TUNE IN TO THE GREAT GENDER ITY DEBATE, PG 7
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Volume 27 Issue 10 • November 6, 2007
www.mcgilltribune.com
Published by the Students' Society of McGill University
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S S M U s u rp lu s n o s e d iv e s E x p e n d itu r e s f r o m
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Playing a game on his personal laptop, Mario Paquet illustrates the increasing presence of homeless people on the internet, which has become an effective and necessary means of empowering the homeless community. See Features pg 12.
The Students' Society released its annual budget this past Thursday to a projected surplus drastically lower than previous years. Citing rising costs and lower operating rev enues, the budget report to Council by SSMU Vice-President Finance and Operations Imad Barake stated, "the current fis cal year is going to be a financially difficult year." With the SSMU surplus down from 5222,298.94 in 20062007 to a projected $49,947.58 this year, Barake made it clear in his budget report that there were major differences be tween this year’s budget and last year's. "We have a start-up operation, Haven Books, this year, and if we take a look at the numbers, Haven Books is expect ed to lose about $68,000 this year," Barake said. Although seemingly daunting, the overall savings for the student population is expected to increase as Haven Books will "continue to provide books to students at an af fordable price," according to Barake. When contacted for comment, Haven Books quickly referred the McGill Tribune back to SSMU. The second significant change in cost was the recent library settlement between SSMU and the See FINANCIAL on page 3
M o n t r e a l t o c l e a n u p its s u s t a i n a b i l i t y a c t M u n ic ip a lity
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K ristin M aich The Montreal Metropolitan Community re cently put forward a $i.02-billion environmental plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Montreal municipality to the Quebec govern ment. Targeting residual waste elimination, the proposal is focused on creating a comprehen sive composting infrastructure in the city. "The current state of Montreal's recycling and sustainability efforts is not very good, espe cially in comparison to other large cities such as Toronto, Halifax and Hamilton,"said Students’Society Environment Commissioner Derina Man. "In many areas of Montreal, we continue with
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twice-a-week garbage pick-up instead of more environmentally friendly waste management systems. Efforts towards greater sustainability have mostly been made by small communities [and] activist groups rather than the municipal government." Environment Canada Climate Change Co ordinator Pierre Sylvestre explained that with the plan in effect, collected organic waste would undergo a gasification process which would break the material down in the absence of oxygen, producing methane gas, which can then be harvested to produce electricity or used as fuel for buses and cars. This latter policy has already been implemented in several European
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cities according to Sylvestre. "The gasification of all Montreal area wastes would reduce greenhouse gases by 1.5million tons per year," he said. "[Gasification is] a good way to resolve some of our environmental problems related to waste." According to Man, the $i-billion invest ment will be well worth the money in the long run, but she emphasized that implementation of the program will require a clear public educa tion program. “Many individuals have been willing for many years [to compost] but-there hasn't been a way for them to do it," she said. Sylvestre agreed with Man, and also sug
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gested the use of a 'brown box' for collection purposes, analogous to the familiar 'blue box' used for recyclable materials. "I think [the composting plan is] something that can be done—we just have to make sure that it is well-publicized," he said. "We have to make sure that everything collected is organic, that everything is separated correctly; as long as it's well-organized and it's easy for citizens to do it, then I'm sure that the people will be very sup portive [of composting collections], as people are very supportive of the blue box right now." Gorilla Composting Coordinator and SSMU See SSMU on page 4
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