The Runner Vol 11, Issue 12

MARCH 5, 2019 VOLUME 11, ISSUE 12 KPU’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER

Life Fades from the Surrey Campus Forest

NEWS

KPU Announces Plans to Reduce Course Offerings, Increase Class Sizes

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Community members discuss the "emotional and ethical value" of green spaces at KPU as an increasing number of dying trees are cut down.

CULTURE

Books 2 Prisoners Offers Solace to People Behind Bars

OPINIONS › 09

Enjoy Vancouver’s Landmarks Before They’re Torn Down

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STAFF Editor in Chief

Aly Laube editor@runnermag.ca

Managing Editor

Connor Doyle managing@runnermag.ca

Staff Writer

Braden Klassen staff@runnermag.ca

Production Manager

Sarah Kraft production@runnermag.ca

Graphics Editor

Kristen Frier graphics@runnermag.ca

Web Manager

Alex Rodriguez web@runnermag.ca

Operations Manager Scott Boux office@runnermag.ca 778-565-3801

CONTRIBUTORS Marcus Barichello Lena Belova Cristian Hobson-Dimas Hannah Howard Tristan Johnston Janelle Swift

COVER BY Sarah Kraft

Arbutus 3710/3720 12666 72 Ave. Surrey, B.C, V3W 2M8 778-565-3801 www.runnermag.ca Vol. 11, Issue no. 12 March 5 // 2019 ISSN# 1916 8241 All submissions to The Runner are subject to editing for style, quality, length, and legality. The Runner will not publish material which the editors deem to be harmful or discriminatory. The views expressed within the publication are not necessarily those of The Runner staff or of the Polytechnic Ink Publishing Society.

The Runner is student-owned and operated by Kwantlen Polytechnic University students, published under the Polytechnic Ink Publishing Society. The Runner recognizes that our work, both in and out of the office, takes place on unceded Coast and Strait Salish territories, specifically the shared traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Sto:lo and Tsawwassen First Nations. Our name is inspired by the hun’qumi’num meaning of Kwantlen, which is tireless hunters or tireless runners. Just as KPU is adaptable and changing, so is The Runner.

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NEWS

KPU Announces Plans to Reduce Course Offerings, Increase Class Sizes In a message sent to Kwantlen Polytechnic University faculty members on Feb. 15, KPU President Alan Davis announced that the university had reached “financial capacity” and must take action to avoid a deficit.

FEATURES

The Forest on the KPU Surrey Campus is Dying “The increasing stress the forest has been under—which has led to the cutting down of many trees—has been very distressing to witness,” says Dr. Rajdeep Gill, an IDEA instructor at KPU.

CULTURE

Books 2 Prisoners Offers Solace to People Behind Bars The Kwantlen Prison Justice Club recently started a Books 2 Prisoners book drive to provide book donations to people behind bars. The club has partnered with Canadian organization Books 2 Prisoners to make this initiative a reality.

OPINIONS

Enjoy Vancouver’s Landmarks Before They’re Torn Down Not all of the places we hold dear will be saved. When looking at Vancouver’s landmarks, ask yourself: Which places are most sacred to me, and what can I do to keep them around?

NEWS

KPU Announces Plans to Reduce Course Offerings, Increase Class Sizes

The Health Unit Coordinator, Farrier, and Music programs have already begun experiencing cuts Connor Doyle | Managing Editor In a message sent to Kwantlen Polytechnic University faculty members on Feb. 15, KPU President Alan Davis announced that the university had reached “financial capacity” and must take action to avoid a deficit.

As a result, KPU plans on increasing its average class size over the next five years from 22 to 24 students. In addition, a proposed budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year would see the number of courses offered at the university be reduced by 3.5 per cent, with a further 1.5 per cent reduction occurring every year for the next four years.

Both initiatives are part of a five-year financial model that the university administration hopes will make KPU more sustainable.

“We are taking a measured approach to addressing our financial situation and the sustainability of KPU,” wrote Davis in the statement.

“This five-year plan will require a high level of fiscal prudence, a keen eye on enrolments and class sizes, and tight management of expenses.”

The decision to recalibrate the university’s finances was made during the development of KPU’s VISION 2023 document. The administration identified the need to slow growth in order to prevent a loss in the quality of education that KPU offers, and to better align the institution’s activities with its revenues.

While Davis wrote that he is certain the administration’s actions will make the university a better institution going forward, he acknowledged that the changes will result in some job losses.

“We are committed to working with our unions to minimize the impact of these reductions on our employees,” he wrote. “This is never an easy process, nor is it one we have taken lightly. Deans have begun communicating with those we believe will be affected by these proposed reductions.”

Impact on Students and Faculty Some programs at KPU have already been experiencing the cutbacks. In November, KPU Provost and Vice President Sal Ferreras met with members of the Academic and Career Advancement (ACA) faculty to discuss his proposal to stop continuous intake and divide ACA into separate faculties.

While this proposal was delayed from January 2019 to April, many faculty members remain concerned about the future of their department.

This February, KPU cut off registration for its Farrier program and is currently reviewing the viability of offering Farrier courses in the future.

The Health Unit Coordinator program in the Faculty of Health also had its continuous intake suspended for one year, and HUC Coordinator Radhika Kumar responded by penning an open letter to KPU’s Senators. In the letter, Kumar implores the senate to participate in collaborative decision-making that includes members of the faculties being affected by these cuts before committing to the changes.

Also in late February, an email was sent to students applying to KPU’s Music program informing them that the university was suspending all intake into the program indefinitely.

That message was not sent to faculty members or students currently enrolled in the program.

Emma Dotto, president of KPU’s Music Students Association, says that the announcement sent the program into “chaos.”

“People are angry. Students are angry. The faculty is angry,” she says. “As president of the

music students association, I’ve already gotten emails from students who were planning to apply, and who got news of the suspended intake just one or two days before all of the music programs in the Lower Mainland close their applications. So they’re scrambling now to fulfill their post-secondary plans. It’s just unfair.”

In an email statement to The Runner, KPU Provost Sal Ferreras said that the university’s budget proposals “reflect the unsustainability of the music department’s delivery model in its current format.”

“The Faculty of Arts is planning a thorough review of the Music degree and diploma programs to seek a more sustainable model for this programming,” he wrote. “In the meantime, it was prudent to cancel intakes to allow that review to be conducted.”

Dotto says that the decision to suspend intake shows that KPU is not interested giving Music students or faculty members a chance to change the administration’s mind.

“It’s extremely poor leadership, it’s a very defensive way to go about making change,” she says. “Essentially they’re bleeding us dry until there’s no more program. They’re not even giving us the chance to rebound off of this.”

KPU Student Senator Murdoch de Mooy says he also feels that the university should be more flexible in its approach to reducing course offerings, specifically with the proposed division of the ACA faculty.

“I feel like deciding the date of dissolution before it can be discussed fully, or before the positives can be mentioned, is really saying, ‘We don’t care what your opinion is. We’ve already decided,’” he says.

Like Dotto, de Mooy—who also serves as VP University Affairs for the Kwantlen Student Association—says he has had students voice their concerns to him about the recent cuts.

“When the ACA stuff first started, there was definitely a spike in people coming to my office and going, ‘I’ve heard bad things are happening.

How soon should I get out of KPU?” The Need for a Reduction In his role on the university’s senate, de Mooy has been in attendance for some of the recent discussions about KPU’s financial situation.

According to him, much of the problem comes from KPU overreaching in the decade since it transitioned from a college to a university.

“I think this is the pushback of trying to expand so much,” he says. “One of the things that’s leading to the situation with the Music program is that these sorts of programs cost more per student than others. My guess is that [the administration] is figuring out which programs are the most cost inefficient for the university and saying, ‘We should not be accepting any more students.’”

Kwantlen University College became Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2008, and de Mooy says that this transition came without a significant increase in funding from the provincial government. Since then, KPU’s growth as an institution has led to greater and greater expenses, while provincial grants have remained largely stagnant. KPU’s other sources of revenue, such as tuition from domestic and international students, have not increased enough in that time to offset the rising costs.

“Our expenses are increasing faster than our anticipated revenues, due mainly to inflation and the ongoing cost pressures of our multi-campus complexity,” wrote Davis in an

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WHAT’S HAPPENING THIS MONTH

MAR. 5

ECODAYS RICHMOND

EcoDAYS is a sustainability celebration and showcase that encourages students to engage in sustainability-related initiatives and to get involved on and off campus.

11:00 am - 2:00 pm,

KPU President Alan Davis.

(KPU Media and Communications) email statement to The Runner. “If we don’t address this issue now, expenses will exceed revenues. Legislation requires that we be in an annual balanced or surplus financial position, so we must take action to avoid a deficit.”

In his message to faculty, Davis explained that the university's opportunities to increase revenues are limited. While the administration is actively exploring new revenue streams, it will take at least a few years before they start making a noticeable impact on KPU’s operating budget.

According to a report prepared by KPU VP Finance & Administration John Harding, which was presented to the university’s senate in late November 2018, KPU is currently losing $20.85 per credit taken by domestic, full time equivalent (FTE) students who have been partially funded by the B.C. government to attend post-secondary university. That number skyrockets to $298.48 per credit for domestic FTE students whose education is not partially offset by government funds.

Losing What Makes KPU Unique De Mooy says he’s glad that the university isn’t officially ending any of the programs that have had their intakes cancelled, and that students currently enrolled in the Music, HUC, and the Farrier programs will be able to finish their educations. However, he is sad to see the administration targeting programs that make KPU a unique institution.

“These programs are the identity of KPU,” he says. “Programs like the Farrier program ... the Music programs—these are ‘us.’”

In the announcement to faculty, Davis wrote that the administration will continue to speak to the government about receiving more funding in order to “fulfill our unique mandate as a polytechnic university, and to respond to the needs of our communities.”

“These are difficult but necessary decisions that are being proposed in order to address structural financial issues and allow KPU to balance its budget this year and create financial sustainability for years to come,” wrote Davis to The Runner.

For her part, Dotto says she’s ready to fight for the survival of the Music program. Following a meeting of Music students and faculty on Feb. 28, the Music Students Association created the hashtag #kpumusicmakenoise and is encouraging people to write letters addressed to the university’s President, Vice President and Provost, and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts about their reaction to the cutbacks.

“The only way I see us making a change is by making a loud enough noise that it shakes [the administration],” she says. “The only way we can do that is if we present as a united front. We want to come together as a program and show that the solidarity and the togetherness is what this program is about, is what music is about, and it’s how we're going to get our voices heard.”

KPU Richmond Rotunda, free.

MAR. 8

THE RUNNER CONTRIBUTOR MIXER The Runner staff wants to mingle with our contributors, so if you’ve ever written for the paper, or want to write for us, drop by our office to play Codenames for seven consecutive hours (just kidding).

1:00 pm,

KPU Surrey A3710, free.

MAR. 8

MUSICAL MENAGERIE

This faculty showcase will feature Hummel’s Military Septet and Saint Saëns Carnival of the Animals. KPU President Dr. Alan Davis will serve as the evening's narrator.

7:30 pm,

KPU Langley West 1270 Auditorium,

$20 for single adult ticket.

MAR. 12 KIDS THESE DAYS

Katie Warfield, Journalism instructor and director of KPU’s Visual Media Workshop, will present on the rise of counter-narratives on social media that challenge the way mainstream media write about "others".

7:30 pm - 9:00 pm,

TELUS World of Science, free.

MAR. 16 PARKOUR DAY

Active KSA is holding an event all about parkour, which they say is essentially a ninja class held at a gym in Vancouver.

Participants will learn how to jump over short walls, tumble, flip, and maybe how to flip off a wall.

11:30 am - 2:30 pm,

Origins Parkour Gym, free for students.

MAR. 19

"I AM A TANDOORI CHICKEN..."

Dr. Asma Sayed from the KPU Department of English will be discussing female objectification in Bollywood films.

All faculty, staff, students, and cinema lovers are encouraged to attend.

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm,

KPU Surrey Cedar Boardroom, free.

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NEWS

Provincial Government Eliminates Interest on B.C. Student Loans The decision will reportedly save average B.C student loan holders approximately $2,300 Braden Klassen | Staff Writer The 2019 budget announcement made on Feb. 19 included a list of measures the provincial government is taking to reduce taxes for families earning under $80,000 per year.

These include introducing child benefit tax credit and, of particular interest to KPU students, eliminating the interest from B.C. student loans.

“Students and young families with loans will save an average of $2,300 after graduation, so they can start their careers off on the right foot,” said B.C. NDP Finance Minister Carole James during the budget announcement.

The provincial government says that the average student loan holder in B.C. will have about $28,000 in debt after they graduate, which includes both provincial and federal loans. $2,300 is the estimated amount of interest students will no longer have to pay towards their provincial loans over a 10-year repayment period.

“We’re happy that they’re taking action to reduce the financial burdens of post-secondary college students,” says Kwantlen Student Association VP External David Piraquive. “It’s something that’s been lobbied for a lot in the past by the ABCS, and it’s something that we’ve heavily pushed for.”

The Alliance of B.C. Students, which Pira-

quive is board member of, is a student advocacy and lobbying organization that the KSA has been involved with for a number of years.

Former KSA President Caitlin McCutchen served as the ABCS chairperson, and current KSA VP Finance & Operations Joseph Thorpe was the organization’s Director of Finance and Operations in 2018.

“Not every single student has the benefit of paying for their tuition up front, so it’s basically like putting an extra tax on low and middle-income students because they have to pay an additional cost,” says Piraquive.

While B.C. student loan-holders can applaud the government’s decision to get rid of the interest, some students who are getting their education here are still bound by interest payments for loans from other parts of Canada.

Mackenzie Rhode, a KPU Journalism student who transferred from the University of Saskatchewan, will still have to pay interest on her loans, even though she is currently attending a post-secondary institution in B.C. She says that the elimination of student loan interest should apply to all students in Canada, and not just those who have loans in this province.

“I think that getting rid of interest on student loans is a great thing, because it’s not your average loan. It’s not me taking money out because I want to buy a car. It’s not me asking for a big purchase like a house,” she says.

The B.C. budget changes have made paying off student loans less of a burden. (flickr/Province of BC) “It’s just me asking for basic funds so I can get myself educated at a post-secondary level.”

Since Rhode received her loans from the Saskatchewan provincial student loan program, she will still be charged interest on her loans which she says total approximately $40,000. She expects to have to pay between $5,000 and $10,000 more in interest, and is considering taking out more loans in B.C. “I think it’s unfair that I have to repay another $10,000 on top of that just because

I’m not in a financial position—or my family’s not in a financial position—to put me through post-secondary,” she says. “You’re told from birth that you need university to get a high-paying job. I don’t think I should be punished for needing the government’s help for that, and I think that B.C. did something right by eliminating the interest, but I definitely think it should be a country-wide thing.

It shouldn’t be just provincial.”

The Runner is hiring a

Community Reporter If you want to write about communities that are important to you and to KPU students, we want to meet you!

Qualifications

+ Passion for storytelling and advocacy + Experience in journalism, particularly with professional writing and interviewing

Assets

+ Being multi-lingual + Belonging to marginalized and underrepresented communities

+ Willingness to learn and grow

Anyone interested can contact editor@runnermag.ca for more details and to set up an interview.

NEWS

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Students Increasingly Rely on KSA Food Bank Amid Growing Food Insecurity Nation-Wide

A report from Food Bank Canada says that the most frequent users of food banks include children and single adults

Braden Klassen | Staff Writer A report issued by Food Banks Canada says that usage of Canadian Food Banks across the country “remains unacceptably high.”

According to the report, which is titled HungerCount 2018, in one month alone Canadians made approximately 1.1 million visits to food banks, including over 125,000 in B.C. The report states that 35.2 per cent of people who use food banks are children under the age of 18, and that 45.1 per cent of users are adults living in single-person households. In addition, food insecurity disproportionately affects Canadians living in Northern regions, and the report contains data from a 2014 Canadian Community Health Survey which revealed that 46.8 per cent of all households in Nunavut can not reliably access as much food as they need.

In the conclusion of the report, its authors support national policy changes to address these issues. These include supporting efforts for creating affordable early learning and child-care facilities, increasing support programs for single adults earning a low income, and focusing on food insecurity in the North.

It also advocates for the implementation of a national basic income program, which would give all Canadians the ability to collect income necessary to meet the rising cost of living in the country.

People aged 18 to 30 comprised 14.3 per cent of food bank users in all of B.C., though

the largest demographic of users are aged 45 to 64, who make up 26.2 per cent. Both statistics are approximately two per cent higher in rural B.C. The rising cost of living in Metro Vancouver means that students sometimes have to make the choice between paying their rent and tuition, or buying their food.

“You don’t need to hide from it; this is a reality,” says Murdoch de Mooy, VP University Affairs for the Kwantlen Student Association.

De Mooy also helps to manage elements of the KSA Food Bank.

Since 2011, the KSA Food Bank has provided students with packages of food which can be requested up to twice a month via an online form available on its website.

The package contains dried and canned goods like pasta, oatmeal, and tuna, and is mostly purchased by the student association in bulk from Costco. It is kept in a locker in the KSA office and is brought to anonymous lockers on the campuses every few days, which ensures confidentiality for students using the food bank.

According to De Mooy, students have been using the program more and more over the past few years, with a noticeable jump taking place during the 2018 fall semester.

“It was really scary. We couldn’t keep up the food demand, we couldn’t keep up with the locker demand,” says Dani Blackett, who works with KSA Member Services and organizes and delivers the food packages. “Today, I sent the first email that I’ve sent in a long

KSA Member Services staff Dani Blackett places a bag of food into an anonymous locker for pickup by a student. (Braden Klassen) time that said that the queue is cleared.”

Blackett says that, during the busiest times, the KSA offers students the choice to retrieve the bags from the Member Services desk in Cedar to speed up the process. However, students would often refuse because they didn’t want to be seen using the food bank.

“Even when I needed it, I didn’t really want

to ask for help,” says de Mooy, who has used food bank services in the past. “It took me a long time to realize that people want to help. It makes them feel good, but they want to make sure you’re not left behind. I think students need to know that, when they need help, they just need to say it.”

KSA Sponsors Student Refugee Living in Canada

A student from Syria and Jordan is studying at KPU with the help of the World University Service of Canada Braden Klassen | Staff Writer Sarah, a student refugee who travelled here from Jordan, has been given the chance to lead a new life in Canada thanks to a partnership between the Kwantlen Student Association and the World University Service of Canada through its Student Refugee Program.

Funding from the KSA allows Sarah to attend KPU, where she plans to pursue an education in business.

“WUSC has given me more chances to [live] my life,” says Sarah, whose last name has been omitted for privacy purposes.

Sarah is originally from Syria, but left for Jordan at a young age. It was there that she attended high school and college.

“When I was in Jordan, there were no chances to learn, and no chances even to travel to other countries,” she explains. “Now that I’m in Canada I have permanent residence and I can travel whenever I want. They gave me more chances to live a new life.”

Sarah says she would go to school in the morning and finish at about 4:00 p.m. She would then head to work, where she would stay until 11:00 p.m. before returning home to eat, study, and sleep. Her average salary was about $400 per month.

“It was too difficult,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep much during that time.”

After high school she focused on getting her education in business administration, but

decided to leave her college after a year. Eventually she applied to the WUSC program.

Now Sarah lives in Delta, and some of her living expenses are covered by funds from the KSA. She is studying English in her first semester here and will be able to register in other courses next semester. She says she doesn’t know what she would like to register for, but knows that she’s interested in the business program.

“I love the situation—what I’m living here and what I’m doing here. I love this,” she says.

“I’m always taking pictures and photos of everything at the university and I post it to Instagram, and my friends in Jordan told me, ‘Okay! We know! You’re at KPU.’” Putting together the WUSC sponsorship took more than a year of work, and was led by former KSA VP Finance Rawan Ramini, who is originally from Jordan.

“The first time I was introduced to WUSC was by [former KSA President] Tanvir Singh and Diane Purvey, the Dean of Arts,” says Ramini. “Diane Purvey particularly thought that it was a good idea to bring [the WUSC refugee program] to KPU, but she needed a student to spearhead the process and do all of the work, because it has to be student-led. She reached out to me because she knows about my interest in refugee issues and helping refugees in general to improve their lifestyles.”

Several other schools across Canada also sponsor refugees through WUSC, including

(Kristen Frier) SFU and UBC. Ramini says that covering the cost of Sarah’s tuition and living expenses is estimated to cost around $40,000 per year, which is being paid by the KSA. Currently Sarah has had two years paid for, but the other two years are not yet covered. She plans to advocate for a 60 cent per-credit fee that could pay for up to four more refugees to come to Canada and study at KPU.

However, if the question does not make it to referendum, or if students ultimately vote against the fee, the possibility of sponsoring future student refugees—or even continuing Sarah’s sponsorship—could become uncertain.

For now, Sarah says she is very happy living in Canada and exploring the areas around Vancouver, and is excited to continue pursuing her education at KPU.

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FEATURES

The Forest on KPU's Surrey Campus is Dying As dead trees are cut down, students, staff, and faculty discuss the importance of the only wooded area on campus Cristian Hobson-Dimas | Contributor

The remaining cedar trees that dot the Sur- what was happening to these trees. Suddenrey campus between the Fir and Main build- ly, the fir trees lost their greenery and died. ings are hardly recognizable as the lush So we were in the situation of, ‘Well, we’ve forest they once were. Recent work has left got all these dead trees, we’ve got buildings, heaps of lumber, as well as branches, bram- we’ve got people, we’ve got pathways that bles, and sawdust, strewn about the forest people use,’ so for health and safety purposgrounds where dense foliage was just under es, we needed to take the trees down.” a year ago. Fallen trunks have been blocking Chisholm says that the university did its pathways through the forest for weeks, wor- due diligence by “consulting with the right rying some members of the KPU communi- parties” to make sure that the trees were ty who value what remains of the campus’s already dead, and made sure to obtain permits natural landscape. for taking the trees down. He adds that many “For a university named after a First Nation, of the fallen logs have been given to First [KPU] sure does erode the small amount of Nations who will make use of them. connection our campus has with nature,” says Most of all, Chisholm says he was astonTawahum Bige, a creative writing student at ished to see the sudden deterioration of the KPU who uses the forest to engage with his forest he was in charge of caring for.

Dene and Cree spiritual practices. “It physi“Within one season, these large trees were cally pains me to see it harmed.” alive, and then they were deceased,” he says.

“When I walked into [the forest] this semes- “For us, when you look at it, we have to look first ter, it seemed lifeless,” echoes Chelsea Franz, at life and safety. With the wind storms and all another writing student. “So much was missing.” that, we needed to take these trees down.”

Franz says that a forested area on campus Dr. Rajdeep Gill, an IDEA instructor at KPU, isn’t just an aesthetic attraction, it is import- feels that the situation was only addressed ant for the mental well-being of students who after it was too late. otherwise spend most of their time on cam“The increasing stress the forest has been pus crammed into classrooms and lecture under—which has led to the cutting down halls for hours on end. of many trees—has been very distressing to “With enough trees you can almost forget witness,” he says. “I see the current challenge where you are and escape the pressures of the with the forest as an opportunity to give back school system for a minute,” she says. “It used to the land, with care and imaginativeness, to be so grounding. It helped a lot of art class- rather than reacting to the situation once it es connect to the universal too.” becomes more and more challenging, or doing The removal of trees from the forest began crisis management.” last year during the transition from the sumGill uses the forest as a space to conduct mer to the fall semester when the nearby mindfulness and connectivity practices as courtyard pond was being renovated. More part of his classes. He says that the space is recently, a much larger number of trees were “very close to [his] heart.” cut down and left on the forest floor.

“I experience and view the trees, and the “What happened with the very hot weather forest as a whole, as a life-enhancing memin the summer, was that there was a speedy ber of the KPU community,” he says. “Green decline in a bunch of the trees,” says Andrew spaces enhance mental health and improve Chisholm, Executive Director of Facilities focus and cognition, apart from serving other Services. “We reached out to an environ- vital socio-ecological functions. Our biophilic mental company, The Arborist, to figure out draw to the living earth also has the power to

orient us to think about the meaning and purFor his part, Gill hopes to start a committee pose of our lives and the knowledge and gifts of dedicated staff and students to revitalize we carry.” the forest and take matters out of the mainteFor years, Gill has been taking KPU stu- nance department’s hands. dents to the forest to connect with nature “I think it could be wonderful to have stuand to reflect on ecology. He says he has wit- dents, staff, and faculty collaboratively take nessed the “emotional and ethical impact of on the stewardship of the forest, to protect the forest” on countless students. and enhance the health of the forest,” he says.

Creative writing instructor Ross Laird also “I see this as a critical moment to reflect on sees the forest as a “valuable part of the envi- the vital need to not only preserve but also ronment [that] could be utilized in any num- expand green spaces on campuses, with colber of ways to promote well-being and con- laborative involvement [from] the entire KPU nection,” though he believes it isn’t currently community, enriching social and ecological being used to its potential. sustainability."

Laird is in the process of writing a new book There is currently some concern among titled Object-Based Learning and Well-being: students and staff that, if the health of the Exploring Material Connections, and has just forest continues to deteriorate at the same finished a chapter about how nature can be alarming rate that it has been, trees will keep used in post-secondary environments. Part of needing to be cut down, leaving the entire forit reads, “with some practice, and with a spir- est at risk of being paved over. it of creative inquiry, any field of study could Mariah Negrillo-Soor, a KPU student who benefit from exposure to natural environ- is particularly fond of the on-campus forest, ments and the objects within them.” does not want that to happen. She hopes the In comparison to KPU, UBC is densely pop- forest will return to its former vitality and ulated with “pocket parks” such as Khorana remain an integral part of the community for and Nobel, and forests as large as 870 hectares. students—and woodland creatures—of the UBC forestry researcher Lorien Nesbitt agrees future to enjoy. with Laird’s point, saying that “every resident “Shout out to the forest for making my should be within a 10-minute walk to a park.” view from my classroom windows a little “I think that urban forests should reflect [a more interesting and calming,” she says. “I community’s] identities and priorities,” she wish I could’ve spent more time with you, says. “When you have trees in these neigh- but I know you’ll do what you have to do to bourhoods, they provide all sorts of benefits: get strong again. Hopefully you’ll be left for psychological health, physical health, and many years to keep spreading those roots, climate change adaptation benefits.” to keep growing those rings, to give home Chisholm says that, while plans to revital- to birds and squirrels, and to support those ize the forest aren’t currently being developed, intelligent fungal systems.” the university is open to the idea.

“I want to wait and see what’s going to happen to the trees this year,” he says. “We’ll engage horticulture and biology and all those folks when we start making plans for that space, but I want to see how the trees manage over the next year. It needs to be done in a collaborative manner.”

FEATURES

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KPU Surrey's wooded area has seen some dramatic changes. If the health of the forest continues to deteriorate more trees will need to be cut down. (Cristian Hobson-Dimas)

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CULTURE

Kwantlen Creative Writing Guild Holds South Asian Femme Poetry Night The Surrey campus saw six poets with shared identities perform spoken word on Feb. 20

Kristen Frier | Graphics Editor Six poets who identify as South Asian femmes performed together for an evening of spoken word which took place at KPU’s Surrey campus on Feb. 20. In this context, “South Asian femme” refers to female-identifying or female-presenting folks whose heritage comes from countries in or around the Indian subcontinent.

Focusing specifically on poets of these identities is what fueled the Kwantlen Creative Writing Guild to hold the event.

“We never take the time to get to know the specifics,” says Tawahum Bige, the primary organizer for South Asian Femme Poetry Night. “I think that’s a white supremacy thing, to separate into whites and everyone else.”

Artists who are BIPOC—Black and Indigenous People of Colour—face regular tokenization and marginalization. In an attempt to add diversity, event coordinators will often cherry-pick artists from marginalized backgrounds to include in their otherwise white-dominated events. This means that these artists often miss out on the opportunity to work with others who share their identity.

“I think having events that celebrate the specifics is so valuable because it helps us to look at ourselves and each other in a different light,” says Sofia Waqar, one of the six featured poets who performed at the event. “It’s another step towards appreciating differences instead of oppressing.”

Sofia Waqar’s emotionally complex set compelled audience members to explore loneli-

ness and relationship dynamics between loved ones, family members, and one's sense of self.

Chelsea Franz, a KPU creative writing student who performed during the first half of the evening, found the experience to be particularly enriching. She describes a lifetime of rejecting her heritage in order to assimilate with her non-South Asian community members.

“On stages, [marginalized] poets sometimes carry the burden of representation,” says Franz. “Usually there will be one or two BIPOC folk on a panel, if ever, and it was nice to have a whole event just celebrating this South Asian Femme-ness.”

Franz, who is one of the organizers of Slamapalooza, KPU’s slam poetry team, also discussed how sharing a space with so many poets who have experiences that are similar to hers gave her the freedom to better explore her identity on stage.

“It kind of relieves that pressure of speaking for all South Asian femmes,” she says.

“Instead, you get to share your story just to share it, and not to educate other people.

Because of our shared experiences we all just kind of understand each other.”

After a short intermission, Naaz Sidhu, an 18-year-old KPU Faculty of Arts student, used her stylized rhythmic poetry to reset the momentum. Sidhu’s work was described by one of the other poets there, Kiran Shoker, as “particularly charging” because of what she represents to the South Asian femmes of tomorrow who are still growing and changing.

“I grew up in a house where my mom was the boss. She ran the show, but while having a

Franz the Poet performs as part of South Asian Femme Poetry Night. (Kristen Frier) strong presence she was also soft,” says Sidhu.

“In the South Asian community, I’ve found women are the heart and soul of everything.

I also find that women are the ones that are quickly silenced when they speak their mind.”

Shoker was the final poet to take the stage that night. Her worked touched on empowerment, self-decolonization, and the role of South Asian women who are, according to

Shoker, “caged in a cycle of physical and emotional violence that spans generations, where voices are not heard as we are oppressed in roles of submission.”

Bige expressed interest in continuing to host events like this one in the near future.

Keep an eye on the Creative Writing Guild and Slamapalooza for more on-campus spoken word.

KPU Students Take First Prize in Accounting Competition

The team is the first from a B.C. school to win the ACHIEVE accounting case competition Braden Klassen | Staff Writer A team of KPU business students have returned from a national conference where they won the ACHIEVE accounting case competition. The conference was hosted by Ryerson University and took place in Toronto between Jan. 31 and Feb. 2.

The KPU team, which is the first from B.C. to win the competition, was led by accounting instructor Sam Newton, and consisted of KPU students Dilsharn Kaur Mokha, Sam Garzitto, Taran Takhar, and Henry Flowers.

The students took home the first prize after competing against teams from several other schools including the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto.

The team also took home an extra award for having the best utilization of social media during the conference, which they credit mostly to Mokha.

“It was very much a team effort,” says Flowers, who explains that the team practiced by analyzing up to three cases per week. “It is insane how far along our team has come.”

The team received a cash prize and an achievement plaque. In addition, KPU’s name was engraved into the ACHIEVE trophy which displays the names of all the schools that have won previous competitions.

The competition featured teams of under-

graduates from schools across Canada who were asked to analyze and present a business case that could impress a panel of judges. In keeping with the competition’s theme, the teams were tasked with finding ways for the company in the case to increase its corporate social responsibility and support more environmentally sustainable practices.

“It wasn’t your typical kind of case,” says Flowers. “It was a not-for-profit company that was a subsidiary of a large cement company in India, and they needed guidance on the best sustainability framework to adopt.”

Flowers says that the team suggested a different value assessment method which uses a score that includes non-monetary factors like greenhouse gas emissions and stakeholder quality of life survey results. He adds that KPU’s accounting curriculum gave the team an advantage over other schools due to its relatively higher focus on case studies.

“I want to give a shout out to KPU, I feel like it definitely did prepare us, especially with having a focus on cases within our curriculum,” he says. “We don’t focus on sustainability accounting, but we do have a strong focus on cases and looking at the practical applications. It’s one of the benefits of being at a polytechnic school, and I think it gave us a step above some of the other institutions.”

“We had, in total, 90 minutes from when

Members of KPU's Accounting Entrepreneurial Leadership team pose with their awards after winning the ACHIEVE 2019 case competition. (Submitted) we were handed the case to when we entered the room and started to present,” says Samuel Garzitto, another member of the accounting team. “We were asked to look at a company and let them know how they could be more responsible with their decisions— focusing on their bottom-line but also the impact that it gives to the environment, to the real world.”

Garazitto believes that supporting corporate social responsibility is becoming more and more important to the future of the accounting industry in Canada.

“It’s about how we can put some sort of figure on helping out this planet or providing benefit to the people around us, which is very hard to do,” he says. “But I think that’s essentially what corporate responsibility is.”

CULTURE

Turban Tying Event on Surrey Campus Invites Students to Celebrate Diversity

Organizers hoped to answer questions and clarify misconceptions about the religious headwear

A turban tying event was held in the Surrey campus courtyard on Feb. 28.

(Cristian Hobson-Dimas) religious figure closely tied to the origin and significance of the dastaar or turban.

“Among the Sikhs, the dastaar is an article of faith that represents honour, self-respect, courage, spirituality, and piety,” the posters read. “The Sikhs regard the dastaar as an important part of their unique identity.”

“Your turban is there for you when you go to sleep, your turban is there for you when you wake up,” volunteer Navjot Singh said, addressing a crowd of attendees at the event.

“If there is one thing that everyone has the right to, that is your kes, that is your hair; the hair that God has given you, your turban is there to protect it, to keep it clean.”

Singh went on to recount the history of the turban, explaining that the personal sacrifices made by Guru Gobind Singh imparted the dastaar unto practitioners of Sikhism.

“Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s whole family was sacrificed for us,” he explained. “A turban is not just a cloth, not just your friend, but a tur-

ban is your crown. Guru Gobind Singh Ji has given us a crown.”

After leading a brief religious group chant, Singh continued. “A turban is a crown that our father has given us, a crown that will always remain with us no matter what, a crown that shows others that if they need help, we will be there for them. A turban gives us our identity.

A turban is us. We are our turban.”

Even as tents were being taken down and empty food containers were being disposed of, volunteers continued to mingle and wrap turbans for one another. Anyone dressed with a turban during the event was welcomed to keep the headwear “as a gesture of kindness and a celebration of diversity.”

Sabharwal is also working with other volunteers to organize more events at the Surrey campus, including a Langar, “where a free meal is served to all visitors without distinction of religion, caste, gender, economic status, or ethnicity.”

Books 2 Prisoners Offers Solace to People Behind Bars

The program provides incarcerated individuals with better access to rehabilitation resources Marcus Barichello | Contributor

The Kwantlen Prison Justice Club recently started a Books 2 Prisoners drive to provide book donations to people behind bars. The club has partnered with Canadian organization Books 2 Prisoners to make this initiative a reality.

“Books are not just for people who are outside of prison. Books are universal, and everyone should be able to read them,” says Salehah Hakik, the President of the Kwantlen Prison Justice Club.

Hakik believes that providing books to prisoners will help ease the rehabilitation process for them.

“The reasons why you incarcerate someone is to rehabilitate,” she says. “When you’re in prison and you don’t have access to [tools that provide the opportunity for rehabilitation], you come out worse.

She continues, “Allowing them to read and take a few hours out of their day in a book will help with mental stimulation, as well as encourage them to stay connected to what’s going on in the outside world. Being locked up provides so much damage to them socially and mentally, so giving them books to read … is a huge benefit to their rehabilitation.”

One Billion Rising Aims to Reduce Violence Against Women Hannah Howard

Cristian Hobson-Dimas | Contributor Practitioners of the Sikh faith gathered on KPU’s Surrey campus for the university’s second annual Turban Tying event on the afternoon of Feb. 28. Organizer Gurpreet Singh Sabharwal says the purpose of the event is to celebrate diversity and spread awareness about the significance of the turban in Sikhism.

“We want to provide answers to anybody who may have questions about what wearing a turban means to us,” says Sabharwal. “As long as they approach the volunteers respectfully, they can ask us about the significance of the turban without thinking they are being offensive.”

The event, which took place over three hours, consisted of volunteers tying turbans both for practicing Sikhs and anybody else who was interested in participating. Tying a turban is a meticulous process that typically takes about ten to fifteen minutes, and at any time during the event, about a dozen people dressed in colourful clothing could be seen sitting around the turban tying station. Beside them, volunteers handed out samosas to passersby.

The more enthusiastic volunteers struck up conversations with strangers, appealing to their curiosity about the event and inviting them to visit their local Surrey Gurdwara, a religious temple of the Sikh faith, where practitioners “sit as equals to give praise, meditate, and eat food prepared by volunteers,” explains Sabharwal.

Poster boards with information on Sikhism that were displayed around the turban tying station explain that Guru Gobind Singh is a

9

Mike Larsen, a criminology instructor and co-chair of the Kwantlen Criminology Department at KPU, also believes that books can play a part in the rehabilitation process, but notes that there are other issues at play.

“Someone’s likelihood of coming out of prison successfully and finding opportunities to make it on the outside has to do with a whole variety of factors,” he says. “It’s hard to say that more books in prisons on their own is going to have radical rehabilitative effects.

However, one thing we do know is that education is a huge factor in ensuring people have successful outcomes out of prison. Education is underfunded, and even opportunities for self-education through reading is an important activity.”

Larsen was once a managing editor for the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, an academic journal operated out of the University of Ottawa where all the articles are written by current or former prisoners.

“Books can be a life changer,” he says. “I wouldn’t be a professor if I didn’t think that.

For our students, access to the right type of books can be a gamechanger and change how someone sees the world. It’s the same sort of thing with prisoners.”

Other issues that impact the rehabilitation

process include improving the connection prisoners have with the outside world, limiting the number of convicted individuals who get sent to prison, and—one often overlooked issue—safe injection sites inside of prisons.

“The official policy of a lot of prison institutions is that drugs are illegal in prison, and so [they]’re not going to adopt policies that begin with the starting point that acknowledges that people are getting and using drugs,” Larsen says. “[They] banned it so [they]’re going to treat it like it’s not happening, even though it is happening.”

He continues, “We know on the outside that harm reduction methods have an immeasurable impact on the likelihood of surviving overdoses, but … in prison it’s not easy to come by needles for the use of substances, so they’re often shared, and you can imagine what this does in terms of the transmission of bloodborne infections.”

Hakik and the Kwantlen Prison Justice Club are accepting book donations until March 13. The club is also planning another event in the future called “Prison Justice: The Walls that Close In” to discuss additional resources that need to be provided to prisoners to help improve their chances at successfully rehabilitating.

As part of a global movement to reduce violence against women, the Network to Eliminate Violence in Relationships (NEVR) hosted the annual One Billion Rising event at LA Matheson Secondary School on Feb. 21.

One Billion Rising is an international movement dedicated to improving the safety and wellbeing of women. The name comes from the statistic that one in three women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime, which totals roughly one billion women and girls.

NEVR partnered with One Billion Rising to educate students on how to handle a situation where someone around them is being assaulted physically, emotionally, or mentally.

Noor Fadel, a 19-year-old public speaker, was the event’s keynote. She discussed her experience being assaulted on the SkyTrain in December 2017. She says that her “main focus is to encourage [students] to speak up about [violence, and] to feel like they have the ability to do more than just sit down and not do anything.”

“You don’t need to physically interfere,” she adds. “You can take out your phone, call 911, be there just to be a witness.”

Several organizations who advocate for ending violence against women were also present, including Surrey Youth, D.O.V.E. (Delta Opposes Violence Everywhere), Respectful Futures, Global Girl Power, and many more. Each of them provided pamphlets, business cards, and information on what they can do for women who face violence.

Kay Dennison, representative for NEVR, says that her goal is to “address this issue of violence in our community.”

“People see it only as striking, but violence is much more than that,” she says.

Dennison acknowledges that youth, as well as people from older generations, do not typically know how to stop violence when they witness it in public, but emphasizes the importance of not somehow getting involved. She also notes that seniors should be included in the task of preventing violence.

“Part of my job as a senior is bringing that senior perspective,” she says. “There’s a tendency to see it as only youth problems. It’s a problem through all generations.”

The event ended with the traditional One Billion Rising dance. This is to showcase the individuality of each person using movement. Everyone stood in rows and music was played for all to dance to in their own unique way.

The event was designed to inspire students to stand up for others. By using your voice or recording an act of violence on your phone, you can make a difference.

Fadel reiterates that everyone has the power to eliminate the violent actions of an individual, rather than being just a bystander.

10 OPINIONS

Enjoy Vancouver's Landmarks Before They're Torn Down Janelle Swift

I’m surrounded by a sea of stories at MacLeod’s bookstore on the corner of Richards and West Pender. Each book has been held tenderly in a previous owner’s hands. There are cracks along their spines, worn in and comfortable with frayed pages, happily overread and overused. A narrow path cuts through the store, wide enough for only one person to pass through it at a time. It fuels the desire to visit the worlds of science fiction, romance, gardening, and beyond.

In the 1980’s, my parents were reckless and in their twenties, listening to some rock band at the Vogue Theatre, the Orpheum, or the Commodore Ballroom.

Your parents could have been in a similar crowd. Thirty years later, I find myself standing in one of those same buildings, awkwardly dancing to indie music. I’ll keep the concert ticket on my bedroom wall, amongst my stacks of books from MacLeod’s.

Sadly, Vancouver is becoming known for constantly tearing down locally adored buildings like these and replacing them with towering condos or office buildings.

It’s difficult to imagine what can be done for places like MacLeod’s and the Orpheum. Take, for instance, the Rio Theatre; last year the owners had to start a campaign to keep the landmark from being ripped away. The Rio offers a unique cultural escape for the people of this city by screening films you usually wouldn’t be able to see in theatres, and it cost $7.9 million to save that.

Unfortunately, not all of the places we hold dear will be saved. When looking at Vancouver’s landmarks, ask yourself: Which places are most sacred to me, and what can I do to keep them around?

The citizens of Vancouver need to stand against the evils of corporate capitalism by being careful about where they invest their funds. Instead of paying a quick visit to Chapters, lose yourself for hours inside MacLeod’s. Other local bookstores include Tanglewood, Pulp Fiction Books, or the Paper Hound Bookshop, which will offer you a bookmark of a dog with the corner bent at its ear upon making a purchase.

Perhaps, instead of wandering up and down Granville Street, hopping from one bar to another, go to a small venue. Check out a concert that’s not held at Rogers Arena.

There’s something more intimate, almost mesmerizing, about sitting in the Orpheum or the Vogue and watching live bands play.

For even smaller venues, try Static Jupiter, the Avant-Garden, or Red Gate.

If you’re already attending these venues, I applaud you. As for the others, try something different by visiting a historic landmark or the spot in the city that makes you the most sentimental. Entwine yourself in the world of people who try to maintain these old infrastructures. It can be costly, but you may not always have the chance to revel in these spaces

With an Election Looming, Here’s What Each of the Major Parties Needs to Worry About This year your vote might come down to picking the lesser of these evils Tristan Johnston | Contributor This year’s election landscape looks very different from the one we saw in 2015. Both the Conservatives and the NDP have new leaders, while the Liberals are contending with a fresh set of scandals.

So what does every major party need to do to stand a chance?

The NDP has not been having a good run.

While Jagmeet Singh was elected as party leader on the first ballot, it seems like he has now lost much of his steam. Through the last year it’s felt like Singh has been somewhat phoning it in.

It’s all too easy to look south—at major figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren—and wonder what the hell the NDP is doing. Why hasn't the NDP been more critical of the Liberal scheme of taxing the wealthy slightly more while being revenue neutral?

It’s no secret that its funding is down, but many members of parliament are already telling reporters that they won’t run in 2019, or that they are outright disappointed with Singh.

Things might change with his recent success in winning a seat in Burnaby-South, though. He earned 13 per cent more of the vote than the candidate in second place, but Singh only has a few months in Parliament to make a good impression before the federal election gears up.

The Conservatives are now led by Andrew Scheer, who is less charismatic and less cerebral than Harper was. Whether you love or hate Harper, he had a clear ideology and goals that he wanted to implement, as opposed to Scheer’s vague, reactionary ideas.

If you sat down with Harper, at least he could talk your ear off on economic policy in an understandable and intelligent way. Scheer hasn’t demonstrated that he’s capable of that.

Conservatives are attempting to make the Liberal carbon tax into the boogeyman of the next election, though the success of the B.C. tax and having no answer when asked about their own climate plan might harm them. We can also expect them to make a point about pipelines, but the policy details that are holding up such development are too persnickety for a clever attack ad to work in their favour.

More alarmingly, and perhaps to their detriment, the Conservative Party is playing a little loose with some immigration-skepticism. A now-revoked Twitter ad attempted to characterize the Liberal plan as open borders, which is a lie. The fit they threw over the UN Migration Pact was equally ridiculous and ill-informed, and won’t stand up to fact checking on Canadian news networks. A cynical analysis of this behaviour could be an attempt to capture potential Freedom Party voters, but it’s hard to say for sure at this time.

Meanwhile, the Liberals have their own

scandals to contend with. Yes, scandals are just a part of politics these days, but the timing is bad for the Liberals. The damage of the recent scandal involving the PMO and SNC-Lavalin has been proven statistically, with a Feb. 26 poll putting the Liberals two per cent behind the Conservatives.

With this in mind, along with the drudgery of the other two parties, the next election looks like it’s for the Liberals to lose. In order to assure themselves of a high chance of success, they need to clean up the SNC-Lavalin scandal as soon as possible.

If it weren’t for that scandal, they could head into 2019 being able to say that they kept the Trump factor from destroying NAFTA, that they legalized marijuana, and that the economy has remained relatively level during their time. Trudeau also needs to sell the fact that he holds town halls where he puts himself at the mercy of regular citizens who don’t get their questions screened before asking them. This is something that Scheer currently hasn’t done.

The Liberals may also stand to benefit from a weak NDP, and nothing indicates that quite like former leader Tom Mulcair suggesting that unexcited NDPers might look towards the Green Party on voting day. They might also benefit from a Conservative Party which is weak on economic messaging and a bit too loud on immigration.

Students Who Want to Improve KPU Should Look to the New Left Movement for Inspiration In the '60s and '70s, student activists used collective action to change post-secondary priorities Lena Belova It’s no secret among KPU students that our university is a lacking a strong on-campus community. I remember meeting a student who attended class here for a semester, and after telling her I currently go to KPU she immediately asked me, “Did you make any friends?”

I ran solo throughout my first semester, mostly because there aren’t many spaces on campus for students to connect with each other outside of class. I had to deliberately seek those spaces out, and once I found the Creative Writing Guild and began working at Pulp Magazine, my identity as a student began to mean so much more to me. Now, the time I spend outside of class is when I make friends, explore my learning on a personal level, and gain a sense of fulfillment by contributing to the community.

The stark difference in the quality of my school experience between having these sorts of experiences and not having them makes me question the value of a school system that prioritizes pumping out degrees for profit instead of fostering an enriching student life. And I think it’s important to note that our generation isn’t the first to feel this way.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, students across North America fought to reorient the interests and priorities of their universities in a movement that became known as the “New Left.” The Port Huron Statement, a manifesto written by student activists in Port Huron, Michigan, decries the state of universities at the time and envisions how they could be better.

Among many points listed in the manifesto was the students’ belief that they deserved to learn in an environment where they were encouraged to explore their personal identities and means of intellectual fulfillment, instead of only being rewarded for rigorous academic achievement. They argued that universities had a duty to the community and a larger role to play in society than merely acting as an isolated institution whose only goal is to earn a profit.

Many students and faculty members from post-secondary institutions in the Lower Mainland were involved in the New Left movement. They helped establish the Vancouver Women’s Caucus, which organized a nationwide mobilization to secure women’s rights to abortion, and also created a Community Education and Research Centre.

These students acted on their dissatisfaction and gathered together to change their

universities and their school experience.

KPU students can do the exact same thing today. From what I hear from my classmates, not only do most of us want changes to occur in our university, but there are also people out there with ideas about how to do it. Sadly, few of them have the time to execute their ideas.

Personally, I have been trying for the past three semesters to start a divestment initiative to urge our university to invest in renewable energy instead of fossil fuels, but repeatedly find that I have no time while I’m also taking five classes.

We are hindered by full or part-time course-loads, and many of us also have to balance work and some semblance of a personal life at the same time. It’s understandable that we are not always able to engage with and attempt to change our university, but we still have to try. We have a unique opportunity as students to reform our university and make it prioritize us as scholars and intellectuals instead of prioritizing the profit it makes as a business.

As the Port Huron Statement suggests, students gathering together to make change is one of the best opportunities to create a stronger school community and gain purpose in our lives as students.

COLUMNS

11

Afterthought: SNC-Lavalin Finally Bursts out of the Ottawa Bubble

The political scandal has escalated into a full-blown publicity nightmare, and it’s not over yet Braden Klassen | Staff Writer The national discourse regarding the SNC-Lavalin affair has escalated sharply following the revealing testimony of Jody Wilson-Raybould on Feb. 27.

The controversy is based on a relatively straightforward situation: members of the prime minister’s office pressured former Justice Minister and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould into approving a deal (called a deferred prosecution agreement) that would help SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal-based engineering and construction company, avoid charges of fraud and corruption. These charges were brought against the company in 2015 by the RCMP, who alleged that SNC-Lavalin tried to bribe public officials in Libya and defraud Libyan businesses out of millions of dollars.

This would probably lead to SNC-Lavalin being convicted of criminal charges, which would forbid them from bidding on federal contracts for 10 years, and possibly terminate ongoing projects.

Thanks to Wilson-Raybould and a series of questionable and highly-publicized decisions and statements made by the Liberal Party, the scandal has now grown big enough to burst out of what political commentators call the “Ottawa bubble.” This term refers to the way in which the drama of political affairs on Parliament Hill sends government officials, politics nerds, Twitter junkies, and journalists into a frenzy, while a large portion of the

Canadian public generally couldn’t care less.

Controversies like “elbowgate,” former cabinet minister Bev Oda ordering a $16 glass of orange juice, and the time Trudeau loudly (and hilariously) called Peter Kent a piece of shit during question period, can be looked back on as a sort of cute arrangement of antique teapots, each filled with their own tiny tempests. Sure, these things often result in politicians having to resign, but the typical reaction from everyone outside the bubble is to shrug, move on, and forget about the whole affair in about a month and a half.

A lot of people initially dismissed the SNC-Lavalin affair as another one of these moments. What its relevance was to Canadians across the country, other than politicians or people employed by SNC-Lavalin and their contract partners, was unclear.

Well, as we discovered after Wilson-Raybould testified in front of the Standing Committee of Justice and Human Rights, it affects a lot of people. And the list is growing. The situation is now a full-blown publicity nightmare for the federal Liberals as they circle the drain, inching perilously closer to the vacuum left by a number of still-unanswered questions: Why did the government—including Justin Trudeau, who was specifically mentioned as being involved—think they could continue to pressure its own Justice Minister, even after she clearly refused their requests? Was she shuffled out of her position into Veteran Affairs because of her decision? Was the

Feb. 27, former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould testified that she was pressured to interfere in a criminal case against SNC-Lavalin. (Wiki.commons) pressure to approve the DPA borne out of political self-interest or a genuine desire to protect thousands of jobs? Will Wilson-Raybould ultimately be kicked out of the party for bringing this to light?

It is a big deal that the government seemed very motivated to influence the judicial process in order to protect the interest of a Quebecois engineering and construction corporation.

Canadians will have to ask themselves whether they can support a party that will so dogged-

ly try to circumvent a straightforward judicial processes, possibly for political reasons.

The question has changed from “will this scandal have enough weight to affect their polls before the election?” to "how much will it affect their polls before the election?" The consequences will be real this time, and if the party doesn’t figure out its problems soon, it could end up costing them a lot more than political capital, goodwill, and public license. It will cost them actual votes.

Going Global: The Balakot Airstrike Why India and Pakistan are firing at each other Tristan Johnston | Contributor For the first time since 1971, several aircraft from the Indian Air Force crossed into Kashmir late last month to perform airstrikes on a terrorist group in retaliation for a terror attack two weeks prior. Moments later, Pakistan responded by scrambling several of their own aircraft, causing the Indian aircraft to retreat.

In the ensuing days, Pakistan and India shelled each other near their border. The result of the Indian airstrike hasn’t been confirmed.

The conflict comes after a few weeks of tension, which started when a terrorist killed 40 members of the Indian Central Reserve Police Force in Kashmir. This attack was claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a jihadist terror group who seeks separation of Kashmir from India as one of their objectives.

The Indian perspective would likely be that they were conducting an airstrike on a terrorist camp that committed crimes against Indian security forces, while the Pakistani perspective would be that India violated the Line of Control to enter their airspace.

Many scholars believe that Jaish-e-Mohammed, the terror group responsible for the bombing in Pulwama, was formed partially with the help of the Pakistani intelligence services, but Pakistan vigorously denies these claims.

There are also currently points being made out of both India and Pakistan being nuclear powers. While this is certainly true, the chanc-

es of a nuclear exchange taking place is almost non-existent. For nation-states, the purpose of a nuclear weapon is deterrence, and while there was indeed an exchange of fire between India and Pakistan, it doesn’t yet constitute a war.

Currently, there’s plenty of indication that neither Pakistan nor India want to have a major conflict. In an apparent gesture of peace, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan told his parliament that they would be releasing Indian pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.

There isn’t enough space here to go into this, but it’s worth mentioning that Imran Khan is a very different sort of Prime Minister. Though he did come into government on a populist wave of anti-corruption, it’s difficult to predict what sorts of moves he’ll make.

Those who are familiar in even a cursory sense with the history of post-partition India and Pakistan likely won’t be surprised to know that Kashmir is the center of another flashpoint.

During the partition of British India in 1947, Britain wasn’t sure what to do about Kashmir and Jammu. They ultimately concluded that there should be two regions for Muslims, West Pakistan and East Pakistan (which later became Bangladesh), and one large region for Hindus.

Putting aside all the damage this did, they left Kashmir with a question mark. The way Britain took control of India was by working out deals with the various states within the subcontinent, many of which were princely

GILGIT-BALTISTAN (PAKISTAN)

* *

DISPUTED

Balakot

Muzaffarabad

BOUNDARY UNDEFINED

LINE OF CONTROL

AREA JAMMU AND KASHMIR (INDIA)

PAKISTAN states. In the case of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh wanted the region to remain neutral after partition. However, a Pakistan-supported uprising in 1947 put an end to this when Hari Singh sought the help of the Indian military to quell violence. The cost: signing an Instrument of Ascension, making Kashmir part of India.

In the more recent past, Pakistan has been accused by many states and NGOs of being a state sponsor of terror, or at least having a poor handle on their domestic issues. These accusations have come from Afghanistan, India, the UK, the US, and to some degree, the United Nations. It also doesn’t help matters that a former Prime Minister of Pakistan has said that Pakistan has indeed supported terrorists in the 1990s, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba

INDIA

(Kristen Frier)

and their actions in Kashmir.

None of this is to say that India has never done anything similar. Though there is less data, British intelligence has suggested through leaked documents that they believe that India does on occasion support terror groups in Pakistan, namely in 2008 in response to terror attacks in Mumbai.

There’s a long history of tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, and unfortunately tensions are likely to remain high for some time. However, it’s seeming more likely that given the gestures of the Pakistani PM, and the willingness of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to avoid a war, there’s a high probability that the region will eventually cool down.