9 minute read
Comment pages 9 to
from 23 March 2022
by Milan Lukes
International students deserve free health care
Despite barriers, international students are willing to fight for the Canadian dream
Advertisement
COMMENT
Ivan Nuñez Gamez, staff As an international student, I understand the concerns raised when one decides to pursue their goals and aspirations by studying abroad, the costs of finding health insurance among them. I would like to think my parents are pretty confident in my recently gained independence, but before I left for Canada, they were meticulous about examining the insurance I selected. I can understand why, as health insurance really is a matter of life and death. Though I initially thought all international students enjoyed Canada’s internationally acclaimed and infamously “free” health care, it didn’t take me long to realize international students do not receive the same care as most Canadian citizens.
staff Marina Djurdjevic / graphic /
Most international students aren’t just paying over $1,000 per academic year for their insurance — the medical coverage they’re paying for doesn’t always cover the assistance they need. This plays into the argument that Manitoba is treating its international students as cash cows.
In Canada, international students make up 17.1 per cent of total university enrolments, yet due to ever-growing differential fees — which cause international students to pay over four times what domestic students pay — they represent 35 per cent of the fees collected for health insurance by post-secondary institutions.
The University of Manitoba is not exempt from this disparity.
If international students’ tuition represents such a large amount of the income the university receives, it is fair to expect access to medical assistance in return. Though each international student enrolled at the U of M is insured under StudentCare and Manitoba Blue Cross insurance, we are nonetheless overcharged and underserviced.
Before the Progressive Conservatives came to power, the Health Services Insurance Act contained a clause that gave international students access to universal health care. However, in 2018, the Act was amended to repeal that clause on the basis it would save the province $3 million a year. Since then, petitions for inclusive health care have been a regular part of the fight to regain this right for international students, and the issue has garnered the support of the Manitoba Liberal Party along the way. A petition for inclusive health care has been read in the Manitoba Legislature thanks to the relentless efforts of the Healthcare for All coalition, but governmental action is yet to be seen.
Although the numbers are grim, they don’t do justice to the hard realities many international students face. Last year, Calvin Lugalambi — an international civil engineering student at the U of M — was charged $123,000 in hospital bills after requiring an emergency surgery to fix an intestinal obstruction. At the time of the emergency, Lugalambi was transferring from the International College of Manitoba to the program of his choice. He claimed neither of the institutions explicitly informed him that he needed to purchase additional insurance or he would be uninsured during the summer.
After Lugalambi’s life-saving procedure, St. Boniface Hospital offered him a 10-year payment plan of $1,000 per month. Although better than upfront payment, this is an unsustainable debt for most international students, including Lugalambi. Despite his situation, Lugalambi said he wishes to finish school in Canada, making him one example of an international student willing to endure these obstacles for the sake of a better future.
When I came to Canada, I never expected to be treated as an equal, at least not by the government. After all, I am nothing but a foreigner seeking educational opportunities my home country is unable to provide. But international students deserve a level of human decency — the kind that does not take my place of birth or my immigration status into account when determining the medical assistance I receive. Universal health care is a human right that all Manitobans are entitled to, regardless of their immigration status. Ensuring it’s provided to international students is simply the price of encouraging them to pursue the Canadian dream.
NFB receives 76th Oscar nomination
National Film Board’s ‘Affairs of the Art’ up for Best Animated Short Film
ARTS & CULTURE
Grace Paizen, staff As a national institution pushing toward its 90th anniversary, it may not come as a surprise to some that the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has officially picked up its 76th Academy Award nomination, considering the Board’s remarkable tenure.
The recipient of the NFB’s Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film is Affairs of the Art, a short created by United Kingdom filmmakers Joanna Quinn and Les Mills with their production company Beryl Productions International and co-produced by the NFB’s own Michael Fukushima.
While the short is described with the tagline “How many obsessions can one family have?” it is morbid in a classically NFB kind of way.
Canadian viewers may see similarities in the humour and animation of Affairs of the Art to the canonically morbid — yet somehow beloved — NFB animated short The Cat Came Back by Winnipeg-born animator Cordell Barker, which was also nominated for an Oscar in 1989.
Though viewed as a kid-friendly adaption of the classic song, those in Canadian elementary school in the ’90s may remember an afternoon where the television and VCR cart was rolled into the classroom, followed by disconcerting feelings as they watched Mr. Johnson’s attempts to blow up a cat with a mountain of dynamite in Barker’s film.
Like Barker’s, Quinn and Mills’s film has a seemingly comical note, particularly at the start, where the narrator Beryl believes she is “Rousseauesque” in her ability to draw, before the narrative quickly transfers to another obsession in the family: Beryl’s sister’s hobby of collecting bugs, waiting for them to die and then placing the corpses in raisin boxes.
This rapid shift from the silly to the morbid sets the stage for more macabre acts — like her sister purposefully attempting to murder her pet mouse via train set — dispersed amid the slapstick narrative of Beryl’s attempts at art.
Bouncing between Beryl’s story of reclaiming her artistic endeavours and increasingly macabre scenes of animal death and taxidermy, Affairs of the Art is not a comfortable watch and employs a very specific sort of humour.
It’s as though the film is attempting Edgar Allan Poe-style dark comedy, see-sawing between the humorous and horrifying, but the film never fully realizes this effort.
Where Poe’s humour was balanced on unsympathetic characters whose disturbing experiences seemed deserved, the core of the film rests on a sympathetic narrator wasting her life in a factory instead of pursuing her dreams, placed in this circumstance by becoming pregnant before she had the chance to attend post-secondary school — an all-too-real experience for women which happens to this day.
In this way, the grotesque scenes of Beryl’s sister’s obsession with death and preserving dead bodies play as depressive in conjunction with Beryl’s own story, as her sister’s obsessions are rewarded.
As for recreating an environment comparable to nostalgic NFB films, Affairs of the Art morbidly hits the mark.
The animation style is aesthetically pleasing, which perhaps adds to the unnerving juxtaposition of the grisly scenes.
In fact, in his book Hinterland Remixed, film scholar Andrew Burke describes the NFB’s deluge of
image / National Film Board of Canada / provided
classroom-setting viewing in the last few decades of the 20th century as notorious for being “both soothing and sinister,” a quote that perfectly sums up the short.
Though a co-production with another studio, Affairs of the Art somehow manages to reconstruct this unsettling characteristic of past NFB productions.
Off-puttingly nostalgic, the film captures the essence of the NFB as remembered in Canadian classrooms.
While it should come with a warning label for its gruesome content, Affairs of the Art is an interesting take on artistically showcasing the obsessive hobbies of family members.
At the very least, the short is memorable, though in a morbid way.
Affairs of the Art is streaming for free on nfb.ca.
arts@themanitoban.com
’Toban cornertable
ARTS & CULTURE
Zoë LeBrun, staff There have been many variations on the classic detective story over the years, with just as wide a range of subjects in the role of crime-solving protagonist. As such, it’s not uncommon to read books about unlikely detectives — but have you ever read about a veterinarian who solves crimes?
This is exactly what local author Philipp Schott imagines in his upcoming book Fifty-Four Pigs: A Dr. Bannerman Vet Mystery. The novel focuses on Dr. Peter Bannerman, a veterinarian in the town of New Selfoss, a fictional Icelandic-Canadian community akin to Gimli, Man.
Fifty-Four Pigs is Schott’s fourth book to date and reflects his own specialized knowledge of veterinary medicine, as he is a practicing veterinarian here in Winnipeg. aid him not only in his veterinarian practice but also in assisting his fellow community members — he is known around town for helping to solve mysteries, as well as for his attempts to find missing people with his trusty dog, Pippin.
When Peter’s friend Tom’s swine barn suddenly explodes one day, they soon find that there is a darker side to the tragedy, and Tom becomes the prime suspect in a murder case. With Pippin at his side, Peter decides to try and clear his friend’s name with his reasoning skills, but is soon in over his head. After another murder and a string of break-ins take place around town, Peter’s involvement with the case becomes dangerous and, despite warnings from his RCMP officer brother-in-law Kevin, Peter pursues leads that point to much larger, potentially international issues.
Filled with twists and turns, Schott’s take on the detective novel is quirky, fun and lighthearted, but also rich in character and worldbuilding. Throughout the novel, we discover key aspects of New Selfoss’s history and loads of detail regarding the backgrounds and connections between members of its community. However, this attention to detail provides the greatest insight into Peter himself, and truly reflects the way that our protagonist sees the world — meticulously, logically and with a hyper-observant eye.
There is also something to be said for the charm that being set in Manitoba brings to the book, especially for those of us who live here. It is not often that we get to see our province represented in novels like Fifty-Four Pigs, but Manitoba is a perfect setting for the sleepy small town mentality that Schott creates in New Selfoss — it provides intrigue, but also serves as a reminder that crime happens everywhere, even in the “safest” and most unexpected places.
provided ECW Press / image /
currently available for pre-order from major retailers. The book will be available for in-store purchase starting April 19.
Fifty-Four Pigs protagonist Peter loves logic and objectivity, concepts that
