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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Senate shoots down Arch CafĂŠ committee Rana Encol

Bill 100

The McGill Daily

Bill 100 stipulates that public institutions must reduce general administrative operations by ten per cent and institute a 25 per cent travel expenses reduction over the next four years, as part of a Quebec government initiative to return the province to a balanced budget by 2013-14.

Munroe-Blum described the bill as an “omnibus law that treats us all the same, and that distorts each university’s ability to follow through with their individual missions.� Its implications for McGill are not clear, she said.

A

s students protested inside Leacock, SSMU President Zach Newburgh’s resolution to create a committee to review the functions and operations of the Architecture CafÊ was not brought before yesterday’s Senate meeting, following the recommendation of the body’s steering committee.

Despite this rejection, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson did announce the creation of a “working group on student communication and consultation.� Like Newburgh’s original proposed committee, the group will be made up of various administration and student representatives, and will report to the Deputy Provost.

(See sidebar on facing page for more information.) However, it does not have an explicit mandate to discuss the Architecture CafĂŠ closure.

At Senate, Principal Heather Munroe-Blum and Newburgh both expressed their gratitude to the Deputy Provost for establishing the group, and Newburgh later called it “a really good step in the right direction.�

Budget concerns in light of the provincial budgetary Bill 100, new accounting principals, and deferred maintenance dominated the remainder of the meeting.

NEWS BULLETINS AUS hosts Town Hall Students had an opportunity to express their concerns to an administrative panel at the Arts Town Hall on Tuesday. The panel, comprised of the Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi, as well as three associate deans, fielded questions ranging from tuition hikes to TA accountability.

The event, hosted by the AUS, was held in the Arts Lounge and was chaired by AUS VP Academic, Jade Calver.

Calver presented the panel with a host of questions, most pressingly on whether they agreed with Principal Heather Munroe-Blum’s commitment to raise tuition. In response, all four committee member agreed it is a smart decision. “We have a shortage of resources,� Manfredi stated, “and we can get these resources through tuition fees.�

Students also expressed distress about TA cutbacks and accountability.

Associate Dean of Academic Administration and Oversight, Suzanne Morton, responded that the problem stems from greater demand on resources. “Despite popular notion, the TA budget has not been cut,� said Morton. The problem, Morton added, is that the budget has not grown.

Students also raised the issue of teacher inaccessibility, saying that it was difficult to have sufficient contact with many of their teachers. Panel members pointed to office hours

Accounting Until last fiscal year, the University’s financial statements were not in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principals (GAAP) issued by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. This rendered the projected deficit for the fiscal year ending May 31, 2011 “greater than we anticipated,� according to the financial report of the Board of Governors, presented by interim Vice Principal (Administration and Finance) Michael Richards.

Under the former system, liabilities such as pensions, vacations, and retirement were not recorded and their addition has increased McGill’s non-cash accumulated deficit. “You now get to see the full value in response. Andre Costopoulos, Associate Dean of Student Affairs, affirmed that in order to build a relationship with your teacher you must also connect with your work, saying, “The surest way to engage with a professor is to engage with the material.�

Throughout the night, panelists encouraged students to use the resources available to them, such as course evaluations or their respective representatives to varying administrative bodies to raise any outstanding issues. “Students are well-represented in all levels of administration,� said Costopoulous. “Students don’t take advantage of this. People do listen to student bodies.� —Nick Kandel

Shale gas drilling stalled Two major energy companies have postponed plans for the completion of two exploratory shale gas wells in Quebec for six months in the face of mounting public opposition to their role in the controversial energy extraction method.

Talisman Energy Inc. and Questerre Energy Corporation announced the decision last Thursday, only a week after the provincial government held public hearings on shale gas exploration.

The hearings sparked a petition calling for a moratorium on the industry, to be discussed at further hearings in November. Quebec’s Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) is due to report on the companies’ practices in February.

Shale gas extraction uses a method called “fracking,� which involves blast-

of benefits we accord our employees,� said Richards.

Residences Michael Porritt, Executive Director (Residences and Student Housing), announced that two market studies are currently underway to determine the future needs of first-years, upperyears, and graduate students.

As of 2008-09, residences accommodated 52 per cent of McGill’s firstyears. Porritt projected that this figure would increase to 62 per cent with the opening of new buildings. “We are still 100 per cent over capacity and it is the end of October,� said Porritt.

However, he also brought up the possibility of having upper-year students live in residence in significant numbers. Currently, of the 3,850 students in residence, there are 41 upper-year students who are not floor fellows, Porritt said.

Porritt also stated that the residence system is facing $150 million in deferred maintenance costs, forty million of which is deemed high priority. A five-year plan to reduce these costs by fifty per cent will begin in fiscal year 2012. These costs are mostly concentrated in older and smaller buildings around campus, including MORE and graduate student houses with low occupancies and urgent maintenance needs. —with files from Emilio Comay del Junco ing a mix of water, chemicals and sand into wells. Environmentalists and residents have expressed concern that long-term effects on drinking water and wildlife are poorly researched.

Kim Cornelissen, VP of l’Association quĂŠbĂŠcoise de lutte contre la pollution atmospherique (AQPLA), is one critic who remains skeptical of the six-month delay. “It’s hard to know what’s behind the decision to postpone it because the companies don’t like it when the citizens begin to do stuff,â€? said Cornelissen. “It’s maybe not the best time to do it. It might be temporary.â€?

Company spokespeople say the cost of the project informed the decision to postpone. Originally expected to rise in 2010, natural gas prices have dropped from nearly $16 (USD) in 2006 to $3.77 per million British thermal units. Prices are expected to continue to drop, causing financial difficulty for companies in the industry.

Since declaring its interest in shale gas, Talisman has suffered significant drops in profit (including a 98 per cent plummet in 2009) and has sacrificed both properties and employees in Calgary, most notably cutting 202 jobs in December 2009.

Questerre’s stocks dropped 14 per cent following their decision to postpone fracking. “I think the investors were disappointed,� said Karen Carle, Questerre’s Public and Governement Relations Coordinator, “but we’re not worried about commercial extraction yet. That will come later.� —Emily Meikle

News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

3

Robert Smith | The McGill Daily

Students haven’t forgotten Arch Café Senate establishes working group on student consultation, to answer to Mendelson Erin Hudson The McGill Daily

M

ore than one hundred students rallied outside Leacock at 2 p.m. yesterday with signs bearing slogans such as “Transparency” and “Time to Listen” in efforts to ensure increased student consultation in key decisions on campus. The rally was the culmination of a three-day boycott of McGill Food Services led by a new campus organization, Mobilization McGill, and was scheduled to coincide with Senate’s monthly meeting.

The boycott began at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, featuring a lunchtime campaign of flyers, electronic petitions, by-donation sandwich wraps, and free Midnight lunches served to students outside Redpath and McConnell Engineering, which house two of the largest cafeterias on campus.

“We want[ed] to…get people involved, let them know what the issues are,” said Arts senator Tyler Lawson. “And hopefully [we’ll] have as successful a rally as last time with…a better response from the administration on the end of the senate…meeting.”

“Ideally we’d like to get complete consultation institutionalized with all matters of student life on campus,” Lawson continued.

Senate created a Working Group on Student Consultation yesterday, which will answer to Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson (See sidebar). Last week, the Senate Steering Committee redirected the question of the reopening of the Architecture Café to the Board of Governors (BoG), deeming that it was out of Senate’s purview.

Nicholas van Beek, U4 History student and Mobilization McGill, member, expressed that the organization aims to address grievances beyond the Arch Café.

“There are a lot of different issues on campus that people are generally dissatisfied with, like food service, tuition hikes, [and a] general lack of transparency,” he said.

Mobilization McGill, distributed white pieces of cloth to increase the visibility of the boycott movement and to promote solidarity. They were white, Van Beek explained, so that students could write whatever they wanted on them.

Nick, a U4 electrical engineering student, explained why he stopped by the rally.

“I like offering alternatives on campus and I think that a campus should be run with students’ interests at heart and I think [the closure of the Architecture Café] is something that, evidentially, students do think is important,” he stated.

“If nothing else it shows that students aren’t nearly as apathetic as we make them out to be at times.

I think it’s a great show … it will be difficult to convince the administration of something, but it’s worth the effort,” he concluded.

Kyle McLaughlin and a handful of other members of Free Education Montreal – a Concordia group created within the last two years – attended the Wednesday rally.

“We saw what was happening at McGill, and really an attack against any group of students, no matter what their campus, is an attack against all students. … We should help each other out. So that’s what we at Free Education Montreal are doing – just helping our neighbour campus,” said McLaughlin before he addressed the crowd of students.

McGill Philosophy professor Calvin Normore, a fan of the Architecture Café, was a part of the crowd.

“I think it’s important because there is an increasing centralization of power in the University. McGill has always been a fairly centralized University but there’s an increasing centralization of power and it leads to things like this,” Normore said. “[The rally is] not enormous, which indicates to me that faculty are not the only ones not yet involved, but it’s certainly lively and there’s a lot of spirit,” Normore added.

Lawson said he was energized by student enthusiasm. “It’s just so great when everything that we do is validated by actual students’ support. What we do doesn’t mean anything if stu-

dents don’t know what is going on in those meetings,” he told The Daily on his way to Senate.

Students were out en masse to receive their lunch from Midnight Kitchen all three days of the boycott.

Alex Briggs, a Midnight Kitchen serving coordinator, was impressed by student turnout at the Monday serving session held outside of Redpath.

“This line, even by MK standards, is long,” he said. Midnight Kitchen collaborated closely with Mobilization McGill, on the boycott, preparing all the food served throughout the three-day event.

McGill Security guards were present Monday and Tuesday as students distributed flyers outside of McConnell Engineering. EUS granted MM permission to use tables outside of McConnell on Monday, although security guards told students that they needed a permit in order to table.

Students referred the guards to the SSMU-distributed Student Rights handbook. Part IV, article 26 of the handbook states that “every group of students has a right to organize and to promote the interests of its members, provided that the purposes of such group are lawful.”

The guards maintained, however, that the space was “private property” and that students required permission to be there. Mobilization McGill, reorganized and removed the tables later that day, placing signs, flyers and wraps on nearby stone benches instead.

“I think it’s a little odd that they’ve brought six security guards. ... It’s a bit of an inappropriate presence,” said Sarah, an Anthropology student who witnessed the incident.

Mobilization McGill, member Christian Scott saw the security presence as a reaffirmation of the point of the boycott.

“We’ll get kicked out but [that is] also a symbol…we need to make it obvious that students cannot do anything spontaneously here,” he said.

“Everything needs to go through by McGill regulations, by McGill censorship.”

On Tuesday, Mobilization McGill, moved to the recently reconstructed James Square, near the Milton Gates. About thirty minutes after the group arrived, McGill Security requested that the group move signs and flyers that were to be distributed off campus property.

Sandwiches, however, could still be handed out. “[M]any of our conflicts are stemming over really unclear rules at McGill with what is allowed in terms of protests and demonstrations…what counts as an event and what counts as a protest,” said Joesph Giardini, a

member of Mobilization McGill who communicated with security guards Monday and Tuesday.

Director of Media Relations Doug Sweet appeared in James Square Tuesday to question McGill Security as to why they had such a large presence. Melanie Ouellette, McGill Security Operations Administrator, was onsite and explained that two of the security guards present were trainees.

“It’s not like the storm troopers are being brought in to close down Midnight Kitchen,” Sweet said as he left James Square.

A

new working group on student consultation, formed in response to the Arch Café closure, will report to Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson. The group was initiated after confidential consultation between Mendelson and SSMU President Zach Newburgh and will set its own agenda. Newburgh described it as a move toward “institutionalizing student consultation.” It will be composed of the following representatives from both the administration and student groups: Josh Abaki is the VP External of SSMU. He has been a strong supporter of student activism surrounding the closure of Arch Café and boycott of McGill Food and Dining Services.

Alexandra Bishop is the President of PGSS, and sits on McGill’s Senate and Board of Governors.

Jane Everett is the University’s Dean of Students, appointed in 2007. A professor of French language and literature, she is responsible for overseeing student life and academic affairs. She works directly under Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson.

Jana Luker is the executive director of the University’s Services of Services, which encompasses student aid, counselling, and physical and mental health services for undergrad and graduate students. She has worked at McGill since fall 2007.

Zach Newburgh is the President of SSMU and sits on McGill’s Senate and Board of Governors. He brought a motion to September’s Senate session regarding Arch Café that was struck down by the Chair as out of order.

Michael Porritt is the director of Residences at McGill, responsible for overseeing housing for first-year and some upper-year students.

Finn Upham is a Music Graduate Student Society rep to PGSS and former VP External (2006-2007) of SSMU. Paul Wiseman is an associate professor in the departments of Chemistry and Physics. The recipient of two McGill teaching awards in 2007, Wiseman has been selected to chair the new working group.

4 News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Thousands protest English school bill New legislation pushed through National Assembly Alexia Jablonski The McGill Daily

We will be leaving the Shag Shop (3600 McTavish, just beside the student health clinic) at 2pm and 4pm on Friday October 22nd. If you can’t make it for those times, feel free to walk up yourself and meet us at the top any time between 12pm and 5pm. Bring your student ID for a free goodie and to enter a draw for a free prize. Take advantage of this beautiful season and come enjoy the beautiful colours on the mountain. See you at the top!

The Daily’s Literary Supplement litsup@mcgilldaily.com

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O

ver two-thousand demonstrators assembled in front of Premier Jean Charest’s Montreal office on Monday to protest Bill 115, legislation that would allow students who spend three years in an unsubsidized English private school to transfer to the public school system after receiving permission from government officials.

The Liberal government suspended National Assembly rules to call in MNA’s Monday to vote on the bill. After 15 hours of impassioned debate, the motion was adopted with a vote of 61 to 54. Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois vowed to repeal the law once her party came into power.

Quebec’s Charter of the French Language, Bill 101, specifies that only students whose parents were educated in English in Canada are

Montreal Region Carrefour Angrignon Carrefour du Nord Carrefour Laval Centre Eaton Centre Laval Centre Rockland Fairview Pointe Claire Galeries d’Anjou Galeries Joliette Galeries Rive Nord

automatically permitted to attend English public schools. In response to this law, many non-anglophone families enrolled their children in private “bridging schools,” allowing them to transfer to public English schools after a year.

In 2002, the government passed Bill 104, blocking access to bridging schools. However, the Supreme Court deemed this unconstitutional in 2009 and gave the Quebec government one year to find a way to limit access to English schools without violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court set Friday, October 22 as the deadline for the adoption of an alternative bill.

Protesters were outraged by both the bill’s content and the manner in which it was passed.

Mario Beaulieu, president of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal – the Quebec nationalist group that organized Monday’s protest – told The Daily in French

Jardins Dorval Mail Champlain Place Alexis Nihon Place Longueuil Place Montréal Trust Place Rosemère Place Versailles Place Vertu Promenades St-Bruno

Quebec City Region Galeries Chagnon Galeries de la Capitale Place Fleur de Lys Place Laurier Promenades Beauport

that the government pushed the bill through “at the very last minute...to do this as discreetly as possibly.”

Members of the francophone community consider the bill a threat to the French language in Quebec, as it will likely reduce enrolment in French schools.

“This bill will weaken French because schools are what is most important to the [perpetuation] of a language and a culture,” said Beaulieu.

On the other hand, proponents of English schooling are generally satisfied with the bill. Jonathan Goldbloom, a spokesperson for the Quebec Association of Independent Schools, told The Daily that he believes the bill is “a step in the right direction” toward following the Supreme Court’s guidelines. However, he feels that “too much discretionary power [is] being given to bureaucrats” and that the regulations “should be clarified and simplified.”

Elsewhere in the Province Carrefour de l’Estrie, Sherbrooke Centre Alma, Alma Galeries de Granby, Granby Galeries de Hull, Hull Galeries Terrebonne, Terrebonne La Grande Place des Bois-Francs, Victoriaville Les Rivières, Trois-Rivières Place du Royaume, Chicoutimi Promenades de l’Outaouais, Gatineau Promenades de Sorel, Sorel-Tracy Promenades Drummondville, Drummondville

News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

5

Bill to investigate Canadian mining Henry Gass The McGill Daily

B

8% 6% US 6% UK

Oth e r

According to a 2009 PDAC report obtained by the NGO MiningWatch – and posted on their website on Tuesday – Canadian mining companies are implicated in four times as many violations of Corporate Social Responsibility, a form of corporate self-regulation, as mining companies from other countries. Canadian companies and global industry leaders such as Barrick Gold have had a number of mines in developing countries under scrutiny.

McGill History professor Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert was conducting research on the history of the central Mexican town of San Luis Potosí in 2001 when, through information gleaned from one of his colleagues, he started to investigate a Metallica Resources mine near the town.

One case involved local lawyer Enrique Rivera Sierra challenging the Canadian-operated Metallica Resources (now New Gold) mine on the outskirts of the town. Rivera Sierra was the legal representative for the Frente Amplio Opositor (FAO), which fought Metallica Resources and the ecological damage the mine brought to the town in the mid-1990s.

“The project destroyed plant life and wildlife that was very important to the region. There was water pollution, air pollution, [and] soil pollution,” said Rivera Sierra in Spanish.

Studnicki-Gizbert later presented his findings to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

His investigations soon became the catalyst for a broader investigation into the environmental and human rights violations of Canadian mining companies in Latin America.

“The project was illegal under Mexican law,” he stressed.

The FAO says that the cyanideleaching gold and silver mine will contaminate the local aquifer that provides water for 1.5 million people and 73 per cent of the local agriculture.

“Mining in Latin America hap-

da a n a 33%

8%

ia Ind

The invisible gold rush

Australia

ill C-300, a Private Member’s Bill that would intensify investigations into environmental and social complaints against Canadian mining companies overseas, is set to be voted on next Tuesday in the House of Commons.

Several McGill professors helped work on the bill, which would mandate the withdrawal of federal funding from Canadian mining companies if they are found to be in violation of environmental and human rights policies.

John McKay, Liberal MP for the Scarborough-Guildwood riding, first presented the bill to the House of Commons in 2009.

“We had help from the University of Ottawa, the University of Toronto, and McGill University Law programs. … We’ve had every NGO in Christendom sign on. We have a pretty bullet-proof piece of legislation,” said McKay. McGill Law professor Richard Janda helped formulate the wording and possible objections to the legislation as part of an informal working group. “[The bill is] about managing, first and foremost, the basis upon which Canada puts money into operations abroad. Secondly, it’s about setting up a way of determining whether standards are being met,” said Janda.

Despite the years of work put into the bill, neither McKay nor Janda were certain it would pass. A diverse array of lobbyists have mobilized against the bill, including Canadian mining companies Barrick Gold and Goldcorp, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“They’re going to have [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper’s minions attack you, all 450,000 of them.

The government would like to terminate this bill with extreme prejudice,” said McKay. The main arguments against passage of the bill are that it would invoke an extra-territorial application of Canadian law, and that it would damage the finances and reputations of Canadian mining companies.

“We agree with the principles of accountability. We don’t agree with the methodology the bill is trying to put into place,” said Bernarda Elizalde, Program Director of Sustainable Development at PDAC. She also said that unnecessary investigations stemming from passage of the bill “could damage [a company’s] image based on some allegations.”

Susanna Cluff-Clyburne, Director of Parliamentary Affairs for the Chamber of Commerce, said the potential withdrawal of federal funding from Canadian mining companies could have severe effects on the companies’ business, and the

Canadian economy as a whole. The Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) is a major source of federal funding for Canadian mining companies. “[The bill] would cut [financial] resources, and diplomatic resources from Canadian companies. It leaves nobody better off,” she said. “For many Canadian extractive companies…[federal] funding is critical,” she added.

The bill is likely to die in the Senate, if not first in the Commons.

McKay said the Senate had a “superveto” in place against all Private Member’s Bills the Conservatives don’t want to pass.

“The Senate would not welcome this legislation with open arms.

There would be an effort to study it to death,” said Janda.

If the bill is not passed in the Senate before the next federal election, it would have to be issued again at the start of the next Parliamentary session.

C

McGill professors instrumental in creation

39%

Source: Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), 2009 CRS Report

Location of ownership of Corporate Social Responsibility violating companies. pens in densely populated zones.

People are using the land intensively, and need the land for their livelihoods,” said Studnicki-Gizbert.

There was little mining in Latin America in the early 1990s, but developments in open pit mining – a far more invasive and ecologically unstable method of extraction – began a gold rush midway through the decade. According to StudnickiGizbert, the average concentration of gold is around half a gram per ton of earth, but open pit mining is able to capture this small but abundant concentration.

“It’s an invisible gold rush. The scale of gold has gone down so much, you need an electron microscope to see it,” he said.

The open pit system has had disastrous effects on the environment throughout Latin America.

Studnicki-Gizbert described how, when sulphurs in the soil are exposed to the air in an open-pit mine, they metabolize and generate acids that acidify the water and soil. He also described heavy metals like arsenic, magnesium, and lead which have been known to leech into the soil.

Open pit mines are designed to contain these waste products within “tailing ponds.” Studnicki-Gizbert said that tailing ponds, however, often fail to prevent toxic material from permeating the natural environment in surrounding towns.

“The reaction goes on for centuries,” said Studnicki-Gizbert. “The waste pile for an open-pit mine is the size of Mount Royal.”

Studnicki-Gizbert said that companies often claim they are aware of risks associated with tailing ponds, and take measures to mitigate the risks, but that the costs in time and money of such projects are so high

they assassinate people, they beat people, communities disappear,” said Rivera Sierra, who alleges that in 2006, after condemning the San Luis Potosí mine, the town mayor was assassinated by paramilitaries.

“The companies are terrorists… they assassinate people, they beat people, communities disappear...”

Enrique Rivera Sierra FAO legal representative that they can’t stop pollution that will affect regions for centuries.

“It takes hundreds of millions of dollars to do. They spend years working on this shit,” he said.

“They’re playing with really big dice on these mines. Do we want to be trashing other people’s environments for one-hundred years?”

Rivera Sierra said he was beaten and intimidated by corrupt state government and paramilitaries allegedly hired by Metallica Resources.

“The government used the police to repress freedom of speech.

One year before I left Mexico I was attacked by…[people] that are helping the mining company,” said Rivera Sierra. “My life was in danger.”

Rivera Sierra fled to Canada and gained refugee status in Montreal in May 2007, where he knew people from FAO were already living.

“The companies are terrorists…

Nine community activists across Latin America were killed in 2009 for their work against Canadian mining projects.

Movilización Student groups and NGOs have mobilized to promote Bill C-300, reach out to MPs, and inform people of the violations associated with Canadian mining projects in Latin America.

Greenpeace McGill and the McGill chapter of Amnesty International are a part of this effort and a rally is scheduled to take place outside the Shatner Building at 1 p.m. today. “[The Bill] is in the interests of protecting both human rights and the environment,” said Nora Hope, Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace McGill. “Many Canadians are unaware that this Bill will be voted on next week.”

See “MINING” on page 7

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SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2010 M.D.,C.M. PROGRAM PRESENTATION AT NOON

Faculty of Medicine

My background is as follows. I was the President of the Student Union of John Abbott College, on Management Carnival Committee last year, MUS 4@7, and was head of a group of O-Staff during Arts Frosh. These positions have taught me how to run successful events, and how school politics work.

I think that the we should organize fundraising events for charity; we lag behind other faculties in terms of philanthropy. I also want to organize a Spring Music Festival on campus. I believe that this will appeal to more students than other events on campus.

Deadline for submissions: November 15 (non-Quebec residents) January 15 (Quebec residents) (MCAT optional for Canadian citizens and permanent residents who hold a bachelor’s degree from a Canadian university)

McGill University, 1200 Pine Ave. West (between Peel and Drummond) Peel Metro Station

A new AUS events tradition must be established: one of accountability and accessibility, a tradition in which Arts students can take pride. I believe variety must be reintegrated into our efforts, in-hand with goals towards inter-faculty collaboration. My time as interim AUS VP-Events has seen to the successes of OktoberhAUS and BdA; already the groundwork has been laid for a Carnivalscaled event, Red&White, and Charity Ball. With sensitivity towards AUS’ budgetary-limitations and a strong working-relationship with this year’s executive, I bring and will continue to bring Arts events the quality it deserves. Vote accountability, vote ingenuity, vote Patricia Tao.

Joe Stonehouse

COME SEE THE DEBATE: MONDAY, OCT. 25th AUS LOUNGE – 6:30 PM VOTE OCTOBER 26th and OCTOBER 27th (ADVANCED POLLING OCTOBER 25th)

THE MCGILL DAILY. B-24, Shatner building.

Come to us.

News

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

7

ASSÉ reports leaked government tuition plan Liberals deny everything in run-up to yearly meeting on education policy Eric Andrew-Gee The McGill Daily

T

he ministry of education will present students with three scenarios for tuition hikes – big, bigger, and staggered-by-program – this November, according to information obtained by a Quebec student lobby group.

The Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), which represents 40,000 students in Quebec, released a statement Sunday saying they had their hands on specific plans for tuition increases for in-province students. Tuition may more than double in 2012, according to one of the options published

by ASSÉ, and the three scenarios the ministry allegedly plans to present to students in November each involve raising tuition on Quebec residents.

Phillipe Ethier, ASSÉ Secretary of Internal Affairs, told The Daily in French that the leak comes from “a ministerial source,” who Ethier believed to be “fairly credible,” though ASSÉ is not “100 per cent sure” of the information’s accuracy.

According to Philippe VerreaultJulien, Secretary-General of the Quebec Students Roundtable (QSR), the Ministry of Education, Sports and Leisure (MELS) has denied the reports, telling representatives from QSR that ASSÉ’s numbers were “without foundation.”

ASSÉ expects the ministry to officially table their tuition plans in November at the annual Rencontre des partenaires de l’éducation. A precise date has not been set and no student organization has yet been invited to the event.

The government’s first alleged option would raise tuition by $500 a year for three years, until it had reached eighty per cent of the national average, leaving it at roughly $4,110, up from the current $2,415. According to Statistics Canada, the national average currently stands at $5,138 for undergraduates and $5,182 for graduates.

The second option has tuition jumping to the Canadian average over four years, beginning in 2012. This would more than double the current rate and constitute an increase of about $680 per year. The third option is to have different tuition rates for different academic programs.

“All three cases would be catastrophic,” said Ethier.

Ethier also charged that the third option, while less specific, could see steep tuition hikes. “You can think of what happened at McGill with the increase in tuition on its MBA program,” he said, referring to this summer’s spike in tuition from $1,700 for in-province students to $32,500.

ASSÉ has been planning to picket the Rencontre since September, calling for an all-student boycott of the meeting in a September 24 press release. The group is also staging a

protest against the meeting at one o’clock today at carée Berri-UQAM. “This meeting is a mechanism to give legitimacy to their tuition hike,” Ethier said. “We refuse to play their game…we will be in the streets, not inside.”

QSR is planning to attend the November meeting. Verreault- Julien said in French that “we [QSR] believe that we have a constructive contribution to make to the discussion.”

“The information published by ASSÉ has only contributed to the mystery surrounding the meeting,” he added. MELS assured Verreault- Julien that ASSÉ’s numbers were baseless.

He declined to state whether or not he thought ASSÉ’s report was accurate, but said the three scenarios it outlined were “unacceptable.”

Verreault- Julien said he fears that, whatever the government proposes, the Rencontre will be a onesided affair.

“At the moment, there is every indication that the meeting is not a real consultation,” he said.

Verreault- Julien said the government should be “rapidly revealing their intentions publicly,” regarding tuition. “It’s important that [their plans are] public,” said VerreaultJulien. “The government needs to show that it’s listening to students.”

In an interview with The Daily, Marie Malavoy, Parti Québécois (PQ) MNA and member of the Culture and Education committee,

“We refuse to play their game…we will be in the streets, not inside.”

Phillipe Ethier ASSÉ Secretary of Internal Affairs said she needed more information before being able to comment on the veracity of ASSÉ’s report.

She said one of the scenarios was being considered within the Liberal government, however. “I am sure that that’s up for discussion, the modulation of tuition” between academic programs, she said in French.

“I’m not comfortable with that, the Parti Québécois is not comfortable with that,” she added.

Citing the example of McGill’s MBA program, Malavoy continued, “We can’t just ask what this [tuition modulation] means for cost, but what it means for student debt.”

The Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) president Louis-Phillipe Savoie said that while the MELS has denied ASSÉ’s figures to FEUQ, too, he fears they may be more or less accurate.

“We don’t know if we can rely on those numbers,” he said, adding, however, “As far as we know the Liberal party’s position is to reach the Canadian average [of tuition],

…until we see any other signal.”

Savoie said that they “don’t believe in the empty chair policy,” and that FEUQ plans on attending the Rencontre. However, he said the three scenarios outlined in ASSÉ’s report “go from insane to ridiculous.”

Education minister Line Beauchamp’s office did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

François Carbonneau, VP External of the Confédération des associations étudiants et étudiantes de l’Université Laval (CADEUL), a QSR member association, said that the alleged government proposals did not come as a surprise to him.

“They had talked a lot about the Canadian average and modulation of fees, so there wasn’t much that surprised us,” he said in French.

Carbonneau also said that he understood why ASSÉ was boycotting the meeting, but that CADEUL was attending.

“We’re going because, despite everything, we want to go to gather information,” he said.

QSR may add new member to its ranks Mining 9,500 students would join SSMU in student lobbying group Eric Andrew-Gee The McGill Daily

W

ith a manila envelope handed across the table in Shatner’s BreakOut room, the Quebec Students Roundtable (QSR) gained a prospective member Saturday.

QSR is a provincial student lobby group of which SSMU is a founding member, currently representing over 65,000 students.

Two representatives from the Association Générale des Étudiants de l’Université de Québec à TroisRivières (AGE UQTR) were on hand at QSR’s monthly general meeting to deliver the envelope – containing the association’s notice of referendum to affiliate with the group – to the QSR secretary-general Philippe Verreault-Julien.

Joël Pedneault, Vice-Secretary General of QSR, said he was excited to have AGE UQTR on board.

He noted that this would be the first member of the Université de Québec (UQ) system to be part of QSR, adding, “It’s really under attack, the UQ system.”

“They have less of a tradition of public funding,” Pedneault continued. “And they’re also the poorest universities.”

He added that having a UQ school in QSR “would allow [QSR] to be

more up to date with what’s happening in the UQ system, and be able to fight that fight more effectively.”

AGE UQTR still has to put the question of membership in QSR up for referendum to its 9,500 student members before it becomes affiliated with the group. There will be a two-week period of student consultation, followed by a week-long electronic voting period before results are announced on November 19, according to AGE UQTR political attaché François Landry.

AGE UQTR left the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) last December in another student referendum. Landry cited, among other things, FEUQ’s “montrealization” – or what he saw as their focus on Montreal schools – as the reason for leaving.

According to Landry, AGE UQTR chose not to affiliate with the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), another Quebec-wide student group, because the student body found the group too “radical.” Landry noted that AGE UQTR does not support making university education free of charge, unlike ASSÉ, but said that the two groups have “good relations.”

Landry said he was looking forward to working with QSR on the under-financing of Quebec’s universities.

He went on to reference a report produced recently by two QSR members, the undergraduate and graduate student associations of l’Université Laval, which proposes that revenue from a mandatory tax on the profits of companies should go to financing post-secondary education in the province.

“We were happy that research had been done on this subject,” said Landry in French, in an interview with The Daily.

He added, however, that he was not completely satisfied with the conclusions drawn by the report. “[We should] not only be taxing super rich companies, with a significant mass salariale, as CADEUL [Laval’s undergraduate student association] suggest, but also looking at any company that’s making a profit.”

Marie Malavoy, Parti Québécois MNA and member of the Culture and Education committee, also weighed in on the Laval students’ report.

“It’s worth working more on this,” said Malavoy. “It’s not clear how you would go down this road [of taxing companies for university financing].”

CADEUL VP External François Carbonneau said he hoped QSR would adopt the report at its next general meeting, but added, in French, “What’s important to us is not the document but the idea of contribution from companies.”

Continued from p.5 “If those companies want the benefits of being Canadian, they should comply to the rules we as Canadians think are just,” said Sean Phipps, a member of Greenpeace McGill.

According to Elizalde, the 2009 PDAC-commissioned report detailing the extent of these environmental and human rights violations in developing countries was never meant to be made public.

She said that it was “totally unethical” that MiningWatch made the report public.

“It was an incomplete study. It deals with unproven allegations and unproven violations,” said Elizalde.

“The problem isn’t human rights,” she added. “The problem is that companies have problems with community engagement. …

[It’s] like any other human relationship: sometimes there are misunderstandings. Sometimes there are fights.”

Mining companies Barrick Gold, Goldcorp, and IM Gold have commissioned their own reports, conducted by retired Supreme Court of Canada Judge Frank Iacobucci, to

expose the flaws in Bill C-300. The report will be released before the vote next week.

Regardless of whether the bill passes or not, Rivera Sierra remains skeptical that it would bring sweeping change to how mining companies conduct business in developing countries, given political ideologies and corruption. Studnicki-Gizbert said that Mexico has a sophisticated system of environmental regulation, but that enforcement is a serious problem.

“We don’t have a lot of confidence in the bill, and we don’t have much confidence in the MPs. Countries like Canada make lots of laws, they talk very, very well, and they say many things, but the fact is that they are countries that [profit] from the companies,” said Rivera Sierra. “[Stephen] Harper in Canada, Felipe Calderón in Mexico…this type of president seems to defend the interests of the companies. …

We are not going to achieve much. … We have to follow the political system that allows the companies to come here.”

Naked photos of Dick Cheney.

Intrigued?

News meetings, Monday@4:30, Shatner Cafeteria

Commentary

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

8

Others are not tools of the self Our society’s way of viewing relationships leaves us painfully alone The gadfly Shaina Agbayani shaina.agbayani@mcgilldaily.com

M

y high school philosophy teacher enjoined a group of light green 17-year-olds to read Charles Taylor’s The Malaise of Modernity to buttress his conviction that modern relationships are bound to stultification and failure, since we are too selfish to be in healthy relationships.

Taylor paints a hollow portrait of modernity’s “liberalism.” Selfdiscovery and self-confirmation are the deceitfully narcissistic idioms of modern liberal rhetoric. While identity formation is contingent upon dialogue with others, individualist mores regard such encounters as mere instruments of self-realization, despite them being central to the dialogue of agreement and struggle through which our identities are properly formed.

The absence of such dialogue incites hollow relations with our selves, provoking pilgrimages towards illusory lands of self-realization and authenticity, via materialistic hyper-consumerism thriving on the latest transient trends, religionshopping, or hiring a life coach… Yet these pilgrimages overlook the roots of the hollowness – a dearth of quality relations with others. The notion of an “inwardly-generated identity” dismisses the significance of negotiating one’s identity with others.

What stimulates me to recall this reading journey is the surge of “authentic” self-fulfilment lingo in popular culture. The bestselling

Edna Chan for The McGill Daily

book Eat, Pray, Love and its recent film adaptation chronicle a divorcée’s odyssey toward self-restoration and self-discovery by lavishly participating in cultural buffetism.

Then there are those American Eagle advertisements and Rihanna’s exhortations to “live your life.” AE suggests we do this by buying unfair-trade clothes with an eagle on the tit. Rihanna suggests we do it by being “a shining star with fancy

clothes and fancy cars.”

But haven’t AE and Rihanna learned anything from Mr. Scrooge and the Grinch? Livin’ the life doesn’t mean exploiting the shit out of the world’s soon-to-be-depleted resources by purchasing things we can certainly go swimmingly without. It means sharing life with others whom you value enough to be inconvenienced for and vice versa.

Looking at everyone and every-

thing as instrumental in expeditions of self-discovery is, as Taylor proposes, self-defeating.

Imagine being the most intelligent, knowledgeable individual in the world on a 500-foot yacht, with gold-plated toilets; inexhaustible supplies of your fave delicacies; the complete collection of your favourite brand of; impeccable speakers with the full discographies of your favourite bands. Yet you’re all

alone.

Well that’s just shitty, ain’t it?

That’s precisely what Taylor argues.

He espouses a “communitarian” critique of liberalism. He argues that contrary to liberal-capitalist rhetoric, which says our existence finds meaning in the context of material items, it is actually society and those who compose it that provide the context for meaning.

We must re-evaluate how inane, narcissistic preoccupations have subtly yet surely colonized our lifestyles to the point that we forget that the virtues of human spirit – pure and simple – are what attract us to others, not what they possess.

This reminds about how often I have invested an exorbitant amount of time grooming and enrobing myself in preparation for an event where, without exception, the people worth spending my time with could not have given an [expletive] how I looked. And, without exception, all the people in my life who I hold closest to my heart evoke beauties that are entirely unrelated to attire or physicality. They could be wearing shit-stained pantyhose on their heads and I would still die for them.

So what realization emerges from this fragmented, pseudo-intellectual rambling? That the gauge of my existence’s richness relies on one material item – shit-stained pantyhose, and how many people whose faces are constrained in it I would die for. Because the pantyhose cannot constrain the virtues of their spirit. Without these people, even if wallowing around in the aforementioned yacht, I might as well die muttering bah, humbug! 1

Learn, boycott, divest, sanction You too can help fight Israeli apartheid Jon Booth Hyde Park

W

ith the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority close to failure because Israel has refused to stop expanding its colonization of the West Bank, those of us committed to the human rights of the Palestinian people must look toward the future. I am a member of Tadamon!, a Montreal-based Middle East solidarity collective.

Tadamon! aims to take the most effective action possible to support Palestine in its struggle for freedom and self-determination. That is why we are active participants in the movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid and are helping to organize a conference to support and

expand the BDS movement this weekend, October 22 to 24 in Montreal.

So, what is BDS and why does Tadamon! support it? Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions are three tactics used to achieve the goal of forcing Israel to respect international law and grant the Palestinians their right to independence, selfdetermination, and return to their ancestral land. The movement began in 2005 when a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups sent out the call for BDS. The movement models itself on the international non-violent movement that helped end the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The three tactics are largely self-explanatory. The sanctions component aims to pressure governments to sanction Israel, as they would any other country that

repeatedly committed war crimes and ignored UN resolutions. The divestment section aims to encourage corporations, unions, universities, and other organizations to cut their ties with Israeli, primarily by selling stock in Israeli companies and cutting off economic relationships with the Israeli government.

Tadamon! is most active in the boycott part of the movement.

The boycott is multifaceted, and includes everything from supporting a boycott of Israel-made goods, such as Ahava beauty products (which are made in an illegal Israeli settlement near the Dead Sea), to encouraging artists and academics not to perform concerts or attend conferences in Israel.

We hope that these tactics will successfully convince Israel to change its behaviour, and judging by quick expansion of the move-

ment, in Quebec and around the world, it seems to be working quite well.

To help advance the BDS movement in Quebec and across North America, Tadamon!, Students for Palestinian Human Rights, and a number of other Palestine solidarity groups in Montreal are organizing the conference at UQAM this weekend. There will be speakers and presenters coming from across Canada and the world, including union leaders from South Africa and the leaders of the Palestinian popular resistance. The conference opens with a plenary session Friday night, featuring Omar Barghouti, the coordinator of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and Sidumo Dlamini, the president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Saturday

and Sunday will be taken up with workshops and strategy sessions.

The workshops cover a large number of topics and issues from a variety of perspectives – including queer, environmental, labour, and indigenous angles.

The conference will be powerful and informative, and we hope to see a large number of McGill students there. We encourage everyone who is committed to social justice to attend, learn about the issues, and participate in the BDS movement to help liberate Palestine!

Jon Booth is a U2 Economics & History (Joint Honours) student.

You can email him at jonathon. booth@mail.mcgill.ca.

You can find more information about the conference, donate, and register at BDSQuebec.org.

Commentary

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

9

Hey you! Pay attention Your school is being taken over Courtney Graham Comment

H

eather Munroe-Blum, in an email to the McGill community this week, finally confirmed what we all know to be true about her: she’s determined to circumvent not only the wishes of the students, but provincial education policy as well, in pursuit of her own misguided and selfish aims.

The email is ostensibly a response to Bill 100, the budget bill passed in June of this year by Quebec’s National Assembly, which is meant to balance the province’s budget by 2013-14.

If Munroe-Blum were attempting to redefine the bill’s prescriptions (namely, by choosing not to cut administrative salaries and reduce expenses) to protect, say, academic support staff or the unionized non-academic staff on campus, I would understand. In fact, I would even find it laudable that the admin would finally be taking a stand for the employees on campus who maintain the huge support network at McGill. This is not even remotely the case.

I’ve known since my first town hall with Munroe-Blum that McGill

here. Accordingly, it should not be a surprise that the single aspect of the bill the administration does support is tuition increases in 2012.

A thirty-cent commitment to financial aid for every additional tuition dollar brought back to McGill is not a catch-all solution to the problems a constantly-growing tuition bill is going to create, however.

International students in the Arts faculty – the largest – have already seen a three to five per cent tuition increase in 2010-11, and may see up to five per cent more after 2011. My tuition as an Arts student was upward of $8,700 this term alone – imagine the situation next fall, when prospective high-talent, academically diverse undergraduates are forced to make the choice to forgo McGill because of the rising cost of attendance.

With rhetoric that’s hard to disagree with at first, she writes, “We are convinced that across-the-board governmental measures that are intended to cover a large range of publicly funded institutions with a one-size-fits-all approach will undermine our mission, our quality, [and] our reputation.” The alternative policies she seeks would instead be

We are systematically being closed out of a structure that depends on our support for its very existence. is a research-oriented university that prioritizes the employment of hightalent and high-profile (and highlypaid) faculty over the success and experience of undergraduate students – many of whom go through quite a bit of financial stress to be

developed under the auspices of “a performance-driven model of funding.” The key words here are “performance-driven,” meaning that we get more money as an institution if we do better than others. Follow this to its logical conclusion and

“

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Let’s send HMB and her pals tons of mail! you find the institutionalization of the administration’s favourite thing: prestige is paramount to all else.

Ask yourself where that will lead us – given current trends – and it’s easy to see why this is problematic.

The implications of this attitude, one we have become all too familiar with this year, should be, and are, very concerning. McGill has a richly diverse and incredibly academically successful student community; neither of these things, however, are administration priorities, and their policies both make this clear and show that in the future, McGill will

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

It’s not only this concrete problem – big companies controlling, through money donations, universities.

It’s something more fundamental going on. It’s a well-organized, all-European campaign to turn us scientists, human or natural, into experts. The idea is: we have a problem – let’s say oil spill in Louisiana – oh, we need experts to tell us how to contain it.

We have a public disorder, demonstrations: we need psychologists and so on. This is not thinking.

What universities should do is not serve as experts to those in power who define the problems. We should redefine and question the problems themselves. Is this the right perception of the problem?

Is this really the problem?We should ask much more fundamental questions.

—Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek on Democracy Now! this Monday

not be a place for activism and progressive education policy, but rigid, neoliberal, conservative, and exclusive “academia.”

We are systematically being closed out of a structure that depends on our support for its very existence. For whatever reason, most of the student body seems to find this completely acceptable.

This is a grave misjudgement on all of our parts, and one we would do well to correct.

Munroe-Blum’s email concludes by noting that suggestions and feedback are welcome. I strongly

encourage you to write to her, to copy her friends in the administration while you’re at it, and to give her what she asked for: an inbox full of emails and a campus full of students who are no longer willing to put up with this blatant disregard for the wishes of the very people she and the admin work for.

Courtney Graham is a U3 Political Science and International Development Studies ( Joint Honours) student and The Daily’s copy editor. You can reach her at courtney.graham@mail.mcgill.ca.

THE LIT SUP IS COMING. Deadline: October 28, 6 p.m. litsup@mcgilldaily.com

10 Features

Proposed path of Mackenzie Valley Pipeline

Jenna Horner The McGill Daily

I

t’s not a project. It’s setting our people free.”

Fred Carmichael, chairman of the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, expressed his hope that the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline – a planned natural gas development in the Northwest Territories – will ultimately be constructed. Carmichael’s main concern is providing Canada’s north with the job opportunities and economic benefits that would result from the proposed pipeline, which, once constructed, would transport as much as 1.2 billion cubic feet of gas per day from sites in the Mackenzie Delta (near the Beaufort Sea) through the Northwest Territories to northern Alberta.

“This is no handout, this is a business deal. … This is the reason we’re now full partners. We own a minimum one-third of the pipeline so all our people stand [to] benefit,” said Carmichael.

Energy companies have been interested in drilling natural gas from the Northwest Territories for nearly forty years, though the project has never come to fruition. The issue has resurfaced in the past decade, however, as energy developers have partnered with northern aboriginal groups. But increased competition in the Canadian energy market, government bureaucracy, and questions regarding the long-term environmental costs and economic benefits of the pipeline have left the project in hiatus.

Despite fierce opposition and bureaucratic red tape, 2010 could prove to be a watershed year. The coalition of partners surrounding the project is perhaps the most significant advancement in the past decade, as today’s pipeline supporters include many of its past critics.

A new coalition between aboriginal groups represented by the Aboriginal Pipeline Group (APG) and oil companies has radically changed the situation from previous decades, when aboriginal communities were largely uninvolved and stood to gain little from pipeline construction. The consortium of energy firms is led by Imperial Oil – one of Canada’s largest producers of crude oil – and also includes Shell Canada Limited, ConocoPhilips, and Exxon Mobil. Some estimate that

the project would entail an additional federal investment of about $2 million.

Oil companies and aboriginal communities involved in the APG cooperatively support the 1,196-kilometre Mackenzie pipeline, holding their breath (or at least crossing their fingers) for an affirmative decision from the federal government.

Aboriginal groups would receive one-third of pipeline dividends, and, according to the APG, the project would create jobs for their communities.

Carmichael’s sentiments were echoed in my discussion with president of APG, Bob Reid, who stated, “There is very high unemployment in the Northwest Territories, especially among youth. This is an opportunity for better education and on-the-job training.”

Reid also addressed his community’s changing mentality during the past few decades. “The big change over the last 25 or fifty years is that people did live off the land, and now there are so few that depend on the land for living. Youth are becoming part of the wage economy. They don’t want to go chop wood, they want to turn up the thermostat.”

Those pushing for Canada to move away from fossil fuels are staunchly opposed to the pipeline, however, and argue that the benefits of the project have been overstated. “There are significant opportunities for renewable energy, especially in wind power,” said Stephen Hazell of Sierra Club Canada. “There are options of hydroelectric development. That would create more jobs. ... We think it will do more harm than good, and there’s not really enough gas there to make it worth while.”

Another environmental group, Ecology North, registered as an intervenor in the ongoing legal proceedings. The group’s program director, Doug Ritchie, also feels that the pipeline is unlikely to create substantial job growth in the Northwest Territories.

“There was not a serious exploration of alternatives to the project,” said Ritchie. “There was not good thinking about that. One thing that is quite startling is that from a permanent standpoint the number of jobs created were about fifty.” Ritchie added that greenhouse gasses from the territory could double if the project goes forward. Part of the problem is that energy would be supplied to the pipeline by burning some of the natural gas on-site.

“Our concern is from an environmental standpoint, and in terms of long-term steady jobs, it seems to not produce that many,” he said. “I think it’s great aboriginal peoples of the North decided to get involved and be partners…but the environmental aspects still remain.”

Despite the fact that the pipeline may create few long-term jobs directly (a fact that Carmichael and Reid both admit), the dividends have the potential to create more jobs indirectly. Reid explained that money from land claim agreements have been invested in northern businesses that provide job opportunities for aboriginal people. According to the most recent report by Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate in the Northwest Territories is 6.4 per cent (versus Quebec’s 7.7 per cent).

“The overall majority [of aboriginal groups affected] are totally in support,” said Carmichael. “You always have the odd one out that opposes, but that’s just democracy. The ones that are going to be affected are going to benefit. They need jobs. They want to be independent and self-sufficient.”

Initially proposed in the early 1970s, debates over land claims, environmental concerns, federal approval and funding, as well as feasibility have all hampered construction of the pipeline. Upon its proposal, the federal government addressed the enormity of the project by leading an inquiry into the environmental and community impacts construction would generate.

Justice Thomas Berger was commissioned to assess the impacts of the project on affected communities, and in 1977 his report “Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland” was released. Berger recommended a minimum ten-year moratorium on the project.

The APG was created in 2000, with the signatures of thirty aboriginal leaders, representing three of the four aboriginal communities directly affected by the pipeline construction. (The Inuvialuit, the Gwich’in and the Sahtu nations have partnered, though the Deh Cho nation has thus far refrained from joining the group.)

Both Reid and Imperial Oil representative Pius Rolheiser emphasized that the partnership between the aboriginal groups and the oil companies is the life force of the project, which lacked in vigour by the end of the 1990s. The companies cite this new partnership, alongside improved technology, new construction

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Anatomy of a pipeline It’s been on the shelf for over three decades, it would invigorate Canada’s northern economy and energy output, but is it a good idea? methods, and settled aboriginal land claims as the chief reasons the project was revived after decreased interest in the preceding decades.

Partners in the project have long awaited approval for the project from the National Energy Board (NEB), which was slated to release its decision last month, though their final decision has met yet another delay.

The NEB’s decision is contingent upon a federal government response to a report issued by the Joint Review Panel investigating the project. Supporters now hope approval will be granted by the end of the year. Once the NEB releases its decision, the partner companies will commence a new stage of their own assessments, evaluations, and the gathering of individual permits that will allow them to initiate actual construction.

In response to environmental concerns about the industrial development, Reid insisted that “land and everything that comes from the land is very, very important.”

I was struck by the unity between the APG and the energy companies after talking to their representatives.

Both seemed dedicated to the project, and convinced of its benefits. But with each governmental roadblock, the project seems to grow increasingly distant – something I couldn’t help mention when talking to Rolheiser: “After over thirty years, is it still worth it?”

Rolheiser laughed. “Our commitment to the project has not diminished,” he said. “We realized at the outset that the non-technical aspects of the project would be much more challenging than the technical aspects. We’re confident in our ability to build the pipeline. … We said at the outset that this could not and would not proceed without aboriginal support.

The fact that we have aboriginal support is key.”

The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline’s prospects are also complicated by an energy market where competition has grown, and become more sophisticated since the 1970s. As of 2006, natural gas already accounted for approximately 24 per cent of Canada’s net energy consumption, alongside oil (32 per cent), hydroelectric (25 per cent), coal (10 per cent), and nuclear (seven per cent).

In recent years, imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and shale gas have both gained interest as an energy source, and the Canadian natural gas market

has intensified. Canada began importing LNG from Trinidad and Tobago last year, and some companies have proposed expanding use of the fuel.

Shale gas is a natural gas generally found in organic rich rocks, acquired by a process called “fracking” that uses water and chemicals to free absorbed gas. A number of provinces have exhibited potential for shale gas production, and governments have hastened to regulate the market. Controversy over shale gas production in Quebec surged this fall, as communities and environmentalists insisted on greater regulation of the burgeoning industry. Earlier this month, Quebec Environment Minister Pierre Arcand announced that companies interested in shale gas exploration will be required to gain a new permit and pass more rigorous inspection than in the past. Ten wells are currently being explored in Quebec, but many more are expected, according to Arcand.

In addition to LNG and shale gas, the Alaska Gas Pipeline Project, headed by Conoco Philips and BP, could potentially deliver 4.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to North American markets. The 1,700 mile-long pipeline would be the largest private construction project in North American history, stretching from the Beaufort Sea to the American Midwest.

According to their website, about 5,200 jobs would be directly created per construction season (about 40 million hours of labour).

Rolheiser admitted that the Alaskan gas pipeline would affect markets for Mackenzie natural gas, if both pipelines were completed, although remained confident in the need for Mackenzie natural gas: “From the outset we’ve kept aware of the Alaska gas project… but we don’t see this as a horserace here. We believe [that] in terms of our project, we’re above where Alaska is. If Alaska and Mackenzie were to proceed at the same time, being the smaller project it would probably impact us more…but even with new sources of supply, we continue to be of the belief the North American market needs Mackenzie natural gas.”

Environmental groups opposed to the expansion of greenhouse gas-emitting energy projects and concerned with the possibility of toxic leaks now seem to pose the major political opposition to the pipeline.

“Our biggest problem right now is environmentalists living in high rises in Vancouver and Toronto,” said

Carmichael, adding, “They don’t even live here, it’s so hypocritical! They complain about the pollution, but they fly up here and rent a vehicle to drive around… if they’re so damned concerned about the environment they should rent a boat and paddle down the Mackenzie.”

Hazell proffered a far less optimistic view of the pipeline, and in fact, a completely different interpretation of recent events.

“I think the most important thing to realize is that the project is dead,” he said. “The thing is dead.”

Hazell asserted that “there’s no way the federal government is willing to cough up two million dollars to give to the richest corporations in Canada.”

I asked Hazell if the new partnership between some of the richest corporations in Canada and the APG would provide any incentive to the government in supporting what would otherwise be a project headed solely by oil and gas corporations.

“I think that does help the argument, but that doesn’t effect the basic equation that the project is not economic,” he said. “Politically it would just be really bad for the current government to fork over that amount of money.”

Hazell also stated, in contrast to Rolheiser, that the partner companies “realized the technical challenges involved. You’re putting the pipeline through several major rivers, through permafrost. … I think what’s happening is that ExxonMobil has come to understand that they have better opportunities elsewhere.”

Ritchie, however, is concerned that the pipeline will be constructed as planned. “I’m not as optimistic as Hazell,” he said. “I think there’s always the possibility the project could come back to life.”

For now, all await a decision from the federal government that will either halt the program completely, or allow it to move forward toward its next stage of approval. What should have been a peak decision this September from the National Energy Board proved merely to be another valley in the decision-making process for proponents of the pipeline, and critics remain united in opposition to the project, but divided regarding their predictions about it.

For Carmichael, however, the present is bleak: “We have absolutely nothing right now. Give us some alternative to how to put bread on the table.”

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

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Yasemin Boluk | The McGill Daily

Health&Education

Tune-out, drop-out, shut-in The Japanese hikikomori phenomenon has struck a cultural consciousness Megan Galeucia The McGill Daily

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he unnamed protagonist in Shaking Tokyo (the third segment of the anthology film, Tokyo! directed by Bong JoonHo) is an utter slob. His small room is piled high with pizza boxes, discarded toilet paper rolls and stacks of old books. We learn that he has not set foot outside of his apartment in a decade and that he uses his phone – his only connection to society – to order pizza and all other necessities from delivery services. But this shut-in differs from other cinematic characterizations of recluses (read Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and Chuck Noland in Castaway) because he is a representative character that hundreds of thousands of Japanese adolescents identify with. In fact, the pizza-eating main character of Shaking Tokyo represents a member of what international news headlines and documentary films have referred to as Japan’s “lost generation,” the hikikomori.

Hikikomori – a Japanese translation of the English phrase “social withdrawal syndrome” – refers to both the social phenomenon of adolescents who have chosen to withdraw from all forms of social life for protracted periods of time as well as the individuals belonging to this group. Like the character in Shaking Tokyo, many hikikomori often spend almost all of their time at home in their rooms. As permanent shut-ins, hikikomori do not attend school, do not have jobs, and do not socialize with friends or even interact with their family members

for long periods of time, anywhere from six months to decades in some exceptional cases, according to a report by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare.

Brian Bergstrom, a visiting lecturer at McGill in the East Asian Studies department since 2006, explained that many of these youth operate on nocturnal schedules, allowing them to come into as little contact with other people as possible; Bergstrom is currently writing his dissertation on representations and cultural constructions of deviant and delinquent youth in Japan.

It’s difficult to grasp the size of the problem. The leading Japanese expert on hikikomori, psychologist Tamaki Saito, has estimated the numbers of hikikomori to be close to one million. However, statistics on the condition’s prevalence vary incredibly, and most studies’ results fall well below the million mark.

Such variation can be attributed to the lack of a strict definition of the syndrome and the underreporting of cases, says Bergstrom. But what remains undisputed is that the sheer numbers of young people dropping out and retreating to their bedrooms have forced Japan to recognize hikikomori as a serious social issue.

But what is hikikomori? A mental illness? A social phenomenon? A youth revolt? And should it be examined through a medical lens? While the term has existed for over two decades, it only came into popular use in the mid-90s. Characterizing the finer details still remains a source of discord among experts, the general population, and in the media. The relatively recent emergence of this mass acute withdraw-

al among adolescents and its virtual nonexistence outside of Japan makes hikikomori’s etiology very puzzling. Though isolated cases have been documented in other Asian-Pacific countries, and social anxiety problems such as agoraphobia (fear of crowded public places) are certainly found in the West, some have defined hikikomori as a uniquely Japanese problem. Psychologists like Saito have insisted on categorizing Japanese youth’s mass social withdrawal as a diagnosable psychological disorder, warranting treatment through drugs, psychotherapy, or a combination thereof.

Many Japanese consider hikikomori to be more of a social than medical problem, often blaming parents for poor child rearing rather than a chemical imbalance in the brain. The public has criticized the parents of hikikomori for enabling their children’s withdrawal by serving them three meals a day (often leaving the food outside their locked bedroom doors) and supporting them with weekly allowances they can use for pizza delivery and to buy video games and CDs – entertainment that doesn’t require any social interaction. The negative portrayal of hikikomori has also been fostered by Japanese news sources that have characterized these “shut-ins” as dangerous angry youths because of two highlypublicized stories of violent crimes: a kidnapper that held a girl hostage for nineteen years and a bus hijacking by a 17-year-old teenager in 2000. Perhaps the enabling habits of parents may be more indicative of families’ underlying fears of stigmatization than poor parenting skills.

Most hikikomori belong to Japan’s large middle class, but may also be impacted by a variety of other social factors.

Media has also focused on blaming internet culture for hikikomori because of its tendency to nurture alienating behavior. However, according to Bergstrom, since most youth in advanced states of hikikomori avoid the internet as well, “an interest in the internet can actually be a way out of hikikomori” by slowly reintegrating individuals into society, beginning with the formation of online relationships.

Social scientists have alternatively deemed societal pressures fostered by the rigid school system, and a weakening labour market combined with the gradual erosion of traditional Japanese values to be responsible for the country’s burgeoning numbers of withdrawn adolescents. In a highly-cited sociological article on hikikomori, Andy Furlong of the University of Glasgow argues that Japan’s economic recession in the 1990s stimulated a reorganization of the traditional labour market, making fewer jobs available to young people. This, coupled with pressures placed on youth by families and educational institutions to reach high levels of academic achievement and build successful careers, leaves many school-aged Japanese without direction, guidance, or state support when doubting their ability to make it to the top.

In a society where dropping out of school to work in a cafe or travel for a year may not be considered reputable options, quietly retreating into one’s room may be the most desirable way to deal with feelings of isolation and uncertainty without being

publicly stigmatized. According to Bergstrom, the popular Japanese conception of hikikomori incorporates both medical and sociological perspectives into a view of the issue as a social syndrome – a mental disease produced by the general conditions of society.

Recently, with increased general awareness of hikikomori in Japan, avenues of support are emerging.

These take the form of self-help groups and family-based therapy, that offer resources such as “rental big sisters” (who provide isolated adolescents with an initial social contact) to the work of job-training programs within the Japanese hikikomori-aid organization New Start. The government has focused more on preventive measures designed to set the social deviant on the right track. One step has been the initiation of a curriculum whose name translates as “education of the heart” by the Japanese Ministry of Education. It aims to instill moral ideals and a sense of patriotism via the observation of national traditions. Critical of this neo-nationalist program, Bergstrom argues that it retains “no sense of rethinking the fundamental aspects of this problem.”

In their emergence as a socially anomalous group, hikikomori are a critique of society writ large.

Deviant groups “frequently open up a space to rethink sociality,” explained Bergstrom. So perhaps instead of pathologizing these individuals as socially inept, criminal, or mentally ill, the hikikomori phenomenon can be seen as an opportunity to address underlying issues and maybe even come up with some fresh, less-normative solutions.

Health&Education

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

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Sovereign sexualities The Daily talks to one of Britain’s foremost queer historians

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hen Jeffrey Weeks first began what would become his life’s work, he and the few other scholars interested in the construction of sexual identity were on the fringes of academia, alienated or disregarded by their peers. Last Thursday, more than thirty years after his book Coming Out helped found the field of queer history, Weeks delivered the opening lecture of McGill’s British Queer History Conference to a packed Leacock 232.

That audiences today are so eager to hear a talk about queer sexuality is indicative of an immense societal shift – an increasing acceptance that Weeks traced from the emergence of social constructionism in the 1960s to the present. In an interview with The Daily, he discussed the state of queer history and the role of queer activism in the face of globalization.

The McGill Daily: Traditionally, a lot of queer history has concerned itself with tracing an origin point for the notion of “the homosexual.”

You’ve made a case for locating it at the end of the 19th century, and others have argued for different dates.

Why do you think it’s valuable that we understand the emergence of “modern homosexuality?” What would you say the queer historical project is attempting to accomplish?

Jeffrey Weeks: Well I think we have to make a distinction between what was the focus in the 1970s when modern queer history began and what the focus is today. I think in the 1970s there was a preoccupation with trying to understand the shifting nature of gay identity, particularly in the wake of gay liberation, and in a sense the starting point was the present rather than the past. And the present was the emergence of new… gay liberation identities, and therefore it was almost a natural response to try to look for the origins of the emergence of these identities.

Today the impulse is almost the opposite, to recognize in the past what we now recognize in the present, which is that there’s a great variety of ways of being gay or lesbian or transgendered, and therefore trying to seek in the past a similar pattern of diversity. In a sense the starting point in both cases is the present. But the aim is different.

MD: In the last few years we’ve seen a real increase in the visibility,

on a global level, of what many refer to as “queer” issues. For example, the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill, the conviction of the Malawian couple Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, and the repeal last year of anti-sodomy laws in India. A lot of LGBT and queer groups across the world are involving themselves in these issues, but there’s also been criticism of these groups for imposing Western templates of gay liberation onto these non-Western societies. What role do you think queer communities – especially activists and academics – should be playing in these situations?

JW: The fact that so much has changed in the West [in terms of liberalized attitudes toward sexuality] has given rise to a recognition that in other parts of the world, things may be going in the opposite direction, and sometimes in direct response to what’s happening in the West. For instance, fundamentalist regimes across the world – or indeed in the Western world – look at what’s happening in the West, and the greater tolerance of homosexuality, and say, “Look, this is what happens if you allow modernization to get out of control, this is what happens if you abandon God.” And that feeds into

homophobia in some other countries in the global south, especially in Africa – the role of the Anglican church in Nigeria, for instance, is extremely dangerous, and is feeding a schism in the world Christian movement.

Now what’s happening is that activists in the West see what’s happening there and want to show signs of solidarity, and I think what’s emerged out of that is a discourse of human sexual rights, which isn’t simply a Western imposition of Western values. It’s reflecting people’s struggles for harmony and self-expression in the world as a whole, and especially in the global south – it’s the politics of solidarity.

But there is a danger, of course, that in doing that, people want to – not so much impose, because we haven’t got the power to impose – but present a model of development that culminates in the contemporary lesbian or gay of the Western world, and we’ve got to respect the fact that homosexuality, and sexuality generally, is lived in a whole variety of different ways in different parts of the world. So it’s important to respect those differences while defending people’s right to express their sexuality, and that I think is what the movement for human sexual rights is trying to do.

MD: Should academics involved in queer issues even be playing a part in these conversations?

JW: I think it’s essential that those of us who have studied these issues and are aware of them should do our best to demonstrate to the world that sexuality isn’t a given, that there’s no such thing as a true sexuality, that there are various forms of sexuality, and they take different forms in different cultures and different histories. We have to respect those differences while insisting that there are certain common human values and norms that every country and every culture should follow. And the supreme one for me in relationship to sexuality is that people should be free to express their own sexuality in their own ways, at their own pace.

As long as those don’t harm others, and don’t impose violence on others, people should be free to express them. … And that doesn’t seem to be a western norm, that seems to be a universal norm.

—compiled by Sheehan Moore Read the full interview online at http://bit.ly/jweeks.

Simple meal foundations for the soul Build your own soup with this basic time-saver Dine with Dash Thomas Dashwood dinewithdash@mcgilldaily.com

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n addition to soothing the foreboding frostnip we are sure to soon encounter, soups are an economical and clever way to use those vegetables most available to us this winter: squash, root vegetables, onions, and all things preserved. I suppose these recipes could be left unblended, but by blending them I promise you they become infinitely more luxurious. I would never suggest buying a piece of equipment just to make one new dish, but a hand blender (for ten dollars at Provigo) is indispensable (and conveniently required for making chocolate banana milkshakes). Standing blenders will also work well.

Variations: Leek and potato: Use three large (peeled if thick skinned) and diced potatoes, and two sliced leeks (white and light green part only, make sure to clean out any dirt or sand within the leek). Great with milk or cream added, and impossible to eat without pepper.

Tex-Mex corn chowder: Add one tablespoon ground cumin and 2 teaspoons ground coriander to onion, fry a little and then add twothirds of a bag of frozen corn. Don’t

use milk. Serve with wedges of lime and avocado.

Pea soup: Use about 500g frozen peas. Try adding a handful of fresh mint, or half of a teaspoon of dried mint before blending. The juice of half a lemon is also very welcome (and, again, lots of pepper).

Roasted vegetable: Cut any vegetables you have (about the same amount as the leek and potato soup will give) into similar size pieces, toss in a few teaspoons oil and some salt and roast at 425° for 25 minutes (until soft). Alternatively, use leftover roasted or cooked vegetables, wilted salads or simply use whatever vegetables you have in the basic recipe.

Curry squash: Cut a mediumsized (no bigger than a loaf of bread) butternut squash (or pumpkin or acorn squash, or something deliciously and autumnally Québécois) remove the seeds, rub with oil and salt, place face down on a roasting tray and roast for 45 minutes at 400°. Scoop out cooked flesh from skin and add to above recipe with 2 tablespoons curry powder (or to taste). Carrots (or cubed sweet potatoes) may also be added, or substituted (roast as well, just for 25 minutes, though).

Soup base Ingredients: t t t t t t

3 tablespoons canola or olive oil (or butter) 1 medium onion Vegetables (see each variation at left) 2 packages or cubes instant stock (chicken or vegetable), or equivalent 1 cup milk (optional) Pepper (in my opinion, vital to many soups) and salt

Makes: About 5 servings.

Method: Heat the oil in a large pot on medium heat, adding the onion after dicing. Cook for five minutes (the onion should begin to look translucent). Meanwhile, fill a kettle with six cups of water and boil.

Add vegetables, cook five more minutes.

Add whichever form of stock you are using to the now-boiling water.

Stick on lid, let cook for at least 25 minutes (after cooking, test the firmest vegetable, continuing cooking if not yet soft).

If, like me, you are impatient, blend while still blisteringly hot. If using a standing blender, open the hole in the lid so that the steam can vent (otherwise, you will have a miniature Pompeii in your kitchen). Cover it with a dish towel to prevent splattering. Be careful of steam as it can be hotter than boiling water and can easily burn.

If using milk, add during blending. Taste and add salt and pepper to your liking. Adjust the consistency by adding more water, stock, or milk.

All of the following can be served warm or cold. Most soups will freeze in bags or containers very well.

Illustrations by Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

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A dapt or die How e-books are rendering the future of the publishing industry uncertain Cole Powers Culture Writer

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he idea of an electronic library has been floating around since at least the advent of the first computers.

Project Gutenberg (founded in 1971), an online library that publishes texts in the public domain, is a still-operating example of such science-fiction flights of fancy.

However, a lot has changed in the thirty years since Project Gutenberg started – when the idea of reading literature on a clunky and prohibitively expensive Apple II might have seemed absurd.

E-books can now be read on any of a number of e-readers (the e, as always, is shorthand for “electronic”): small, lightweight, inexpensive tablet-like devices. E-readers can even be read without the ocular strain of LCD monitors owing to recent advances in electronic ink. They can house huge stores of memory, and thus books, as well as connect wirelessly to the internet through wi-fi and cell phone networks. Though e-books comprise only about four per cent of total book sales right now, they are, as the notoriously avant-garde literary agent Andrew Wylie told the Harvard Review, the four per cent his agency spends 96 per cent of its time talking about.

Publishing, much like the fashion industry, releases its “new arrivals” in spring and fall waves of publication. In the United States, where the top ten publishers represent over 88 per cent of the total book market, companies like Random House, McGraw-Hill, and HarperCollins release hundreds of titles per season knowing that many will fail.

Those few that are successful are

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Confronted with the internet’s ultra-accessability, the publishing industry is at a cross-roads. has been the case ever since books became an industry instead of the hallowed profession of monks, but the digitization of literature has serious potential to destabilize this dynamic.

Publishing electronically is in some ways more attractive for publishers: books can be published almost-instantly everywhere on earth, the method is considerably

Authors potentially stand a lot to gain if they choose to forsake traditional publishing methods aggressively marketed, meaning that the books that get the most marketing dollars are the kind that have been preselected as profitable by market research groups. This

cheaper, and thanks to social networks, books on niche topics can find their communities instantly, guaranteeing that new books are delivered to the people that want to

read them.

However, there remains some controversy over the nature in which royalties for electronic books will be distributed to authors. Wylie, in a recent well-publicized legal wrangle with Random House, moved to publish on Amazon the edited finished works of some of the authors he represents, without compensating the publisher responsible for those works’ original publication.

Had he succeeded, he would have secured a higher royalty for his client (or his client’s estate), and a bigger cut for himself, since the profits from the online sales of books he represented would not be shared with the publisher who owned the non-electronic rights. He lost that fight, and Odyssey Editions, the publishing company he started in order to sell those rights, was forced to back down and compensate Random House.

Wylie’s move shows that authors potentially stand a lot to gain if they choose to forsake traditional publishing and cut out the middle man.

The main benefits publishing houses confer on authors are the legitimacy of their name, and the dollars of their marketing muscle.

In the case of the former, legitimacy can be ignored for significant savings, and in the case of the latter the difference in ease of the marketing of print versus electronic books is so dramatic that only a certain nostalgia for physical books could sustain commercial interest in them.

Given these factors, publishing as it currently exists must either adapt or die.

According Sarah MacLachlan, president of the mid-size, independent Toronto-based House of Anansi Press, there is merit to the traditional publishing model.

“I think we [traditional publishers] offer a stamp of legitimacy to what we choose to publish. We say to the public, ‘Out of the 250,000 other manuscripts we received, we choose to publish this one; it’s a good book, read it.’”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden is one of the most lauded science fiction editors of the last 25 years, as well

as a prolific blogger. In an interview with ABC News, he said that e-books represent “an optimistic new thing that…open[s] up a bunch of new channels and opportunities.” The only point of interaction so far between e-books and the internet has been the point of sale, from Amazon for instance, to one’s e-reader – but that doesn’t have to be the case.

As Hugh McGuire, Montrealborn founder of online audiobook library Librivox, noted in Forbes Magazine, “What is a book, after all, but a collection of data (text and images), with a defined structure (chapters, headings, captions), meta data (title, author, ISBN), prettied up with some presentation design?

In other words, what is a book, but a website that happens to be written on paper and not connected to the web?” According to him, “E-books [so far] are an attempt to make it easier for people to buy and read books without letting e-books become part of the internet.”

If those, like McGuire, who lament the publishing industry’s slow adoption of new standards of publication get their way, then books as we know them could irrevocably change. In light of new technology, the book becomes a point of entry to the internet: the terms within it instantly available for looking-up and cross-referencing, and distractions from the text – like implanted videos and online discussion – ever-present. If, like McGuire, you think the text itself should comprise more than merely text, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Just as music and television’s digitization hasn’t killed those mediums but in fact increased the efficiency of their sale and distribution, so too will books survive their inevitable digitization.

Publishing stands firmly at a crossroads, the same one that many other industries have stood at before: to embrace new technology at the expense of the current order or to cling to the old ways in spite of technology. If publishers want to stay competitive, their business models will have to radically change and many people will lose their jobs. But this loss comes with much that is to be gained by digital publication.

Considering the nature of capital, it is not likely that publishing will be able to buck the trend for much longer. It might soon be entirely appropriate to write elegies for the book as we knew it.

The Daily’s Literary Supplement Send fiction and poetry to litsup@mcgilldaily.com by 6:00pm on October 28th.

Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

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[title of article] Latest TNC production is more meta than you can imagine John Watson The McGill Daily

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uesday Night Café’s first production of the academic year sets the bar high for shows to come: [title of show] is a hilariously entertaining, whimsical effort that manages to achieve emotional depth and self-reflection. [title of show] is a musical comedy, as directors Julian Silverman and Dane Stewart described, “about two guys writing a musical about two guys writing a musical.” Although you may be thinking that you’ve done a lifetime’s worth of thinking about layers within layers within layers after Inception, [title of show] manages a level of metatheatricality that rivals Shakespeare, while at the same time smoothly chronicling the day-to-day pleasures and challenges of writing an off-Broadway musical.

The show follows two gay pop culture and musical theatre-crazy friends in New York (Ben Harris and Michael Grundland) who are bored with their day jobs and are looking to pull out the sonatas and reach

fame by writing an original show for a festival. Singing their way through the writing process, they recruit two cast members (Caitlyn Milot and Bryna Weiss), resulting in an awkward but tight-knit family who set out to escape the triviality of everyday life through musical theatre. The songs themselves aren’t thrilling, but they serve their purpose in a musical that is really about more than music.

In a way, [title of show] is like watching a behind-the-scenes, “makingof” a musical that takes the constant frustrations and personal anxieties of the writer’s creative process and places them in the magical world of song and dance.

Director Julian Silverman takes the metatheatrical theme a step further by allowing the actors to use their own names onstage (although the producers insist that they are still playing the original script’s roles of Hunter, Heidi, Jeff, and Susan), bridging the gap between the audience and the characters. This decision, according to Silverman, “really made the show feel like our own,” but it also forces the audience to recall the countless times that they

[title of show] tells the story of two young would-be musical writers. themselves have been immersed in a similar process of creation. By leaving visible the show’s levels of production, the audience is able to submerge itself critically but also quite self-reflexively – unlike most musicals, [title of show] is not only a spectacle, but also the realization that musical theatre is a spectacle.

Now that’s metatheatre, for you.

Silverman must have been somewhat limited in his choices for stage design by the script’s constant selfreferences (e.g. “We only have four chairs”). But this simple staging of four chairs and a keyboard both gives [title of show] its distinctive off-off-Broadway vibe and allows the cast to embody the various effects and emotions that in larger productions are conveyed through elabo-

rate stage designs and devices.

With such a small cast and simple set, each actor is given ample time on stage to show off their comic, dramatic and vocal talents, but the strength of the cast lies in their group dynamic and their ability to perform as a cohesive whole.

In a hilarious early number and one of the show’s most memorable of an otherwise fairly forgettable list of songs, Ben plays a sassy-ass piece of blank paper in “An Original Musical.”

In “Monkeys and Playbills,” Caitlyn and Bryna appear and disappear throughout the theatre as spectres for ideas and inspiration, until they get called out for it and return to normal. Even Michael, the most idealistic and realist of characters, can’t help but be absorbed by the power

Photos by Eric Chad | Courtesy of TNC

of theatre as he proclaims with Ben and Bryna, “We’ll sing backup!” for “Die, Vampire, Die!” In the end, what really comes across is the degree to which the cast and crew seem to have really had fun putting this together. At its bones, that’s what a musical is all about. The fact that [title of show] is able to do this while explicitly bringing up the struggles and pressures of the theatre industry is a sign of hard work, but most importantly the love of musical theatre. [title of show] is playing this week until October 23 and 27 to 30 in Morrice Hall at 8 p.m.. $6 for students, call 514-398-6813 or email tnctheatre@gmail.com for reservations.

Winsome Windsor Alexander MacLeod’s first short story collection nominated for Giller Prize Ben Fried The McGill Daily

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wo runners in a tunnel, sprinting before the oncoming train. A young woman, afraid of water, throwing herself off a hotel roof into the river below. A damaged man walking along the side of the highway at night.

These are the images that have stayed embedded in my memory in the days since I read Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting, a lousy title for a book that weighs so heavily on the mind. Each comes from a different short story, crystallizing the action therein – the moment of sudden change when, by design or accident, a person becomes someone else and may fleetingly glimpse the receding figure of the old self. A collection of small transformations, Light

Lifting has deservedly been shortlisted for this year’s Giller Prize.

There are seven stories in all, each of which is set in Windsor, Ontario or harkens back to it. It has been a while since a work of fiction reminded me so sharply of the pungent pleasures of locality. Windsor only rarely oversteps its bounds and intrudes on the personal dramas of MacLeod’s stories, yet it remains a constant presence: a waning industrial town, hard to love and, for that reason, loved all the better by a few. The city ties the stories together, pulling the disparate instances into a broad undercurrent of urban decline. The good times in “Light Lifting,” which keep bricklayers and bouncers busy, turn sour by “The Number Three” – the last and most topical story in the collection – when the aftershock of a car crash swells into a troubled and ironic elegy for the once-confident automobile town.

The twilit moment when action becomes epiphany is what interests MacLeod. “To do or not to do: that would be my Shakespearean question,” he revealed in a press-package interview. Epiphany, of course, is the great structural cliché of storytelling; each tale must refresh it anew. It’s a pleasure, therefore, to reach the end of “Miracle Mile,” which contains the scene in the train tunnel, and discover that what seemed to be another take on the loneliness of the long distance runner has in fact been more simply, and movingly, a story of friendship.

Or, again, to realize in the last paragraph of “Adult Beginners 1” that the woman who forces herself to swim does not entirely escape the dangers of water.

Those are the stories I liked best in Light Lifting. Each has problems, however, which become more distracting and detracting

for the rest. MacLeod writes well, if plainly, and he is clearly a practiced hand with the story form.

Nevertheless, there is bravado in his writing that betokens a much younger man. His first-person narrators have the aggressive tendency to let their insights loose in asides that begin “You know...” He is too eager to demonstrate just how much he knows. A sentence like this one from “The Number Three,” comparing “a piece of crap 2.2 litre in-line 4 with barely 85 hp” with “the optional 4-litre turbocharged V6 with 251 hp,” shows what happens when free indirect discourse becomes too free for its own good. And while there are distressing and effective images of violence in Light Lifting, too often MacLeod twists the reader’s stomach needlessly. The weakest story, the one that gives the book its title, ends with a brawl among bricklay-

ing crews for which nothing, not even the characters’ frustrations, has prepared us and from which nothing results.

Like one of his own characters, Alexander MacLeod seems to be in an “in-between” state. Alongside the faults of his collection are passages of great power, beneath the sheen of performance are gulfs of feeling. MacLeod has not yet ascended as a writer. He published his first story at the age of 21, but he is 38 now, and Light Lifting is his debut book. He is also the son of Alistair MacLeod. I don’t want to speculate on what it must be like to write in the reflected light of a man who, with holy simplicity, has composed some of the best stories in the English language; suffice to say, it probably involves different parts inspiration and intimidation.

I hope the Giller recognition steers MacLeod to clearer waters.

16 Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

BEGGAR’S BANQUET

South street blues Downtown Thali Cuisine Indienne doesn’t live up to its northern counterparts Oliver Lurz Culture Writer

W

hat does the “taste of Parc Ex” have to offer downtown? Not much it seems. This might sound like a facile observation but 1409 St. Marc really is a long way away from where I and most people I know live. I arrived to find Thali Cuisine Indienne offputtingly deserted. It was a Sunday night though, so in the interest of fairness one should ignore this.

“Bewildering décor, isn’t it?” my companion asked. That was an understatement. Framed prints of Indian paintings in an 18th century style clashed irreconcilably with dollar store Halloween decorations – spider webs, pumpkins, the lot.

The overall effect was a very “Tim Burton meets the Asian sub-continent” vibe; not a look anyone in their right mind would be anxious to create, but, I suppose, unavoidable at this time of year.

There were more members of staff than there were customers,

but despite this the ordering process seemed strangely complicated.

Surveying the scene, we went to the counter to order and pay, and then confusingly were sent to a different counter to order again. Here we were presented with our food on a metal plate that I can only describe as ‘prison canteen style’. Different sections aimed to keep each element of the meal separate, but inevitably during the course of eating one ends up with an unidentifiable mélange in the centre. I wasn’t too bothered by the unusual crockery situation since combining flavours is something that Indian food lends itself to really appealingly.

I ordered the vegetarian thali, a sample platter of different dishes.

Unfortunately, the seasoning in my lentil dhal was maddeningly off the mark; there was no trace of the crucial coriander, and the balance of cardamom, cumin, and chili was spoiled by an upsetting amount of salt. The chickpea masala was dry and lacking a much-needed citrus note. Essentially, the vegetarian platter, which ought always to be the jewel in any Indian

restaurant’s crown, seemed to me to be a subtle provocation to give it all up and become a carnivore. This may have been a good idea, as my companion was quite pleased with the meat option.

The brinjal bhaji (spiced eggplant and potatoes) considerably redeemed the situation. Not overly oily, nor too mushy, and with a pleasant nutty flavour, it was the evening’s saving grace. It didn’t exactly send me into a catatonic state, but it was certainly had a drug-like effect, helping me forget the discomfort of the other dishes.

On reflection, my rapturous reception of the eggplant perhaps owed a lot to how it stood out from the other dishes, which I suppose was not a difficult feat. My friend agreed that comparatively it did taste heavenly, but at any rate we were brought swiftly back down to earth by the stale naan bread.

Admittedly, for under $9 Thali doesn’t allow any delusions of grandeur. But I want to refer you to Sarah Musgrave’s recent review in the Montreal Gazette some months ago.

Blair Elliott | The McGill Daily

Here she writes that in order to keep costs down, Thali “cuts all the right corners”. I could not disagree more.

Downtown rents could be the cause of these cut corners, but despite the lower quality that this seems to engender, Thali is almost unique in offering authentic Indian food along Ste. Catherine. However, it still does not quite warrant the effort of the walk from McGill’s campus.

Yes, if you’re downtown and hungry there are a score of pricier and worse places to eat. If, however, you’re committed to finding a thoroughly decent Indian restaurant, you would be better off going to somewhere in Parc Ex. Bombay Mahal at 1001 Jean-Talon, for example, is equally cheap but quite frankly better. Although the naan is still pretty stale.

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Culture

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

17

Tintin and the fleur-de-lys Quebec’s relationship with the controversial and creative Belgian comic Alexis Montgomery The McGill Daily

M

y first encounter with Tintin was in my grade four French class with my now favourite Tintin book: L’Île Noire (The Black Island).

Although I could not understand the French text, the glossy pages of pictures depicting Tintin and his wire fox terrier Milou trying to take down a gang of counterfeiters got me hooked on the series for years.

Created as a serial in 1929 by Belgian writer Georges Remi (pen name: Hergé), Les Aventures de Tintin – which details the international escapades of the young Belgian reporter, and Milou, his constant companion – has become a global phenomenon.

With over 230 million copies sold in over seventy languages, Tintin has become a worldwide favourite among all ages. Here in Quebec, Tintin is found in every children’s bookstore and on the walls of Frite Alors! franchises. Given the character’s ubiquity, I wanted to explore how and why Tintin manages to transcend time, language, and culture.

Tintin connects with young readers because of its emphasis on themes of friendship. Tintin’s relationships with Captain Haddock – an old whisky-loving sailor – and Professor Tournesol – the brilliant though distracted scientist – provide examples of comradeship that transcend age and survive many obstacles. Tintin’ s relationship with Milou also does this – but with species as the barrier.

Produced before the advent of television, Tintin’ s adventure series, which featured detailed pictures of world cultures and regions and often explored themes of a historical and political nature, was both educational and entertaining – albeit at times rife with imperialist racism. Taking place all across the world, Tintin’s adventures functioned as exciting surrogate journeys for readers and gave them a peek into parts of the world they could otherwise only find in photographs. It also gave them glimpses into relevant historical debates and realities, as in 1954’s On a marché sur la Lune (Explorers on the Moon) – a clear reference to the space race of 1950s.

Though the plots of Tintin often valourize minority groups pitted against wealthy European

Matt Milne | The McGill Daily

villains, the comic bears the racist mark of its age. Hergé’s representations of Jewish people, Japanese people, and above all, African people were grossly stereotyped and have come under harsh scrutiny in recent years. In response to pressure from Congo nationalist Mbutu Mondondohas, the particularly crude Tintin in the Congo may be banned in Belgian bookstores this year. This controversy over racial stereotypes continues into criticism of Tintin in America, Cigars of the Pharaoh, and Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

The adaptability of Tintin’s character to new cultures is no doubt another reason why the series has become popular in so many countries. The name “Tintin” refers neither to an established first name or surname, but was invented by Hergé himself, giving it the same currency in any language. According to Hergé, the name Tintin was simply meant to embody all the virtuous and heroic qualities of man. For that reason, Tintin was thought to have the abil-

ity to translate easily into cultures and represent a universal ideal.

Tintin didn’t always succeed at this, however. In L’Étoile mysterieuse (The Shooting Star), published at the height of the Second World War, Tintin and a team of Europeans from neutral countries raced against a team of Americans to be the first to land on a meteorite. The comic, which both portrayed Americans negatively and played up racist Jewish stereotypes (something Hergé had done before), garnered substantial criticism in the international community when it was published. As a result, in later versions of L’Etoile mysterieuse Tintin’s American competitors were replaced with characters from the fictional country of Sao Rican, and all explicitly Jewish characters were removed.

In Quebec, it is clear that Tintin has had a profound cultural impact. Maxime Prévost, a French literature professor at Université d’Ottawa who just finished co-editing a volume of contributions with Études françaises about Tintin

– Hergé reporter, Tintin en contexte – explained that by the 1950s, the majority of French speakers in Quebec had devoured their favourite Tintin stories, relishing in the adventure and heroism of the boy reporter. As he explained in an email, “[Tintin] is a cultural denominator, one of the rare works which you can allude to in any discussion or any forum and be certain that your interlocutors actually know what you are talking about.”

Sociologist Yves Laberge, adapted the Tintin volume Coke en stock (The Red Sea Sharks) into Quebec French. Laberge explained that even though French Canadians understand perfectly the French (and original) version of the stories of Tintin, Laberge wanted to adapt or transform some elements into a more typical Québécois and Canadian reality. He added, “It was not a translation but a cross-cultural experience, an adaptation...to demonstrate how the Québécois talk.” However, this adapted version has been met with criticism for belittling Québécois readers,

echoing the Tintin debates of past decades. Prévost explained that Hergé wrote the French version of Tintin for an international audience, and thus wrote French that was clear and concise. This is precisely why Tintin is used as a learning tool in French classrooms and for students learning French as a second language. Prévost felt that it was unnecessary for Laberge to transform the version with Quebecisms, and that Hergé himself would have disapproved of the adapted version. Moreover, he disapproved of the inclusion of Quebec curse words such as “tonnerre de brest” and “mille sabords” in these editions – which French audiences might still recognize – as opposed to the innocent nonsense curses used in the original.

Despite the many controversies that Les Aventures de Tintin has incited over its eighty years, its continued popularity – not only as a comic series, but also as a worldwide commercial and cultural phenomenon – makes evident Tintin’s timeless and borderless appeal.

But at my back I always hear time’s wingèd charioty hurrying near...

The Lit Sup deadline has been extended!

It’s not too late to get yourself published in The Daily – send your creative writing in all forms to litsup@mcgilldaily.com by October 28th at 6 p.m. Multiple submissions are welcomed.

Compendium!

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 21, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

18

Lies, half-truths, and this is your mind on drugs

Obama defects, founds Derridean party Télésphore Sansouci The McGill Daily

U

Triple happiness

L

ot of good things in this place... I experienced three today: Children. What joy the bundled, rambling kids holding onto a rope bring to us all. What a welcome contrast from students in the way they walk: undetermined and without hurry, amazed and distracted by tiny creatures or the hat falling off of a playmate’s head in front. Oh, and the high-pitched screams of joy and excitement from the playground across the way, inspiring and ensuring many a smile.

Views from the classroom – being able to see the afternoon sun hitting building tops through the window with those enormous clouds moving in.

What a sight to complement this lecture!

These sunny fall days, the light and breeze making everyone’s face so fresh and beautiful... Here’s to looking at you, and you, and you!

Fuck yeah! is an occasional anonymous raves column. Sick of seeing so many Fucks these (see below)? SEND ME MORE FUCKS YEAHS! 300 words or less, make them loving. Send to: fuckthis@mcgilldaily.com. Maybe if we get enough, we’ll make a separate e-mail address.

Life in a glass of water Corinne Parker

REMEMBER REBOOT?

.S. President Barack Obama has deserted the Democratic Party and founded his own political formation: The Derridean Party.

“We’ve got to find the power of paradox,” the president said. “‘Change’ means not being bound to logic or what you say your positions are. It means a dialectic of contradiction.

“It means appealing a court decision that handily accomplishes what you say you want. It means opposing the accomplishment of your stated goals. It means telling the military not to accept queer people, even in the same breath as you say you want them to.”

Questions about Obama’s profound misunderstanding of Derrida PRESIDENT MAKES NO SENSE, P. 8

The University of HMB, Inc. Fuck the ZERO mention of learning, teaching, or pedagogy in the October 14 message from the Principal. I’m glad I’m here to help you fulfill your “mission.” I hope I’m allowing you to achieve a “progressive” mix of students, acting as a great fund-raising source and performing to your standards. I’ve forgotten why I’m here in the first place. Fuck this.

Posters: sticky, sucky, stop!

“Summer fling, in a nutshell”

Sugar dick daze Pogo New

To the assholes who are constantly sticking impossible-toremove posters on mailboxes, lamp posts, and pretty much every other flat surface within a mile of campus (including the latest load of Israeli Apartheid flyers, oh goodie!): While I’m sure you like to think of yourselves as heroic urban warriors who are really sticking it to the Man as you vomit your message all over the city, many of us find your advertising method of choice to be an eyesore and a nuisance, especially after months of seeing the stubborn posters every two metres on the way to school. (Those posters bitching about the Vancouver Olympics? Still there!)

Maybe people like me would be more sympathetic to your message if you didn’t permanently glue it to everything that doesn’t move. You probably wouldn’t be happy if I smeared flyers for Israeli

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Independence Day all over a building that you’d have to look at for the next year. Learn to use bulletin boards.

One coffee enema, coming up Thank you, classmate, for spilling coffee all over the floor in class and not saying anything as it made its way down to my bag, which absorbed most of it. Now all my gym clothes, lunch box, and hat are soaking in your foul, vanilla-smelling, diarrhea-coloured crap. You did well to sneak out really quickly after class or I’d have performed a rectal cleaning on you with the hot liquid.

How to write a Hyde Park about the Arab-Israeli Conflict for The Daily 1. Before writing, inculcate yourself with the belief that your perspective or argument is distinct, profound, and – most importantly – true.

2. Load your first sentence with disparaging remarks criticizing all opposing points of view. After all, your perspective or argument is the right one. Character assassinations against authors of articles you disagree with are especially appropriate here.

3. Fill the body of your article with far-reaching conclusions and mischaracterizations of opposing

views. If possible, take someone else’s quote out of context.

4. Remind yourself, constantly throughout the writing process, to exercise zero humility whatsoever.

Remember that despite the fact that you are only an undergrad and at best merely studying the Middle East, you are an authoritative figure, capable of making huge judgments on complex, hotly-debated issues.

For this step, it is crucial to understand that despite the presence of hundreds of books, entire university departments, and thousands of news writers completely dedicated to the discourse of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is such a simple issue.

The conclusions are obvious and before our own very eyes...inside your Daily article.

5. Sign your article with credentials indicating your expertise on the matter. Your argument will hold more credence if you are studying the issue at hand – bonus points for being an honours student!

6. When the issue has been printed, circulate it to all of your friends who presumably go to McGill and read student newspapers only to learn/read about the Middle East.

They are of course, not more interested in real issues that affect students at the McGill/Montreal level.

Too much hate this week! Send me a fuck yeah: fuckthis@mcgilldaily. com.