a bill that “would strip American academic institutions of federal funding if they choose to boycott Israel,” according to Al-Jazeera.

“The fact that Palestinians are denied basic rights as well as academic freedom due to Israel’s military occupation is lost on [those arguing against a boycott]. And [the argument’s] privileging of academic freedom as a value above all other freedoms is antithetical to the very foundation of human rights,” writes Butler. Anti-boycott academics who want more academic freedom should be considering the academic freedom of Palestinians as well, since, according to Butler’s article, many students in the West Bank cannot get to their universities and classes on time because they are stopped at Israeli checkpoints, and sometimes have their universities shut down for a full semester. Students in Gaza are unable to reach universities in the West Bank due to the Israeli blockade, and are left with only one opportunity for higher education: the local university run by Hamas. When anti-boycott academics argue for the free transfer of education across borders, they do not take into account the reality that exists for most Palestinian students. As Di Stefano writes, “Palestinian academics are restricted from moving about freely, there is de facto segregation and underfunding of Palestinian schools in Israel, a deeply problematic vetting of Palestinian curriculum, and obvious limits to Palestinian students’ freedom of movement and ability to access education due to the system of checkpoints.”

Unfortunately, the question of ethics shall remain even after this article is published, though many like it continue to be written. Although a boycott might seem to be the worst way to solve the problem for many, it is only one of many solutions activists have for the conflict in light of the asymmetrical (U.S.-brokered) Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace’ talks. For Hartman, it remains a question of educating oneself and others about BDS and the conflict, which might lead to more support from the wider McGill community. As she writes, “A boycott is a powerful tool, and one which can be effective to bring international attention and pressure on Israel to end the occupation and colonization of Palestine, grant all people of the land equal rights, and respect and promote the right of return for Palestinian refugees.”

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Quebec has 17 universities that attract students from Quebec, other Canadian provinces, and other countries. Out of these universities, 14 are in the city of Montreal, the largest city in the province. With a rich history, a relatively strong arts scene, and of course an expansive nightlife, Montreal is a perfect city for students coming to study at McGill, Concordia, or any of Montreal’s universities. Quebec offers more than it seems at first sight, and not all of it is positive. Even with a lot of cultural diversity and a large migrant population, Quebec’s latent xenophobia is becoming stronger.

If passed, the Charter of Quebec Values, or Bill 60, would institutionalize intolerance, and increase feelings of fear and of being unsafe for many groups on campus. According to Kira Page, external coordinator at the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill, the Charter, as well as the proposed changes to already-existing language laws, is already having effects on people of colour and migrant communities in Quebec. As an example, a survey conducted by Geneviève Pinard Prévost at the Université de Sherbrooke showed that “88 per cent of Muslim women said they no longer feel safe leaving their homes.” Pinard Prévost’s sample size of 388 might be small, but such a high ratio can nevertheless not be ignored. Pinard Prévost said herself that, “It may not look like a lot of women in the total of Muslim women in Quebec, but it’s a lot of women who live with this kind of problem in the province.”

Beyond making communities and individuals feel unsafe, Page states that Bill 60 would create an access barrier to employment for many people. Ellen Aitken, Dean of McGill’s Faculty of Religious Studies, firmly believes that Bill 60 would affect faculty members, in that they would “in a sense, be forced to hide part of their identity.” Aitken continues, “It would create an environment in which the fullness of who we are as human beings, as scholars, and as social beings interacting with one another could not be expressed fully, and I think that is a very chilling environment in which to learn.”

Page explains that in Quebec, “various iterations of a political and social need for things like cultural protection, sovereignty, or the self-determination of francophone communities have often turned into a xenophobic, anti-immigrant politic that is deeply white supremacist, colonial, and racist.” No matter its original intention, Bill 60 is now used as one of Quebec’s many soldiers of xenophobia. While traditionally defined in the New Oxford American Dictionary as an “intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries,” xenophobia can be further defined to include a dislike or fear of other cultures, languages, and religions.

At McGill’s tri-annual debriefing in December, Suzanne Fortier stated that Bill 60 is already affecting McGill’s recruitment of faculty and students, with certain faculty members already considering leaving. Outside the limits of McGill, Aitken says that Bill 60 and Quebec’s xenophobia would “be a real disincentive for anyone applying from outside. It would probably even be a real disincentive for some Quebecers coming to McGill.”

“It would create an environment in which the fullness of who we are as human beings, as scholars, and as social beings interacting with one another could not be expressed fully, and I think that is a very chilling environment in which to learn.”

In January 2014, McGill submitted a brief to the National Assembly commission working on Bill 60, in which it made clear that it would have a strong detrimental effect on the university’s environment, and would destroy what a university is and should be. The brief states that a university is “an environment that brings them [the students] face to face with a reality that goes beyond the experience they have had until now, and helps them to develop their judgement and critical thinking.” It is very clearly implied that Bill 60 would hinder and negatively affect this environment. As well, the brief says that Bill 60, if implemented, would fundamentally alter the nature of the university as an institution, as “the institutional autonomy of a university is defined as the ability to manage its mission according to its own rules of governance, in complete freedom and without interference from any third party, including the government.”

Taking Aitken’s position of Bill 60 affecting McGill’s faculty, this same brief clearly states that Bill 60 would have a negative effect on the student population itself, as “McGill hires nearly 3,500 of its students on teaching contracts in their disciplines (as lecturers or teaching assistants), to supervise examinations, work in the University libraries or bookstore, do office work that is partly subsidized by the central budget, fill research assistant positions, or serve as floor monitors in the student residences.”

Beyond institutionalized bills such as Bill 60, xenophobia is clearly present in language issues. In 1977, Quebec’s National Assembly passed a bill called the Charter of the French Language, or Bill 101, which has been controversial even amongst Quebec residents. Very broadly, this Charter is meant to define the role of the French language in the province, and the accompanying language rights. While Bill 101’s many articles all serve to strengthen the French language, they can have negative aspects, especially on some anglophone populations. After the implementation of the Bill, Quebec experienced a large emigration of these populations, leading to the closing of many anglophone schools.

Under Bill 14, businesses that serve the public would have needed to communicate in French with their customers. Furthermore, buisnesses with 26 to 49 regular employees would have had to make French the language of the workspace. Such rules make it much more difficult for immigrants in Quebec to create and run a business and make a living if their French language skills do not meet the required standard.

All of these aspects of present-day Quebec do not paint a very attractive portrait of the province, a fact simply exacerbated by certain components of next month’s electoral platforms. With so many universities, it would be unwise for Quebec to close the door, or at least make the door very hard to open, to international students because of its cultural policies and behaviour.

In an earlier version of the article, The Daily incorrectly stated that, according to Kira Page, the Charter would have a negative effect on Quebec’s international image. In fact, Page said that the Charter has negative effects on people of colour and migrant communities in Quebec. The Daily regrets the error.

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Though these statistics paint a grim picture, several efforts at language revitalization have had success in producing new native speakers of endangered languages. Language nests, which are immersion-based early childhood language education programs, have been successful in many communities in danger of losing their language. The idea originated during Maori revitalization efforts in New Zealand, and has been implemented in Hawaii and across Australia.

In Canada, these programs exist in several provinces and territories, including British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. The latter has over 20 nests, covering all the official Aboriginal languages of the territory. Aliana Parker, Language Revitalization Program Specialist at the First Peoples’ Cultural Council in British Columbia, highlighted some of the challenges associated with developing language nest programs. “Most of the languages have only a handful of speakers left, all of whom are elders. So it’s really hard to create a full immersion environment, as it can be challenging to have the elders in the nest for a long enough period of time, or [to find] other speakers who are younger, and […] who are able to speak the language and work in the nest.”

Kahnawà:ke is a Mohawk community located across the river from Montreal on the south shore of the St. Lawrence. There, Step By Step Child and Family Centre is a grassroots organization that offers early childhood education and daycare programs with language components in Mohawk. One of the Centre’s main objectives is to provide early intervention programs to support preschoolers’ development alongside culturally relevant education. The Summer Mohawk Immersion Program, which first piloted in 2008, is designed for three-year-olds to gain enough knowledge of the language to continue their schooling in Mohawk. The program has proven to be so successful, growing from one or two children to 11, that a Mohawk immersion daycare program is in the works.

Debbie Delisle, executive director of Step By Step, says that, “There’s not that many speakers [of Mohawk] left in our community so the revival of our language is paramount.” Delisle adds that people start to realize the importance early childhood investment has for the future of language and culture, which became the foundation of the programming at Step by Step. “We used to have a curriculum [that was] very basic. […] Then we started learning more about our own culture, because we had a lot of learning to do too because of our history. […] Today, our curriculum is culture and language, and we incorporate activities into that,” says Delisle.

Language nests are effective because they target young children during the ideal developmental stage for language learning. Immersion-based programs have had widespread success in producing fluent speakers of endangered languages. As Delisle says, “All the literature says that from zero to six is the most critical part of a child’s life because it builds the foundation to where they’re going to be in the future.” In April 2014, a new language nest will be starting in Kahnawà:ke. The project, entitled Iakwahwatsiratátie (which translates to “Our Families Are Continuing”), is headed by Karihwakátste Cara Deer and Ieronhienhawi McComber, and has received federal funding from the Aboriginal Head Start program.

Deer explained that there was a previous language nest program in Kahnawà:ke from 2005 to 2007, but it stopped mainly due to lack of funding. Meanwhile Deer and McComber planned to revive the nest by researching other language nest programs, applying for funding and learning more of their language. When asked why preserving Mohawk is important, Deer said, “It’s at the core of what defines us. […] Our language is deeply rooted within our culture as well as within our ceremonies and our ways of life.”

Parker observed that, “We’re beginning to see more and more evidence of when students are able to participate in a language immersion program in their mother tongue or their cultural language. It has huge positive impacts on their academic and social success, health, and well-being.”

In Montreal, there are a few opportunities available for adults to learn Indigenous languages. In early 2013, the Avataq Cultural Institute began offering Inuktitut language classes in Montreal. In the fall of the same year, First Peoples’ House began to offer informal Mi’gmaq classes. Paige Isaac, First Peoples’ House Coordinator, said, “The classes started because there is a large enough group of Mi’gmaq students and staff at McGill and in Montreal, and we had a fluent speaker amongst us.” Yet, learning the language in Montreal has its challenges, said Isaac. “There are basically no opportunities to speak the language in Montreal except for this class so far. You need fluent speakers and I only know two at McGill – which is great, but I need to learn more first.”

In February, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced “an historic agreement” with the Assembly of First Nations to reform the First Nations education system. According to Harper’s website, the legislation aims to establish a statutory funding regime, including language and culture, in the curriculum, while recognizing that “First Nations are best placed to control First Nations education.”

The reform, however, is not welcome everywhere – on December 18, 2013, the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) of Kahnawà:ke published a position statement rejecting the proposed legislation and demanding that the government “immediately cease all actions related to [its] development, passage and implementation.” One of the many reasons for this is the trauma endured in the residential schools system, which has demonstrated to the community “the severe harm that can come to our children and community with external control of education.”

As Tiffany Harrington, a U2 student at McGill, says, “You have a whole worldview within a language and it’s something that socializes you and ties you in relation with people and land.” If language education is not a priority within the First Nations Education Act, then the already fragile linguistic diversity in Canada will be placed under even more pressure.

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This phenomenon is called the bystander effect and refers to a situation in which the likelihood of a person to help someone in distress stands in an inverse correlation to the number of people present. The larger the number of other possible helpers, the higher the probability for diffusion of individual responsibilities. A study published in the 1998 issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that bystander effect is generally less likely to occur when people have experience in fields that need direct action to help people (nurses, for example). While people with less experience in aiding others, like students, were more likely to react while alone, the overall rate of helping was consistent in nurses, irrespective of who else was there. Preparing people for certain situations was shown to be crucial in overcoming the bystander effect.

“Most forms of structural oppression affect people in ways that are made invisible to people who have the privilege of not experiencing those forms of oppression.”

A 2011 study published by the American Psychology Association showed that the bystander effect was less likely to occur in situations that could immediately be identified as an emergency. This could for example be a scenario with the presence of a perpetrator obviously posing an immediate threat to someone; however, situations where individuals face distress take on a variety of forms, including accidents on the street, physical and verbal attacks, online bullying, sexual harassment, gender-based violence, microaggressions, and more. Situations that might not be perceived as immediately threatening should not be ignored. Kira Page, External Coordinator at the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill, told The Daily in an email, “It seems important to point out that most forms of structural oppression affect people in ways that are made invisible to people who have the privilege of not experiencing those forms of oppression. […] Racism, ableism, homophobia, misogyny, cissexism, classism, and so on are therefore usually situations that students are facing in often extremely isolating contexts.”

Many of these issues have become part of societal norms, and are as such often ignored by people not directly and negatively affected by them. People who were born into this system of institutionalized racism, sexism, and patriarchal power relations, need to take initiative to see beyond this distorted value system that’s perpetuated through our daily activities. As soon as we turn on the TV, Western sensationalist media will bombard us with Islamophobia, when we switch to sitcoms we’ll put up with bad jokes about rape culture, and the ads we’re exposed to, literally everywhere, make us internalize misogyny. We are conditioned from a very young age to think a certain way, but in the end what matters is how we choose to educate ourselves.

There are a variety of organizations at McGill, such as QPIRG, Midnight Kitchen, the Social Equity and Diversity Education Office, the Union for Gender Empowerment, Queer McGill, Healthy McGill, Rez Project, and SACOMSS, that provide students with information, and offer workshops, talks, and film screenings. Page stated that, “McGill students have incredible opportunities at their fingertips to learn about these things. […] Our Culture Shock series, for instance, addresses issues of white supremacy and colonization in the Canadian context. Social Justice Days address a wide range of social justice issues, this year, with a focus on mental health and care. The Radical Skills Workshop series gives people concrete skills for actively engaging in these issues.” The Israeli Apartheid Week that is currently underway at McGill offers a variety of workshops giving insight on problems faced by many Palestinians.

“[… Education and awareness are] clearly part of the equation, but seem to happen at the exclusion of a conversation about actually intervening.”

Even though educating yourself is a first step, Page notes that too much focus on education alone might be problematic, “There is a harmful and self-protective reliance on ‘awareness’ as the only possible or appropriate response to actual, immediately visible and preventable instances of violence. [… Education and awareness are] clearly part of the equation, but seem to happen at the exclusion of a conversation about actually intervening. There seems to be a predilection for understanding ‘anti-oppression’ as the ability to articulate that discourse or ideas are ‘problematic,’ while not understanding anti-oppression as something that actually requires you to step up and act.”

Intervening in situations of distress might seem counter-intuitive for some people. A lot of times, however, intervening does not mean walking straight up to someone and getting into a fight. Even small actions like getting someone else to help, diffusing the attention of a target by spilling your drink, turning lights on and off, or simply making your presence as a witness known might help. A smartphone app called RISE, released by the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women, the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre, and other community partners, tries to teach people about how to safely intervene in different situations. The app, which was supported by organizations at the University of Ottawa, shows the user a broad range of scenarios followed by possible responses.

Page does not have the impression that McGill is doing enough to educate people on bystander intervention, or to raise awareness on these issues. On the contrary, she believes that McGill is perpetuating negative influences. “McGill is implicated in these issues, often refusing to protect students being harmed (for instance, in the history of McGill, being more interested in protecting football players than survivors of sexual violence), and also often in actively perpetrating harm against students.”

All of us have heard about incidents where someone was assaulted at a party and no one intervened, making it seem like the assault was okay. And most of us will probably have thought that, if that were us, we would have done something to prevent it. Yet bystander effect is a real problem in our society. It is a very human reaction that most of us have probably experienced at some point. One way to overcome this inaction and start being helpful in precarious situations, is by becoming aware of issues, taking responsibility, and acting on one’s own judgement instead of imitating the reactions of people in our surroundings. And next time you encounter a drunk person harassing someone, you might realize the socially accepted passiveness everyone experiences, and proceed to overcome your own apathy.

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Le Portail Santé Montréal declined an interview, yet in a press release sent to The Daily, they state that this restriction will only affect new patients who have not yet started treatment. Patients who have already been admitted can stay with the doctor they have been seeing. Even though it is not certain whether new patients will be able to chose their hospital under some circumstances, Nathalie Rodrigue, President of the Coalition Priorité Cancer au Québec, an organization that rallies different groups in order to fight for more effective cancer treatment, is not so confident about it. “Nothing has been put in writing to guarantee this,” she said, “so the patients are still vulnerable. The Coalition is waiting to see what happens come April 1 and beyond.”

Getting specialized care close to their homes would definitely be more convenient for cancer patients, as it would keep them from having to take long daily trips to far-off hospitals; however, the specialized treatment cancer patients require is not available to the same extent at every hospital. “There are a myriad of treatments in cancer care that make it different from other kinds of care,” Jen Greig, a cancer patient, told The Daily in an interview. Greig was diagnosed with advanced lymphoma in 2008. She received treatment at Saint Mary’s Hospital, a smaller hospital in Montreal, and experienced the benefits of being treated in a familiar environment. “When you’re super stressed out, getting all sorts of weird procedures done to you, familiarity really helps reduce the experienced level of stress,” she said. Yet, being part of the old system, Greig was able to seek alternative advice from other hospitals, including the JGH in Montreal. She stated that Saint Mary’s Hospital couldn’t do a lot of things like stem cell harvesting and magnetic resonance imaging, which forced her to go to the JGH. Next to the transportation costs and time, Greig also expressed concern about “the psychological aspect of having to make so many trips to the hospital.”

Portail Santé Montréal specified that the $6 million in funding will be transfered to support hospitals in the Laval and Montéregie regions in their new radiation oncology cancer centres. In an interview with The Daily, Eduardo Franco, head of McGill’s oncology department, stated, “Decentralization of our services is a good idea, and I believe the government has the very best intentions. I’m quite wary, however, [about] how this plan may be rushed to implementation because of financial concerns. Inevitably, if change is rushed, the quality of services will be affected and the patient will be the one who suffers.”

“There will be a ripple effect of this dispersion of funding [that] may affect the quality of oncology doctors who graduate, the quality of teaching, the quality of treatment, the quality of specialty, the quality of care,” Franco continued. This decentralization of care might not be able to guarantee the same level of efficiency. He continues to explain that cancer treatment is one of the most expensive treatments one can receive, since it requires specialized teams for diagnosis, treatment, and follow up. Teams need to be all in one place, gain trust in each other’s competencies, and communicate with and rely on each other. Without this synergy, miscommunication is likely. After the allocation of funds, patients newly diagnosed with cancer, with limited time to get diagnosis and treatment, may end up unnecessarily running around to get the services they need.

Coalition Priorité Cancer au Québec opposes the decision to reallocate funds. “This decision is being made solely based on financial savings, when it should be ethically based on the quality of patient care,” Rodrigue told The Daily. “The patient will pay for this single-minded political decision.”
A transfer of funding from the major English-speaking hospitals to French-speaking ones might create difficulties in getting service for anglophones who live off the island of Montreal. A report by the Community Health and Social Services Network from last year states that English speakers comprise 13.4 per cent of Quebec’s total population, with 66.8 per cent of them residing in the Montreal-Laval region. A 2011 report by the Institut national de santé publique du Québec states that only 14.6 per cent of the 10,540 doctors, and 12.67 per cent of the nurses in Quebec, only use English at work. This makes it increasingly difficult for anglophones to access healthcare in English.

The new implications also parallel those of the Quebec charter. A group of McGill professors, psychiatrists, and researchers specializing in mental health published a letter against the Quebec Charter, stating that the JGH was built in the 1930s “because of systematic discrimination at major academic and healthcare institutions in Montreal.” Whether or not the current budget allocations may be an anti-anglo issue, decentralizing cancer care will probably result in not having the same level of expertise quality of care for cancer patients of different backgrounds.

Allocating $6 million in funds to the Laval and Montégerie hospitals from the JGH, Montreal General Hospital and other hospitals on the island most likely will have detrimental impacts for cancer care in the long run if the funds are not implemented carefully. Cancer care is specialized and highly complex. It needs a team of people who can easily communicate in their specialty to ensure the patient does not get lost in translation. Dispersion of resources and specialized care could have negative implications for patients and research. Cancer care requires the best training, best resources, and the best service, to provide the best care.

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In Germany, around a third of all university students spend at least some time during their studies abroad, while the U.S. keeps up with about 20 per cent of its students partaking in the experience. In Canada, even though the tendency is rising, the numbers are less significant, with only around 10 per cent of all university and college students taking part in any study abroad programs. Katie Idle, the coordinator of the Study and Go Abroad Fair organized by Recruit in Canada, told The Daily that there is rising interest in international study experiences. “We started with 400-500 visitors the first year we organized in in Montreal in 2010. Now we expect between 800 and 1000 visitors.”

According to the “Open Doors Report” from 2012, the supply of study abroad programs has become much more diverse and accessible. When studying abroad started becoming popular in the 1970s and 1980s, the duration of the programs was much longer.; however, a recent trend shows that students prefer shorter stays abroad. “The Open Doors Report” points out that 58 per cent of the students going abroad are registered in an 8-weeks-or-shorter summer program. 38 per cent spend between one and two semesters abroad, and only 4 per cent study or work for at least a year in a foreign country. Hence, there is a continuously growing availability of short-term programs, including summer courses, internships, and work opportunities. “Popular, for instance, is teaching English during summer. South Korea and Japan are the current hot spots. But South America is [also] increasingly considered as the place to go,” says Janice Tester, who is a career advisor at McGill’s Career Planning Service (CaPS).

While it seems to be becoming increasingly regular, if not expected, to gain international experience – be it through teaching English in South Korea, doing summer school in Brazil, or studying for a semester in France – it is undoubtedly a matter of finances as well. Depending on what sort of international experience one is opting for, costs can be substantially higher than the fees paid for studying at home. Travel costs, potentially higher living expenses, and supplementary program fees can quickly end up accumulating. The “Open Doors Report” states that there has been a notable increase of institutions offering scholarships and other financial support, from 63 per cent in 2000 to 81 per cent in 2007; however, the Canadian Bureau for International Education’s “World of Learning Report” in 2009 emphasized that for 69 per cent of students, lack of funds or financial support is still the most common barrier to studying or working abroad. “There are increasingly funding and financial support opportunities,” explains Idle. “The government provides more funds in order to make studying abroad attractive for Canadians. But there is an according uptrend among universities and companies, as well.”

Tester adds that while students with more limited funds might not have as many options for their stays abroad, there are still opportunities available for them. For example, some of the working programs, for instance teaching English in Asia, are paid. This might be a viable option if the degrees needed to teach were free. Kester adds, “If a student really wants to go abroad, there normally is a way to make this possible. There are many students consulting me and my colleagues who do not have the required funds themselves.” This statement, however, ignores the fact that many students are not able to spend money or time on study programs, as this would restrict their time to work in order to afford a degree.

“It is also a question of international networks,” says Tester. “Many students going abroad arrange their work and stay via friends, family and acquaintances.” This requires, however, that one already be part of an international network, and know how to use it. Studies have consistently shown that students are more likely to study abroad if they are in an environment that is able to support this decision. A family that is internationally oriented, or is at least approving and encouraging of a stay abroad, might play a substantial role. The findings of the “Open Doors Report” show that racial minorities are underrepresented among the students heading abroad, which is inequitable, considering the benefits that come with taking part in these programs. Since people from different socioeconomic backgrounds might be less likely to take part in these programs, this can lead to social inequality when it comes to getting hired or getting into grad school. Even though universities and the government try to strike a balance by providing students with scholarships or paid working opportunities, the high cost of the programs will remain a problem for many.

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Rad Sex Week is a well-established highlight of the UGE’s and Queer McGill’s activities. The aim of both groups is to enhance the position of women, queer, trans* and intersex people, and to encourage an open conversation on campus. In addition to being home to different working groups, the organizations offer an alternative library, as well as alternative contraception and menstruation products available by donation. During the Rad Sex Week, they work with external partners – including Stella, l’amie de Maimie (an organization representing and supporting sex workers), two Montreal-based drag artists, the Alternative Lifestyles Community Centre, and sexual health educators involved in the Sense Project and Head & Hands – in order to reach a broader audience. On Monday, Clinic L’Actuel will set up HIV tests and be ready to answer questions about sexual health.

The workshops will deal with the political aspects of sex, romance, and different conceptions of intimate relationships, and address questions around sex and safety issues in general. They offer an open and non-judgmental environment for trans* people to discuss shared concerns, and attempt to offer an insight into drag to interested people. Intersexuality and where that fits in our conventional understanding of sexuality is another topic treated during the week. Some of the more hands-on events give an introduction to erotic practices like kink, waxing, and bondage. The Slippery Slope Cabaret on Thursday will be a highlight, according to Sabine Grutter, Resource Coordinator at Queer McGill. As stated on the Facebook event page, the play will be a “sexy and provocative animal-themed extravaganza of burlesque, drag, and sex-positive performance” looking at conservative societal attitudes and fears toward everything that is not heterosexually monogamous.

All workshops will be held in English, with the exception of “Intersex Realities,” which offers the option of whisper translation. The locations are spread over the McGill downtown campus and are mostly wheelchair accessible.

Rad Sex Week’s will have daily free events from February 19 to 27. Check out the Facebook event for more details.

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Human papillomavirus (HPV) is primarily conceptualized as a women’s ailment, with the majority believing that it is affiliated with cervical, vulvar, and vaginal cancers alone; however, it is also linked to penile, anal, and head and neck cancers, associating it with around 5 per cent of cancers worldwide. The vaccinations Gardasil and Cervarix can protect individuals if they are vaccinated prior to being exposed to the virus. Both vaccines protect against different strains of the virus, and while Gardasil has been approved for both females and males between the ages of 9 and 26, Cervarix is only available for females between 10 and 25.

In 2007, the first girls received HPV vaccines in Canada. By September 2008, all provinces in Canada had school-based vaccine programs targeting girls as young as nine. This is a cost measure, as at age nine a child will only need two injections, instead of three, to be immune. Depending on the province, girls have the option to begin the shots in Grade four or five, and have another opportunity in Grade nine, or seek the inoculation for free at a clinic or from their practitioner.

In April 2013, Prince Edward Island became the first province in Canada to include boys in their HPV vaccination campaigns. In September 2014, Alberta will follow suit. According to Alberta Health’s website, the government decided to extend coverage of the HPV vaccination to boys because it can “save lives, reduce disease and reduce future health care costs.” They estimate that the cost savings for the system from this policy change could amount to over $13.4 million.

If men can carry the disease and women can contract it from a male sexual partner, then not vaccinating men seems like it is ignoring a huge factor in the spread of HPV.

Quebec has chosen to not fund vaccination programs for boys, based on the assumption that inoculating females will indirectly protect males, and that if males want it, they will seek it on their own. Even though this inoculation policy does regard women as sexual beings, it assigns them a one-sided HPV burden in the responsibility and prevention paradigm. And while the shot is available for men, its high cost makes it inaccessible to many, with three doses of Gardasil costing $500. Furthermore, males are not educated about the virus to the same extent as females, and many men don’t even know that they are vulnerable, believing HPV to be responsible only for cervical cancer. NovaRogue**, a Political Science, Sociology, and Sexual Diversity McGill alumnus to whom I spoke via a thread on the McGill forum on Reddit, only found out that the vaccine was an option for him when he was advised by a nurse at age 21. He feels that men are “not at all” informed or advised to learn more about the vaccine in the same way women are.

In Chris’ understanding of vaccines, “maximum inoculation is when they are most effective. If men can carry the disease and women can contract it from a male sexual partner, then not vaccinating men seems like it is ignoring a huge factor in the spread of HPV.” According to Eduardo Franco, professor in the departments of Epidemiology and Biostatics, director of the division of Cancer Epidemiology, and chair of the Oncology department at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine, the Quebec government decided not to cover male vaccination because of the cost. “In Quebec they did a lot of evaluating; [the Quebec government] evaluated the cost and decided it was too much. They’ve done a good job covering women, and so did not adopt a publicly-available vaccine for boys. By covering women they are also indirectly covering men,” noted Franco.

This assumption also leaves the category of men who have sex with men at risk and wholly responsible for ensuring their safety in a way that women and men having sex with women are not. This subset of the population is in fact getting no publicly-funded protection. If men can be vectors of transmission, it seems ineffective not to vaccinate everyone. NovaRogue thinks that the current policy is discriminatory toward men who have sex with men (MSM), and calls the decision “short-sighted,” and “very possibly another example of institutionalized/systemic homophobia/heteronormativity.” Kristina Dahlstrom, postdoctoral fellow in the division of Cancer Epidemiology of the Oncology department, agrees, “By vaccinating only girls we are effectively not protecting MSM against HPV. MSM have a high prevalence of HPV and are at an increased risk of developing anal cancer.”

Franco says that as vaccines go down in cost, it is likely that more inclusive public coverage will happen. He hopes that his current study at McGill, the TRAP-HPV study, will shed light on opportunities for this. The TRAP-HPV study differs from other studies because it looks at non-genital sites, like oral and anal regions, and aims to determine whether unvaccinated partners of vaccinated individuals benefit in terms of protection from their partner’s HPV vaccination. Dahlstrom told the McGill Newsroom, “Increasing the knowledge about HPV transmission dynamics will benefit cost-effectiveness studies and have implications for decision-making when implementing population-level vaccination strategies.”

Andrew Doyle, an English Masters student at McGill, believes that, “In an ideal world, we would vaccinate everyone against everything, but in reality it costs too much. Me or my girlfriend might have it even though we’ve never had symptoms. [sic] I don’t really think about it differently than other STIs, but if there’s a vaccine for it, why not?”

*name was changed
**Reddit username

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With a listing of nearly 400 mental disorders, the DSM-5 – often referred to as the “Bible” of psychiatry – takes a largely categorical approach to disorder classification. For Ethan Macdonald, a member of the Inclusive Mental Health Collective at McGill, these solid walls between psychological conditions are too limiting. Macdonald believes that individuals should be given room to make sense of their own experiences, outside of the psychiatric diagnoses that bind them in their everyday lives. “The act of coercing someone into a DSM category […] in order to access services is but one way we marginalize and oppress the psychologically diverse. A diagnosis can have a major impact on the way one lives, and yet here we have groups of people who can’t access resources if they don’t fit into the proper category,” he wrote in an email to The Daily.

Macdonald is not the only one who finds the current categorical approach to be problematic. Individuals in the community concerned with mental health issues have brought up the troubling phenomenon of “diagnostic inflation.” They point out that many new disorder categories are introduced with each DSM revision, despite the fact that there are significantly more disorders than treatment options and the same drugs are used to treat patients with supposedly distinct conditions. According to Frédéric Fovet, director of the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD) at McGill, “Almost all forms of human behaviour can now [fit] into the description of a ‘dysfunction.’” Not only could this be a waste of limited resources, but more importantly, it also runs the risk of unnecessarily subjecting people to harmful treatments and stigma. “Literally tens of millions of new patients will be created overnight with no evidence that they can be accurately identified, no proven effective treatment, and every indication that the medication treatments offered can have very harmful side effects,” said Allen Frances, chair of the task force responsible for the previous DSM, in a Medscape interview shortly before the DSM-5 was set to be published.

“A diagnosis can have a major impact on the way one lives, and yet here we have groups of people who can’t access resources if they don’t fit into the proper category.”

Studies have also revealed that DSM diagnoses show poor accordance between diagnosticians. These findings become particularly worrisome considering that psychiatric treatments can only ever be as dependable as their corresponding diagnoses. In 2005, a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that 45 per cent of people who met criteria for a single DSM-IV disorder met it for at least two more. Overlapping risk factors and symptoms found between DSM diagnoses raise concerns about blurred boundaries between the presently established categories. Joel Paris, a professor in McGill’s Psychiatry department, notes that there is a distinct lack of scientific evidence supporting the current breakdown of disorders. “Categories can be arbitrary, and in psychiatry all diagnoses are based on signs and symptoms, not on underlying mechanisms,” states Paris.

Due to the weaknesses in the present diagnostic paradigm, an increasing number of professionals believe that the field of psychiatry should reject discrete mental illness labels altogether and take a continuous, dimensional approach instead. This involves using quantifiable measures to determine where patients stand on a continuum. Recent brain-imaging studies show strong support for the use of disorder spectra. For example, a study published in 2012 in the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders found that people with mood disorders and people with anxiety disorders showed similar activation patterns in the amygdala region of the brain – which plays a major role in the processing of feelings and memories – in response to particular emotions.

In fact, the original goal of the DSM-5 was to make a complete switch to dimensional psychiatry, but the task force was too idealistic. During the development process, enthusiastic proponents of this approach suggested a variety of dimensions, such as a schizo-obsessive spectrum which merged schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Unfortunately, the majority of these dimensions did not pass field trials, as diagnoses were too inconsistent between psychiatrists. One notable spectrum that did make the final cut, however, involved Asperger’s syndrome, which was removed as a separate diagnosis and placed under “autism-spectrum disorder.”

“Categories can be arbitrary, and in psychiatry all diagnoses are based on signs and symptoms, not on underlying mechanisms.”

Moving toward dimensionality would inevitably alter psychiatric drug administration, posing a problem for drug companies. Clinical research, charities, and support groups would be impacted as well, since familiar diagnostic labels and mental disorder ‘brands’ would lose their power and visibility. All in all, critics argue that it is too early to make such a drastic shift to the diagnostic paradigm, as the field is still lacking sufficient genetic and neuroscientific knowledge about the links between various disorders. “Proposals to make all classification dimensional are premature, and run the risk of labelling [healthy] people as having sub-clinical forms of illness,” explained Paris. He adds that “future DSM revisions should await real scientific breakthroughs, which I don’t expect to see for several decades. It is the best we have for now, with all its problems.”

For certain professionals like Fovet, a more ecological and holistic approach may be the most appropriate alternative while waiting for an actual solution. He notes that an increasing number of student services at McGill, including McGill’s Counselling Service and the OSD, have chosen not to rely so heavily on diagnostic instruments. These services focus instead on how to benefit the individual client by teaching students useful skills to manage their problems and remove barriers in the environment whenever possible. “Diagnosis therefore becomes almost irrelevant,” states Fovet.

As for the DSM-5 and its faults, Fovet believes that not all hope is lost. “The good news is that a fair section of the psychology-psychiatry field is now pushing back and ridiculing this last embodiment of the DSM. Perhaps this grotesque excess in one direction will have positive outcomes after all.”

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Today, all forms of doctor-aided death are illegal in most parts of the world; however, with an aging population and advances in medical technology that allow the prolonging of life even with terminal illnesses, physician-aided death is coming to the forefront of discussion in both medicine and law. Society is trying to reconcile the difficult problem of preventing suffering while preserving the sanctity of life. Physician-assisted suicide has been legalized in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, as well as a few U.S. states (Oregon, Washington state, and Vermont). The conversation has recently gained fuel in Canada, and Quebec may become the first province in Canada to legalize physician-assisted death.

Physician-aided death in Canada

In Canada, physicians who aid a person in committing suicide are held criminally liable under the Criminal Code. This law has been challenged a number of times over the years – one of the most recent cases being Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), which involved Gloria Taylor, a woman who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease that involves muscle paralysis, and chronic pain while maintaining cognitive function, and leads to a slow, but eventual death. Taylor sought out physician-assisted suicide, and the British Columbia (BC) Supreme Court ruled in favour of providing an exception in her case; however, the BC Court of Appeal held the ban on assisted suicide. Though Taylor eventually died of an infection, the case is now being brought to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“I’d like to stress that ‘medical aid in dying’ is an expression that is well-chosen.”

The various definitions surrounding “end-of-life” interventions are poorly understood by the general public. Under the current law, discontinuing life-sustaining treatment (‘pulling the plug’) at a patient’s request is legal. All individuals have the right to refuse treatment, even if it means accelerating death. Potentially life-shortening symptom relief – such as palliative sedation, which involves using medications such as morphine to decrease a patient’s level of consciousness to relieve severe pain – is also considered legal, as long as the intent is not infliction of death. This is not to be confused with terminal palliative sedation, the practice of administering a lethal dose of sedative in order to accelerate the patient’s death. Euthanasia (the deliberate act of ending someone’s life in order to relieve suffering) and assisted suicide (providing the means or knowledge needed for an individual to commit suicide), and any act carried out with the intent of killing a patient are illegal under federal law.

Quebec’s Bill 52

A game changer in Canada may be Bill 52, termed “An Act respecting end-of-life care.” This bill was first introduced in 2013, and is currently being discussed at the National Assembly of Quebec. The bill defines “end-of-life” care as palliative care for individuals at the end of their lives, and includes the options of “terminal palliative sedation” and “medical aid in dying.”

The specific criteria for access to medical aid in dying are also outlined in the bill. Individuals must be of full age, be capable of giving consent, and the possession of an incurable serious illness with irreversible decline in capability and constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain.

A double-edged sword

Bill 52 has sparked heated debates, with strong supporters both for and against; however, both sides advocate for what they believe is the solution in the best interest of patients and society, and raise important considerations, making it difficult to define an easy solution.

This particular legislature uses the terms “medical aid in dying” and “terminal palliative sedation.” This has become one major area of contention – proponents of the bill see this as a necessary step in avoiding the negative connotation that comes with the terms “euthanasia” and “suicide,” while the opposing side has argued that this lack of clarity hides the reality of what it really is.

“I’d like to stress that ‘medical aid in dying’ is an expression that is well-chosen,” Veronique Hivon, the Quebec Minister for Social Services and Youth Protection, told The Daily. According to Hivon, the main differences are that euthanasia does not imply that all requests come directly from the person suffering, and assisted suicide does not make it necessary for a physician to be present when an individual carries out the act. “Here, the focus is on the ‘continuum of care,’ and the comforting and supporting aspect is very important,” Hivon added.

“In palliative sedation, people are made unconscious with the assumption that they will die. The problem is that we don’t know when it will happen – it could be days, hours, [or] weeks. The problem won’t be for the patient who is unconscious, but for the family that will have no end.”

Some opponents argue that because patients can be asked to be taken off life support – and palliative sedation provides the means to alleviate suffering – other options are not required, and should remain closed to prevent the risk of abuse.

To this, supporters of physician-assisted death argue that keeping people sedated without life support is inhumane and the length of time before a person passes away is often uncertain. “In palliative sedation, people are made unconscious with the assumption that they will die. The problem is that we don’t know when it will happen – it could be days, hours, [or] weeks. The problem won’t be for the patient who is unconscious, but for the family that will have no end,” asserted Dr. Yves Robert of the Quebec College of Physicians.

The slippery slope

One of the most commonly heard arguments against these death-inducing interventions is the “slippery slope” argument. Recently, a number of controversial cases have been arising in Belgium, where euthanasia has been legal since 2002. In September 2013 Nathan Verheist, a trans man, was given legal euthanasia for “unbearable psychological pain” after several unsuccessful surgeries. Earlier that year, Marc and Eddy Verbessem, two deaf twins who were going blind, were given legal euthanasia on similar grounds by the same doctor. These cases sparked the legal euthanasia debate in Belgium, raising the question of whether assisting death for “mental suffering” without terminal illness was pushing ethical boundaries. Additionally, Belgium’s recent moves to attempt legalizing euthanasia for patients with dementia and for terminally-ill minors have added fuel to this debate.

Arguing for the need to protect vulnerable populations from misuse of euthanasia, opponents of Bill 52 suggest that these issues could arise if Quebec legalized medically-assisted death. “I think everybody should object to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide even if they don’t think it’s inherently wrong, because of the possibility of abuse and what it means for the values of our institutions and society,” said Margaret Somerville, a law professor at McGill.

“Whatever happens, there needs to be clear guidelines about how the process happens – and we need very good data. The slippery slope argument makes sense, but we don’t have very good baseline data.”

Policymakers and proponents, on the other hand, assure that the stringent requirements in Quebec’s bill make it impossible for these types of cases to occur legally. Unlike the laws in Belgium, which state that individuals suffering unbearable psychological or physical distress as a result of incurable medical conditions are eligible for euthanasia, Quebec’s laws additionally require the individual to be at the end of life. “For Quebec, it’s a combination of criteria similar to Oregon or Washington state that are based on the “end of life,” whereas in Belgium and the Netherlands it is based on suffering,” Hivon explained.

Yet, with little data regarding the state of physician-aided death currently occurring in Quebec, it is very difficult to know whether this slippery slope might materialize. “Whatever happens, there needs to be clear guidelines about how the process happens – and we need very good data. The slippery slope argument makes sense, but we don’t have very good baseline data,” says Emmanuelle Belanger, a researcher in palliative care at McGill.

Access to palliative care

Currently, not all individuals who need palliative care receive it. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, only 16 to 30 per cent of individuals who need palliative care actually receive it. Palliative care physicians are one of the groups that have been vocally against the adoption of Bill 52. One of their concerns is that the knowledge of the option to receive “medical aid in dying” may act as a barrier for patients seeking alleviation from suffering. Additionally, they argue that most individuals don’t fully understand all the options available and the various terminologies surrounding physician-assisted death.

Hivon assures that the bill takes measures to improve palliative care, describing the bill as being based on the idea of a “continuum of care,” with medically-assisted death being reserved for exceptional cases at the very end of the spectrum. The PQ government publicly acknowledged the need to improve palliative care services, announcing last May that it would invest $15 million into palliative care.

Not all physicians will be willing to carry out the act. A survey by the Quebec Medical Association revealed that only 41 per cent of doctors surveyed would be willing to grant the requests for medical aid in dying. “I’ve tried to get specialists to understand that if they referred me to a patient who did not want palliative care, I’d refer them back to them, because I can’t help them. They aren’t aware of the fact of who would be willing to do it. It’s one thing to support the idea in principle, and another to implement it,” Manuel Borod, a palliative care physician at the McGill University Health Centre, told The Daily.

End of the debate?

Though questions still surround the long term effects of passing a bill that will allow medical aid in dying, Bill 52 has aimed to address most of these issues, and is likely to move forward in the National Assembly. Physician-assisted death is a deeply divisive issue with individuals on both sides ready to fight for what they believe. Emotions run high. There is one point on which both groups agree: people deserve compassion and respect at the end of life. Even if Bill 52 is adopted in Quebec, it won’t be the end of the issue. All forms of physician-assisted death are illegal at the federal level, and the federal government has expressed that they will keep it this way, meaning that adoption of this bill could lead to a constitutional challenge. The debate will, seemingly, continue on indefinitely.

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Euthanasia and assisted suicide laws around the world

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Each component of the strategy against drugs (prohibition, deterrence, punishment) has led to disastrous consequences. The prohibition of a wide range of drugs is the most well-funded manifestation of the idea that people must be prevented from using drugs. For example, the U.S. has spent at least $1 trillion over the last 40 years in an attempt to destroy the supply of drugs that millions of their citizens demand. This effort has failed, as the U.S. leads the world in drug use, with an increasing rate of illegal consumption.

The next step in most states’ anti-drug strategy is deterrence. Since state efforts to destroy drugs have been tremendous failures, states should determine that they need to attempt to convince their citizens not to experiment. Providing accurate information regarding the negative effects of drugs is extremely important, yet most information the government relies upon grossly exaggerates the negative effects of drugs in an attempt to make the deterrent factor more effective. This is prevalent in numerous examples of television anti-drug campaigns and the scientific studies they rely upon, such as one by Dr. George Ricaurte, published in 2002, which claimed that one hit of MDMA could cause Parkinson’s or death in primates. The study was retracted shortly after publication as it turned out the scientists had used extremely high doses of methamphetamine in their tests instead of MDMA. Despite this, Congress members quoted the study extensively, leading Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the Safety First Project of the Drug Policy Alliance, to claim that “[this] study looks like high-class ‘Reefer Madness.’ The government’s trying to scare the kids out of experimentation and into abstinence, and it just doesn’t work.”

Finally, the state drafts and enforces punishments for those who decide to do drugs regardless of all the deterrent efforts. These punishments are deeply flawed in three ways. Primarily, the logical basis of these punishments is that taking a substance that only harms you means you deserve to be punished so that you will stop doing said substance. These laws impede on an individual’s agency but are also tremendously ineffective at aiding individuals who may have addictions as a result of their drug use.

Additionally, these punishments disproportionately affect the most marginalized within society in numerous ways. For example, black people make up 13 per cent of the U.S. population, but 56 per cent of those incarcerated for drug-related crimes (and this has nothing to do with drug usage rates, as white people are more likely to use drugs and develop addictions than black people, according to a 2011 study from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.)

These ineffective and racist punishments also create a costly cycle that does nothing to stop the drug problem, but only adds to the prison problem. From 1973 (three years after the agreed-upon start of the “War on Drugs” in the U.S.) to 2009, the prison population has grown by 705 per cent. These typically unjust prison sentences are funded by tax payer dollars and have destroyed families and communities from the inside out.

Essentially, the policies that have emerged from the notion that people must be prevented from doing drugs are clearly ineffective. So, despite all of the ‘tough on drugs for your benefit’ rhetoric, it is astonishingly clear that drug-prohibiting states do not actually care about their citizens’ health as it pertains to drug use. If they did, they would drastically alter their anti-drug strategy instead of spending more money on the same things to get worse results.
Future drug policies should start from a refined conception of health in relation to drugs which seeks to ensure that people purchase and use drugs in the safest way possible, instead of banning them from doing so. This conception would treat citizens like autonomous adults instead of like children who are told what to do. This means that current policies regarding prohibition, deterrence, and punishment must be turned on their head.

Rather than prohibiting drugs, drugs should be legalized and distributed by the state to ensure that drugs are not dangerously laced; this would simultaneously destroy the income source criminal networks rely upon. Then, rather than harshly punishing those who use drugs, the state should offer rehabilitation and support to those who desire it. This has been the model in Portugal since all drugs were decriminalized in 2001, and it has resulted in reduced drug use and reduced rates of addiction to hard drugs, which have dropped by 50 per cent. Finally, rather than seeking to use exaggerated health effects to scare people away from using drugs, states should properly fund areas where people can learn how to use drugs safely. For example, safe injection sites in Vancouver have aided local drug users tremendously, as there have been no deaths on the site even though over 2 million people have used it in the last ten years.

While these examples are steps forward, it will take much more than a few minor reforms in a broken drug system to solve the ever- expanding problem. The way drugs are dealt with in society needs to be revolutionized. This must begin by reconceptualizing how policies should deal with health in relation to drugs.

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Most developed countries use modern technology in order to minimize direct contact with pesticides; however, due to their use in agriculture, contact can never be completely eliminated. Farming communities tend to be present in areas contaminated by pesticides affecting their long-term health (water is the most likely source of contamination). Furthermore, the residues on chemically treated foods will affect people who don’t live in rural areas, as it stays on the produce.

pesticides can cause a number of health problems such as birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other diseases.

While pesticides can protect the food that we eat from diseases and insects, a small amount of pesticide residue might be able to get into our system by consumption. In Canada, this amount is regulated by maximum residue limits (MRL), which indicate a concentration of pesticides that does not affect human health. In 2006 and 2007, Health Canada tested over 99 per cent of Canadian fruits, vegetables, and imported foods, and found that all were below Canada’s MRL.

Although limited contact with pesticides is usually not fatal, the negative health effects are tremendous. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that pesticides can cause a number of health problems such as birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other diseases. The effects depend on the pesticides used, and on their level of toxicity – some pesticides can toxify your body right after you ingest them. The main purpose of pesticides is killing any predator threatening the plants they are applied on. Since their mode of action is not specific to one species, they can also harm humans, especially children in their developing age. Other pesticides create diseases in the long term, including cancer.

It is clear that pesticides can pose a threat to our health, so why do we continue using them? From an economic point of view, pesticides are seen as beneficial, as they prevent the premature fall of fruit, deterioration during storage, and ensure that the produce ripens more slowly, assuring a higher amount of profit. Our consumer society is used to a yield high enough to sustain the population. By stopping the use of pesticides, the total yield will decrease, leading to a price inflation for food. These economical disturbances would increase the gap between rich and poor, since people with less income will be even less able to purchase produce needed for survival.

The use of modern technology in food production allows the yields to be high enough to make food accessible to most people, yet the dilemma is obvious. People with less income cannot stop buying products that have been affected by pesticides, as they are often in a more accessible price range. As long as people consume those goods though, they will be produced. Pesticides were created to benefit mankind and establish food security; however it cannot be ignored that those same substances bring undesirable effects.

One alternative to pesticide-infected food is organic produce. The major issue with organic food is that the yield in the short term is comparatively low to that of fields farmed with industrial agriculture. This leads to a very high price as opposed to more affordable conventionally grown food, making it inaccessible to many populations. As long as the common consumer is not willing to spend more of their income on organic food, and the government does not reinforce organic over conventional agriculture, the cost will be a problem that many are not willing nor able to bear.

Furthermore, organic food is not as clean as most of us think it is. A CBC News investigation this month found that as much as 5 per cent of organic food in Canada tested in the past two years has traces of pesticide residues higher than the MRL allowed for organic food, while half of all the produce had at least some traces of chemical residues. The companies producing organic food have been accused of deliberately putting pesticide on the food to enhance growth. This leads to the conclusion that even organic food might not be the right option in order to keep chemicals out of your system. Unless you have a crop in your garden, and you grow your own food, buying food from the market will never be 100 per cent safe.

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The Network is a “cross-disciplinary faculty learning community of approximately 15 instructors” according to Marcy Slapcoff, Educational Developer at Teaching and Learning Services (TLS). The group of staff members from the McGill Writing Centre, TLS, and the McGill Library meet on a monthly basis. Formed back in 2008, the group aims to create stronger links between teaching and research to enhance student learning. According to Slapcoff, “The goal of the group from the beginning has been to understand how to best use coursework to promote students’ understanding and active engagement with research.”

Almost all McGill Faculties are represented in the Network. Geography professor Sarah Turner is one of the members of the Teaching Inquiry Network. Last semester, Turner implemented some of these ideas from the Network in her GEOG 409: Geographies of Developing Asia course by having students write journal entries for each week of readings. “From the student feedback [journal entries] seem to work really well as a learning tool and students appreciate the ability to take time crafting their responses rather than taking an exam that they have to cram for.”

“Although it might seem weird,” continued Turner, “Professors don’t have that many opportunities to really debate and critique different teaching approaches, because we’re so busy just getting all the parts of our job done. So this is a fun and productive way to think through new ideas.”

A student in GEOG 409 (who wished to remain anonymous) attested to the overall positive experience. “The course was structured really well. […] It was my first time having to write journal entries for a course. It actually forced [students] to think about what the author was saying and relate it to the class, and ourselves personally. I thought it was really good.”
The Network has also received support from the University. In 2011, the Nework facilitated the Joint Board Senate meeting where the Board of Governors supported the Network’s idea that “enhancing students’ understanding of research is a powerful way to improve student learning and the overall undergraduate experience.”

“The goal of the group […] has been to understand how to best use coursework to promote students’ understanding and active engagement with research”

McGill currently has a number of other services dedicated to promoting undergraduates’ involvement in research. Some of these groups include Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering, the Arts Undergraduate Research Internship Award, and the Office of Undergraduate Research in Science. Though these services benefit students, they are not without their limitations, as they are only open for a limited audience. Many of them are very Faculty-specific or only available to students who actually apply to volunteer. According to Slapcoff, this stands in contrast to the Teaching-Research Project, which has the goal of reaching every McGill undergraduate through their coursework.

Enhancing and discussing teaching methods is a step toward improving the undergraduate experience at post-secondary institutions, where generally the main qualifier of a professor is their research rather than their teaching skills and methods. Turner maintained, “Hopefully students then feel they benefit from a wider and more dynamic range of teaching approaches and assessment strategies.”

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