VICTORIANEWS VICTORIA NEWS FEATURE
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Aerial technology at sea
Travelin’ javelin man
HMCS Regina will carry remotecontrolled reconnaisance drones on its next mission. Page A3
B.C. high school track and field champ Mason Kereszti is taking the next step on his athletic journey. Page A18
Friday, June 8, 2012
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Students show Solidarité! UVic, Camosun students support Quebec counterparts Natalie North
Victoria Coun. Shellie Gudgeon paints over graffiti on a telephone pole at the corner of Bridge and Bay Streets. Covering over graffiti shouldn’t be the responsibility of the city, she says, citizens and businesses need to step.
News staff
Don Denton/News staff
Citizens asked to pick up paintbrush Supplies provided by city for graffiti removal; hefty fines in line for offenders Roszan Holmen News staff
People have come to know that the ‘Three Rs’ stand for a call to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. There’s now a second meaning ascribed to the expression. Conscientious citizens are now being asked to Record, Report and Remove when they run into graffiti. It involves taking a picture, grabbing a paint brush and informing police. “We’re empowering residents to adopt a pole or a block or a section of the city where they are
going to paint out all the power poles, so they remove all the graffiti,” said Darb Erickson, Victoria’s downtown programs liaison. “It needs to be addressed with community effort. We can’t just expect the city is going to go pay for all of it, whether it’s on public or private property. “And we can’t expect necessarily that utilities companies will be as responsive as we want them to be.” It’s part of a program called Together Against Graffiti, which Victoria adopted in 2011 after seeing it work in Esquimalt. “It’s about volunteers (making) a statement that they’re not going to stand for graffiti vandalism in their areas,” Erickson said. PLEASE SEE: Fast action on graffiti, Page A10
The sound of banging pots and pans is filling the air from coast to coast. Though they’ll be thousands of kilometres away, Victorians will engage in a “casserole march” in unison with striking Quebec university students and supporters across the country during Solidarité!, a block party in Centennial Square tomorrow (June 9). It will be the second show of solidarity with the eastern ralliers since May 30, when locals, many with pots and pans in hand, marched through downtown Victoria. More than 155,000 post-secondary students, nearly one-third of the student population in Quebec, have yet to return to class amid escalating tension with government, sparked by the Quebec Liberals’ proposed 75-per-cent tuition increase over the next five years. Students in B.C. pay nearly double the average post-secondary tuition fees compared to Quebec students – $4,852 versus $2,519 annually, according to Statistics Canada. Despite the disparity, student groups in Victoria have thrown their full support behind the Quebec student resistance. “The post-secondary system in Quebec really serves as a model for the rest of Canada; it’s a system we can look to,” said Lucia Orser, direc-
tor of external relations for the University of Victoria Students’ Society. “That’s why we see students mobilizing across Canada – they’re defending the most accessible post-secondary education in North America.” Quebec students fear their postsecondary education system might become similar to that in B.C., which lifted tuition freezes in 2002, Orser added. “The culture in Quebec is so different and very distinct,” said Madeline Keller-MacLeod, external executive for the Camosun College Student Society. “Students in B.C. don’t remember a time when tuition wasn’t extremely expensive.” On May 28 both the UVic and Camosun student societies passed motions of support for Quebec students. Solidarité! begins with a pots-andpans-banging casserole march at 5 p.m. (8 p.m. eastern), the same time protesters will take to the streets in Quebec before leading into a party in the square with live music and guest presentations planned. “It’s a growing movement in support of Quebec, but also to demand affordable education for all,” said Orser, who hopes the Quebec protests may lead to more awareness of post-secondary cuts in B.C. Government watchdog, the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, strongly opposes the student movement based on the “perpetuation of Quebec’s cycle of entitlement” and the fact that B.C. taxpayers continue to make equalization payments to Quebec, said Jordan Bateman, B.C. representative for the federation. PLEASE SEE: Student march planned, Page A6