Volume 104, Issue 20 Monday, February 23, 2015
McGill THE
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OUT INSIDE PULL
Construction halts on heritage site
Rethinking diversity in the environmental movements
J-Board releases recommendations
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SCI+TECH
13th annual Homelessness Marathon New permanent residency rules for international students
The value of science communication
SUS to fund research awards
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Algonquins of Barriere Lake file lawsuit Brown building renovation underway
Indian Cuisine Try our variety of veggie & non-veggie meals! Butter Chicken Lamb Jalfraisi Chicken Tandoori Palak Paneer Vegetarian Vorma Free samosa/dr i nk w i th a chi cken leg thali or chick e n kebab plate
Fighting for student-run spaces and food
Healthcare accessibility talk
Fre e s amo s a/dr in k wi th a n o n -ve ge t ar ian thali ( 2 me at / 1 ve g)
There is still more time to apply for Personal Credits of up to $3000 for educational, language or cultural programs. Individuals who received a Common Experience Payment under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement are eligible for up to $3000 in Personal Credits for education programs and services.
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These include courses at universities, colleges, trade or training schools or for programs and workshops provided by community-based groups or cultural centres for activities related to Aboriginal language and culture. Personal Credits can be used by a Common Experience Payment recipient, shared with up to two family members or pooled for group education services. The deadline to apply has been extended to March 9, 2015. Help with completing the Personal Credits Acknowledgment Form is available. Find out more at www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca or by phone: • Main information line: 1-866-343-1858 • Assembly of First Nations: 1-866-869-6789 • Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, Iqaluit: 1-888-646-0006 • Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, Inuvik: 1-867-777-7092 • Makivik Corporation, Quebec: 1-418-522-2224
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COMMENTARY
Stop using the word ‘ethnic’ Letter to The Daily Educational non-profits are not enough
SPORTS
Is there racism in the NHL?
20 CULTURE In conversation with singersongwriter Lowell LadyCab series takes satirical approach to gender discrimination What to check out this week Netflix should support Canadian content
23 EDITORIAL Solidarity with the Algonquins of Barriere Lake
24 COMPENDIUM! Students push for Eldritch Studies minor Chinchilla situation in Admin Palace not chin-chill
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February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Construction halts on alleged site of historical Indigenous village
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Heritage preservation non-profit linked to construction company
Emmet Livingstone The McGill Daily
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onstruction of an office complex in downtown Montreal was halted on February 15, due to fears that developers were building on an Indigenous heritage site. Ivanhoé Cambridge, a real estate subsidiary of provincial pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, paused construction following a series of complaints to the municipal and provincial governments, as well as archaeologists, from freelance photographer Robert Galbraith. The site, just south of the corner of Maisonneuve and Metcalfe, is a candidate for the disputed location of the St. Lawrence Iroquoian village of Hochelaga, visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535, and famed for being the first recorded instance of contact between Europeans and Indigenous people on the island of Montreal and one of the defining moments in the history of New France. The site was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1920 because of its “potential archaeological resources, objects, and sites.” However, according to Galbraith, Ivanhoé Cambridge began digging foundations for the office building on February 11 without consulting an archaeologist. “To assume that there is no archaeological evidence or human
Emmet Livingstone | The McGill Daily remains under the asphalt without an adequate investigation [shows] a total lack of concern [for], and [an] abandonment [of ], this largely unknown period of Canadian history,” Galbraith told The Daily in an email. When John William Dawson, a McGill geologist, first excavated part of the site in 1860, he found extensive human remains and pottery, and proposed it as the location of the Hochelaga village. Anthropology professor and Dean of Students André Costopoulos spoke to The Daily about the site’s significance. “Whether the Dawson site is Hochelaga is an open question, but
clearly it’s a settlement very much like Hochelaga,” he said, adding that even if archaeologists proved that the Hochelaga village was located elsewhere, it was important to protect the site downtown. “It’s a site that has cultural significance, not only [for] French Canadians, but for people from Kahnawàke, and people from other Indigenous communities near Montreal,” Costopoulos continued. Accusations of neglect Asked whether construction had begun because of a lack of interest in the historical and cultural significance of the site from the City
J-Board rules on General Assembly procedures
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n February 20, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Judicial Board (J-Board) released a set of recommendations regarding rules of procedure at General Assemblies (GAs). These specified that SSMU is required to adopt and publicize a simplified version of standing rules for the GA, but that a special two-thirds majority rule instead of a simple majority for a “motion to postpone indefinitely” was not a valid standing rule. The J-Board was mandated to investigate the matter on January 17 as a result of a mediation session to resolve a J-Board case against the SSMU president and speaker filed by Nadir Khan and Zain Ali Syed. They had sought a special GA to discuss the Palestine solidarity motion that had been postponed indefinitely at the Fall SSMU GA. The J-Board ruled that article 5.2 of Bylaw Book I requires SSMU to adopt simplified standing rules and to publicize these rules to its members at least five days in advance of the GA. However, the J-Board recommendation makes a distinction between “standing rules” and “special rules of procedure.” It notes that
“standing rules” – which are meant to regulate the administration of SSMU – “do not interfere with the freedom of a meeting, and they may not conflict with the constitution, bylaws, rules of order, or other standing rules,” and can be changed without prior notice by a majority vote at any meeting. However, “rules of procedure” are in place to facilitate the meetings, and cannot be changed as easily. The two-thirds majority rule for the motion to postpone indefinitely is a change to rules of procedure. Thus, in its recommendation, the JBoard stated that it is not under the authority of Council to include a revision to the motion to postpone indefinitely. However, the recommendation did note that the rule could be changed if the Board of Directors was to adopt a change, or if members at the GA voted to amend or suspend the rules of order. According to the ruling, both Robert’s Rules of Order and article 13.2 of the SSMU constitution support this. —Jill Bachelder
of Montreal, Costopoulos argued that it was simply a case of the relevant authorities being ignorant of the situation. However, in an email to The Daily, Galbraith pointed out that neither the City of Montreal nor cultural organizations had objected to the construction project. He pointed out that other cities, including Rome, London, and Quebec City, have stringent building regulations in order to protect their heritage. In reference to Montreal, he said that “various organizations are trying to rewrite history and disclaim people who have a great knowledge of history for their benefit.” He fur-
ther complained that Montreal had a “wild west municipal government.” Héritage Montréal, a non-profit that works to protect the “architectural, historic, natural, and cultural heritage of Greater Montreal” did not oppose the building project either. Galbraith accused the organization of deliberate neglect in its duties. Ivanhoé Cambridge, the developer, is a major financial sponsor of Héritage Montréal. Speaking to The Daily, Héritage Montréal spokesperson Dinu Bumbaru rejected the allegation that an affiliation to Ivanhoé Cambridge had influenced the organization’s decision. “There is a perception that this is a site of Hochelaga – but this is a perception,” he said. Bumbaru added that Héritage Montréal had come to a decision regarding the site following a McCord Museum conference in 2010, which concluded that the Hochelaga village was not on the site. “If you were in their shoes, what would you say?” responded Galbraith after learning of Bumbaru’s comments. “There’s more to life than [to] dig and destroy,” he continued. “But here, because of a political climate and greasy politics and stuff like that, and the almighty dollar, we’re about to sell our souls.” Representatives of the City of Montreal could not be reached for comment by press time.
Homelessness Marathon broadcast aims to raise consciousness
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ebruary 25 will mark the beginning of the 2015 Homelessness Marathon, a 14-hour-long radio broadcast starting at 5 p.m. and lasting until 7 a.m.. Airing on nearly forty campus and community stations across Canada, the broadcast will be hosted by CFRC radio at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. McGill-based CKUT will be one of the stations airing the marathon and raising awareness of the event. “The idea of the marathon is really to engage a broad discussion across the country about the deeper issues of homelessness and housing,” CKUT Community News coordinator Aaron Lakoff told The Daily. The initiative began in 1998 in Geneva, New York, with the goal of raising awareness about the housing and homelessness crisis in the U.S.. CKUT brought it to Canada 13 years ago, and hosted the event for 11 years before passing the torch to Edmonton-based CJSR last year. This year, CKUT will be broadcasting part of the marathon from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. from the Native Friendship Centre on St. Laurent.
A community dinner open to everyone will also take place before the event, starting at 6 p.m. at the same location. According to Lakoff, the marathon is a consciousness-raising rather than a fundraising broadcast, and as such is intended to challenge “this idea that if you drop a couple of coins into the Salvation Army’s bucket, that’s going to somehow alleviate the problem of homelessness.” Instead, the broadcast will provide an opportunity for people who are homeless and their allies to speak on the radio and, at the same time, allow a nationwide discussion on issues facing people who are homeless and their possible solutions. “The homelessness crisis is a capitalism crisis,” said Lakoff. “It’s a crisis of our economic system, and it’s going to take a deep discussion and deep action to solve the problem, as well as privileging the voices of people living on the street themselves, who are the best ones to recount their own experience of life on the street.” —Michele Zampa
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February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
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New federal permanent residency rules for international students criticized Students applying through Quebec will not be affected
Cem Ertekin The McGill Daily
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n January 1, new rules came into effect at the federal level concerning the permanent residency applications of international students. Previously, the application system gave an automatic leg-up to international students with Canadian work experience. Under the new regulations, however, international students will now be put in a general pool with other immigrants and will be scored according to a “comprehensive ranking system.” In order to receive a formal invitation from the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, international students need to receive a high score on the ranking system. For instance, if the applicant is particularly skilled at a job that, according to a government assessment, no Canadian worker is available to do, they are awarded 600 points. The most recent bulk of invitations were sent to applicants who scored above 800. Representatives from the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) and the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) have voiced concern about the attitudes of the federal and provincial governments toward international students. “My first reaction is that it is quite unfair that that regulation would be put in place, and that [the] exception has been removed,” said SSMU VP External Amina Moustaqim-Barrette in an inter-
view with The Daily. “International students come here and make a large investment in the society and in our post-secondary education system. It is unfair that that investment of time and resources wouldn’t be recognized. It’s true that it’s really difficult for international students to be full-time students and also gain work experience, so it definitely puts them at a disadvantage, and unfairly so,” Moustaqim-Barrette said. The new rules change only the treatment of students in the Express Entry program under the Canadian Experience Class, and does not alter provincial selection systems. Students wishing to live in Quebec cannot apply through that program, and will not be affected by the changes. However, Quebec students wishing to reside elsewhere in Canada need to use the federal system. Currently, Quebec holds the power to declare applicants who are applying through the Programme de l’expérience québécoise as eligible for consideration for permanent residency by issuing a Quebec Selection Certificate (CSQ), which is similar to the Quebec Acceptance Certificate that is issued when applying for a study permit. Holding a CSQ, however, does not guarantee permanent residency, as the authority to grant it ultimately rests in the hands of the federal government. “PGSS is involved in everything that deals with international student
rights at [the] Quebec and Canadian levels. We’re going to do a bit of research on this topic,” said PGSS External Affairs Officer Julien Ouellet. “I’ve heard of this issue pertaining to the flexibility of what international students can do in Quebec before,” said Ouellet. “Even when people want to get involved in student politics, it’s much more difficult for international students to do that, especially at [the] FEUQ [Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec] level. Because if they don’t take [an adequate] number of credits, they can be asked to leave the country. This is not something that we think is very healthy, of course. The government seems to be going in a different direction right now than what we would like the situation to be.” In an email to The Daily, McGill Vice-Principal (Communications and External Relations) Olivier Marcil said that the federal immigration program does not apply to McGill or other Quebec universities. Pauline L’Écuyer, Director of International Student Services, echoed Marcil’s statement. “My understanding is that the new Express Entry program does not apply to our international students who want to stay in Quebec after graduation,” L’Ecuyer wrote in an email to The Daily. “Quebec is currently conducting a consultation on the future of immigration in Quebec; perhaps this will evolve in new [permanent residency] programs.”
Cem Ertekin | The McGill Daily Forgoing the rights of international students Pointing to McGill’s recent restatement of support for international student tuition deregulation, Moustaqim-Barrette argued that there is a trend of putting the burden of austerity measures on the backs of international students, given that it is much more unlikely that there will be high mobilization around the subject of international students’ rights. “I think it’s a very strategic move to do. In 2012, when [the provincial government] tried to raise tuition for Quebec students, they saw these massive mobilizations – thousands of people in the streets. So it’s very strategic on the government’s part to do something like that, because they won’t see that kind of
pushback [on the part of international students], and they know it,” Moustaqim-Barrette explained. Ouellet also pointed to the difficulty of lobbying with the federal Conservative government, which tends to be unresponsive to student demands. “We have very little [recourse] in what does not affect our members directly. When it’s something that is outside of Quebec, we have very little reach, because even the FEUQ has a hard time getting in touch with Conservative ministers and deputies,” explained Ouellet. “We’ve managed to get in touch with all three other federal political parties, but I think we meet [...] a Conservative [maybe] once a year, and it’s usually very brief. It’s very, very difficult to talk to them.”
Coalition launches in support of student-run food services Members hold “heartbombing” event to show dedication to student space Janna Bryson The McGill Daily
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mployees and members of various student-run food services on campus are in the process of joining to form the McGill Food Coalition, a new campus group that aims to “bring together all studentrun food initiatives, and give them a place to share goals, work together, and maintain the culture of studentrun spaces on campus,” according to Coalition member and SNAX employee Emma Meldrum. The Coalition held its first public event on February 13: a “heartbombing” under the Leacock stairs, where representatives from SNAX, Midnight Kitchen, the Nest, and the
McGill Spaces Project had snacks and information for those passing by. The online description for this inaugural event outlined the goal of the coalition. “Currently, [studentrun food and space] initiatives are vulnerable to the top-down, profitdriven decisions of our administration. We believe that unified, the groups in the coalition will have stronger negotiating power within McGill’s hierarchy and ultimately more influence on campus.” The survival of student-run services and spaces is an issue that has reared its head frequently at McGill. Last semester, the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) negotiations took the spotlight when McGill
ordered the AUS-run food kiosk SNAX to “cease and desist” the sale of sandwiches. Kathleen Bradley, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP Finance and Operations and former head chef at the student-run cafe the Nest, told The Daily that the SNAX controversy helped prompt the development of the Coalition. “Around the time that McGill told SNAX that they couldn’t sell sandwiches – that was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back – a whole bunch of students from Frostbite, from SNAX, from the SRC [student-run cafe, the Nest], from a bunch of SSMU services kind of got together,” said Bradley. “We met with the people from
the Concordia Food Coalition, and they shared their experience with corporatized food services and how they’re working against the Concordia administration to make sure that student-run food services are preserved on campus,” she continued. The Coalition is in the process of drafting a charter that outlines its purpose and values, one of which is to support student-run food services in their interactions with the McGill administration. According to Bradley, advocating for students throughout MOA negotiations is one way this goal can be achieved. “We were a little bit late to the SNAX game, but hopefully in the future if EUS [the Engineering Undergraduate Society] or another faculty
was negotiating its MOA and was having difficulty preserving their student space, the Coalition could come together, do demonstrations, [create] awareness, and put pressure on the McGill administration to put [measures to preserve student space] in the MOA.” Meldrum added, “If the SNAX negotiations continue to drag as they are, there is still definitely an opportunity for the coalition to participate.” Bradley listed “coming out to demonstrations if you see them, writing letters to the McGill administration or getting in contact with your faculty and seeing how you can support their student-run food service,” as ways that interested students can get involved with the Coalition.
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February 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
Algonquins of Barriere Lake file lawsuit against government, managers Community cites mismanagement, demands control over own finances
Jill Bachelder The McGill Daily
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s part of their ongoing struggle against the Canadian government, the Chief and Council of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake (ABL) have filed a lawsuit against the government and their current and previous third-party managing companies, Hartel Financial Management Corporation and BDO Canada. The lawsuit, filed on January 30 for $30 million in damages, claims that the government and managers have harmed the community “by mismanaging and withholding funds that were to be used for the benefit of the community and its members,” according to a press release from the ABL. The managers currently hold the community’s money in a trust, according to the press release, effectively placing the ABL community’s funds out of their control and leaving the community with little agency over its own finances. “As it is now, the community is dissatisfied with how third-party management has continuously kept us in the dark,” Barriere Lake’s Interim Director-General Tony Wawatie told The Daily. “We have requested information regarding our financial status, and it was repeatedly refused or ignored,” Wawatie continued. He added that the managers did not work well with the ABL and did not listen to what the community members asked of them. The press release expanded on this discord, noting that managers have “ignored our reasonable requests for basic information, and have bounced cheques to suppliers, interfered with our economic relations with suppliers, hired and fired employees without authority, and otherwise proven themselves completely unconcerned with the interests, well-
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being, and future of our community.” According to both Wawatie and the press release, the managers charged millions of dollars in fees to the community, as they take a 10 per cent fee of every project they take on, whether or not the deficit is reduced. This money was paid by the ABL community, even though the ABL did not want the help of the managers. This lawsuit comes after growing tension between the third-party management program and the ABL. Last December, the ABL sent out a press release calling for food and donations for 15 Algonquin families, including 25 children, to whom the federal government refused welfare checks after the ABL failed to comply with the First Nations Financial Transparency Act as protest against the community’s lack of agency over its own finances under the third-party management system. Wawatie also noted that the infrastructure and training programs the managers were supposed to arrange for the community were never provided. “One of the things that the third-party managers were supposed to do was to come up with some capacity development [and] training for the community members,” he said. According to a document released by the ABL in 2014, Barriere Lake has been reduced to 59 acres of reserve, on which “the socioeconomic conditions of the community are extremely poor.” The unemployment rate ranges from 80 to 90 per cent, and a housing crisis has lead to on average seven people living in a home, though this number can be as high as 18 to 23 people. “Our members continue to experience [abject] living conditions, in spite of the tremendous wealth generated through resource extraction within our traditional territory,” the press release reads. “Our roads, wa-
ter, hydro, school, and social services remain gravely underfunded, when compared to the funding available to Canadians living in non-First Nations communities.” The Hartel corporation declined to comment. BDO also declined to comment, citing the fact that the lawsuit is currently ongoing. As of press time, neither Hartel nor BDO have responded to ABL’s claims. James Campbell, a member of the educational activist network Educators for Peace and Justice, condemned the management system and expressed solidarity with the ABL. “The imposition of third-party management is simply the latest stage of the federal government’s attempts to break any and all forms of resistance by the people of Barriere Lake,” Campbell wrote in an email to The Daily on behalf of Educators for Peace and Justice. “It is only possible because of the continued existence of an explicitly racist [and] white-supremacist piece of legislation [The Indian Act]. It is a direct attack on the people of Barriere Lake and we support their fight against the racist laws and policies of the Canadian government.” “There [have] been many different ways that the Canadian and Quebec governments have tried to destroy the community and the language and the culture and the way of life that the Algonquins of Barriere Lake have,” noted Kira Page, external coordinator of Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill. Community organizations stand in solidarity with ABL Educators for Peace and Justice and QPIRG McGill were two of over fifty organizations who supported a list of demands set forth by ABL in 2008 to the governments of Quebec and Canada, insisting these govern-
Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily ments honour the agreements of 1991, 1997, and 1998, and respect the selfsufficiency of the ABL and the conservation of their languages and culture. Wawatie noted that the current management system goes against these two agreements, and that since the signing of the 1991 and 1998 agreements, the Quebec government has done little to nothing to ensure the self-sufficiency of the ABL. The ABL has long resisted the Canadian government’s attempts to impose regulations and programs and promote resource extraction on their lands. They have employed legal actions in the past – they filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2010 after the Minister of Indian Affairs forced them into adopting an elective governance system, under Section 74 of the Indian Act, which implements a foreign system of governance onto the community, invalidating customary leadership structures as a legitimate source of governance. According to barrierelakesolidarity.org, a platform sustained by the Barriere Lake Solidarity QPIRG McGill working group, this band
council has made deals with forestry companies and other industries, against the general desires of the community, and now Barriere Lake sees the extraction of $100 million in resources annually, none of which goes to the ABL. The ABL have also worked in collaboration with other communities and community organizations to resist these measures, holding protests in Ontario and Quebec to protest the Section 74 electoral process. In 2008, the ABL created a blockade on the highway that passed through their lands, demanding the government give the community a voice in the decision to develop 10,000 square kilometres of the land on which they live. A video on their website describes the struggle of the ABL. “Our Algonquin community of 400 people is fighting for control of our land, our government, and our way of life,” says an unidentified voice. “We will not back down. We will never back down, our parents and grandparents did not back down, and that is why our land is still protected.”
Science undergraduates to fund summer research awards
he Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) General Council (GC) voted to fund three Science Undergraduate Research Awards (SURAs) at its February 18 meeting. The SURAs, managed by the Office of Undergraduate Research, are awarded to students on the basis of academic merit to fund 16 weeks of full-time research during the summer. “It’s an already established award where donors, potentially like ourselves, would contribute $2,800 toward an award, and then whoever the professor is who takes the student will match it,” explained
VP Communications May Yin-Liao. Yin-Liao noted that international students are eligible for SURAs, as opposed to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Undergraduate Student Research Awards, which are only available to Canadian residents. “We do technically fund a significant number of research positions under work study, but obviously not everyone qualifies for work study, whereas [...] anyone in the Faculty of Science and [in] Arts and Science can apply for [a SURA], so that’s more accessible to all of our constituents,” said Yin-Liao.
A total of $8,400 will be allocated for the SURAs for Summer 2015, coming directly from SUS’s operating budget. Yin-Liao indicated that she hopes to fund the awards through “more sustainable sources, such as external sponsors” in future years. Answering a question on how the recipients of the awards will be determined, Yin-Liao said that the awards will be allocated randomly to three of the 19 departments in SUS, and the recipient of the award will be chosen by the department. Bachelor of Arts and Sciences Integrative Council (BASiC) President Matthew Satterthwaite raised con-
cerns over the amount of funding. “I’m just worried about the $8,400 – that seems like a lot of money coming out of student fees, and I’m not sure [these awards] that can benefit three students are the best use of that much money,” he said. Yin-Liao responded that, following the recent increase in the SUS base fee, there was money allocated specifically for new initiatives such as this one. “The money is not going anywhere if we don’t use it,” she said. The motion passed with one abstention.
Tuition deregulation was also discussed at the GC. Representative to the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Zacheriah Houston told councillors that all three representatives to SSMU had voted against the motion to oppose tuition deregulation that passed at the last SSMU Council. Houston said that he voted in this way because, although there was no time for proper consultation, a majority of the forty Science students he consulted were opposed to the motion. —Igor Sadikov
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February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
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Senate discusses McGill’s mission statement, academic freedom
Implementation of mental health recommendations criticized as slow Marina Cupido The McGill Daily
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onvening for the second time this year on February 18, McGill’s Senate debated revisions to the University’s mission statement, discussed student mental health, and heard a presentation on the budget for 2015-16. Changes to mission statement Senate discussed a proposed revision to simplify McGill’s mission statement and amend it with a statement of principles, namely “academic freedom and responsibility, integrity, accountability, equity, inclusiveness, and respect for cultural and individual diversity.” Several faculty senators expressed concern over the inclusion of academic responsibility in the principles, arguing that the term carried negative connotations and imposed constraints on academic freedom. Some recalled the controversy surrounding the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC)’s 2011 “Statement on Academic Freedom,” which defined academic freedom as being “constrained by the professional standards of the relevant discipline and the responsibility of the institution to organize its academic mission.” Medicine Faculty Senator Kenneth Hastings argued that the term ‘accountability’ was “dangerously” ambiguous. “To whom are we accountable for the nature of our scholarly activities? Is it to our principal? [...] Is it to our donors? None of those really sound like academic freedom,” said Hastings. Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Arts Senator Kareem Ibrahim decried the fact that
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the senators seemed to “be shirking away from the idea of including [the term] ‘responsibility’ because of the supposed negative connotations.” Speaking to The Daily after the meeting, SSMU VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan noted that the senators’ opposition to academic responsibility was significant in the context of the ongoing review of McGill’s research regulations. “Myself and the rest of the Senate caucus [were] highly disappointed in the adversarial response of the Senate body to the inclusion of responsibility as equally important to, and associated with, academic freedom,” said Stewart-Kanigan. “This represents the broader institutional reluctance to [adopt] meaningful stances on the role of research in supporting social wellbeing and providing benefit, not harm, to society.” Closing the discussion, Fortier said that senators’ thoughts would be presented to the Academic Policy Committee (APC), which would draft motions taking into account their suggestions. Implementation of mental health recommendations Stewart-Kanigan, SSMU Arts and Science Senator Chloe Rourke, and SSMU Medicine Senator David Benrimoh submitted a question regarding the University’s commitment to ensure a pan-university implementation of the recommendations of the Mental Health Working Group, struck in 2013. In September, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens said at Senate that a consultant would be hired as of January 2015 to work with “stakeholders across the University” to implement the recommendations. “Given that the recommenda-
tions do apply to academic policies and […] practices, will the individual tasked with [implementing] these recommendations have a working relationship with [governing bodies at McGill]?” asked Stewart-Kanigan. Dyens replied that no such individual had been hired as of yet, and said that the revision of University policies was the responsibility of the individual governing bodies. He assured Stewart-Kanigan that the recommended reforms would nonetheless be carried out in a transparent manner, noting that the timeline according to which the recommended changes will be implemented is available on the website. Stewart-Kanigan expressed her disappointment with Dyens’ comments in an interview with The Daily. “The University’s response was concerning, given that the recommendations of the Mental Health Working Group did extend to reforming academic policies, and the University did acknowledge that reforming academic policies was essential, but when asked [...] they skirted the question and suggested that [...] those recommendations would not be able to hold academic units to account,” she said. Budget forecast Provost Anthony Masi gave a presentation on McGill’s budget for 2015-16 and following years, the second of three to be presented to Senate this year. He warned to expect additional provincial budget cuts in the coming year, which will “exacerbate the university’s chronic underfunding.” Masi told senators that although Quebec’s overall financial situation is improving, the
Andy Wei | The McGill Daily provincial government “[has] no intention of stopping the pressure on both hospitals and education,” and McGill will likely face a budget cut of roughly $6 million when the provincial budget is announced in April. According to Masi, the restrictive measures announced in October, which included a hiring freeze for administrative and support staff positions and the postponement of non-essential equipment purchases, will remain in effect at least until the end of the year. “We have to make sure we respond to reductions in provincial funding [...] of our publicly underfunded university,” he said, adding that the University was seeking to “diversify and optimize some of [its] revenue sources.” Masi also noted that tuition would be indexed by 1.7 per cent in regulated faculties and by 5 per cent for international students in deregulated faculties. It’s unclear, he said, how the government will proceed with further tuition deregulation.
New programs, tenure regulations Senate approved three new Professional Development Certificates in the School of Continuing Studies, namely English for Healthcare, English for Social Services, and English for Healthcare Administration, as well as a Diploma in Entrepreneurship. Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures & Equity) Lydia White also presented new regulations on the process of appeal of denial of tenure, combining two sets of regulations into one and clarifying them. The revisions passed, after some discussion over the appointment and composition of committees to review tenure decisions. At the end of the meeting, Dean of Students André Costopoulos gave a brief progress report on the development of McGill’s sexual assault policy. Although the policy was previously expected to come to Senate for approval by the end of the academic year, Costopoulos said that it most likely only come for discussion, with potential approval to follow next year.
Project seeks feedback on use of space in Brown building
n February 16 and 18, McGill solicited student feedback on renovations to the Brown Student Services building. At the informational session on February 18, the lobby of the building was turned into a space where students and staff could come in and offer feedback on ideas for redesigning the building. Dubbed “Operation Brown Building,” the initiative began this semester as a collaboration between students in ARCH 514: Community Design Workshop, the Brown
Building Redesign Advisory Group (BBRAG), and the McGill Spaces Project (MSP). Operation Brown Building is intended to make the building a less confusing and more student-friendly space. “The Brown building was initially planned as a transit space from Doctor Penfield to McTavish as well as [...] a conduit to connect to SSMU. But, these [connecting] doors look like fire exits, they don’t look very approachable,” MSP Director and U3 Sustainability student Alan Chen told The Daily.
“Institutional memory has been lost over generations in the sense that people who are using the Brown Building right now don’t know that the space was initially planned to be used as a conduit,” he continued. These information sessions were the beginning of a consultative process that will be continued through similar events in March. “Right now, we are just introducing people to the idea, and then [during] reading week we will have workshops, actually have people sit
down, and we’ll show them options and they’ll pick,” Ila D’cruz, a Masters student studying Urban Design, explained to The Daily. “Once that’s done, by the end of the semester, we will come up with design proposals, and they’re actually going to do it in summer,” she said. According to D’cruz, the funds for the project have already been set aside by McGill. Chen emphasized that community input was key to the project. “We not only would appreciate, but would welcome and encourage
community members to come and leave their ideas and opinions.” Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) student Catherine Weatherall agreed that the Brown building could use improvement. “Every time I do come in here, it’s not the most inviting building, – you walk in and you don’t know where to go, and to be honest, I really don’t spend a lot of time here,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like our building, like a students’ building.” —Jill Bachelder and Janna Bryson
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News
February 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
A history of anti-blackness
Panelists discuss race and blackness in Quebec and Canada Peter Zhi The McGill Daily
D
uring the February 16 event titled “Discourses of Race: The United States, Canada, and Transnational Anti-Blackness,” panelists sought to educate the audience on the history of slavery in Canada and Quebec, tackle misconceptions about the issue, and attempt to find solutions to presentday racism in Quebec. The Black Students’ Network (BSN), the McGill Debating Union, and other groups organized the event. Moderated by Rachel Zellars and featuring McGill art history professor Charmaine Nelson, Saint Mary’s University sociology professor Darryl Leroux, and Montreal historian Frank Mackey, the event was attended by over 300 people. Mackey filled in for renowned scholar and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who could not attend due to an emergency. Nelson explained that the erasure of Canada’s history of slavery is caused in part by the failure of early education. “The education system here is broken, because all of [the students] come in knowing about the Underground Railroad [...] but
not that Quebec, or New France, practiced slavery since the 1600s for roughly two centuries,” she said. For Nelson, a large obstacle to educational reform is the academic research that forms the basis of what is taught. Although historical records detail the enslavement of black Canadians, those specifics have been ignored in academia. “The early secondary sources are horrifically racist, because they are not at all interested in the lives of the African slaves suffering,” said Nelson. “The issue is not the archives in themselves, it’s what our approaches will be, and how can we ask new questions of those archives?” Mackey argued that Canadian black history should be studied independently from black history in the U.S.. “There is a big difference between Canada, Quebec, and the States,” he said. “We have to stop seeing it on American terms.” Some of Mackey’s comments, however, angered audience members, and prompted Zellars to later write a response on her blog. According to the blog post, Zellars took issue with Mackey’s distinctions in kind between slavery in the U.S. and in Quebec – namely, his qualification
of slavery in Quebec as temperate – as well as his view that “the failure of knowledge and historical accuracy about Black life in Montreal was attributable to Black people.” “In stating that we are responsible for our own historical absence, you are overlooking the politics and histories of white domination and control of Canadian academic life and scholarly production,” wrote Zellars. “We cannot be referred to as ‘problems,’ as you did Monday night when [...] you uttered a sentence that began, ‘The problem with the Blacks…’” added Zellars, addressing Mackey’s comments during the panel. “It was degrading, and it must be named as such.” Leroux linked Quebec’s unwillingness to own up to its history of slavery to the recent resurgence of blackface in Quebec, where a satirical play by the Théâtre du Rideau Vert featured a white male actor in blackface playing the part of Montreal Canadiens player P. K. Subban. “Defenders of blackface would have us believe that anti-black racism is an American affair, something that we simply cannot be guilty of,” said Leroux. “They believe them-
CANADA’S LARGEST INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY AND STUDENT TRAVEL EXPO
selves to be victims of colonialism, themselves innocent in the contemporary racial role.” Nelson added to this argument that Quebec francophones’ perception of themselves as victims contributes to the erasure of black history, and is a key reason for this incident. “There is a way in which white francophones mobilize their marginalization and not their privilege in a way that shuts down conversation about race,” remarked Nelson. “That’s why you can have the director general of a legitimate theatre company coming out and saying that she feels humiliated, when she authorized performance of a white male actor in blackface to play a black male.” Leroux agreed, and thought it “quite an impressive feat” that the beneficiaries of French slavery can now confidently assert in the public sphere that they have no history of anti-black racism because they were conquered by the British. “Quebec’s racist discourse relies on a heavy dose of victimhood mixed with equally strong amounts of innocence,” said Leroux. According to Nelson, racial reconciliation in Quebec is inhibited by
social conventions. “We have been trained that to talk about race is to be racist,” said Nelson, “so you get shut down very quickly if you want to start that conversation.” Leroux added that the language used in this conversation is laced with racism. “We must avoid engaging with the discursive frameworks that currently exist because not only do they normalize the erasure and the ways in which anti-blackness has been fundamental to the foundation of Quebec, but perhaps more seriously legitimize its denials today.” Zellars later told The Daily, “I’m grateful for the way the conversation moved between all the panelists, and I knew in choosing them that they would each offer their perspectives to make the conversation complete.” BSN Political Coordinator Isabelle Oke found the event eye-opening. “There is more than meets the eye in this whole narrative that we try to bring up on race,” she said. U3 Arts student Alex Langer from the McGill Debating Union concurred. “Canada has its own history and its own ways of oppressing black people, and we should remember that and learn from that.”
SATURDAY
FEB 28 MONTREAL
MONTREAL CONVENTION CENTRE 1 pm -5 pm
www.studyandgoabroad.com
SEMINARS start at 12 noon
CALL FOR CANDIDATES
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING The AGM of the Daily Publications Society (DPS), publisher of The McGill Daily and Le Délit, will take place on
Thursday March 19th, McConnell Engineering Building, Room 204, 5:30pm Members of the DPS are cordially invited. The presence of candidates to the Board of Directors is mandatory.
The Daily Publications Society (DPS), publisher of The McGill Daily and Le Délit, is seeking candidates for
student directors on its Board. Positions must be filled by up to eight (8) McGill students duly registered during the current Winter term and able to sit until April 30, 2016. Board members gather at least once a month to discuss the management of the newspapers and make important administrative decisions.
Candidates should send a 500-word letter of intention to chair@dailypublications.org by 5:00 PM on March 19th. The nomination period opens on March 12th.
News
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Global challenges to women’s healthcare access
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Panelists emphasize relevance of socioeconomic disparities Arianee Wang The McGill Daily
A
round forty students gathered on February 16 at a panel entitled “Women’s Access to Healthcare: Policies and Issues,” to discuss current problems inhibiting women’s access to care in Canada and around the world. Hosted by the McGill chapters of the Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC) and of the Student Association for Medical Aid (SAMA), three speakers – Zoua Vang, Amm Quamruzzaman, and Simona Bignami – were invited to shed light on the problems currently affecting women’s access to healthcare around the globe, and the effect of policies on these issues. The panel discussion included talks from each speaker followed by audience questions. Zoua Vang, an assistant professor of sociology at McGill, primarily discussed the role of racial and ethnic determinants in infant and maternal health in the U.S. and Canada. In her talk, Vang stressed that socioeconomic status is a factor that majorly affects the study of access itself. “You can’t treat all women as this monolithic group,” said Vang. In her talk, she examined the ways in which racial, socioeconomic, and ethnic differences related to premature birth rates, which can vary significantly across populations. Vang demonstrated that among
Asian women, there are discrepancies in the health results of women from different countries. While aggregate numbers show that white and Asian women have similar premature birth rates, there are many ethnic variations at play. By dissecting this larger categorization, “we can see for a lot of these Southeast Asian groups like Hmong, Cambodian, Filipino, Lao, and Thai, their rates of pre-term birth are almost twice that of nonHispanic whites,” said Vang. Vang’s discussion also touched on the difficulties facing immigrant women in the U.S., where there is no universal healthcare. Quamruzzaman, a PhD candidate in sociology at McGill, spoke about political agency and women’s access to healthcare, specifically addressing cases in the Global South. “There are physical facilities, but access to those facilities [is] restricted, especially to women, those who are poor, and minority groups,” Quamruzzaman said. Furthermore, Quamruzzaman identified corruption as a serious problem facing healthcare systems in nations in the Global South. “Many who go to public clinics have to pay a bribe,” he explained. Quamruzzaman also noted how access to healthcare for women is influenced by systems of governance. “Women’s political participation is significantly linked with infant mortality rates. [...] It is imperative to improve their quality
Arianee Wang | The McGill Daily of governance by improving their healthcare service prospects.” Bignami, an associate professor of demography at Université de Montréal, spoke about the struggle of collecting medical data in certain countries. Bignami pointed out that a great deal of the data presented by Vang is not available for Sub-Saharan African countries. “For Sub-Saharan Africa, we are limited to [using] data from surveys,” Bignami noted. “Everything else that we know is biased insofar that people told us what they thought happened or what they thought we wanted to hear happened.”
Rebecca Kahn, a U2 Cognitive Science student, stated that she attended the panel because she is “interested in healthcare and its shortcomings in biomedicine, Westernized healthcare especially, and how this affects marginalized groups like women and racial minorities.” “The people running healthcare systems are white men who don’t know what women and cultural minorities need,” she added. Jessica Petrov, a graduate student in physiology, thought that “it was very informative – they seemed very well-versed on their topics.” She also added that she would have appreci-
ated “more background information for people who don’t know much about the socioeconomic factors.” Another Physiology student in attendance, Laurence Carrier, expressed the opinion that the panel discussion lacked cohesion, saying that “they were very fragmented, and I would have liked to see a theme.” While some attendees thought that the panel was unstructured and lacked focus, and neglected certain issues like trans women’s access to healthcare, others still found it helpful. “I thought they had some really interesting points that I hadn’t heard of before,” said Kahn.
Arts councillors discuss communal student spaces AUS voices support for ECOLE project and QPIRG McGill fee increase
Jasreet Kaur The McGill Daily
O
n February 18, the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Legislative Council met to discuss and vote on budget allocation, support for various campus organizations, and fee increases. Allocation of existing budget: space design or student services? President Ava Liu reported to Council plans to redesign spaces in Leacock and the Ferrier courtyard in order to make them more attractive, and to allow students to use them as communal spaces. Liu’s forecasted expenses were $180,000 staggered over three years, or $60,000 per year. Some were skeptical of the idea, including Arts Senator Jacob Greenspon.
“This is such a huge sum of money that I think we should have a larger discussion before spending it on a couple of space projects,” Greenspon said. “A lot of the money can be put toward student services.” Equity Commissioner Vareesha Khan agreed with Greenspon, and said that a survey should be conducted among constituents so that they have a say in where AUS’s money is being spent. “There’s concern if what we’re doing is relevant to the students. There’s concern from constituents that we don’t represent people enough,” Khan said. AUS supports QPIRG McGill referendum, ECOLE project Council passed a motion supporting the Educational Community Living Environment (ECOLE)
project in its efforts to promote sustainable lifestyles for students on campus. In the motion, Council agreed to publicize ECOLE among Arts students, mandating that “the AUS grant ECOLE booking privileges under the External portfolio.” Council also passed a motion to endorse Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill’s upcoming referendum, including a fee increase from $3.75 to $5.00.QPIRG McGill is seeking a fee increase to compensate for inflation, as its last fee increase took place in 2009. Field studies fees Timothy Johns, the academic director for the Canadian Field Studies in Africa (CFSIA) program, addressed Council regarding the program’s financial sustainability. The CFSIA course brings interest-
ed students to places in East Africa to study sustainable development. Johns attributed the financial instability to depreciation in the Canadian dollar by almost 10 per cent since the program’s budget was last approved in November 2014, and said that although the program had excess funds in the previous years to offset the fluctuations, the funds were wiped out in the current year. To ensure the continuity of the program, according to Johns, it is essential that the fees for the program be increased. “In order for it to be self-funding, we need a fee increase of $3,004, which raises the fees [to $15,430],” Johns said. “We’re obviously in a risky situation and we realize it’s a huge increase, but if the program’s not self-funded, it won’t run.” A motion to increase the fee passed.
Council also passed a motion for the Northern Field Studies Program to increase its fee from $5,000 to $12,000 for interested students due to change in location from Schefferville, Quebec to Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut. Other motions Council also passed a motion to fix a redundancy in its electoral bylaws with regard to holding subsequent referenda on fees instituted by referendum. Other motions passed included one in support of AUS departments working with the Ethical Business Practices Committee to ensure that employees are treated fairly, and another in support of the Active Bystander project, through which sexual awareness workshops will be held in order to create a safe space for students.
Financial Statements April 30, 2014
Independent Auditor's Report To the Directors of Daily Publications Society Société de Publication du Daily We have audited the accompanying financial statements of Daily Publications Society / Société de Publication du Daily Organization, which comprise the statement of financial position as at April 30, 2014, and the statements of operations, changes in net assets and cash flows for the year then ended, and a summary of significant accounting policies and other explanatory information. Management's Responsibility for the Financial Statements Management is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of these financial statements in accordance with Canadian accounting standards for not-for-profit organizations, and for such internal control as management determines is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error. Auditor's Responsibility Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these financial statements based on our audit. We conducted our audit in accordance with Canadian generally accepted auditing standards. Those standards require that we comply with ethical requirements and plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free from material misstatement. An audit involves performing procedures to obtain audit evidence about the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The procedures selected depend on the auditor's judgment, including the assessment of the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to fraud or error. In making those risk assessments, the auditor considers internal control relevant to the entity's preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the entity's internal control. An audit also includes evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our audit opinion. Opinion In our opinion, the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of Daily Publications Society / Société de Publication du Daily Organization as at April 30, 2014, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the year then ended in accordance with Canadian accounting standards for not-for-profit organizations.
Montreal, Québec October 15, 2014 1CPA
auditor, CA, public accountancy permit No. A112505
T.514.934.3400 Richter S.E.N.C.R.L./LLP 1981 McGill College Mtl (QC) H3A 0G6 www.richter.ca
12,175
285,109
272,934
Daily Publications Society Société de Publication du Daily
8,586
293,695
Advertising Students' fees
Printing and production Selling General and administrative Financial
394,081
428,905
175,512 88,217 121,360 2,568
182,042 89,603 145,506 1,892
387,657
419,043
6,424
9,862
Interest income
2,162
2,313
Excess of revenues over expenses
8,586
12,175
-375,000 See accompanying notes
-
137,392 291,513
Excess of revenues over expenses from operations
150,000 Balance - end of year
75,000 150,000 Balance - beginning of year
99,630 294,451
Expenses
See accompanying notes and additional information
Excess of revenues over expenses
Operations reserve $ Emergency reserve $
Statement of Changes in Net Assets For the Year Ended April 30, 2014
Daily Publications Society Société de Publication du Daily
2013 $
Revenues
58,533
12,528 (3,942)
2014 $
10,162
46,005
285,109
Statement of Operations For the Year Ended April 30, 2014
14,104
Invested in capital assets $
Unrestricted $
2014 Total $
2013 Total $
Montréal, Toronto
-4-
Commentary
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
The trouble with words
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How saying ‘ethnic’ is dehumanizing and alienating
way is commonplace, yet this normalization is what leads to tokenization, hostility and – further down the line – racist immigration laws and institutionalized discrimination. Using the word ‘ethnic’ is a gross oversimplification of the diversity of cultures and
traditions in U.S. and Canada. And for people who belong to cultures outside the norm, the word is dehumanizing. For myself, when I see my own culture trivialized by white Canadian and American norms, I feel that my culture and identity are inferior – something
delights” when referring to food of which to be ashamed. This is internalized racism, from Vihn’s Café is such an ugly and it causes people to erase their reminder that non-white cultures own identities in order to assimi- are treated as unfamiliar, foreign, late and survive. In this way, white and inherently different. Euronorms are insidious – they swal- pean food isn’t othered in this low non-white identities and spew way, which says a lot. I often see them back out as watered-down, people explicitly distinguishing trivialized, bite-sized ‘ethnicity.’ between European food, whether They also force people to internal- it be Italian, Greek, French, or ize these cultural norms, which anything else. Italian and Greek then alienate them from their food are rarely referred to under own culture. No one is technically the same category as ‘Mediterforcing anyone to conform to the ranean food,’ and when they are, prevailing culture, but people find this narrow definition most likely themselves changing who they are does not include Libyan or Egypbecause it is too painful to be an tian food. Foods from European outlier in a society that only pays countries are referred to by their proper name, whereas ‘ethnic’ lip-service to multiculturalism. This is why growing up in the foods are grouped together unU.S. and Canada is hard when der a non-white blob that implies you’re not part of the domi- something spicy and foreign. This nant culture. I don’t necessarily is only one example; however, it identify as being East Asian, but exemplifies the kind of racial esI’m forced to take on that iden- sentialism that alienates cultural tity because of how I look. I’m identities and erases cultural forced into recognizing the fact self-determination. The word ‘ethnic’ is a barrier that I look ‘ethnic,’ even though that’s not how I feel. I’ve spent to non-white cultures being acmy whole life in Canada and the cepted in U.S and Canada. It’s the U.S., my first language is English, line that denotes the end of Euyet people still ask me if I’m from ropean comfort zone, the end of China. I’m not. I’m pushed into familiarity, the end of all things accepting an East Asian iden- white. The word ‘ethnic’ is a retity, because of how I look – even flexive othering mechanism that though it feels alien to me. Why stems from underlying racist can’t I be American and Korean structures. It props up the dehuat the same time, and not have to manization and stereotyping of entire groups of people, creating sacrifice cultural diversity? Whether or not assimilation the illusion that people from ‘ethhappens voluntarily, it’s easier to nic’ backgrounds are somehow all conform to the dominant culture the same, or that they lack comrather than struggle with identity plexity. It’s time we stopped usissues and try to figure out how ing it, and start referring to peoyou fit into your community. So ple and their cultures in the ways when I encounter casual use of the they prefer. term ‘ethnic,’ I’m reminded of all these confusing identity struggles, Isabel Lee is a U2 Political Sciand how different I am from the ence and Philosophy student. To so-called norm. reach her, please email isabel.lee@ That’s why the phrase “ethnic mail.mcgill.ca.
from our libraries in any way. This would not make sense for a unique, print-based, and largely non-English language collection like that of the Islamic Studies Library. The study is largely being conducted because we are physically running out of space for collections, and many materials are being stored in less-than-optimal conditions such as the Currie Gym basement. In addition, our libraries currently provide seat-
ing space for only 11 per cent of our student population, while the North American minimum recommendation is around 25 per cent. Financially, it costs approximately $4.80 per year to keep a single print book on a shelf due to continued facility, retrieval, and administrative expenses. In comparison, a book in high-density storage costs less than $1 per year. Thus, traditional open stacks are becoming unsustainable for a
growing collection. This is a reality of research libraries across the country that have turned to highdensity or off-site storage options. While the use of print materials varies by discipline, general stats on print check-outs show a downward trend that cannot simply be explained by books being consulted in-branch or being more available online. One of the challenges of the study will be to balance the need for print browsing and fast re-
Isabel Lee Commentary Writer Author’s Note: I use the terms ‘non-white’ and ‘white’ in this article because racialized terms are widely used in the Canadian and American contexts, and I want to make it clear that the term ‘ethnic’ originates from historically racist structures. People of colour have always been arbitrarily grouped together and discriminated against. The dichotomy between ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ has forced me to use this language to denote how much of an othering effect this division creates.
W
hen I saw that the McGill Food and Dining Services website described the Vietnamese food offered at Vihn’s Café as “ethnic delights,” I was shocked. Why didn’t they just refer to it as Vietnamese food? It’s not as if pho noodles are so ‘foreign’ and ‘exotic’ in U.S. and Canada. The use of “ethnic delights” disturbs me because it indicates a broader problem related to using terms like ‘ethnic,’ ‘foreign,’ and ‘alien’ to describe people and cultures that don’t belong to the dominant white culture in Canada and the U.S.. It reinforces the assumption that this culture is the norm. The word ‘ethnic’ is a political term used to alienate cultures that do not conform to the dominant one; it essentializes nonwhite cultures as abnormal. When we describe a non-white cultural product as ‘ethnic,’ we are effectively creating an ‘us versus them’ dynamic. Calling food, fashion, or anything else ‘ethnic’ is code for saying that minority groups are strange or exotic. Although those who use the word may not mean anything by it, it’s still harmful. Exocitizing cultures in this
Alice Shen | The McGill Daily
Letters
Submit your own: letters@mcgilldaily.com
Missing the mark While I absolutely believe in standing up for our smaller branch libraries in the face of austerity measures, the piece, “In defense of our Islamic Studies library” (February 16, Culture, page 19) misrepresents the goals of the Library’s Feasibility Study. While the project is absolutely exploring high-density storage options for collections, the goal is not to remove all books
trieval with more efficient storage. The Feasibility Study does not seek a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to budgetary and space restraints, but rather to create library spaces that better serve their varied users. This includes a desire to maintain and showcase our important print collections, such as that of the ISL, rather than to hide them away. — Erin Sobat, Library Improvement Fund Coordinator at SSMU
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Commentary
February 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
A year of nothing
City Year, and programs like it, are not enough for public schools Jill Bachelder The McGill Daily
I
could tell you stories of chocolate milk fights, fourth grade drama, and after-school dance parties that would have you rolling on the floor, laughing with tears in your eyes; or of suicide confessions of nineyear-olds and bullying violence that would make your heart bleed. Working as a corps member in New York City for the educational non-profit City Year gave me so many opportunities and memories, and yet, since finishing the program, I have had to come to terms with the fact that the work that my peers and I did was not nearly enough to overcome the massive barriers that our students faced. Between a system that was working against us and the students, and the enormous problems within the organization, truly helping the students was impossible. City Year is one of the most wellknown educational non-profits in the U.S., and it has a huge amount of power. It’s present in hundreds of schools across the country – and even in two international locations: in London and Johannesburg. Every day, I wore the logos of Aramark, Bain Capital, and Pepsi on my back, huge companies that sponsor the program every year. City Year convinces them that an investment in the program is something that will change the students’ lives, and help fix the public school system. The basic assumptions of City Year are noble but inherently flawed. The program follows the ‘whole school, whole community, whole child’ model, which assumes that teachers and schools are already providing a great education, and that what students need is more ‘human capital,’ or valuable skills and experience, to improve the overall school environment. But this isn’t what students need. While public schools in the U.S. are not the cesspool of inadequacy and ignorance that many believe them to be, most of them face the challenges that come with being located in poorer neighbourhoods; including poor funding, high student-to-teacher ratios, and students with serious problems at home. For every motivated teacher who teaches in a public school, there is another who is disillusioned by how hard it is, and doesn’t believe in their students. In the school I worked at in Brooklyn, as well as the vast majority of City Year schools, bullying is rampant, students are depressed and suicidal, and some have serious mental health or behavioural issues. All of these are acute problems that stem from the broader school system. It’s probably true that if each
Alice Shen | The McGill Daily corps member worked intimately with every student to improve their performance, and if the team were also able to revamp the school environment, then the school system would be greatly improved. However, looking for a way to cope with the overwhelming behaviour problems, many corps members learn how to deal with their students from the teachers in the school, who usually just resort to yelling and empty threats. And when this does happen, the corps members are only contributing to the overall system, and their presence has little benefit in the school.
ate into the next year, are always a struggle. Often, only a tiny sliver of the total student population manages to pass. The students who fail are sent to summer school, but even after they take the test there, most of them still fail. In the end, because schools have nowhere near the resources they need to make everyone who failed repeat a year, the administration ends up arbitrarily deciding who moves on to the next grade and who is held back. Furthermore, the year I was working for City Year, the curriculum that the teachers were assigned did not match with President
Most of all, though, even the most idealistic person I worked with could see that the work we were doing was no match for either the failures of the school’s administration, or the broader issues with the public school system in general. Thursdays at our school were dubbed ‘Kaplan Thursdays’ – referring to the Kaplan TestPrep books – and were dedicated in full to test preparation, with three hours of English in the morning, and three hours of math in the afternoon. These standardized tests, used in all New York schools to determine which students gradu-
Barack Obama’s new Common Core curriculum, on which the standardized tests were based, drastically reducing the students’ chances of succeeding. In the suburbs of New York City, when parents were notified by the school that this was happening, and they boycotted the test by not sending their students to school in protest. The boycott never happened at our school, but we had even more issues. Ours was a mayor’s truancy school, meaning that the absence rate was greater than 60 per cent annually. The administration al-
I am not being overly cynical in claiming that the work of City Year amounts to nothing more than a light dusting of sweetness on a pile of manure.
lowed a student, who had moved just one month before from Bangladesh, and who did not English, to enroll, even though another nearby school had a Bangladeshi English as a Second Language (ESL) program, which our school didn’t have. This was so that they could get the money from the government for accepting a new student. How could we, as corps members, possibly compete with this overwhelming neglect? How could my presence in the classroom during the hellish Thursday test prep ever fight the systemic issues that were keeping these kids from success? When you speak like this at City Year, they call you a pessimist. They say that you must think more broadly, that the smaller goals that your kids meet every day amount to a great deal of good. But this doesn’t add up. One million minus five is still basically a million, and I am not being overly cynical in claiming that the work of City Year amounts to nothing more than a light dusting of sweetness on a pile of manure. Of course, the statistics that City Year shoves in your face to prove that they are making an impact are quite impressive at first glance. However, if you look again, the numbers are not so impressive. For example, saying that “82 per cent of of third- through fifth-graders improved their scores on literacy assessments” is highly misleading. These numbers are based on reading tests given at three points in the year by corps members in elemen-
tary schools. If a student begins at a first-grade reading level and ends the year at a second-grade level, this counts as an improvement – even if they are moving on to fourth grade. This ignores the very real problem that the student is still far behind where they are supposed to be. All in all, the vaunted statistics don’t reflect the fact that the work of City Year still leaves the performance gap largely unfilled. Basically, City Year is nothing more than a minimally effective non-governmental organization, hiding behind a facade of idealist rhetoric. It’s fighting a good cause, but in a way that is misleading and inefficient. I am all for programs like City Year to exist, but those alone will never be enough. Schools don’t have the money for enough books. Students are not evaluated for their eagerness or potential, but by the scores that Kaplan assigns them. And our society and the government continue to ignore the amazing, talented children trapped in a system that is failing them. Faced with all these problems, organizations like City Year are powerless to create any kind of large-scale change. City Year should stop pretending it’s a fleshed-out solution, and admit that it’s nothing more than a band-aid. Jill Bachelder is a News editor at The Daily, but the views expressed here are her own. To contact her, please email commentary@mcgilldaily.com.
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BANFF TIDES SEAN MIYAJI ACRYLIC ON PINE
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WINTER AT UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SITING NI ACRYLIC ON CANVAS GREY WOLF SEAN MIYAGI SCRATCHBOARD + WATERCOLOUR
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Features
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
DIVERSIFYING ENVIRONMENTALISM Rethinking what it means to be sustainable Written by Subhanya Sivajothy Visuals by Alice Shen
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February 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
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he concept of sustainability is held up by three major pillars, which are social, environmental, and economic. ‘Mainstream’ environmental movements have sought to adapt in a way that intersects these three pillars. However, studies are increasingly showing the lack of diversity within environmental sectors and related mainstream movements. This homogeneity in environmental movements limits not only their accessibility, but also their effects. Issues related to the environment tend to have disproportionate effects on those who face economic or social oppression. For example, changes in water distribution may asymmetrically affect someone in vulnerable areas, more dependent on land and agriculture than a city dweller in Canada. Food insecurity caused by climate change affects those who already experience poverty more significantly. Those living in poverty will be much more vulnerable to detrimental environmental factors such as poor water quality, polluted air, and hazardous waste – all of which are exacerbated by climate change. The first step in rethinking sustainability is understanding our own place and privilege in the movement, as well as being aware of the different ways in which others might experience environmental change.
Positioning ourselves within the movement Mainstream environmental movements are commonly assumed to be paired with anti-oppressive movements that seek to combat ongoing colonialism; however, part of the problem lies with how colonial privileges have sustained themselves in the movements without being opposed. Sierra Club and Earth Justice, for example, only recently started working toward more diversification of their projects. One way colonial legacies can be seen is in the way we view land as a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. When settlers introduced the system of private property in Canada, many Indigenous cultures did not believe that pieces of land could be owned by individuals – a struggle that Indigenous cultures worldwide are still facing. “Land is a fictitious commodity,” Nicolas Kosoy, an economics professor at McGill, told The Daily. “A commodity is something we build for trade; we need to reassess this. We cannot continue expanding the commodity front.” Aldo Leopold, an American environmentalist who was an important figure in the field of environmental ethics, wrote a highly influential book in 1949 called A Sand County Almanac. In an essay from the book called “The Land Ethic,” Leopold argues that humans need to have mutual respect for the earth, and that the concept of community needs to be expanded to include humans, animals, plants, as well as abiotic elements. He also explains that while the economic privileges of land have been recognized, the obligations that humans have toward the land have not. Currently, these views persist in the way that mainstream environmentalists may view themselves as defenders of the land. Although biodiversity and maintaining ecosystems is a deep concern, some of the theory on environmentalism has been motivated by emotional currents that have been expressed in romantic attitudes toward nature. Environmental romanticism developed in the late 18th century, and still provides an objectified view of nature
as something ‘pure’ and unaffected by humans. Romanticism doesn’t value the environment for its own sake, but rather as a projection of human desires and cultural values, which may stem from believing that humans have ownership over it. This is problematic, because the disconnectedness doesn’t allow for humans to have a sustainable role within nature. “Environmental movements continue to be underpinned by colonial relationships to land, and are not without guilt of perpetuating those relationships in their work,” wrote Claire Stewart-Kanigan, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP University Affairs, in an email to The Daily. Stewart-Kanigan noted that romanticism is not only seen in the perceived relationship with the land, but with regard to other cultures as well. Mainstream environmentalist movements have often been criticised as romanticizing and appropriating Indigenous knowledge to serve the movement’s goals, while neglecting to rectify fundamental problems of colonialism – such as returning land to Indigenous peoples instead of seeking to ‘protect’ it. Examples such as these also depict one of the root problems that plague environmentalist movements: the issue of privileged people speaking over those who are directly affected by environmental issues. In fact, many of the most effective cases of environmental resistance have been through direct local action, because community development and collective efforts have a greater effectiveness in creating appropriate solutions. One example is the Green Belt Movement that was founded by Wangari Maathai, a professor at the University of Nairobi. Along with other local women, Maathai planted trees in rural Kenya to confront the gendered poverty, deforestation, and erosion that was destroying the land. It was successful because it involved the action and participation of local members, and it took a holistic approach, combining environmental conservation and communitybuilding. Her actions are also seen as part of the ecofeminist movement, which connects feminism and environmentalism by linking the oppression of women to the exploitation of nature.
stood as having inherent values and responsibilities as well. One issue where the intersection of values and data can be seen is within the ‘green consumption’ or ‘ethical consumption’ strategies, where consumers are mindful of the environmental impact of what they consume. Looking at alternative consumption simplistically, we can conclude that it is more eco-friendly; however, having the privilege to alter one’s consumption is complicated with the recognition of race and class privileges. Often, green consumption includes switching products or finding another supplier, though this might result in higher monetary costs. It is, therefore, an option only available to people who are able to pay. “Unfortunately, certain forms of consumption, such as buying local, driving a hybrid, or even voluntary simplicity, are often conferred moral weight, despite the fact that the ability to make such choices relies on the systemic unearned privileges that go with being white and middle-class,” writes Gregory Mengel, a social justice educator, in his editorial on privilege in the environmental movement published on the Pachanama Alliance website. Environmental strategies, such as alternative food choices, have implicit social impacts, since much of these values and choices are culturally very specific. Strategies such as green consumption, although better for the environment, depict only a limited spectrum of what one can do for environmental activism. Being an ecologically-mindful citizen shouldn’t have to equate with good consumption. These strategies are not inclusive or diverse, and don’t acknowledge the inequality of the capitalist economy and its inherent structures of privilege. Kosoy outlined some of the societal and environmental costs of our economic system. “We tend to see economic processes as ever-growing, but ecological processes have [...] feedback loops that maintain [their] check and balances within,” he said. He also noted that the social and environmental costs of this come in many different dimensions. There are many consequences of economic ‘growth’: from ecological impacts, such as climate change, to social impacts, such as poverty.
Environmental destruction is driven by the need to control people and spaces — we cannot repeat those same actions in order to reduce it. In order to make a significant impact through environmental movements, we need to think more critically about our position and not erase the diversity of experiences that people have when facing environmental issues. Environmental destruction is driven by the need to control people and spaces – we cannot repeat those same actions in order to reduce it.
The privilege of choice Ethics have a role not only in social and ecological sustainability, but also within the economics as well. Furthermore, despite usually being thought of in monetary terms only, economics need to be under-
Currently, by neglecting ecological limits, we are putting the capacity of systems to evolve at risk. Not only are we eroding environmental resources, but we are also eroding our cultural diversity via assimilation, which in a way is eroding humanity’s evolutionary capacity to respond to sudden shocks. Evolutionary mechanisms seen in nature function through diversity, because in the multitude of different responses to environmental stress, communities can find a way to adapt to the changes. By homogenizing society, or by acknowledging only one perspective, we are reducing the diversity of options at the societal level, and are therefore destroying the resilience of our
society and our ecosystems. Kosoy also pointed out that the problem is the idea that businesses believe that they can have a ‘triple bottom line,’ aiming to win socially, economically, and environmentally. However, if you maximize one dimension you cannot maximize any other. “We can’t optimize [or] maximize three dimensions at the same time, that is a mathematical impossibility,” said Kosoy. “There are obvious trade-offs that nobody makes explicit.” “Many environmental issues are rooted in the poor understanding of the greater consequences of manufacturing and consumption trends, and so the solution lies in mobilizing people,” said Lily Minkova, a member of MyVision, a social business club at McGill. She commented that the immense environmental degradation of the last century is overwhelming, which may even paralyze people into non-action or into willful ignorance. However, instead of focusing on the guilt of each person’s ecological footprint, social business focuses on the empowerment of people, inspiring them to change, which in turn can inspire change on a greater scale. Shona Watt is the owner of a social business in Montreal called Tiny Homestead, which runs workshops on ecological and sustainable living. Last year, at the Post-Graduate Students’ Society of McGill’s (PGSS) Green Drinks event, she gave a talk on whether capitalist companies, who value the pursuit of profits over the environment, can ever be sustainable. During that talk, Watt brought up that many companies have an incentive to do ‘good’ and be sustainable, because it increases customer satisfaction, but that it is ultimately another strategy for making money. Buisnesses in a capitalist system are inherently in conflict with sustainability, and we need to address when we play the role of the consumer and try, at the same time, to participate in ethical consumption.
Moving past the status quo In the process of reaching a higher level of sustainability, the overarching challenge is reconciling our ‘infinite aspirations’ on our finite planet. “We’re at a race between our environmental potency and our selfawareness,” said Andrew Revkin, a New York Times journalist, in his recent talk at McGill entitled “Charting a Good Path in the Age of Us.” Revkin proposed that the human population can be compared to bacteria on a petri dish smeared with agar. The bacteria grow until they receive feedback from the waste and there isn’t enough food, and then the population stops growing. “You’d think we’d be smarter than that,” said Revkin. For decades, scientists have been saying that we as humanity are heading toward the “edge to the petri dish” – our planetary limits. They have attempted to quantify the planet’s biophysical limitations that place restrictions on our resources. This resulted in a list of nine planetary boundaries, as outlined by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which are: stratospheric ozone depletion, loss of biosphere integrity, chemical pollution, climate change, ocean acidification, fresh water consumption, land system change, nitrogen/phosphorus flows to bodies of water, and atmospheric aerosol loading. 28 internationally-renowned scientists have made it clear that humans can thrive
Features only within the boundaries of these criteria, and that crossing these boundaries could result in irreversible detrimental environmental changes. Unfortunately, our situation is already fairly severe: we’ve crossed four of these nine boundaries already. All of these issues are backed by years, if not decades, worth of scientific research; however, it doesn’t seem to be inspiring much progress. Revkin pointed out that the biggest enemy of climate change is inertia. Humans have a tendency to prefer
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily tion,’ may at times end in results that are limited to certain cultures, and exclusonary to those that are not seen as part of the globalized mainstream. There are societies on this planet that have lived sustainably for millennia, and they should not be ignored for the sake of capitalist thought. In 2003, a paper called “Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience” in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment highlighted that it is not the biodiversity or the number of species in an ecosystem
Environmental movements continue to be underpinned by colonial relationships to land, and are not without guilt of perpetuating those relationships in their work. Claire Stewart-Kanigan, SSMU VP University Affairs sticking with the status quo, even when it is clearly irrational. Maintaining the status quo is a very easy task. The desire to uphold the status quo not only strongly affects our interests, but also our lifestyles, which determine the way we approach and combat climate change. Environmental movements should overcome their status quo, and be actively involved in making diverse, ecologically-conscious decisions. Mainstream environmental movements need to be aware of how the strategies of combatting climate change, such as the previously mentioned ‘green consump-
that we need to focus on, but rather the response diversity to environmental distress. The response diversity is what ultimately leads to resilience. Similarly, Revkin noted that we can use the same concepts in society when trying to combat climate change. Having multiple responses to the same threat is the key. However, diversifying the movement is not merely taking peripheral actions to include people of colour and people who do not associate with the standard, white middleclass in the West within the mainstream environmental movement. It is a
matter of putting lasting investment into standing in true solidarity with those who are oppressed and whose voices may not be heard. When engaging with the environment and ecology, the concept of the collective has unfathomable importance. Scientifically, one can see the interconnected, delicate systems within nature that all have effects on one another. It is important to place ourselves in those systems as well and understand everyone’s role within it. In fact, many movements are already taking this approach. In parts of South America, buen vivir is a social philosophy that is taking hold as a starting point for new perspectives, in direct opposition to Western capitalist thought. Loosely translated from Spanish as “good living,” buen vivir describes a way of doing things as a community, in a state of coexistence with other humans as well as nature. Building on its Andean, Indigenous past, it rejects the notion of ‘natural capital,’ which gives monetary values to environmental goods such as water and forests. It also rejects the notion of ‘human capital,’ where essentially people are reduced to their economic value. This type of movement calls for a significant overhaul of the capitalist modes of production we have today – especially with regards to primary production. Other examples of social movements in response to environmental issues include transition towns and the idea of ‘degrowth,’ where less is more. Transition towns are community-oriented projects that are appearing in diverse communities all over
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the world. People attempt to build ecological resilience through local initiatives that transition away from high levels of energy consumption and carbon emissions. The goal is to find happiness through collective and non-consumptive means. Degrowth is built on the idea of reducing consumption drastically and going ‘back to basics.’ It is opposed to the idea of economic ‘growth,’ and the mainstream idea of sustainable development. Conceiving development as a type of growth is incompatible with, and unsustainable in a world that is already environmentally stressed. Neither of the movements are completely inclusive either, however, as they are directed to people who can actually participate in ‘degrowth’ due to their excessive prior ‘growth,’ or who have the financial means to start up a transition town. Diversity in sustainability needs to do more than simply reaching out – the idea of community needs to be understood in its broadest sense. In order to create the space to act in solidarity and as a collective, we need to recognize our own position and decolonize our understandings and presumptions, within what we consider to be the mainstream environmental movement. Many of the systems that we currently have in place are completely at odds with the biophysical boundaries of the planet, yet many cultures have already developed systems that live comfortably within them. Environmentalist movements shouldn’t assimilate and erase marginalized voices, but rather integrate diversity and actively participate in reciprocity as well.
Sci+Tech
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
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Nutrition should not be this hard Researchers call for a better labelling system
Zapaer Alip The McGill Daily
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ou are what you eat, but what happens when you don’t really know what you’re eating? It’s no secret that we are terrible at estimating the amount of calories we consume, as well as the amount of sugar, salt, and fat in our food. This is why nearly all processed foods are mandated to have nutritional information displayed on the packaging. Now ask yourself, when was the last time you checked the nutrition fact table on any of the processed foods you bought? The resulting discrepancy between the calories we think we consume and the actual amount has resulted in an epidemic of over-consumption. According to Statistics Canada, 50 per cent of women and 70 per cent of men in Canada consume more calories than needed on an average day. The health implications are worrying; 6 in 10 Canadians are either overweight or obese, and almost 8 in 10 Canadians are consuming salt at levels associated with an increased risk of negative health outcomes such as heart disease. The current labelling system Naturally, everyone wants to know what they are eating, and nutritional information like the salt, sugar, and fat content could significantly influence our decision-making when it comes to choosing what food products end up in our basket and eventually inside of us. The current nutrition label system regulated by Health Canada is the Nutrition Facts table. It provides a lot of useful information including the sodium, fat, vitamin, and fibre content in terms of the Percent Daily Value — the proportion of what the item represents in terms of the amount you need each day – in addition to sugar, protein, and calorie content. In theory, consumers should easily be able to use the Nutrition Facts table to make healthy choices. A recently published study by researchers at McGill found the exact opposite. According to the researchers, the Nutrition Facts table is both ineffective and too complex to be used while shopping. It provides too much information and does not resolve any nutrition conflicts, leaving consumers to make complex decisions such as choosing between high sugar versus low sodium content. The study entitled “The effects of nutrition labelling on consumer
Alice Shen | The McGill Daily food choice: a psychological experiment and computational model,” was conducted by Peter Helfer, a PhD student in psychology and neuroscience, and Thomas Shultz, a professor of psychology. They compared four different nutrition labelling systems: the currentlyused Nutrition Facts table, the NuVal label, the UK Traffic Light Signpost label, and a binary label (heart symbol or health check) indicating healthier food items. The research study The independent study, funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), assessed the different labelling systems based on their validity, if the labels lead to healthier choices, and usability, or how easy they are to use. In an interview with The Daily, Shultz explained that the study involved psychological and computational parts. The psychological part of the experiment focused on measuring people’s ability to compare the nutritive value of food. To start their experiment, Shultz and Helfer created an online survey and advertised it on food and nutrition-related websites. Participants in the online survey had to choose between pairs of food based on product images, taste scores, and one of the four nutrition labelling systems. They also had to answer factual questions to make sure they were not making up their data.
“In each case, participants were asked to choose between four food items, either four different yogurts or four different cereals. There were two additional manipulated variables: time limit (20 seconds or unlimited) and accompanying visual information (showing the actual product photo or generic clip art that indicated only the food category – cereal or yogurt),” said Shultz. The computational model of the decision-making provided insights into why people made the choices they made. The researchers used decision field theory (DFT), which is considered to be one of the most successful models of human decision-making. DFT works with the idea that decision-making is about comparing options to your wanted outcomes and in the process gradually building up preference for an option. Once a certain threshold is reached, the decision is made. One of the insights gained is that time didn’t affect nutrition choices because preferences often emerged quite early. The computer neural network models were provided with the same information as the participants and generated many of the same choices, Shultz said the computer model “captured the general qualitative pattern in data.” In short, the computer-generated data and the results from the psychological component came to the same conclusions. The bi-
nary labels such as the health check are fast to use but also tend to produce not-so-nutritious choices. The Traffic Light labels take more time to use and result in only a mediocre increase in nutrition. The most commonly used Nutrition Facts table takes the most time and results in the least nutritious choices. The NuVal label was found to take the least time to use and result in the most nutritious choices. A much better alternative NuVal is a novel labelling scheme in several respects; it remains one of the only nutrition labelling schemes to have been scientifically tested for validity, and it does not classify foods in the traditional categories of healthy and unhealthy. Instead, it provides a score on a scale from 1 to 100, based on the Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI) algorithm. The score is positively influenced by the presence of fibres, vitamins, minerals, and the quality of fats and proteins; and negatively influenced by saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, added sugar, and cholesterol. In 2011, researchers at Harvard published a paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine which concluded that people who ate according to the NuVal scores would be less likely to be overweight or obese, and less likely to suffer from chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer,
and diabetes. However, several of the researchers who conducted the validity studies are from Harvard and Yale. Both universities are involved with NuVal to varying degrees, with Harvard’s School of Public Health using the algorithm to conduct its own research and Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center having funded the initiative to create NuVal. According to Shultz, “NuVal is fairly unique in considering the positive aspects of food, which provides an important advantage over other labelling schemes. Many nutrition-labelling schemes focus only on the negative aspects, in the manner of warning labels on tobacco products.” NuVal has its flaws and is in no way is a perfect system. For one, the ONQI algorithm developed by experts at prestigious universities such as Harvard and Yale is kept secret as it is patent pending. It also poses challenges to mainstream adaptation, as Shultz points out that “sensible governments are unlikely to mandate or fund research into anything that is not transparent.” Additionally, NuVal is limited in its scope to only products and does not provide any information for overall dietary quality. While it makes it easy to compare between same food types like two brands of pretzels or between different food types like apple juice and strawberry yogurt, it doesn’t provide any information as to how it will impact your overall diet. The future of nutrition labelling Ideally, there would be an alternative labelling scheme like NuVal, but more transparent. This highlights the need for continued research in finding a scheme that is both easy to use and actually beneficial to your health. The research by Shultz and Helfer, which started out as a side project, highlights the need for science-based evidence when it comes to implementing nutrition labelling schemes. With advances in computational modeling, it is no longer too expensive nor difficult to assess the nutrition and health merits of different schemes as proven by this recent study. Consumers are directly harmed when essential nutrition information is not provided in an accessible manner. You shouldn’t have to be a dietician to make nutritional choices. It’s time to radically revamp the current labelling scheme, because simply put it’s evident it wasn’t designed with consumers in mind.
Sci+Tech
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
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A dose of reality
Why better science communication is needed in the discourse around vaccines Rackeb Tesfaye The McGill Daily
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et’s be honest, do you remember the last time you were vaccinated? For many students, unless you study a subject like immunology, chances are you don’t tend to think about vaccines on a daily basis – or at all. However, the vaccination issue has been at the forefront of media coverage lately, due to incidents like the recent outbreak of mumps in the NHL, or the measles outbreak at Disneyland California, which infected over 100 people, including ten confirmed individuals living in Lanaudière, Quebec. In fact, none of the 10 individuals from Quebec infected with measles had been vaccinated, due to religious or philosophical reasons. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are safe and effective, there continues to be a prevalent and dangerous public distrust in them. A recent poll found that 20 per cent of Ontarians believe certain immunizations, such the shot to prevent Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR), causes autism. While this belief is shared by more people in the U.S., it is contributing to the reappearance of preventable diseases, as many parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. Much of this anti-vaccination movement can be traced back to a 1998 study published by disgraced researcher Andrew Wakefield, who falsely pointed to MMR vaccines as a cause of autism. His unethical study, in which he fabricated evidence for financial reasons, has since been discredited by the scientific community. Since then, several studies have established that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, a finding which the scientific community fully endorses. Though discredited, the residual effects of Wakefield’s paper are still felt today, adding to the public’s confusion when it comes to vaccinations. So why does this disconnect between scientific knowledge and public knowledge still exist? According to Brian Ward, a professor in McGill’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology, “Many [parents] are not so much anti-vaccine as pro-theirown-children, and they are very concerned to not take risks.” He continued, “The principal problem is that parents with kids who have autism are desperate [to find] some reason, and MMR in particular is delivered at a time when the first diagnosis of autism is made. So in lots and lots of peoples’ minds, if something is linked temporarily
Stephanie Ngo | Illustrator they believe it is a causal relationship rather than a coincidence.” When it comes to the debate about vaccine safety, Ward was quick to emphasize that the fact that the risks of not getting vaccinated far outweigh the safety risks of vaccines. “There are risks to anything! But you can’t compare the risks of vaccination to the risks of nothing [...] If it’s compared to nothing then anti-vaccine people are always correct […] You have to compare the risk of vaccinations to the risks of the natural disease and how likely you are to get it, in which case anti-vaccine people are always wrong.” Ward notes that a major problem is the readily available information on the internet to which wellintentioned parents have access. “The anti-vaccine websites are extraordinarily frightening. They appear to be very reasoned, very care-
fully thought out arguments against vaccines. The trouble is they interpret information in ways that are really not evidence-based or true at all.” Marianna Newkirk, also a professor in McGill’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology and in the faculty of Medicine, similarly points to the “media stirring up” the general public’s belief in a conspiracy theory. But terrible science translation just doesn’t seem to be going away, especially when it comes to vaccinations. For example, take the latest controversy surrounding the Toronto Star, where the publisher had to make a public apology for an article that presented a series of anecdotes painting the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil, as dangerous to women. The Star’s article embodies everything that is wrong with science journalism: not only does it disre-
gard the scientific evidence that HPV vaccines are safe and effective, but it comes at a time when HPV inoculations are very low in Canada, increasing the potential to turn more people away. However, this is not just a media problem. The ivory tower of the academic world has also been implicated, most recently with the uproar over a professor at Queen’s University, Melody Torcolacci, who came under fire for presenting anti-vaccination material in her lectures. “If it’s something being taught to teach a lesson that’s one thing, but if it’s being taught as the truth it’s so scary,” said Newkirk in response to the antivaccination slides. The accusations of anti-vaccination lectures in an academic setting are scary; not only does it validate the continuation of the anti-vaccination discourse, it also questions
how academic institutions educate and train future scientists, physicians, and public health workers. Currently, communication is undervalued and neglected as an essential skill for science students, who need to be able to communicate their research and address issues effectively. Recently, one of the only science communication courses at McGill (REDM 399 Science Writing) was discontinued. Furthermore, there are no courses focused on improving communication between scientists and the public, who fund the majority of science research. “There just isn’t enough of it,” said Newkirk regarding incorporating science communication education, specifically with medical students. She would like to see more courses where students are forced to think about these controversial issues in a more critical way, but also understands the barriers that come with large and demanding class schedules, something third year McGill medical student Steve Roy is familiar with. “I feel we do receive an appropriate level of training about vaccines, their utility, and educating parents about them. I think we can always have more training on how to educate patients and trainees, but I recognize the time limit [of ] an already dense curriculum” he said. Roy added that he would love to see more workshops geared towards science communication. So how can we bridge this science communication gap? According to Newkirk, it will take a collaborative effort that involves scientists “[reasoning] and presenting data in an appropriate and honest way,” and “educating journalists” on how to understand and present research. Newkirk also believes it’s important for students to engage in outreach efforts, such as facilitating discussions within the community to address issues like the importance of vaccines. For those students thinking “I’m not a parent or science student, and this doesn’t apply to me,” Ward has a strong message: “Get that damn vaccine booklet before your parents throw it out. [Students] have no idea what their vaccination history is. They have no idea if they’re vaccinated! Every young adult has to take responsibility.” By not knowing your vaccination history, you are putting yourself and others at risk, so check out the McGill website to see what vaccines are recommended for students, or better yet, go see your doctor, because we can all use a dose of reality.
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Sports
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
19
Unsolved, unnoticed, underreported What Evander Kane tells us about racisim in the NHL
Madison Smith The McGill Daily
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vander Kane, formerly of the Winnipeg Jets, has recently left for the Buffalo Sabres following a series of events whose meaning remains obscure. Here are the facts, as we know them. On February 3, Kane showed up to a Jets team meeting in a tracksuit, in violation of the team’s dress code for such occasions. Allegedly to “send a message,” Kane’s teammates threw his clothes in the shower. Later, an hour before puck drop, Kane told team officials that he would not play in the scheduled game in his hometown of Vancouver. Then, on February 11, Kane was traded to the Sabres. Last, but certainly not least, Kane is a black man who plays hockey. Is that last point salient to the events in question? Nobody who remains on the Jets seems to think so. When asked to comment on the tracksuit incident, Kane’s then-teammate Blake Wheeler said, “We’re professionals, we make a lot of money. And we’re expected to uphold a certain standard. That’s the code we live by. That’s just the way it is.” That may be how Kane’s teammates view things, but there are deeper issues at play here than mere professionalism. Kane has long been known for being ‘controversial,’ and the criticisms that have previously been leveled at Kane that made him a ‘controversial’ player have been uncomfortably tinged with racial assumptions. This reputation almost undoubtedly contributed to Winnipeg’s decision to ship him off after this recent incident. Kane’s first brush with media infamy came in 2012 when he posted a photo of himself holding stacks of cash to Twitter. It set off a media firestorm of sorts, with some accusing him of being disrespectful to NHL fans and employees by posting a record of his wealth during the lockout. Kane has stated that he thinks that much of the criticism he received for that picture happened because he was black. Not everyone agrees. Commenting on Kane’s claims, Don Cherry, everyone’s favourite hockey bloviator and unreconstructed old-school Canadian, said, “When he says stuff like that, it gets the crowd against him [...] to say it’s racial is ridiculous.” Of Kane’s character, Cherry said, “He’s gotta straighten out a little. You can’t be a loose cannon in hockey. You can
Alice Shen | The McGill Daily in football and you can in basketball, but not in hockey.”
This subtle kind of prejudice, which quite often goes unnoticed by the person uttering prejudiced words, is an insidious and pervasive force in modern sports commentary. That kind of line illustrates the type of racially-motivated criticisms that black players receive in hockey and in other sports. First, Cherry identifies Kane’s posting of the picture as a problematic behavior that needs tamping down, and then says
that that sort of behavior is acceptable in sports that are considered to be blacker than hockey. Cherry probably doesn’t even think of his criticisms in racial terms, but he is hostile to the entrance of an element of stereotypically black culture into his white world of hockey. Cherry’s bias against blackness can be seen again in a YouTube clip entitled “Is Don Cherry Racist?” The clip compares Cherry’s analyses of the play of two rookies. First, we see Cherry – infamous for encouraging goonery in hockey – uncharacteristically criticize then-rookie P.K. Subban’s play for being violent and disrespectful, even ominously implying that somebody will hurt Subban if he doesn’t moderate his style of play. Next, we see Cherry enthusiastically cheer on the violent playing of Brad Marchand. The only obvious difference between the two players that could account for Cherry’s varrying reactions is race. Subban is black and Marchand is white. This analysis is uncomfortably reminiscent of the racist trope of the ‘uppity black man’ who needs to be put in place by white authority.
This subtle kind of prejudice, which quite often goes unnoticed by the person uttering prejudiced words, is an insidious and pervasive force in modern sports commentary. It can make sports feel unwelcoming to minority groups who wish to participate, and it will be hard to eradicate. Admittedly, hockey has its share of overt racism in addition to the more covert forms too: from P.K. Subban being the target of thousands of racist tweets from Bruins fans, to Wayne Simmonds of the Flyers getting a banana thrown at him. These acts of overt racism combine with the more frequent airings of dog-whistle prejudice to create a potentially hostile environment for non-white players. Troublingly, since the members of media who criticize black players in subtly racist ways do not think of themselves as racist, it will be very hard to convince them that they need to change their tune. The question of race is not as hotly debated in the NHL as it is in leagues like the NBA and the NFL. This is, perhaps, because there are simply not as many visible minority players in the NHL, as there are in the other leagues,
to bring this issue to the up. In recent years, players in the NFL like Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks have called out the media for using words like thug to refer to black players whose attitudes are perceived as being threatening to the status quo. The NHL needs more players like Kane and Simmonds to speak up about how fans and the media treat them to help hockey break out of its comfortably tolerant self-image. So did Evander Kane get shipped out of Winnipeg because he was black? It’s complicated. I would not say that Kane’s blackness was the only reason, or even the most important reason, for his trade to the Sabres. Clearly, there was a toxicity in the Jets locker room that went beyond questions of race. However, I think it is clear that Kane’s race was a factor that distanced him from the fans in Winnipeg, contributed to his reputation as a ‘controversial’ player, and thus nudged the Jets in the direction of letting him go. Unlike Cherry, I say that race is of course a factor in hockey, just as it is a factor in every other facet of life in Canada and the U.S. To say otherwise is naive and ultimately damaging.
Do something new - write for Sports! sports@mcgilldaily.com
Culture
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Lowell tells it like it is
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Canadian singer-songwriter talks music, politics, and sexuality Rosie Long Decter The McGill Daily
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n recent years, the Canadian music scene has seen an influx of alt-pop and electronic music with women at the front, from Grimes to Braids to Purity Ring. At the forefront of this evolution is Lowell, a Calgary-born singer-songwriter whose talent for blending catchy hooks and powerful lyrics has earned her a reputation as a strong performer and producer. Lowell’s raw, grungepop aesthetic matches her upfront personality: the singer is known for being honest in both her music and her interviews, openly discussing her politics and her past. After dropping out of music school at University of Toronto, Lowell followed her own path, working as a stripper – her EP, I Killed Sara V., is named after her former stripper persona – and working on her music to get to where she is today. Speaking to issues of sexism and sexuality, her work serves to inspire listeners, and paints the picture of a fearless and talented artist with something to say. Fresh off a tour promoting her first LP, We Loved Her Dearly (released in the fall of 2014), Lowell sat down with The Daily to give some insight as to what that something might be. The McGill Daily (MD): Did you always know that you wanted to go into music? Lowell (L): I was sort of a late developer in a lot of different ways. [...] The only thing I was good at for a long time was music. That just made [me] more confident, and then I started getting interested in other things and realized I wasn’t as stupid as I thought I was. MD: So you were doing writing before you started putting out songs under your own name, right? L: I would say that they coincided. I did writing for other people and at night I would work on my own things. MD: Do you have a preference? L: It kind of just depends on my mood. What comes the most naturally is doing my own music. [...] but it can be really difficult because when you’re releasing something under your own name it means more to you; it represents who you are as a person. So every song that you make is like a boyfriend you bring home to your family. [...] To continue with that analogy, writing songs [for other people] is like bringing your friend home to your family. MD: Less commitment. L: Less commitment, yeah, I
Lowell performing at Bar Le Ritz PDB. would say – not less difficult. It’s actually super challenging. [...] It’s very psychoanalytical – I have to get into another person’s head. [...] It’s kind of creepy actually. [...] In a world where there’s supposed to be no rules, there are a lot of rules, and it’s almost like a puzzle trying to figure out how to balance those things. MD: Do you find some of those rules challenging when you’re trying to do your own stuff? L: I think it’s more of an inner battle. If you meet somebody who says that they always know who they are, they’re just lying to you, or they’re magic or Jesus or something. [...] I would say that I have an inner battle between how ‘pop-y’ I wanna go – how much I want to follow rules and how much I want to a be a free spirit. MD: So where do you draw some of your inspirations from when you’re writing? L: Movies are great. I get really inspired when I watch Tarantino films. [...] But then from that, I always draw from my own experiences. This album is 100 per cent a diary. [...] I mean it’s really hard because when you love movies and you’re a girl there’s not a lot of characters that you can reach for, so I go to Tarantino because he always just has normal, badass girls that you can look up to and fantasize about being. MD: Do you find that as a woman you’ve faced any challenges in the industry? L: Yeah, for sure. There are a lot of reasons why it’s hard. There are
deep-rooted things, there are the ways people treat you, the ways you think people should treat you. Actually, recently I met a house duo called Rebecca & Fiona, from Sweden. This is what I’m saying about expectations – I met them, they have a super cool image, they look amazing, everything they’re doing is really cool. [...] They were working on some new material, and I was like, “Cool, who does your production?” I would’ve never asked that to a guy. I’m guilty of it too. [...] And I know people have done the same thing to me. MD: A lot of your music has these themes in it, especially feminist themes. Do you think it’s important for music to be political? L: I don’t think that it’s important for music to be political at all, but I think it’s important for my music to be political. It’s just important to me. [...] It more just comes from a place of what I want the world to be. MD: And you find that you can express that through music? L: Yeah, I do. I think that when I was in grade 12, maybe first year, I told my dad I wanted to go into politics. [...] I think I told him in an adorable way: “Dad, I’ve realized that Taylor Swift has so much more pull than Stephen Harper.” [...] Obviously he has [real power]. But artists are people [who] have control over how we think in general. MD: So We Loved Her Dearly is your first album; how was it, being able to put that out – how different is it from doing an EP?
Rosie Long Decter | The McGill Daily L: Actually, I’d already written the whole album when [I Killed Sara V., the EP that preceded We Loved Her Dearly] came out, so it was all just one process. But one thing about putting the EP out before the album was that it gave me time to reflect on the whole album. When I released I Killed Sara V. I was really only just then approaching the idea of being open about the fact that I used to be a stripper, and I thought it was a cool way to just own it and make it sort of a political statement. [...] In that time I was like, I Killed Sara V. is a cool concept – I killed my past – but that almost represents me being ashamed of something and having freed myself from something I was ashamed of. In the time [between when] I released I Killed Sara V. and the record, which was only six months, I came up with the idea of We Loved Her Dearly because I realized that I shouldn’t really be killing her, and that it was really something that I was proud of and that I would miss – which in the end just makes it more of a political statement. It represents what society was making me feel like I had to do, and it was just this crazy process of me finally realizing who I am. MD: So you did [your recording] in London. How do you find it different working in different areas? What do you think of the Canadian industry, the Canadian music scene? L: We have a really cool grant system in place in Canada, and I think that it’s an amazing platform
for artists – specific artists that are involved in a certain community, which is awesome. Because there’s a platform that is grant-worthy, it requires a certain sound. And that’s Canadian and I love it, it’s like Tim Hortons or something. [...] But with that, it means that actually, some artists that are really alternative or really interesting have to compete even harder, because they’re not getting any sort of attention financially. [...] So unfortunately it just means that they have to leave for awhile and then come back. MD: What kind of experiences do you think your music speaks to? Do you have a certain audience in mind? L: The thing is that I’m just super honest in my music and my interviews. In some way, that allows my music to speak to everyone. What I really do is speak out honestly about taboo subjects that I, as a normal person, have experienced and I’ve felt that a lot of people want to talk about but they don’t know how. I almost think that anybody can relate to that – we’re all sort of stuck in these parameters of how we’re supposed to be. In my mind I want to be like, ‘I speak to young girls,’ because I want girls to not feel like they have to be these perfectly-picked flowers that society wants to see. But that can speak to anybody, really – we all feel pressure to be perfect, to display ourselves in a certain way. – This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Culture
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Hail a LadyCab
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Montreal-based web series critiques gender discrimination Lauria Galbraith The McGill Daily
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Carry a large handbag because that is the best defence of all, with which to smack any unwanted assailants,” Kirsten Humbert explains to The Daily, in character as Dorcas, one of the ladies from LadyCab. In addition to playing the role of Dorcas, Humbert is also one of the creators of this new Montrealbased web series, along with Tessa J. Brown and Marianne Trenka, who play the roles of Emily and Florence respectively. The show is a political satire that “highlights the obstacles that women, trans people, and gender non-conforming people face in day-to-day life,” particularly with regard to cabs and public transport. “You could fill it with something heavy but lady-like, perhaps tiny bricks shaped like lipstick,” Brown helpfully chimes in as her character, Emily. “But it should be not heavier than a baby, because a lady should never carry anything heavier than a baby,” Humbert nods. Their fake posh accents veil their witty sarcasm. Mainly shot in the back of their ‘LadyCab,’ the web series was created in response to the police reaction to a number of incidents where women were sexually assaulted in Montreal cabs, which involved telling women to “limit their alcohol consumption and stay in control” and not take cabs alone at night. While the series clearly positions itself as a reply to this incident, its purpose goes beyond the one issue. The three main characters – Dorcas, Emily, and Florence – are old-fashioned, traditional ladies who run their LadyCab as a service for “proper ladies, who have proper lady reasons for being out.” Their proper reasons include “buying biscuits or
Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily better yet, buying things with which to make biscuits.” As Dorcas, Emily, and Florence attempt to navigate the Montreal streets in their LadyCab, they ask passengers about their experiences of harassment in public spaces or taking cabs. Meanwhile, the satire also makes fun of outdated stereotypes about ‘proper’ women, as the three ladies are constantly astonished by the ‘modern’ ladies they drive around, and their unladylike notions about “bodily autonomy” and safety in public spaces. The hyper-posh characters are a satirical criticism of the view of women as delicate or helpless creatures. All three creators and LadyCab hosts have a background in performance, be it stand-up, improv, or burlesque. As such, the over-the-top personas of the LadyCab characters came naturally to them. According to Brown and Humbert, their char-
acters are the result of watching “way too much Little Britain” and Monty Python. Discussing the characters with The Daily, Brown explains that “when it comes to satire, when it comes to what we’re responding to – which is the suggestion that we can’t go out late at night, we can’t have drinks with our friends, we can’t be out alone without protection – well they’re the sort of ladies that never dream of doing such things, oh my!” Humbert points to the importance of satire as an alternative approach to politics, explaining that she found it refreshing to embody the character of these ‘proper ladies.’ “I personally was tired of being the shrill, angry feminist,” she says, “just shrieking at people and having that shriek be so high-pitched that it goes above most people’s hearing range.” According to Humbert, LadyCab
seeks to “raise awareness and educate people not only in the area of sexual assault, but more broadly just gender equality and respecting other people as human beings, no matter how you perceive their persona.” “We don’t really think that women should have to separate themselves from society, we don’t think that women should have to not take cabs late at night – we don’t think that we should feel unsafe in public space,” Brown explained. The series, which has now released 13 episodes on YouTube, features different guests in each ride. The passengers of the LadyCab are a variety of modern ladies: Seska Lee is a burlesque performer and cabaret producer; Connie Lingua is an interdisciplinary drag artist. The cab plays host to women-identified and gender-non-conforming persons. This variety allows the show to explore
the views of all types of ladies, which Brown explained is only growing. “We’re really trying to get more diversity in term of the experiences, in terms of the lived experiences of the people in the cab, so we don’t want to just be getting white, cisgender, heterosexual ladies in the cab.” Beyond the diversity of real issues and experiences that LadyCab brings to light, the web series is wonderfully funny, as Dorcas, Emily, and Florence teach their audience how to be a ‘proper lady,’ and in turn learn from their more ‘modern lady’ passengers. They scheme up impressive ideas such as “Lady-only streets,” which, in one episode, Emily excitedly explains will make us “separate but equal!” The juxtaposition between the ‘proper ladies’ who host LadyCab and their modern passengers forces the audience to realize how laughable gender stereotypes are, especially when we try to impose a standard idea of femininity across the broad and ever-growing spectrum of what a ‘lady’ can be. As Dorcas, Emily, and Florence discuss how to be delicate and not bothersome, it brings to light the contradictory elements of safety advice given to women. Lady-only cabs and lady-only streets not only isolate and segregate women, but also reaffirm the negative idea that men are dangerous and that it’s women’s responsibility to keep themselves from getting hurt. With their tongues in their cheeks, LadyCab addresses these issues head on. The series mixes important harassment and gender issues facing the ladies of Montreal with a comedic touch to highlight the ridiculousness of anyone who tries to deny these ongoing problems. LadyCab is driving through Montreal, running over stereotypes and discrimination with some proper laughter, tea, and biscuits.
Host of Hidden Treasure & Nuit Blanche Niyousha’s Pick: Documentary screening: Host of Hidden Treasure As we stuff our brains with study notes this week, we shouldn’t forget the histories that are often hidden and kept out of our textbooks. The documentary series Host of Hidden Treasure traces one of these silenced histories along slave-trade routes in Canada, the U.S., and Africa. The seven-part series is the project of non-profit organization Stolen From Africa/Volé D’Afrique. The Toronto-based organization, which has branched out to Montreal and other locations, aims
to employ the arts as a means of empowerment, through promoting awareness of the African diaspora, and challenging racial stereotypes. Hidden Treasure follows two rappers from Toronto and Atlanta on their journey to uncover historical and current truths about displacement and diaspora. The first installment of the series, Canada – USA – GHANA, is premiering at McGill and Ryerson this week as part of Black History Month. Come listen to the artists’ stories and hear the chapters that get glossed over in lecture halls.
Rosie’s Pick: Nuit Blanche It’s easy to become a hermit during winter. Hole up in your room with your blankets, tea, and textbooks, and you’re good to go. But this Friday, everyone should put on their longjohns for an unforgettable winter adventure. Nuit Blanche, back for its 12th year, is an all-nighter of arts and culture on the streets of Montreal. This year, it’s taking over three ‘quartiers’ – Quartier des Spectacles (Downtown), Old Montreal, and Plateau–Mont-Royal and Mile End (so you might not even have to go that far). While there are too many activities to name, there are
a few that shouldn’t be missed. The Goethe-Institut will be presenting “Inside Out,” a multimedia installation that seeks to confront “conflicting ideologies exemplified by internet culture,” juxtaposing the NSA outrage with the flood of online media and communication. Or, if you’re less into the cyber-world, check out “Remix Inuit” at the Canadian Guild of Crafts, an evening of audiovisual performance with artist and producer Madeskimo, combining urban influences with traditional Inuit art. For those looking to dance, many of Canada’s greatest musicians will also be filling the Montreal airwaves,
from east-coast indie prince Rich Aucoin to electronic powerhouse A Tribe Called Red. No matter what kind of night out you usually go for, Nuit Blanche has something for everyone. So step outside for some fun and fresh air – just make sure you wear your gloves. The screening of Host of Hidden Treasure is Thursday, February 26 at 7 p.m. in the SSMU Ballroom. Nuit Blanche is Saturday, February 28. There will be a free shuttle service and the metro will remain open all night. For more details, head to montrealenlumiere.com.
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February 23, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
If you can’t beat ‘em, make ‘em pay
Culture
Canadian content matters and Netflix needs to be regulated Graham MacVannel The McGill Daily
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overnment organizations, outside of those known to us by our required interactions with them, do not get much credit. I suspect most of us would raise our eyebrows at someone handing out flyers in the metro about the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), wondering why they should care about a government regulator. From governing the way radio and television is broadcast to the speed of internet connection, the CRTC’s responsibilities address more than just the technical components of our access to media – they shape its content as well. Or they used to, at least. Currently, commercial radio and television face varying requirements in terms of playing Canadian content. 35 per cent of popular music content on commercial radio must be Canadian, while for television broadcasters the requirement is 55 per cent. New media outlets, however, put this system in question. When the CRTC recently requested access to Netflix’s information, it received a clear no, sparking a debate among Canadian cultural commentators. The question at the core of this dispute has been the ability of a government regulator to ensure a minimum level of Canadian content in Canada. But is this goal still valid in 2015 – does Canadian content even merit protection? Canada’s Broadcasting Act sets out the CRTC’s mandate as “serv[ing] to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada” while also “encourag[ing] the development of Canadian expression […] that reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas, values and artistic creativity.” Although these goals might appear admirable at first glance, underneath the fluffy language, not much is actually being said. What are the Canadian “attitudes, opinions, [and] ideas” in question, and who gets to define them? Broad themes of being overly polite and non-confrontational, such as those depicted in Canadian ‘classics’ like Little Mosque On The Prairie undoubtedly look nice on screen, but in reality present little of the critical self-reflection that Canadian content in a democratic society should provide. When the Minister of Justice conflates terrorism
with ‘culture,’ folksy sitcoms on Canadian diversity run threadbare. The best screen content coming out of Canada is often independent, usually avoiding stereotypical Canadian narratives to
provides more accessible avenues to produce and distribute content. When Netflix argued that it need not subject itself to CRTC oversight for online video broadcasting – as it did this past fall
The best Canadian television content comes out of local directors and actors that receive little exposure on the larger media circuit. tell stories that run deeper. These narratives comes from outside of the large networks. Quebec is a hotbed for such successful, creative content: 19-2, 30 Vies or productions by Xavier Dolan, Denis Villeneuve, and Denys Arcand to name a few. These widespread films have gained critical acclaim in Canada and abroad for their evocative and critical portrayals of Canadians and Canadian life. To say that English Canada lacks good filmmakers is nonsense: local films like My Winnipeg or short films like The Chaperone similarly shape our perceptions of what we think of as ‘Canadian.’ Rather, what’s clear is the lack of investment in local productions, as opposed to attempts at bland mainstream shows like the new CBC sitcom Schitt’s Creek. The advent of the internet has, in many ways, been a huge help to local works, as new media
before a CRTC commission hearing – its words rang hollow. With millions of Canadians using Netflix, a company that doesn’t pay a dime in HST or GST or contribute to Canadian productions in any meaningful way, it is difficult to imagine that it is under no obligation to support local filmmakers and artists producing Canadian content. Online giants embody the same monopolistic qualities that the CRTC strives to regulate in terms of other service providers – it’s only sensible that Netflix should be obliged to give back to the society from which it so readily profits. The best Canadian television content comes out of local directors and actors that receive little exposure on the larger media circuit run by the big networks. This is a mistake. One such example is Orphan Black, a sci-fi drama written, filmed, and produced in To-
ronto, as an example of high- quality television made in Canada and produced by BBC America. The investment in and development of shows like Orphan Black speaks to the quality of ‘made-in-Canada’ productions that the CRTC content restrictions indirectly facilitate. If they were to foster a space for Canadian productions, larger networks would gain this pool of talented filmmakers, directors, and producers to draw from. Protecting and supporting our local artists, screenwriters, and producers is a win-win situation, even for Netflix – the more quality content is produced, the more quality content Netflix has to distribute. Canadian
casting. The CRTC does not and should not constrain Netflix – this would be both overly restrictive and beyond the mandate of the CRTC itself, to facilitate, not control, Canadians’ access to online media. Rather, it’s the role of intermediaries like Netflix, Google, and large Canadian networks to invest in the type of local content that demarcates us in a globalized and intertwined world. These filmmakers’ stories provide alternative narratives; they show us parts of Canada that some of us might never otherwise know. Individual Canadian viewers, of course, are the final arbitrators of what is considered worthy television to watch – American,
It’s only sensible that Netflix should be obliged to give back to the society that it so readily profits from. networks may complain that they cannot afford to support locallygrown content in a competitive field of content providers, but the issue is a circular one: without exposure, Canadians are less likely to know what’s being created in their own backyards. Ultimately, Netflix’s ability to provide Canadians with access to different media content is simply the next step in commercial broad-
Canadian, or the like. The protection of Canadian content should not constrain this selection process, but rather add to it with content that would not be generated otherwise. The current system needs to evolve to better capture the core of Canadian content – the local talent that is driving it forward. It’s seems only reasonable then, Netflix included, that we all do our part.
Nancy Gu | Illustrator
Editorial
volume 104 number 20
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Alice Shen | The McGill Daily
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Rackeb Tesfaye le délit
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cover design Nancy Duan contributors Hera Chan, Marina Cupido, Nancy Duan, Dahlia Eldaly, Lauria Galbraith, Nancy Gu, Fiona Higgins, Keiko Ivinson, Sinthusha Kandiah, Jasreet Kaur, Isabel Lee, Graham MacVannel, Sean Miyagi, Siting Ni, Stephanie Ngo, Jonathan Reid, Subhanya Sivajothy, Madison Smith, Tamim Sujat, Jehane Yazami, Arianee Wang, Michele Zampa, Peter Zhi.
O
n January 30, the Chief and Council for the Algonquins of Barriere Lake filed a claim against the federal government and the community’s past and present third-party financial managers for $30 million in damages. In 1991, the Barriere Lake community signed a Trilateral Agreement with the federal and provincial governments that was meant to include the community in the management of its traditional territories. The Canadian and Quebec governments have not honoured the agreement. Like other violations of Indigenous rights, this has been largely ignored. As settlers on Turtle Island – in our case, on Kanien’kehá:ka land – we must acknowledge that by turning a blind eye to the government, which acts on our behalf, we are complicit in these violations. We must stand in solidarity with Barriere Lake and demand that our government honour its word. The Trilateral Agreement – internationally recognized as an alternative to Canada’s Comprehensive Land Claims process – was supposed to ensure the protection of the Barriere Lake community’s land rights, Aboriginal title, and way of life. The agreement was meant to ensure that logging activities would take into account Algonquin knowledge and would not harm their ways of life, protecting traplines, areas of moose habitat, and sacred sites. It stipulated that Barriere Lake and the Canadian government would co-manage resource development decisions and that both parties would share in the profits. While the recent lawsuit targets the federal government, the Quebec government has also failed to honour both of these commitments. For more than 100 years, resource development without consultation with Barriere Lake leadership
has devastated the community’s land. Furthermore, for over eight years, the Canadian government and thirdparty managers have been withholding funds and financial information. This has left basic social services such as roads, water, hydro, and schools largely underfunded relative to non-First Nations communities. As a result, the community suffers from difficult living conditions while the government and the corporations it supports rake in the profits. By filing a lawsuit, Barriere Lake leaders are asserting their rights to govern their own finances and to manage profits from resources on their land. They are also currently campaigning against the government’s further undermining of self-determination through the imposition of band council elections in 2010, a colonial measure that forbids traditional Indigenous system sof governance. The government’s conscious efforts to delegitimize the Algonquin system of governance are symptomatic of Canada’s broader system of colonialism and racism. Barriere Lake communities are taking direct action to resist this system. They have written letters, blockaded a highway, and marched in defence of their rights. As settlers, we are also treaty people, and it is our responsibility to stand in solidarity with these actions as well as with claims made by the current lawsuit. It is important to act now by signing Barriere Lake Solidarity’s petition, calling on Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard to honour the Trilateral Agreement, and endorsing Barriere Lake’s list of demands. The Algonquins of Barriere Lake are fighting to defend their way of life and the land they live on – they should not have to fight alone. —The McGill Daily Editorial Board
Errata
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The article “McGill profs signing military research contracts via private companies” (February 16, News, page 6) incorrectly stated that Samuel Goroshin was a McGill professor. In fact, he is a research associate at McGill. The article “Secretary-general candidates present platforms” (February 16, News, page 6) incorrectly stated that Yony Bresler had previous experience with the Physiology Graduate Student Association (PGSA). In fact, he has experience with the McGill Graduate Association of Physics Students (MGAPS). The Daily regrets the errors.
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dps board of directors Joseph Boju, Juan Camilo Velásquez Buriticá, Alyssa Favreau, Ralph Haddad, Molly Korab, Rachel Nam, Hillary Pasternak, Dana Wray All contents © 2015 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff. Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec. ISSN 1192-4608.
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Compendium!
February 23, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
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Lies, half-truths, and chinchillas of the world, unite!
Students push for Eldritch Studies Access to knowledge of celestial eternals crucial
Herald of the Dark One The McGall Weekly
L
ast Friday, February 13, the Dark One reached out from its slumber and into the minds of thousands of students affiliated with McGall, and spoke to them in their nightmares, reminding them of the futility of their existence. “You mortals live on a tiny speck of dust in a universe beyond your comprehension,” said the Thing That Should Not Be. “The vast reaches of the dark void are forever beyond your petty grasp. The knowledge of the eternal celestials shall never be yours. Your wretched existence has no purpose.” Speaking to The Weekly in an interview, Howard P. Lovecraft, U3 Interdimensional Development Studies student, described the nightmarish broadcast as terribly painful, as if a thousand nails were hammered into his head each time a new word was uttered, but also thought-provoking. “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far,” Lovecraft said. Inspired by the shared nightmare that will be forever grafted into our collective memories, Lovecraft and his really cool friend Jen Cemertek, U3 Pseudoanarchist Studies student and
Totally-One-Hundred-Per-CentObjective Opinions editor at The Weekly, started a petition to launch an Eldritch Studies minor. “You know, in my studies, we read about many a great philosopher and political theorist. We listen to the words of dead men from [the] 19th century, hear them telling us to destroy private property, among other things,” Cemertek said in a letter written in red ink.
“Access to information about, and knowledge of, the celestial eternals is crucial” Argus Tiberius Indigo, exchange student “Yet not once have I been taught how to do blood sacrifices properly – it’s very wasteful if not done properly.” According to the petition, Lovecraft and Cemertek envision the minor as “an interdisciplinary approach to how the universe functions, and how we can manage to deal with the fact that the arcane shall never be made clear to us.” “So, is that like philosophy?” asked Gore Semantikov, U2 Erratums Studies student and LastWeek’s-News editor at The Weekly. “Don’t philosophy students also realize that truth is subjec-
tive, and the infinite shall be forever beyond their grasp?” “It’s a bit different,” Cemertek was heard to say. “The study of the Eldritch is more practical. We want to acquire the secrets of the celestial eternals, and then use blood magic to wake the Sleeping One, the Dark One, the Thing That Should Not Be – perhaps even bend it to our will.” “All for academic purposes, obviously,” Cemertek concluded. “Access to information about, and knowledge of, the celestial eternals is crucial,” said Argus Tiberiexus Indigo, an exchange student from Proxima Centauri, whose close friends call them ATI. “My planet was completely destroyed, because we did not know what the architects of the universe had in mind. Things like that can be easily averted with more knowledge.” Later, Lovecraft explained the purpose of the minor in much simpler terms. “The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age,” he said. Lovecraft and Cemertek are planning on submitting the petition to Principal Suzie Forte by the end of March. Speaking to The Weekly, Forte said she was
Elaci Nesh | The McGall Weekly beyond ecstatic to hear about an opportunity to uncover the secrets of the celestial eternals. “The Dark One was condemned to an eternal slumber in the depths,” Forte said in hushed whispers. “For it was destined to bring the knowledge to us – but
we were denied our rights.” “I will see to it that the Eldritch Studies minor becomes a part of McGall’s curriculum. Our day will come. The secrets of the celestial eternals shall be ours, and humanity shall become one with the architects of the universe!”
Admin denies chinchilla scandal
Underground rodent lair discovered in Administrative Palace basement Snell & Snelly Hensley Partners in Reporting
T
he Weekly has discovered the existence of an illicit chinchilla farm operating in the basement of McGall’s Administration Palace. The Weekly has also learned that this chinchilla farm is secretly responsible for 70 per cent of McGall’s reported privatelyearned income. Documentation, obtained via a request for access-to-somestuff (ASS), showed that the farm has been in operation since 1821. However, more recent accessible documentation will not be avail-
able until McGall completes its audit in the fall, according to McGall provost Toni B. Musty. Musty said he is “appalled” at these allegations. He insisted that the chinchillas were “scofflaws,” and that they would not be allowed to live in such an important and expensive building. Our source, who wished to remain anonymous, worked with the chinchillas until massive administrative cutbacks resulted in his termination in the fall of 2014. He said that one caretaker still lives in the bowels of the building, and is solely responsible for the feeding, sponge-bathing, breeding, and selling of more
than 500 chinchillas. Our anonymous source, who says he originally started in chinchilla farming because of his passion for the creatures, said he could not stand by as his former colleague and the chinchillas remained vulnerable to this subjugation. “It’s not chin-chill,” the source told The Weekly in an interview. “The chinchillas have needs, and [their needs] are not being met. Where is their dust for burrowing? They need dust! How will they remain plush?” Traditionally, chinchillas bathe by immersing themselves in sand or dust, but the administration appears to have neglect-
ed this practice and has instead been cleaning the chinchillas with water.
“It’s not chin-chill. The chinchillas have needs and [their needs] are not being met.” Anonymous source “This is why I’m speaking up now,” explained the source. “I’m worried about their health.” The abhorrent treatment of
the chinchillas has also been linked to rodent infestations taking place in other buildings. The chinchillas, unwilling to remain subjugated to a cold, endless enslavement in the marble basement of the Administration Palace, are calling on rodents worldwide to rise up and revolt against human imperialism. Also, The Weekly learned on Saturday that government officials have unsuccessfully attempted to conduct a raid. While they were able to rescue the abjectly lonely farmer, the administration appears to have been tipped off, and was able to move the chinchillas to an alternate location.