Vol102Iss11

Volume 102, Issue 11

October 11, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

DAILY Drinking responsibly since 1911

Published by The Daily Publications Society, a student society of McGill University.

Is underfunding a myth?

Page 3

University of Ottawa

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NEWS 03 NEWS

Postal workers to vote on deal Missing and murdered Aboriginal women remembered

06 COMMENTARY On growing up a slut McGill’s involvement in Montreal’s corruption Sexism in Physics must stop FEUQ claims they are not “traitors”

08 FEATURES The right-to-die debate in Canada

11 HEALTH&ED Abortions on the high seas Sex when you’re homeless

13 CULTURE Cultural negotiations between old memories and a new home If you can pronounce it, we applaud you: Kuhrye-oo and new genres of electronic music

15 EDITORIAL Mayor Tremblay must resign

16 COMPENDIUM! Drink like a liberal!

Breaking news is breaking!

Thursday, October 11, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Controversy surrounds university underfunding McGill contemplates “worst case scenario”

McGill makes claims of underfunding Police brutality denounced

The McGill Daily

Laurent Bastien Corbeil The McGill Daily

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early a month after the Parti Québécois (PQ) gained a plurality in the National Assembly, McGill is concerned about the change in rhetoric from the government regarding university financing. Higher Education Minister Pierre Duschesne told La Presse on Saturday that he was not convinced about the existence of university underfunding.

Various actors from the education sector plan to debate the issue at a summit on higher education later this year.

Without a tuition hike or an increase in government funding to solve the problem, the University could be heading toward a “worst case scenario,” according to VicePrincipal (External Relations) Olivier Marcil.

“We can have a lot of success with limited resources when we compare McGill to other world universities, but at some point it’s an elastic that will reach a breaking point,” Marcil told The Daily in French.

The notion of underfunding is mired in controversy.

In an interview with The Daily, Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) President Martine Desjardins alleged that university underfunding was fabricated by the Conférence des Recteurs et des Principaux des Universités du Québec (CREPUQ) in 2007 as a justification for the tuition hikes.

CREPUQ brings together administrations from 18 Quebec universities.

Photo Laurent Bastien Corbeil | The McGill Daily

“From our perspective, we are talking about mismanagement.

There have been numerous studies that prove that universities have the money, but that it isn’t allocated for research and education,” Desjardins told The Daily in French. “They are transferred into funds that have nothing to do with education.”

A study conducted by CREPUQ in 2010 found that universities in Quebec were underfunded by around $620 million for the 2007-2008 academic year. This number, however, was disputed by the Institute de recherché et d’informations socioéconomiques (IRIS), a progressive think tank based in Montreal.

According to a 2011 report by IRIS that quotes CREPUQ’s study, “[the figure $620 million] is not based on an analysis of universities’ needs that points to a lack of resources, but rather on ‘the

current difference between the financial resources Quebec universities have at their disposal compared to what institutions in other provinces have.’”

The number only reveals the “additional resources [universities] would gain if Quebec raised its tuition fees to match the Canadian average,” continued the report.

Ludvic Moquin-Beaudry, communication secretary for the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), told the Daily in French, “The money invested per capita in Quebec is more than the Canadian average.

The problem is not about a lack of funds. It’s about where the money is being spent.”

McGill’s latest budget stated that revenues have grown “consistently” over the last few years, but have failed to keep up with rising expenditures.

According to the budget

released by the University this year, most of these costs are associated with “increases in salary and benefit costs.”

Net assets have increased from $873,290 at the end of 2009 to $1,167,625 in 2012, according the budget.

McGill’s debt for its operating budget is equal to 16.5 per cent of the University’s total operating revenue. It reached a high point of 28.4 percent in the 1991 fiscal year and fell back to its lowest point at 3 per cent in the 2002 fiscal year.

Principal and Vice-Chancellor Heather Munroe-Blum is slated to represent the University at the upcoming education summit, according to Marcil. The University plans to work closely with CREPUQ to explain the “real situation” to the government, he said.

ASSÉ will consult its members before deciding whether to attend the summit.

Anti-police brutality march peaceful, sparsely attended Hera Chan The McGill Daily

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n anti-police brutality march numbered around 350 last Saturday and remained largely peaceful, with no major confrontations between police and protesters.

The march departed from Place Émilie-Gamelin at around 8:45 p.m. and was declared illegal from the onset by the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) because the route was not shared with the the police beforehand.

The demonstration was called, along with the annual March 15 protest against police brutality, after the recent announcement by

the Police Ethics Commissioner that 46 per cent of all ethics complaints made during the student strike had been dismissed.

Led by a band of black-masked protesters, the crowd chanted anti-police slogans and carried signs with the acronym ACAB, which stands for “all cops are bastards.”

The protesters were flanked by riot police throughout the march and followed by mounted police. Fireworks were ignited throughout the demonstration.

The demonstration ended around 11:00 p.m. after protesters were driven onto sidewalks by police.

One protester was given a ticket for launching a flare at a police officer.

Photo Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

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NEWS

The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 11, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Canada Post and union reach tentative deal Union says back-to-work legislation skewed negotiations Lola Duffort and Jordan Venton-Rublee The McGill Daily

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anada’s largest postal worker union, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), decided on October 5 to endorse two tentative collective agreements with the Canada Post Corporation (CPC): one would cover rural postal workers, the other urban.

The Union has said that its decision is largely the result of legislation passed by Parliament in June 2011, which mandated union members’ return to work and included penalties for non-compliance ranging from $1,000 a day for a single worker to $100,000 a day for the whole union.

In a post on the CUPW website about the tentative agreement for the urban unit, CUPW President Denis Lemelin said that the Union “would never have agreed to these changes if [it] had the right to strike.”

The 2011 back-to-work legislation also stipulated that a government-appointed arbitrator would choose between offers put forward by the CPC and CUPW without considering a compromise.

The tentative agreement between the CPC and CUPW was reached without an arbitrator.

In a press release issued last Friday, Conservative Labour Minister Lisa Raitt stated, “I have always said that the best solution to any labour dispute is one that the parties reach themselves.”

The first appointed arbitrator, former Ontario judge Coulter Osborne, quit when the Union filed a court challenge because he was not bilingual. The second arbitrator, Guy Dufort, was ordered off the case by a Federal Court judge after CUPW raised concerns about his background as a Canada Post lawyer and Conservative Party candidate. Both

Postal workers to vote on tentative agreement. were appointed by Raitt.

According to Lemelin, the Union had to decide between “the decision of an arbitrator…or trying to achieve something.”

CUPW members will be voting from November 13 to December 19. Should the agreements be ratified, they will put an end to the twoyear struggle that was precipitated in 2010 when the CPC introduced “Modern Post,” an attempt to modernize and streamline mail-delivery.

According to the Union, the Modern Post initiative would have put hundreds out of work and result-

ed in harsher working conditions.

The collective agreement between CPC and CUPW expired in January 2011.

CPC spokesperson Anick Losier told The Daily that the Crown corporation is “very pleased that we have hit this new milestone and we now need to work together to transform our business, which is certainly suffering in the face of digital alternatives.”

For the Union, the two agreements would essentially achieve the maintenance of basic rights and benefits accorded in previous agreements, as well as protection for new hires.

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

Among the Union’s victories in the collective agreement for the urban unit are the protection of paid half-hour lunches, the rejection of the CPC’s previous attempt to replace retiree benefits with a spending account, and entitlement to a defined benefit pension plan for future employees.

“The most important thing is the pension plan…the second one is that we still have job security so people can plan their lives and that the working conditions will be the same,” Lemelin told The Daily. “I think we achieved to protect what we have.”

Lemelin also added that even if the agreements were ratified, the Union would still be busy.

CUPW filed a constitutional challenge in the Ontario Supreme Court last October, which argued that the back-to-work legislation violated the freedom to associate as guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“As workers and citizens of this country, we […] deserve to be respected, we deserve to have a government that is really looking after the people and not only protecting big corporations,” said Lemelin.

OFF-CAMPUS EYE “Die-in” staged at Place des Arts Hera Chan

Around fifty activists participated in a “die-in” yesterday at Place des Arts, which was organized by Amnesty International Montreal as part of the World Day Against the Death Penalty.

— Laurent Bastien Corbeil

NEWS

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 11, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

March and vigil honours missing and murdered Native women Attendees demand government action Dana Wray News Writer

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bout 350 people gathered at Place Émilie-Gamelin last Thursday evening and marched through downtown Montreal for the seventh annual Sisters in Spirit Memorial March and Vigil for Missing and Murdered Native Women.

Bridget Tolley, an Aboriginal woman whose mother was killed

by Quebec police in 2001, founded the vigil in 2005. She collaborated with Sisters in Spirit (SIS), an Aboriginal research and policy initiative of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) whose funding was cut by the federal government in 2010.

This year, a record 163 vigils were held across the country, drawing tens of thousands of Native and non-native supporters to honour the missing and murdered Native women in Canada.

A virtual candlelight vigil was also held online, garnering over 542 messages of solidarity.

Stories of negligence in police responses to situations of violence against Native women are common. When a Sûreté du Québec police cruiser struck Gladys Tolley – Bridget Tolley’s mother – the officer in question was never charged. A request for an independent investigation by the Quebec government was subsequently denied.

According to SIS, at least 600 Native women have gone missing or have been murdered nationwide since 1980, though activists

believe the number to be closer to 3,000 – a discrepancy they attribute to incomplete police records.

This year, NWAC issued a petition calling on the government to hold a national public inquiry that involves Native women and communities.

Although the United Nations has repeatedly called on the government of Canada to undertake a comprehensive plan of action against what Amnesty International Canada calls a “national human rights crisis,” the government has thus far refused to cooperate.

“It benefits the government to ignore our calls for a public inquiry,” said Ellen Gabriel, a Mohawk activist who spoke at the vigil. “[Aboriginals] are creating more jails for the Harper government.”

Aboriginal leader John Cree agreed with Gabriel, and had stronger words for the government’s treatment. “They don’t seem to care because they think we’re animals,” he said.

When Métis journalist and activist Irkar Beljaars organized the first Montreal vigil in 2007, only thirty people attended, a stark contrast to the hundreds that gathered last week. Since 2009, Beljaars has partnered with Missing Justice, a grassroots solidarity campaign of the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy at Concordia.

Nina Segalowitz, an Aboriginal caseworker, encouraged marchgoers to not only mourn for those lost, but to “celebrate all the women that continue to fight every day.”

Drumming and singing from supporters accompanied the peaceful march to Phillips Square.

The evening culminated with both traditional and contemporary cultural acts, several speakers, and a candlelit moment of silence.

Despite the positive mood of the march and the vigil, there was a pervasive current of frustration, evident in comments from speakers and march-goers alike.

Tanya, a Concordia student, criticized the government’s failure to address this issue properly.

“I’m ashamed by the fact that you can barely find any information about [the issue]. It’s a real disaster,” she said.

Bianca Mugyenyi, a program coordinator at the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy, echoed these sentiments, calling the situation an “epidemic.”

“The government is not providing solutions. They’re indifferent, and this makes indigenous women incredibly vulnerable to violence,” Mugyenyi told The Daily.

Amnesty International Canada reports that Native women in Canada are five to seven times more likely to be killed violently than their non-native counterparts.

The Missing Justice campaign also criticized the federal government for choosing to increase police power – allowing police to obtain warrants and install wiretaps – rather than continuing to fund SIS. Aboriginal activists maintain that these increased privileges will only be used to further criminalize native communities.

Quebec Native Women President Viviane Michel told the gathered crowd at Place ÉmilieGamelin that she was tired of the stigmatization of Native women.

Photo Simone Sinclair Walker

A record 163 vigils were held across Canada this year.

“You go to the police to ask for help, and they respond with ‘your daughter has been missing for two, three, four days? She’s probably just

drunk somewhere,’” she said in French. “I am so sick of Native people being immediately associated with the problem of alcoholism.”

Legal Information Clinic expands Space to be used to add confidentiality to legal counselling Doris Zhu The McGill Daily

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he renovation of the Legal Information Clinic at McGill is currently underway following the temporary closure of the “Green Corner” on the first floor of the Shatner Building.

The Clinic is a free, non-profit, student-run information service.

It also runs the Student Advocacy Program, which provides advice and representation to McGill students going through disciplinary and grievance processes.

In summer 2012, the Clinic served over 1,000 clients and referred about 2,000 students to

other legal services. In addition, the Student Advocacy Office assists about 150 to 200 students per year.

In an interview with The Daily, Clinic Executive Coordinator Emily Elder explained the reasons behind the expansion of the Clinic.

“Students and [the general] public come into the Clinic to access our services,” said Elder. “Some people come in with very confidential issues, such as sexual assaults.”

“The additional room at the Clinic will allow us to provide a fully secured space for them to discuss their issues with our volunteers,” she added.

In addition to increased confidentiality, the additional space will allow the Clinic to add two more volunteers to every shift on top of

the four to five volunteers currently serving the Clinic.

“Most people in Quebec cannot afford legal services, and thus the services provided by the Clinic become very important for anyone from the McGill or Quebec community who cannot afford that,” said Elder.

The additional space will also house the Student Advocacy Office, which will continue to help McGill students advocate for their rights and deal with issues related to discipline and other legal negotiations within the McGill community.

The new space was originally occupied by the Green Corner project led by Organic Campus, one of SSMU’s 21 student-run services.

Since its establishment several

years ago, Organic Campus has used the Green Corner to sell baked goods and local produce, as well as for other “green” groups on campus to gather and post information.

In an email to The Daily, SSMU VP Clubs and Services Allison Cooper explained that the Green Corner was “a creative idea to use the little perhaps [six by six foot] space behind the vending machines, but in practice was a little-used hang-out spot that always smelled a little weird.”

According to Cooper, the SSMU Environment Committee and other green groups on campus came to an agreement with the Legal Information Clinic to reduce the space designated to the Green Corner.

“The SSMU Building Committee made the decision [to expand the Legal Information Clinic at McGill] at least last year,” she wrote.

SSMU Sustainability Coordinator David Gray-Donald told The Daily in an email that “the idea is not to kick Organic Campus out.”

“Rather, there has been a temporary displacement of furnishings during the renovation process and then Organic Campus will continue using the space,” he wrote.

“They took some of the space away to extend the legal services clinic,” said Noemi Stern, one of the Organic Campus coordinators. “I mean, we will just have less space, but it should be okay for Organic Campus.”

Commentary

The McGill Daily Thursday, October 11, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Easy Asian On the racialized body, the intersectionality of sexuality, and growing up a slut a few hours until a white man approaches me and says, “Ni hao, I love Chinese boys, and by the way are you a bottom?” But if what I am looking for is a liaison of the flesh that also respects my mind, body, and choices, I had better prepare my heart for a long and lonely hunt.

For most of my life, I did not know the difference between sexual objectification and sexual intimacy. I believed that being valued or loved meant the same thing as being fuckable, and as an Asian boy-child who wanted to be a girl, I knew that my body was less lovable by far than those of the beautiful white men I fantasized about.

(How many times have I heard those fateful words: “I’m sorry, I’m just not into Asians?” How many Craigslist ads and dating site profiles proclaim: “No femmes, no fats, no Asians or Blacks?”)

Yet these men who move so easily and fearlessly through the sexual realm are not sluts. Their bodies – white, cisgendered, born with all the physical abilities that society favours, masculine, valued above all things – are not construed as something constructed for the pleasure of others, that can be bought and sold, summoned, or dismissed at a whim. No, the body of the slut is feminized and racialized; the slut’s face is the face that dares to gaze back without deference at the judgement of a world that deems it ugly, unlovable, devalued below all things.

Marginalized peoples are not

Ryan Thom Memoirs of a Gaysian

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t was obvious to me from my first erotic dream at the tender age of seven. From that first secret and shameful stirring deep within my lower body, I knew that I was destined to be an easy lay. And it must have been obvious, though perhaps a little later, to my peers as well. I was fourteen years old the first time one of my classmates called me a “gay cocksucking [sic] whore.”

This would become a trend amongst my friends and acquaintances over the next half-decade: from the barrage of anonymous internet insults in the tenth grade to the random man last week who grabbed my ass and attempted to pull me into an alley, it seems that my sexual availability is common knowledge to the wide world.

So if I am such a slut – if this Asian, transgendered, feminine body of mine is such an easy mark – why is it so dang hard to get laid in this town?

There is no shortage, of course, of men on the streets, in clubs, bars, and grocery stores, who, alerted by the swish of my skirt or the sheen of my lipstick that I am “that kind of boy,” catcall from their cars at night and leer at my legs as I pass by. On any given weekend, I can don a tank top and tight jeans, go to Unity, and shimmy my hips for

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

meant to have access to sexual capital – we are not allowed to take pleasure in other people’s bodies, or in our own. If we are of colour, then we had better not presume to make love to whites – except to please them. If we are queer, we dare not desire straight bodies. And if we are women, we should not want to make love at all. In being combinations of these identities, our access to sexual pleasure, to that blurry line between objectification and intimacy, diminishes ever more.

It is in the wanting that we

become sluts. It is our desire, even our capacity for desire – that secret-shameful stirring deep in our bodies – that threatens the hierarchy that keeps our bodies enslaved in sex. In surviving rape, in showing pride in our beauty, in wanting to be lovable and fuckable and everything in between, we challenge the domination of those who hold the keys to sexual power. And so we are insulted, assaulted, leered at on the streets and dragged into alleyways.

Beaten down that we might submit once more.

I can be only what I am destined to be: an Asian man who dresses and has sex like a woman.

Who wants sex, fears it, who still searches long and lonely nights for that hook-up, affair, relationship, in which I can be whole. It isn’t easy. It never is. Still, I want it. Still, I search.

Ryan Thom’s Memoirs of a Gaysian is a column about life, love, and intersectional oppression. Ryan is a writer, performance artist, and lifelong slut. Contact them at mem oirsofagaysion@mcgilldaily.com.

Coffee at Consenza Cafe Public money should not be traded over espressos Marcello Ferrara Commentary Writer

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cene: the court room of the Charbonneau Commission.

Lino Zambito, former vice president of Quebec construction firm Infrabec, sits behind the microphone to deliver his testimony. “Montreal is a closed market,” he says, addressing the honourable judges. “I submitted bids in Laval, and that was a closed market, too.”

Zambito goes on to describe the racket in detail: each firm would pay the Montreal Mafia 2.5 per cent of the total contract value, minus externalities like taxes. Cash would be sealed into brown Canada Post bags and sent to the middle man, in this case Nicola Milioto, at the Consenza Cafe over coffee.

The best mobster movies – Goodfellas, The Godfather, et cetera – always have the cafe scene. The two Mafiosos meet, discuss life, catch up on family gossip, and down their espressos, and before they part ways one of them utters a euphemism or gestures that reveals their private agenda, hidden behind the public appearance. In these films, Timothy Sun once wrote, “We see the American dream – and in turn, ourselves.”

For the Charbonneau Commission, however, the concerns are very public indeed.

In the past months, the anticorruption squad, comprised of detectives, lawyers, and judges, has uncovered and exposed staggering amounts of corruption in the public-private practices of the Quebec construction industry.

Just a few weeks ago, McGill

University’s own Health Centre was raided by Quebec’s anti-corruption unit when officers of Operation Hammer entered the doors early in the morning with search warrants in hand. Since then, the entire investigation has branched into two main inquiries: 1) Construction company SNC-Lavalin’s involvement with bribery and embezzlement and 2) the various staff members who received bribes or embezzled money themselves.

Former director of the McGill University Health Centre Stella Lopreste is the subject of an investigation for alleged fraud of up to $1.6 million. The evidence against the suspects includes spending this money on personal expenses such as luxury clothes, flower deliveries, travel expenses, cellphones, a computer, and much more. The entire investigation,

to remind everyone, surrounds a contract to build a new super-hospital that would focus on cancer research. McGill makes no secret of its desire for private money.

Public-private partnerships have been pushed around the world in recent years. In August 2008, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime issued a statement, from its resident anti-corruption expert Giovanni Gallo, that the “public-private partnership is the best way to reconcile diverging perceptions which may generate conflicts and opportunities for corruption… particularly in the area of public procurement, where the two actors interact the most.” The situation in Quebec today flies in the face of this statement.

The crime movie genre has often been interpreted as allegori-

cal of the failure of the American dream, or, in broader terms, the structural failures of the free market. Criminals have come to represent the most ardent believers of said system. They never fail at trying to take any wealth away from the public to support their materialistic fantasies. Corruption and crime, these movies tell us, are acts of entrepreneurial spirit. The desire to take money away from public scrutiny and legal authority: this is the nature of corruption.

The solution for Quebec today is not more public-private collusion, as Gallo would suggest, but a new system where public money may be used in service of the public.

Marcello Ferrara is a U1 English and Geography student. He can be reached at marcello.ferrara@ mail.mcgill.ca.

commentary

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 11, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Fine men, sexist pigs Calling out misogyny in Physics

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily Shannon Palus The McGill Daily

“

You’re just being a catty girl,” Ben* tells me. He retreats to his room with the graphs and calculations that we’d been arguing about, and I’m left on our sofa, thinking that I can’t possibly win this one.

Ben and I are both in Physics – but to say that we are in it together would be a bit of a stretch.

Just over 20 per cent of the undergraduate physics department is female – roughly on par with other universities. In the McGill Physics Lounge, next to posters of galaxies, a foosball table, and a recently installed coffee station, you can hear comments that might make you wonder why the 20 per cent of us even bother to show up.

For example, a boy convincing another boy to attend a party argues, “Dude, just come, there will be so many sick bitches everywhere, out on

a shelf like in Walmart.”

Last year, a member of McGill Society of Physics Students (MSPS) explained to me that it would be fun to rearrange their acronym to “PUSS,” as in ‘pussy.’

This degrading talk makes for a “chilly climate” – a term coined by feminist scholar Bernice R. Sandler.

She explains in a report titled “The Chilly Classroom Climate” that these everyday remarks “ultimately undermine girls’ and women’s self confidence in their academic ability, lower their academic and occupational aspirations, inhibit their learning, and generally lower their self-esteem.” And the people perpetuating the chilly climate are not, necessarily, committed to the idea that women do not belong in physics – I am reminded, via email, that the pussy comment was meant “jokingly.”

This everyday sexism is more than, as one male peer suggested, a shut-and-closed case of ‘boorishdorks-being-unclassy.’

A recent Yale study found that female applicants (for a fictional lab position) were consistently ranked lower in terms of competence and “hireability”; they were offered a lower starting salary, and scientists expressed less interest in mentoring the fictional female applicant.

I’ve supported and defended this sexist climate, somewhat explicitly, to an extent: I lived with guys – Ben and two others – because guys were just easier to get along with than “catty” girls. Evenings out ended with them verbally dissecting the lumps of human flesh visible through that one girl-at-the-party’s American Apparel dress. I told them I’d rather they didn’t filter out the sexist comments. In order to fit in, I tried to make myself okay with their standards.

There is a name for the type of woman I was being: a loophole woman. She sees her presence in a male-dominated space as an exception. She knows that women aren’t

inclined toward numbers-based subjects, but she is, and she’s proud of it.

It’s an understandable defense mechanism – survive, fit in, make yourself more masculine. But this method of declaring myself separate from other women – able to dish and take sexist remarks – wasn’t, in the end, just damaging to me; it’s also not really the best way to go about changing things.

The gender gap is, however, steadily shrinking as other efforts to do away with sexist notions and the chilly climate are being made.

A report by the National Academy of Science concluded that this narrowing divide indicates the difference in turnout between men and women in hard sciences is better explained by cultural, rather than biological, differences.

Efforts are also being made in the Rutherford Physics building: as of January, there are now five female physics professors (out of forty) on staff. Assistant Professor

Tracy Webb tells me that they meet on a regular basis, and are looking to start a mentoring program for female undergrads.

But if we want to encourage women to stay in Physics, we have to examine the day-to-day ways that we enforce the notion that women are less than men.

In the months that followed Ben’s comment that I was “just being a catty girl,” my relationship with him disintegrated into passive aggression (him), and slammed doors (me). I am not up for staying somewhere where I feel so fundamentally unwelcome. I posted an ad on Craigslist for a lease transfer, and I moved out. *name has been changed Shannon Palus is a U3 Physics student and a member of the Daily Publications Society Board of Directors. She likes quantum mechanics and having feelings and would definitely love to hear from you. She can be reached at shannon.palus@gmail.com.

The federations are not traitors A response to Wolfe’s attack on behalf of FEUQ Cameron Monagle Commentary Writer

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found out last week that I am a traitor.

I also found out that I reject the strike as a means of pressure, have a paranoid fear of losing control, am buddy-buddy with the Parti Québécois (PQ), and that saluting students who take bold action is a shameless act of recuperation.

My colleagues and I were naturally quite surprised.

Fortunately, these things are only true in some upside-down world created to prove an exceedingly weak point and fan dying embers of mistrust toward the organization I am proud to be a part of.

To set the record straight, the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) encouraged and helped students to go on strike last spring. And yes, there was an action plan following the demonstration, though I’d be remiss to tell you that we (or anyone, for that matter) pre-

dicted the length of the strike. In fact, the federations were the only groups prepared for the eventual elections. We challenged students to stand up to the Charest government, and they – you – exceeded every expectation set. We’re proud of that. Together, we won, and I find it disturbing that certain folks would rather attack us than accept that the ‘evil federations’ can do something right.

Statements like “the federations moved to destroy the strike…” are sensational and outrageous – I, too,

would be horrified if that were the case. Wolfe’s commentary neglects to mention that one CEGEP “forced” to reach out to the Coalition Large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE) was, in fact, also a member of the coalition. This is literally the only proof of our “treachery”? As a university student, I expect more intellectual rigour and honesty behind such a statement. I could go on, but I would rather move beyond stale attacks. Why not encourage a discussion on the diversity of tactics,

the merits of federative democracy, and the balance between ideology and concrete gains? Why not discuss the issues of substance that matter to students?

I’d be thrilled to discuss the positions or the structure of FEUQ, but conspiracy theories and ad hominem accusations do not lead to honest dialogue.

Cameron Monagle is the Internal Affairs Coordinator for the FEUQ. He can be reached at attpresse@ feuq.qc.ca.

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features

Locked In Nicholas Cameron on why the Canadian right-to-die debate matters.

Illustrations by Alice Shen

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 11, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Warning: This article contains potentially triggering descriptions of suicide and medical experiences.

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y the end of it, Tony Nicklinson could only blink. Having experienced a severe stroke seven years ago, Nicklinson suffered from locked-in syndrome, a condition in which the patient is cognitively aware but suffers from paralysis of the body except for the eyes. Relying on a sophisticated computer that tracked his eye movements so that he could tell a British high court why he deserved the right to die, Nicklinson said his life had become “dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified, and intolerable.”

And when Lord Justice Toulson rejected his appeal, Nicklinson’s anguish was so visible that, despite being paralyzed from the neck down, his entire body shook from crying. Emotionally devastated, Nicklinson “went downhill quickly,” according to his family. He would refuse food for six days, contract pneumonia, and then – finally – pass away at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, August 22, 2012. He was 58 years old.

For as long as we’ve been willing to discuss it, the debate surrounding euthanasia and medically-assisted suicide has driven right to the ethical heart of our society.

On the one hand are the supporters, who argue that prolonging someone’s suffering and refusing to grant them authority over their own bodies is inhumane. On the other hand are the opponents, who insist that institutionalized assisted suicide will lead to elder abuse and that, instead, palliative care units should be improved. Now, twenty years after Canadians were first confronted with the issue, the two sides have been given an opportunity to pitch their arguments to the public and resolve the right-to-die debate in Canada.

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e should first hash out the terms “assisted suicide” and “euthanasia.” “Assisted suicide” – or less grimly, “medical-aid-in-dying” – occurs when a patient intentionally ends their life with the assistance of another individual. For example, a patient is unable to inject a toxin into their system or lift their arms to put a pill into their mouths and they require another person’s aid. Or, assisted dying could also take place when a perfectly mobile patient simply wants a physician to oversee the process. Euthanasia occurs in the event that someone other than the patient ends the patient’s life. Here, an example would be if a patient wishes to never live in a vegetative state, and requests a doctor to euthanize them should they become incognizant.

By way of historical background, we see that the right-to-die debate in Canada has ebbed and flowed. In 1972, attempted suicide became no longer punishable under the Criminal Code of Canada. Over the next decade, a handful of court cases determined that a mentally competent patient had the right to refuse treatment.

Citing section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that individuals cannot be discriminated against based on physical disability, ALS patient Sue Rodriguez claimed that her rights were being violated by being refused access to assisted dying. If she were an able-bodied person, she reasoned, she wouldn’t face persecution for wanting to end her life.

While the Supreme Court ultimately agreed with Rodriguez, twice, that her rights were being infringed, they insisted it was necessary to do so to protect against widespread abuse. After years of exhaustive legal battles, Rodriguez committed suicide illegally in 1994 with the assistance of an anonymous medical practitioner.

After the Rodriguez case, aside from a handful of “compassionate homicides” where the victim was often terminally ill and euthanized by a family member, Canadians had to look south in order to see the right-to-die debate played out in any meaningful way. Between 1990 and 1998, Dr. Jack Kevorkian would help an estimated 130 ill Americans end their lives and, subsequently, draw substantial public interest with his vitriolic critiques of the medical community. “My ultimate aim is to make euthanasia a positive experience,” Kevorkian would tell the media after his first patient, Janet Adkins, took her own life. “I’m trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.” For his actions, Kevorkian would have his medical license revoked in 1991, be labeled “Dr. Death” by a divided American public, and found guilty of second-degree homicide in 1999 for assisting in ALS sufferer Thomas Youk’s death. Usually, the patient would use Kevorkian’s own machine to inject chemicals into their bloodstream under his supervision. However, in footage provided to 60 Minutes, Kevorkian administered the lethal injection to Youk.

That injection, despite being fully consensual, was enough to sentence Kevorkian to 10 to 25 years in prison. He was released in 2007.

While Kevorkian was in prison, the world was given its first international euthanasia and assisted-suicide celebrity.

On March 18, 2005, 15 years after having entered a vegetative state following a full cardiac arrest, a legal tug-of-war between Terri Schiavo’s estranged husband and her family ended with a court injunction that her feeding tube be removed. With no written statement about what she would have wanted to happen – which was, really, the true essence of the case – both sides of the right-to-die debate would lay claims to her voice. However, instead of delving into either side of the discussion, most news sources relied on tabloid spectacle to keep the story alive. Talking heads babbled over her (possible) eating disorder, protesters covered their mouths with red tape inscribed with the word LIFE, and a ten-year old boy was arrested for trying to bring her water. All the while, we allowed ourselves to forget that Schiavo was crawling toward, as the court insisted, a “natural” death. It would take 14 days without food and water until, finally, she died of severe dehydration. And when a television banner announced a few weeks later that Schiavo’s condition was irreversible and that large portions of her brain had been liquefied by the seven minutes it had been deprived of oxygen during her cardiac arrest, it was hardly talked about.

Now, after a relative lull in explicit discussion on the issue, there are two cases going through the judicial circuit that could produce the right to die in Canada.

The first case involves Gloria Taylor who, in June, won a constitutional exemption so that she could be the first person in Canada to legally access assisted suicide.

While Taylor’s victory was twice challenged by the federal government – indicating an interest on the part of the Conservatives to keep things the way they are – the British Columbia resident died on October 5 from a sudden infection, thereby unable to exercise her exemption. Though Taylor is gone, a larger case dubbed the “Carter Challenge” has been launched on the heels of her victory in order to revise the current legislation.

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or expediency’s sake, it’s probably best to measure the inadequacy of the anti-right-to-die movement by simply examining its claims. The hardest part in acknowledging the opponents of assisted dying is realizing that they are not evangelical half-wits, bunkered away in bomb shelters and donning tin-foil hats. Instead, Canadians have heard from people like Margaret Somerville – founder of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law – who, for the past thirty years, has been one of the most visible and outspoken opponents in the country of the right to die. In opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide, she often cites the need to improve the Canadian health care system to be better equipped with treating long-term patients.

“We know that if you give people access to good palliative care, the vast majority no longer wants euthanasia or assisted suicide,” claims Somerville. “And yet in Canada, at the moment, where we’re thinking of instituting this intentional killing of Canadians, we’ve got access to palliative care [for] around 14 per cent of the population … So, [this means we’re going to have] 86 per cent of the population who are going to be offered euthanasia and not palliative care.“ If nothing else, Somerville’s math reflects the main concern of right-to-die opponents who believe that minor legislative reform will lead to widespread euthanasia of non-consensual participants. As she explains in one correspondence, “I often ask people to ask themselves the question, ‘If we legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide now, how do you think your great-great-grandchildren will die?’”

For Somerville, the right to die represents a ‘slippery slope.’ She points to Belgium, where euthanasia has been broadened to include those who were not admitted when the legislation allowing for medical-aid-indying was first enacted. She mentions the Netherlands, where parents have recently been given the ability to euthanize disabled children within a month of the birth.

Examples like the latter do add a certain complexity to a citizen trying to grasp the ramifications of legislating the right to die.

However, as Wanda Morris (the spokesperson for the right-to-die group Dying With Dignity) points out, the slippery slope theory is inherently flawed. “A parallel example,” explains Morris, “is to say, ‘oh, my son has been caught shoplifting, so he’s going to [have] a life of crime, and he’s going to go to prison and he’s going to be killed there, and he’ll be dead before he’s 25.” Furthermore, when we recognize that there would have to be deliberate legislative revision for any definitions to change, we can see that the argument that just about anyone will be allowed to kill themselves does not hold water. The slippery slope argument is more revelatory of an opponent reacting to the expansion of euthanasia than any immediate danger posed by allowing the right-to-die.

Because, as Morris argues, the legalization of assisted dying “clearly isn’t about [anyone] being assisted to die on demand, [it’s about] somebody who is facing the prospect of death being less harmful to them than life.”

Probably the strongest argument against the right to die is that it will lead to elder and patient abuse. To this effect, critics like Somerville claim that coercion on the part of family members will lead to unwanted euthanasia and patient death.

She insists that there are “at least 500, or upwards to 2,000” unwanted cases of

“Talking heads babbled over her (possible) eating disorder, protesters covered their mouths with red tape inscribed with the word LIFE, and a tenyear old boy was arrested for trying to bring her water. All the while, we allowed ourselves to forget that Schiavo was crawling toward, as the court insisted, a ‘natural’ death.”

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 11, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

“If Christopher Hitchens described having a life-threatening illness as being ‘shackled to your own corpse,’ then being egregiously ill and deprived of the right to die cannot be unlike being buried alive.” euthanasia in Canada each year, though I have had trouble locating this statistic elsewhere. Against this argument, the Carter Challenge sets up specific and rigid parameters for when and how assisted dying could occur. Only when the patient has signed a form, demonstrated consent to two physicians, and is accompanied by a witness, can the death be carried out. Elsewhere, such as in Oregon, at least one of the patient’s witnesses cannot be related by blood, marriage, or adoption, nor be entitled to any financial benefit from the passing. Even in the Netherlands, 50 per cent of all assisted dying requests are rejected out of extreme measures to safeguard against possible abuses or lack of conscientiousness on the part of the patient. Moreover, if we follow the argument against euthanasia’s potential abuses to its logical conclusion, we see that it is inherently hypocritical. If the current system of refusing a conscious patient the right to die and thereby forcing them to die a far more arduous and painful death isn’t understood as patient abuse, then what is?

Opponents like Somerville are right to point out the need to improve palliative care facilities, just as they are right to point out the need to improve psychological health for patients enduring the distresses of treatment. However, a failure of their stance is their insistence that assisted dying must be banned for all patients, rather than merely restricted.

As Morris explains, “the essence of the Carter Challenge is that you can never make anything foolproof, but you have to find a balance between [protecting] the weak and the vulnerable, and the rights of those who are egregiously ill and suffer terribly at the end of life. And the balance is way too far now at one end and we need to move it toward the middle.”

It is, at best, naïve to believe that because euthanasia and assisted suicide is illegal in Canada, terminally ill people will not kill themselves if they want to.

Ideally, organizations like Dying With Dignity exist to provide information on ensuring a peaceful death. However, there are cases like the one Morris told me of a terminally ill woman who recently threw herself in front of a subway. What is being decided in the Carter Challenge is not whether assisted suicide or euthanasia will ever occur in Canada.

Instead, it will decide to what extent we want to acknowledge that assisted suicide occurs, and whether Canada will set up specific parameters to make it more peaceful, legal, and medically sound.

Yet, there is another crucial issue that hardly gets mentioned in the right-to-die debate. For while the patient is often the central focus in the argument in favour of legalizing assisted dying, the importance of the death for their surviving family and friends cannot be understated. And, in order to hammer home that part more fully, I should probably tell you about how my father died.

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n the evening of March 12, 2005, my father passed away after a nine-month battle with esophageal cancer.

Three weeks earlier, his cancer spread toward his liver and, as if unraveling, my father was slowly drawn closer and closer toward his end. Understanding this, my mother fought against hospital administration in order to allow him to return home to die.

And when each member of my family was given some time to talk with him and then finally comfort him as he took his last breath, he looked up and then retreated into himself. It was easier to accept this because my father had been given, all things considered, the most comfortable death possible.

My dad was not euthanized, nor did he commit suicide with the assistance of anyone. Someone who opposes the right to die might tell me that my story is actually a celebration of what medicine is doing right, and how it can deliver a dignified death. But my father also didn’t suffer for months or years in constant, extended pain like the agony he endured for the last few weeks of his life. Three days after he died, Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed. By coincidence, I ended up spending lots of time watching the Schiavo drama unfold and saw, for the first time, the difference between a comfortable death and an arduous one. One of the biggest insecurities for extremely ill patients is that their family and friends might be left solely with memories of them in treatment; that the illness might suffocate any understanding of the person who existed before the diagnosis. And if we are terminally ill, and can see our death coming around the bend, do we not deserve the right to establish some parameters around the very thing – sickness – that could potentially change our conception of ourselves? Because, if Christopher Hitchens described having a life-threatening illness as being “shackled to your own corpse,” then being egregiously ill and deprived of the right to die cannot be unlike being buried alive.

HEALTH&Ed

The McGill Daily Thursday, October 11, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

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Making waves Dutch group provides abortions in international waters

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily David Ou Health & Education Writer

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round the world, access to an abortion is governed by the laws of individual countries, which effectively decide a citizen’s access to safe medical care. Unfortunately, many countries enforce laws that restrict this access to what they deem ‘appropriate’ emergencies, which, while variable, often revolve around the questions of risk to maternal life, physical deformation of the child, or if the fetus results from sexual assault.

Many pregnant women in distress who don’t meet these requirements will attempt to seek out other routes in order to recieve the abortion they desire.

However, most of these other routes are unsafe and pose significant health risks as well as potential prosecution. In some countries, namely Morocco, it is estimated that as many as 800 illegal and unsafe abortions are performed daily. Worldwide, 13 per cent of pregnancy-related deaths are related to botched abortions,

according to the World Health Organization.

Unfortunately, given their unregulated and unsanitary nature, they often end in death or other permanent health complications.

In an attempt to raise awareness for the high toll of these abortions, Dutch physician Dr. Rebecca Gomperts founded the nonprofit pro-choice organization Women on Waves in 1999. The aim of the organization is to provide women who live in countries bound by restrictive abortion laws with the reproductive health services that they need, especially in the form of non-invasive and non-surgical abortion services. Since its inception, Women on Waves has also provided assistance in the forms of contraceptives, counselling, education, and hotlines where women can call to learn about all matters of women’s health.

By circumventing repressive abortion laws through providing medical care on international waters, Women on Waves aims to “prevent unsafe abortions and empower women to exercise their human rights to physical and mental autonomy.” Upon the founding

of the organization, Dr. Gomperts designed a portable gynaecology unit named “A-Portable” with the Dutch design company Atelier Van Lieshout. A-Portable operates as a mobile clinic and can be easily installed onto ships made for international travel. Every ship carries a minimum of one specialized abortion doctor, one gynaecologist, and one specialized nurse, in addition to other trained personnel.

According to the organization, the standards under which each ship operates exceed the requirements set forth by Dutch law and other EU regulations.

In 2001, Women on Waves made its maiden voyage onboard The Aurora to Ireland, where abortion is illegal. Since then, the organization has travelled to Poland in 2003, Portugal in 2004, and Spain in 2008. As a reflection on the influential work of Women on Waves, an official poll in Poland found a 12 per cent increase in support of legalized abortion.

Women on Waves’ most recent journey to Morocco this past Thursday, October 4, was somewhat unsuccessful. The Moroccan Health Ministry intercepted the

ship as it tried to dock in Smir, and naval forces were deployed, while authorities on land shut down the harbour and restricted access for both journalists and women seeking aid. As it was evident that the Moroccan government was not going to budge, Women on Waves launched what it called its “Trojan Horse.”

As the ship remained at sea, it revealed its Moroccan hotline number women can call for information on receiving a safe, Dutch government-sanctioned medical abortion through the use of the drug misoprostol, which is on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) List of Essential Medicines. Arthrotec, the brand name of misoprostol available in Morocco, can be used until the 12th week of pregnancy.

Legally, ships equipped with A-Portable are able to provide safe, surgical abortions up to the end of the first trimester, or 13 weeks, as governed by Dutch law. When on international waters, Women on Waves is only subject to the regulations of its origin country, the Netherlands, and thus can perform abortions as regulated by the

Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport.

Women on Waves has not always had such liberal reign.

In 2004, the Dutch health minister ruled that each boat must be within 25 kilometres of the Slotevaart hospital when performing an abortion, should the crew encounter an emergency.

Fortunately, this decision was then overturned by the Law Court of Amsterdam in 2008, and Women on Waves was restored to its original legal status in providing abortions anytime during the first trimester.

It has been shown through polls done by Women on Waves that after each visit of their boat, the general opinion toward legalizing abortions takes a turn for the positive. This is especially beneficial to women of lower socio-economic status as they are the most likely to use unsafe methods resulting in severe complications. As such, considering the lives of women with unwanted pregnancies, one cannot deny that access to safe abortions is one of the most fundamental issues of social justice.

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Sex and the homeless Emery Saur All That Naked Business

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here I come from, there is a place downtown where some people who are homeless have amorous encounters. To be more specific, where I come from there is a hilltop park enshrouded with trees where the heather is soft and people without beds go to get it on.

Montreal, however, has very few parks like this. As a result, the homeless sex culture is, perhaps, a little less romantically framed.

Meet Velma*, a homeless woman I see almost daily downtown. We spoke recently while sitting on the gritty concrete of a lower-level patio on Sherbrooke.

Velma has been homeless for two years. She is originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, but hitchhiked to Montreal because she’d heard it was easier to make a living on the streets here.

Velma told me she has yet to find a niche. She never feels safe when she’s alone, and when she’s with a group of people (usually men), she feels worse. So there isn’t ever a place she really wants to be. Sometimes there are young couples that move around together and she likes them, but when she’s with them she also feels like an outsider, like she’s getting in their way. She says she’d like to have a dog, but sometimes people out here do bad things to dogs, and she doesn’t want that.

Basically, Velma hasn’t had consensual sex since she began living on the streets. She wanders from group to group of other homeless people, but has yet to really feel secure with any of them. She’s battling alcoholism, and one of the problems with living in a group of pretty consistently horny men is that when she does slip up they see her as open for group sex. Velma doesn’t want to categorize it as rape, because

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

in the encounters she has remembered she doesn’t exactly feel compelled to stop it. She simply wants to feel like she has found a place, and when she’s drunk, sex seems like a natural communion.

Except it always leaves her feeling more removed than before, and so she moves on to someplace else.

She believes she was in love a couple of times, but has also heard that you know when you’re in love, so maybe she wasn’t. She also says that it’s hard to cuddle with someone when you’re sleep-

ing on pavement and boxes.

When there aren’t walls for privacy it’s even harder to feel like you’re alone, and that the rest of the world doesn’t matter.

Plus, she’s a bit limited in the kinds of men she meets, and says that there aren’t enough women out there to consider lesbianism, though she has thought about it.

Before she became homeless, Velma worried about finding a “someone.” Even now that she is faced with more immediate concerns, she still thinks about it as

much, if not more. She says that sex is a basic human need and that the lack of intimacy might be the bleakest part of her life right now. She has a hard time deciding what she misses most about the way her relationships used to be. She eventually decides that maybe it is kisses on the cheek.

Our interview was cut short when a group of men she called “acquaintances” came down the stairs with some 40s of beer.

They stood awkwardly in front of us while I said goodbye to Velma

and then parted politely for me to leave.

When she was little, Velma had wanted to marry a mailman. She now thinks that she’d settle for something a little less traditional, like a sugar daddy. *names have been changed All That Naked Business is a new column on sex, which will be run every other week. Emery can be reached at allthatnakedbusiness@ mcgilldaily.com.

WRITE FOR THE DAILY’S HALF SECTIONS: Features: features@mcgilldaily.com Health&Education: healthandeducation@mcgilldaily.com Science+Technology: scitech@mcgilldaily.com Sports: sports@mcgilldaily.com

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Hummus vs. poutine An immigrant’s existential crisis Ralph Haddad Culture Writer

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n the months before I arrived in Montreal, my homeland of Lebanon was in a volatile state.

Groups within the population were blocking major highways with burning tires and smashing car windows, protesting the fact that members of their sect had been kidnapped in Syria, and that their fate was unknown. Others protested the frequent blackouts happening all over the country, and low wages for government contract workers. I was skeptical that would prove their point.

I couldn’t wait to leave. Knowing that I was coming here to McGill, and moving here with my mother and sister, I was in a state of bliss.

The depressing reality of violence and the lives lost over religious conflict did not, and still don’t, make sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong: this wasn’t happening all over the country. Parts of the country, so deeply rooted in their religious beliefs and ethnic affiliations, used burning tires in an attempt to prove their point. I looked at my Lebanese passport with disgust, because the knowledge of its symbolism, and my understanding of my country’s history, seemed absurd in a 21st century context. I was excited to one day receive Canadian citizenship, and discard my old passport for a new one – one that would guarantee me better prospects and security. August 14 rolled around, and I packed my bags and headed to the airport at dawn. Watching the same old scenery roll by – the old buildings, the national stadium, the modernized downtown district – didn’t even make me feel melancholic. I didn’t even cry when all my friends were sitting in my living room sobbing at my imminent, and maybe permanent, emigration to a land they had heard so much of, yet knew so little about. I distracted myself on the plane; I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Across the Universe, and that was when my throat started blocking up, and tears started brimming in my eyes – at 36,000 feet over the Atlantic.

Even so, I landed in Montreal with new hope, and I was glad I didn’t have any trouble at customs. I had been wary after my friend received a humiliating cavity search in front of three American officials as he entered the United States to attend uni-

Illustration Amina Batyreva | The McGill Daily

versity, ostensibly because his passport is Lebanese. I wondered if they would have done the same to me, had I not shaved my very Arab-looking beard at the insistence of my father before travelling. “One look at your beard and your nationality, and they’ll lock us all up!” he joked.

I decided that I wasn’t going to be one of those people who cried at every chance they got because they missed everything back home. Of course, I did miss a lot of things, but I never showed it.

Only 48 hours after we landed, members of a Shiite clan closed down the highway leading to the Beirut International Airport by laying burning tires across the road. Lately, this has become a trend. Of course, it had something to do with Syria, and the hostages that were kidnapped who happened to be related to the clan.

The media here in Canada portrayed the event in such a violent

light that I was so scared for my family and friends’ well-being. I asked my best friends in Lebanon what was happening. “Same old, same old,” they answered.

Eventually, we settled into our new apartment on Drummond, and I attended orientation day with dread, afraid that I wasn’t going to meet anyone, or that no one was going to like me enough to stick around. While we were standing in groups, a girl asked me where I was from. “Beirut!” I said, with enthusiasm. She asked if I was from the Muslim side or Christian side. I was amazed that people still thought Lebanon was segregated. I realized that knowledge about Lebanon in Canada is skewed, and that ongoing violence in certain areas of my home country doesn’t help the matter.

“Neither,” I answered.

It’s not as if I’m not proud to be from Beirut; it’s just that I am ashamed of what is happening

there now. I don’t want people to assume that Lebanese people all resemble the violent portrayal in Western media. Adapting to Montreal has been easy. Being fluent in French and English was essential. What I love about Montreal is the eclectic mix of nationalities and cultures that come together in this one big mix of a population that coexists peacefully, a concept that has been alien to me until now. My only fear is forgetting about Lebanon – that through socializing myself deeply within Montreal, I will lose the Lebanese part of my identity, and sever my connections with my home country. I can already feel it happening. All these joys I experience in Montreal have already overshadowed most of my bad memories from home. Although I have many fond recollections, I can’t say I miss the electricity that goes off every two to six hours, or the lack of hot water, or the scat-

tered sectarian tension.

As for my experience with the Montreal gastronomic scene, my first encounter with poutine did not go well, and left me invading my small bottle of Tums and my reserve of chamomile tea. I miss homemade hummus, chichtaouk, and tabbouleh. Basha and Amir do not even come close.

I guess you have to leave your home country in order to really appreciate what it has to offer.

Now I need to try to balance the best of both worlds. In Arabic, we say, “He who negates his roots, negates himself.” I try to abide by that philosophy every day, and remember that no matter how violent, impoverished, or sectarian Lebanon may be, it has an infinite amount of good to offer. One day, I hope to receive my Canadian passport, and proudly call myself a Canadian citizen. But when that day comes, I won’t forget that I come from Lebanon, the country that made me who I am.

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The McGill Daily | Thursday, October 11, 2012 | mcgilldaily.com

Kuhrye-oo and the Montreal music scene Nathalie O’Neill The McGill Daily

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lectronic artist Calvin McElroy, recording under the name Kuhrye-oo, has recently released his self-titled debut EP. Although he admits he doesn’t specifically know how to pronounce his project’s name, the Alberta native is quickly making a name for himself on the Montreal music scene and internationally.

McElroy first got involved in music at the age of thirteen, when he picked up a guitar and joined a band. He went on to university in Edmonton, and received a degree in jazz guitar. He has been involved in musical projects of many different genres, including a punk band. McElroy was previously associated with musical act Born Gold (familiar to some as the made-over Gobble Gobble) and has also toured as backup for Grimes. This year he performed at the Royal Phoenix as part of POP Montreal, making this his second POP show as Kuhrye-oo, and his fourth overall. Kuhryeoo explains that electronic music has the special characteristic of always being performed differently through loose interpretation and improvisation. He often improvises during his live performances, making each of his shows a distinctive experience.

Kuhrye-oo’s self-titled EP was released May 1 on New York record label UNO. Consisting of four tracks and two remixes, the EP has a smooth and flowing pace, interspersed with strange and intriguing vocal samples.

His tracks are very beat-oriented, and though the left-field rhythms may sound a touch bizarre, they give the effort a strong backbone. Decidedly un-clubworthy, Kuhrye-oo’s arrangements allow the listener to delve into the layers that compose his electronic music as he plays around with various repeating samples.

“Human Rights” illustrates this quality best with its rapid succession of staccato beats and swirling melodies. “Temple” and “Untitled” include more traditional instrumental samples such as piano passages, but these fold seamlessly into Kuhrye-oo’s otherworldly sound. “Give In (For The Fame)” is probably the most appealing track of the album, with an industrial rhythm and ethereal, echoing female vocals.

The difficulty of classifying much of today’s music into clear-cut genres has led to the

CULTURE HAPS

Emerging electronic

Talisman Theatre: The Medea Effect

Théâtre La Chapelle October 11 to 13 8:00 p.m.

3700 St. Dominique $24.50 for students The Medea Effect is a play about love and cruelty seen through the narrative lens of a director trying to cast the lead role for Euripides’ Medea. Talisman Theatre specializes in producing first-run English editions of contemporary Quebecois drama. The text, originally written in French

by Suzie Bastien, is inspired by classical drama on multiple levels.

Flying Lotus Society for Arts Technology (SAT) October 12 10:00 p.m.

1201 St. Laurent $30

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This celebrated L.A. electronic artist will bring his hyperactive DJ set to the SAT this Friday. In the tradition of J Dilla and Madlib, the past decade’s great hip-hop producers, FlyLo uses an extraordinary range of samples to create beat-heavy music that favours experimentation over pop sensibility. Teebs and Jeremiah Jae will open the show. Check online for ticket vendors.

Illustration Hera Chan | The McGill Daily

widespread use of terms such as “genre-less” and “post-genre.”

Much of the contemporary electronic scene is described in these terms, highlighting the convergence of many different influences in one-of-a-kind musical projects. McElroy explains how this applies to his EP, noting that “every track is unique.” He has dabbled in many genres throughout his musical career and draws on a wide array of influences. A part of the pleasure of listening to his music is discovering, through the kaleidoscope of sounds, the creative processes that brought him to these results. Kuhrye-oo always starts with a beat, and then builds onto it with various samples, a formula that allows for near-infinite possibilities. Other types of music often follow an opposite process, beginning with a melody and then incorporating a beat, creating results with a greater genre focus.

Recently, a lot of blog hype has been circulating about the video for Kuhrye-oo’s track “Give In (For the Fame).” The video features Claire Boucher (a.k.a.

Grimes) and another friend of McElroy’s dancing in an abandoned Six Flags park and a nearby cemetery in New Orleans. The video was shot on the spur-of-themoment with an iPhone. “People expect this kind of spontaneous

video from emerging artists,” McElroy says. Although McElroy promises his video doesn’t have any obscure meaning, bloggers and YouTube commenters have been speculating about the artistic message behind the trippy dancing and rough camera work.

One commenter even remarked that the video resembled “a meaningless high school art project.” As his Kuhrye-oo project expands, McElroy intends to create higher-budget videos, to meet the expectations of his label and the public.

The relative quickness and ease of creating an electronic album is part of the appeal of the Kuhrye-oo project for McElroy.

By using Ableton, a popular music production program, he can compress the multifaceted process of creating an album. The program allows Kuhrye-oo to compose, create beats, record, produce, and perform, all on a single platform. The use of samples previously recorded by other artists was another way McElroy eased into the project. For his next undertaking, Kuhrye-oo plans to record his own samples instead of using preexisting ones, promising an even more unique sound.

When asked to describe Montreal’s electronic music scene, McElroy stresses the distinctiveness of the city. Montreal’s

pluralism, he said, permits a variety of different scenes to coexist, connect, and overlap. This diversity is especially salient when contrasted with his native Edmonton, where, he said, there is only one music scene where multiple genres cluster. McElroy describes Montreal as a centre for “throwback music,” music that is heavily influenced by past sounds and genres. “Montreal is such a unique city,” he stresses, adding that “there are so many different cultures and musical histories to draw on.” This quality might help explain why, in McElroy’s view, Montreal musicians don’t suffer from the inferiority complexes that affect other Canadian cities, and tend to shy away from the general trend of inter-city musical competition.

Kuhrye-oo is leaving for New York shortly to grow in the larger electronic music scene there. “The bigger the better” is McElroy’s attitude toward his upcoming move to Brooklyn. Next week, he will be performing at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York, a festival showcasing new artists that is geared toward creating contacts for emerging bands.

Kuhrye-oo’s full album will be released in early 2013. His EP is currently available on vinyl or from iTunes.

Benoît Lachambre: Snakeskins

Usine C October 13 and 14 8:00 p.m.

1345 Lalonde $31.54 for those under 30 Called a “chef-d’oeuvre” by France’s Danzine, Lachambre’s Snakeskins is contemporary dance for the digital age, incorporating multimedia and the music of experimental composer Hahn Rowe. Sunday will be the final show of Snakeskins, although Lachambre will continue his artistic residency at Usine C for three more seasons.

Vernissage: Perry Bard & Matt Soar, Sébastien Pesot, and Ianick Raymond

Joyce Yahouda Gallery Belgo Building, room 516 October 13 4:00 p.m.

372 Ste. Catherine West Free Combining artists working in the media of paint, photography, and video/performance art, this new show at the Joyce Yahouda Gallery promises a multifaceted investigation of politics and the nature of reality. It is also a good opportunity to explore the Belgo Building, a nondescript structure on Ste. Catherine that houses a huge variety of private galleries over several floors.

EDITORIAL

volume 102 number 11

Graft and loathing in Montreal

editorial board 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

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Tom Acker

In the past several years, media outlets in Quebec have brought to light evidence of serious corruption among politicians at the provincial and municipal levels. Amid crumbling infrastructure, citizens of Quebec have complained that awarding of public municipal contracts to private companies has cheated the population for the sake of kickbacks and graft.

After two years of provincial Liberal inaction, ostensibly out of fear of political fallout, former Premier Jean Charest created a commission to investigate government corruption related to the construction industry in November 2011. The commission, presided over by Judge France Charbonneau, began its investigation last March in a series of public hearings. Although it has come far too late, the Charbonneau Commission is a necessary first step in the process of ending institutionalized corruption.

The dramatic events unfolding around the Charbonneau inquest have confirmed many Quebecers’ fears about their province. In late September, a police detective testified to the Charbonneau Commission that construction companies paid up to 5 per cent of the value of municipal contracts to the mafia to ensure that “everything went smoothly.” According to the testimony of Lino Zambito, former vice-president of construction company Infrabec, the awarding of city contracts was privately organized by ten companies who agree to take turns at offering the lowest bid. Zambito also testified that Union Montréal, the party of mayor Gérald Tremblay, receives a 3 per cent cut of every large public works contract. If Zambito’s testimony is true, then the entire system by which municipal taxes are spent on large projects is a sham, designed to line the pockets of construction companies and to protect the role of the mafia. This is only one sample of the shocking testimony that the Charbonneau Commission has witnessed.

On October 4, police raided the offices and home of Gilles Vaillancourt, the mayor of Laval, Montreal’s largest suburb. Last Tuesday, the Montreal Police Brotherhood, a union that represents police officers but is separate from the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), denounced the Union Montréal government, alleging that the administration has “zero credibility.” Meanwhile, the city’s public works projects have ground to a halt as the extent of the corruption is being investigated. The Commission will not conclude until 2014.

Despite the persistence of a defeatist plus-ça-change attitude toward the pervasiveness of corruption in Montreal, the Charbonneau Commission has helped to galvanize the population to express their outrage. In contrast to the low turnout rate for municipal elections, a recent poll commissioned by La Presse found that 43 per cent of respondents demanded the immediate resignation of Mayor Tremblay. Last Friday, demonstrations took place at City Hall to demand that Tremblay resign. If citizens are to take control of Montreal from the hands of the mafia and corrupt politicians, then Montrealers must demand accountability from their representatives, through direct action and the vote. Regardless, to begin this process, Tremblay must resign.

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Nicolas Quiazua

rec@delitfrancais.com

cover design Sid Ahmed and Amina Batyreva

contributors Sid Ahmed, Nicholas Cameron, Marcello Ferrara, Ralph Haddad, Cameron Monagle, Nathalie O’Neill, David Ou, Shannon Palus, Emory Saur, Alice Shen, Ryan Thom, Jordan Venton-Rublee, Simone Sinclair Walker, Dana Wray, Doris Zhu

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All contents © 2012 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff.

Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec.

ISSN 1192-4608.

Errata In the article “Philosophy students seek to seperate from AUS” (News, October 4), The Daily stated that AUS has always covered the rent paid to the University for the space occupied by SNAX. In fact, it can only be confirmed that the AUS has covered this cost for the past two years. The Daily regrets the error.

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15

compendium!

The McGill Daily Thursday, October 11, 2012 mcgilldaily.com

lies, half-truths, and drunk liberals

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Graphic Liberal rights theorists since Locke (Reddit)

If this photo appears blurry, you may already be drunk - proceed with caution.

Breaking: SSMU has been occupied Puppy adorable, weed dank Eyawn "Karlos" Eekay The Bison and Bulldog

A

mob of five students and one bichon frise dog occupied the parking lot in front of the Shatner building on October 5.

The occupation was staged because of what the protesers say is an “imminent” conflict with SSMU staff about whether or not health and safety regulations mean the dog must be banned from the bar.

The occupation began around noon, and coincided with the day that one of the protesters had brought a dog to school. In addition, the group had finished classes for the day, meaning that the weekend had arrived and many others in the area were relaxing after school or work. Occupier

Rudy noted, “woof woof bark [b] ark [...] woof.”

Update (4:18 p.m.): The protesters spoke with the Bison and Bulldog about what they hope to accomplish with what they describe as their “insurrection.”

First, they would like to “create a new form of deterritorialized rhizomatic super-skagger that is stratified with intersecting layers of cannabis and tobacco and then pass that dutchie to the left like our liberal baby boomer parents never did,” noted organizer Pauline Derrida.

“If one examines neocultural discourse, one is faced with a choice: either accept the capitalist paradigm of narrative or conclude that sexual identity has intrinsic meaning, but only if Marx’s model of precultural desublimation is valid,” found

Derrida, who swiftly situated the analysis on the concrete.

“Under neoliberalism, the subject is contextualized into a cultural postdialectic theory that includes narrativity as a reality.

Thus, a number of theories arise which are concerning for not-discourse, as neodialectic materialism suggests. It is within this void that the transcendence of prediscourse may be revealed.”

Update (4:54 p.m.): Protesters have left the SSMU parking lot following news that there was an anticapitalist rendevous at a nearby depanneur, before joining a manifestation downtown.

Eyawn “Karlos” Eekay writes, believes, and consumes neoliberal newsproduct on an hourly basis. Find him eating bison with the bulldog.

Illustration K. Marx | The Bison and Bulldog

These people like their dog. Breaking: SSMU doesn’t.