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Great plans for Lachine Canal By Y ona Reiss________________ If you are an avid cyclist, you may have already experienced the beautiful and scenic bike path that runs along the Lachine Canal. But the bike path is only the beginning of an ambitious project that is underway by federal and provincial governments with great expectations for the City of Montreal. In January 1997, the Minister of Canadian H eritage Sheila Copps, along with the Mayor of M ontreal, Pierre Bourque, announced a project that would see $82 million spent on the re-opening of an important historic and economic sight, the Lachine Canal. Their predictions for this undertak ing were im pressive, and the rewards they expect the City of Montreal to reap seem to be well worth the great expense and effort. “This project will create 4,000 jobs, and, by the year 2002, the canal will attract 1.2 million visi tors each year,” Copps said. The plans for the seven kilom eter-long site are am bitious. Included is the re-opening of the canal to boating traffic, landscap ing of the ca n al’s banks, and improving access to the waterway and the Old Port from downtown Montreal.
The canal's history The Lachine Canal is an area credited with playing a leading role in the birth of the Canadian manufacturing industry, and is considered a National historic site. The original construction of the canal was completed in 1825, and because it fulfilled the objective of allow ing boats to bypass the Lachine rapids, it greatly simpli fied navigation for the area. In the mid-19th Century, the Lachine Canal helped to establish the area as a dense industrial sector and Continued on Page 20
Mike Colwell
M o w in ' b u b b le s o v e r t h e w e e k e n d a t t h e 1 7 6 th a n n u a l S t . P a t r ic k 's D a y p a r a d e
Education reaps windfall in provincial b u d g et McGill officials, student representatives are disappointed McGill didn't get more By Jonathan C olford M cG ill and the S tudents' Society of McGill University had mixed reactions to the provincial budget presented by Finance min ister Bernard Landry last Tuesday. The budget calls for a total of $4.5 billion in tax cuts over the next three years, $2.1 billion being added on top of cuts announced in the 1999 budget. Health care and education will receive a $3.7 bil lion injection of funds, with $1.15 billion allotted to education. Q uebec universities will receive $600 million from the $1 billion Quebec Prem ier Lucien Bouchard promised to education at last m onth's Q uebec Youth Summit, and $100 million of the additional $150 million promised in last week's budget. In total, uni versities will obtain approximately 61 per cent of provincial funds destined for education. In a press release, McGill's
acting VP A dm inistration and Finance Morty Yalovsky and VP Academic Luc Vinet expressed their satisfaction with the new monies for universities, indicating that the Quebec governm ent's commitment would absorb operat ing deficits over the next three years and allow post-secondary institutions to begin re-investing in themselves. Y alovsky and V inet were concerned, how ever, that the promised amounts would not be enough to allow Quebec universi ties to remain competitive with other Canadian institutions. "Despite the m agnitude of this amount, we remain concerned that this falls short of the $650 million required annually to per mit Quebec un iv ersities to be competitive with their Canadian peer in stitu tio n s," V inet and Yalovsky said in their statement, focusing on the promised increase in funding to post-secondary edu
cation, w hich is scheduled to reach $335 million per annum in 2002. They were also disappointed that the government did not set aside funding in its budget to address deferred building mainte nance. They did, however, "wel come" the government's initiative to have future funding for post secondary education tied to matching goals set out in "perfor mance contracts" between the uni versities and the government. SSMU VP Community and G overnm ent A ffairs W ojtek Baraniak had mixed feelings about the budget. He too was optimistic about the funding increases, including a decision not to tax undergraduate scholarships up to $3,000 of th eir value, and to refrain from taxing graduate scholarships. Graduate students have benefited from a $24 million increase in the budget as well. Baraniak pointed to a lag still
existing between levels of funding in Q uebec and in the rest o f Canada. “One m ust recognize that Quebec students are still receiving less than their Canadian counter parts,” Baraniak said. “And on top of that, this budget does not men tion anything about the universi ties’ crumbling infrastructure.
Other budgetary initiatives Perhaps the most dominant feature of the 2000 budget were the sweeping tax cuts proposed by Landry. The cuts will average 13 per cent for 2.4 million tax-paying households in Quebec.. For instance, full-professors at McGill, who average $75,000 in salary, will see their basic tax rate drop from 26 to 24 per cent. If they are single-m em ber houseContinued on page 5
The McGill Bookstore is proud to present the Montreal launching of
A s c e n s io n a n d E c c le s ia
Professor Farrow teaches Theology and the History of Christian Thought
b y M c G ill P ro fe s s o r D o u g l a s F a r r o w
Tuesday, March 28th — 5pm
at McGill University in Montreal.
McGill University Bookstore Café (2nd floor) B O O K S T O R E ^ * 7 H M r T ,tu i x h
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