Recent mobilization in Toronto has come about in response to the acquittal of the Toronto police officer – whose identity has not been released – responsible for the fatal shooting of Andrew Loku, a 45-year-old father of five experiencing a mental health crisis at the time. On July 5 2015, Loku, a South Sudanese man, was holding a hammer when he was shot twice by police in his neighbour’s home.

“Despite it all, Black Lives Matter Toronto has stood strong – centering warmth and community in the face of vicious anti-black racism and police brutality.”

According to BLMTO’s Facebook event, the peaceful occupation of Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto, which began on March 20 and later moved to the Toronto Police Service (TPS) headquarters, has “faced countless attacks from the TPS – ranging from physical attacks, chemical warfare, deprivation of heating and electricity, and various other bullying/intimidation tactics. Despite it all, Black Lives Matter Toronto has stood strong – centering warmth and community in the face of vicious anti-black racism and police brutality.”

The Daily spoke with an organizer of the demonstration in Montreal, Sumaya Ugas, a McGill student. Ugas explained that the demonstration was to show the world that “police violence cannot go unchecked.”

“Cops cannot keep killing people with impunity,” continued Ugas. “The other part of why we’re here is to show love and support and solidarity with the people who are out there in those streets, protesting [in Toronto], who have been met with physical violence.”

“Cops cannot keep killing people with impunity.”

The demonstration included spoken word performances and speeches about the topics of police brutality, Black and Indigenous allyship, and issues facing Black women and Black LGBTQ people.

In the opening speech, before inviting guest speakers to share their thoughts, the organizer stressed that “it is important to remember who is at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement; this is a movement of black women! Black trans folks, black students, black parents, black disabled folks, poor black folks. These are the bodies that are first to be attacked and last to be supported. We see you and we hear you!”

The Daily spoke with Sidiki, one of the speakers at the demonstration, who called for action from “elites,” specifically students at universities like McGill. Sidiki said that they “have a huge responsibility in having an impact on social justice and social affairs because they are decision makers. People involved in high institutions, whether political or economic, should get involved in trying to promote social justice through laws or endorsement.”

“We see you and we hear you!”

Leslie Anne St. Amour, an Indigenous McGill activist, explained the importance of solidarity and collaboration between Black and Indigenous groups, both of whom have been historically marginalized. “Black and Indigenous people have something in common: We are an inconvenience to the majority. We have felt oppression for years, and now that we demand change, the majority feels threatened. We need to stand strong and stand together,” St. Amour said.

St. Amour continued, “Solidarity means standing behind, and not in front of [others.]”

Editor’s note: This article was modified on 6 September 2017 to remove a quote in accordance with the speaker’s wishes. 

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There were at least 25 members of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) outside the hotel preventing their entry. The demonstration came in the wake of a protest in Quebec City on March 20 while Le Pen was touring Quebec and struggling to find members of the Parti Québécois (PQ) willing to meet her.

Protesters carried signs bearing anti-fascist and anti-Nazi imagery, as well as slogans such as “Fascists aren’t welcome in Montreal,” written in both French and English.

Le Pen’s leadership of the FN has been fraught with controversy. In October 2015, Le Pen stood trial for “inciting racial hatred” in France for comparing public prayer by Muslims to the Nazi occupation of France during the second world war. The March 21 protest against her visit ended in at least two arrests, including that of Montreal activist Jaggi Singh.

Protest in Quebec City

Le Pen, who is also a member of the European Parliament, arrived on March 19 in Quebec, ostensibly to visit a Bombardier plant as an economic mission from Parliament. However, Le Pen used the opportunity to deliver a series of speeches and interviews in the province criticizing Canada’s immigration policy and multiculturalism.

The Globe and Mail reported that Le Pen described the federal government’s immigration policy as “erroneous,” insisting that “a multicultural society is a society in conflict.”

“We want her to know that her ideals are part of a past that we want no part of.”

After the assault of a protester by Le Pen’s bodyguard in Quebec City on March 20, Montreal-based activists organized a “Welcoming Committee” event on Facebook to “encourage everyone to take a stand against racism, sexism, homophobia, and the worldwide advance of the far right,” and to “let all hotel guests and staff know exactly who is staying in the hotel.”

Kyle, a protester at the demonstration at Le Pen’s hotel, explained to The Daily that “the increasing trend of fascism and right-wing extremism throughout the world […] is not welcome at all in Montreal and Quebec. It should be resisted the world over.”

Kyle added that “the high-ups in the political parties in Quebec have nothing to gain by supporting [Le Pen]. They know that their constituents wouldn’t approve of them meeting this far-right [extremist], and ultimately this is the reason they are rejecting her.”

Protest in Montreal

Shortly after the protest began, the hotel management explained to protesters that Le Pen’s reservation and all FN events had been cancelled. At around 8:45 p.m., protestors learned via social media that Le Pen had moved her interview with Radio-Canada to the basement of the Station des Sports bar on Ste. Catherine, and protesters began to gather outside the bar.

According to Gregoire Beaune, a protester who was present at both demonstrations, a large police presence was already barricading the bar entrance when the group arrived. At least two arrests were made by the SPVM, including Montreal activist Jaggi Singh. According to The Link, Singh was fined $440 for being in violation of a by-law concerning noise and $148 for refusing to cooperate with the police.

Nolwenn Bellec, a French protester at the demonstration in Montreal, told The Daily that they would want Le Pen to know that “nobody here, or anybody with any attachment to France, finds her welcome or desirable. We want her to know that her ideals are part of a past that we want no part of.”

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I will be the first to admit that I have not always been faithful to this principle. I remember writing in a journal upon returning from a decisively failed development project in Central America, something along the lines of:

“Well, I couldn’t get ahold of the community beforehand, how were we supposed to know what they wanted? Why were they so hostile to me wanting to help them out? Who cares about the methods so long as the good intentions are there? Why don’t those ungrateful people appreciate my good will?”

The project was doomed before it began because the founder arrived already convinced that he knew what was best for the community without soliciting their input. It was made infinitely worse when he reacted violently after the community insisted they didn’t want his kind of development project. I left after five days because of the repeated threats of violence with a gut feeling that this project was not going to help anyone.

I think I’ve grown up a bit since then. While the project obviously didn’t fail solely on my account, I recognize that for me to call the people in that community “ungrateful” is counterproductive, insulting, and unacceptable. Any work done with that attitude would have been insincere, and work (especially development work) done without love is worth nothing.

The fact is, as any good international development student, blog, or professor will tell you, good intentions and an education from “the Harvard of Canada” aren’t enough.

The spirit of the times and shifting discourse around international development means that geographical distance is no longer an excuse for a development project that enacts neocolonialism – that is to say, a project that doesn’t consider the needs and desires of the community in question, opting instead to impose the will of the Global North on the Global South without the agency and informed consent of the people involved. It’s astonishing, and frankly embarrassing, that it has taken the Western international development community so long to figure out that the people directly affected by socioeconomic issues probably have the best ideas for how to fix them.

The push for participatory development projects has only come to the forefront of conversations about international development within the last decade. However, only in the last few years has the technology and infrastructure been created to make direct consultation with communities exceedingly simple.

Internet access is quite high in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean (61, 47, and 42 per cent respectively) and continues to rise. Apps like WhatsApp and Skype make the once daunting task of directly communicating with a community about their needs easier than it has ever been. Cheaper and more powerful smartphones further contribute to increasing internet accessibility. It is a cliché at this point, but we really are globally connected in ways that have never been seen before.

However, this global proliferation of technology and communications has been closely tied to neoliberal economic theory and ideology, which has given us a fixation on privatization and deregulation as the key to poverty alleviation. In simpler terms, it’s the wealthy’s old command to the poor to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” coupled with the belief that regulation is an inherent barrier to innovation.

In the development sector, these principles can be seen, for example, in the emphasis on entrepreneurship as a way of turning poor, disenfranchised Indigenous women in Latin America into ‘productive’ members of society. This offensive notion completely erases the fact that these women work ludicrously hard and are very ‘productive’ despite being dealt a lousy hand by history. Consider, for example, the major role that Indigenous women played in the 2000 Cochabamba Water War in Bolivia. The tech sector’s fixation on the whiggish “inevitable march toward progress” often comes at the expense of what a community actually wants, and in fact hides the agency of community members.

At a summit in Nairobi last September, Kenyan activist Ory Okolloh Mwangi expressed concern about “the fetishization around entrepreneurship in Africa,” arguing, “it’s almost like it’s the next new liberal thing. Like, don’t worry that there’s no power because hey, you’re going to do solar and innovate around that. Your schools suck, but hey, there’s this new model of schooling. Your roads are terrible, but hey, Uber works in Nairobi and that’s innovation.”

However, this is not to say that teaching Indigenous women the basics of running a business isn’t valuable, so long as it’s done with the consent and consultation of the community in question.

Such was the case with the winning project of the Spanish and Latin American Students’ Association’s SLASummit 2015 social entrepreneurship case competition, “Construyendo Consciencia Femenina.” A community of mostly Indigenous women in Guayaquil, Ecuador, that reported very high instances of domestic violence, wanted economic independence by way of running their own beauty salons. Working with local leaders, the student team designed curricula for these women to learn the technical skills and the basics of running their own businesses, and the project has been a resounding success. While this is not a permanent solution to the grave issue of domestic violence in the area, it was an important step through which the women claimed more agency and ownership over their futures.

The forces of market globalization are difficult to stop – it’s no secret that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and other trade deals are negotiated by politicians with minimal input or respect from the people they claim to represent. Changing that process is a complicated and systemic issue that we as students don’t have much power to change.

In a microeconomic context, on the other hand, especially in the world of development projects operated by NGOs, we have the ability and obligation to obtain the consent of the communities we want to help. We owe it to them to make sure that their voices are heard, and that they are involved 100 per cent of the way. With the advent of new communication technologies and their increasing accessibility, we no longer have any excuse not to get this consent. In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.

The fear of being publicly condemned by left-leaning critics for enacting neocolonialism or imposing Western values upon a disadvantaged community should not be a reason to give up on a great idea to alleviate extreme poverty – but the previous paragraphs should inform how we go about the realization of development projects. I encourage any student of international development who is disillusioned by the proliferation of development projects that are simply variations on a theme of colonialism dressed as “progress” to consider instead what they could do if they were given a chance to get directly in touch with the concerned communities.

Participatory development models are not perfect; development projects are very much trial-and-error, no matter the model. However, when a project is developed according to the desires of the community in question, the feedback and improvements over time become much more meaningful.

Vincent Simboli is a U4 International Development Studies and Hispanic Studies student, and is the co-chair of SLASummit. To contact him, email chair@slasummit.com.

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The panel was organized by the Comité pour les droits humains en Amérique latine (CDHAL) and various local liaison groups that support human rights, labour activism, and anti-imperialist activism.

Panelists Suzanne-G. Chartrand, José del Pozo, Clotilde Bertrand, Carmen Gloria Quintana, and Mouloud Idir devoted a significant portion of the discussion to ways in which the Chilean immigrant community had become an integral part of social movements within Quebec and elsewhere abroad. The panel also explained the legacy of Quebec socialist movements of the 1970s and 1980s and their equally important roles in removing the Chilean dictatorship.

Chileans began to arrive en masse to Quebec in 1973, following the coup d’état that ousted and killed the democratically elected president Salvador Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet for a 17-year military rule.

Del Pozo, a Chilean associate professor of history at UQAM, explained to the audience in French that Chileans integrated into Quebec society remarkably fast, indicated by the lack of a “Chilean ghetto” in Montreal, and the fact that “within one generation, Quebec began to see Chilean immigrants running for political office by 1990.”

Chartrand, a founding member of the Comité Québec-Chili (CQC), explained in French that a major part of the CQC’s activism at the time was informing and mobilizing Quebec’s unions and left-leaning political groups to take a stand against Pinochet’s regime by boycotting companies that profited from the disappearances and extrajudicial killings of the military dictatorship.

“Within one generation, Quebec began to see Chilean immigrants running for political office by 1990.”

According to Chartrand, the Quebec political sphere was a space where “the word ‘socialism’ certainly existed in 1973,” with many syndicalist groups working together for “a national liberation in the context of a social, socialist transformation, and this was relatively close to the project of [Allende’s leftist coalition] Popular Unity.”

This, Chartrand argued, explains how Chilean immigrants who supported Allende would have integrated themselves with relative ease into Quebec’s labour movement.

Chartrand also explained, however, that the CQC faced a challenge in terms of explaining to those mobilizing within Quebec that the problem was not just the coup d’état or Pinochet, but rather the complicity of “French, […] Canadian, American, and Japanese multinationals” with “American imperialism.”

The panel also included discussion of the Quebec socialist movement’s involvement in the Chilean struggle after the coup. Bertrand, who was the Québec solidaire candidate for Argenteuil in the 2014 elections and the former coordinator of the Centre internationale de solidarité ouvrière (CISO), spoke on the topic.

Bertrand explained in French that, just as Chilean immigrants to Quebec were willing to get involved with Quebec’s socialist political groups, Quebec socialists that supported “our grand comrade [and former president of the Confédération des syndicats nationale (CSN)] Michel Chartrand were eager to heed his call to help Chileans immediately following the 1973 coup.”

According to a 2002 study by the York University Latin American Research Group, this support took the form of pressuring the Canadian government to consider Chileans fleeing the violence as refugees. The study noted that this sent a powerful message to the rest of the world that Canada, a major trade partner of Pinochet’s Chile, was willing to recognize the crisis and welcome Chileans seeking safety.

The CISO and other Quebec labour groups were grateful for Chilean immigrants’ contributions to their struggles, said Bertrand. “The Chileans who came,” she concluded, “were a gift to Quebec.”

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On February 3, the results of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Winter 2016 special referendum were announced. The referendum question to increase the SSMU membership base fee by $5.50 failed with 49.7 per cent, a margin of 18 votes, while the question regarding the restructuring of the executive portfolios passed with 72.1 per cent of the votes.

In an interview with The Daily, Erin Sobat, a member of the “yes” committee for the fee increase, said that the results of the referendum question are “disappointing.”

“Those who voted “no” with [the information we communicated] – we obviously respect that and we are glad that they had the opportunity to look through it and make an informed decision,” Sobat said.

“What is disappointing is knowing that with a 16 per cent turnout, [there are a] number of students out there that simply did not hear about the campaign, did not care enough to vote, or did not feel that they had the information or knowledge to see it as important or relevant,” Sobat continued

Consequences of the “no” vote

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SSMU VP Finance and Operations Zacheriah Houston explained that the “no” vote will have immediate results. Houston said that he was in the middle of working on the February budget revision before the referendum, and that all relevant departments had already submitted their preliminary drafts.

However, Houston told The Daily that he did not start reviewing this draft, “because I knew that I needed to know whether or not [the] base fee passed to really make these decisions.”

“For this year, we will want to reduce spending, but [will] not necessarily need to cut things drastically, because we saved so much on salaries this year. For example, an already planned project of the VP University Affairs would not necessarily get cut, but if the VP University Affairs’ mental health budget has some extra money with no direct plan – [we’re] definitely trimming all that off now. Any unallocated money and budgets will get cut,” Houston said.

SSMU VP Clubs & Services Kimber Bialik explained to The Daily that the cuts would affect how much assistance her portfolio would be able to provide to help run student group events.

“In the context of my portfolio, the biggest issue that I have on the student group side of things is that we are wildly understaffed,” said Bialik. “A big part of the base fee increase [would have meant] being able to hire more staff – student support staff and eventually a full-time student group support staff.”

Executive restructuring

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According to the results of the executive restructuring question, the VP Clubs & Services position will be converted into VP Student Life, and the VP Finance and Operations position will be divided in two. The restructuring will also re-allocate some of the responsibilities of current positions to accommodate for the seventh executive.

Bialik explained that the new VP Operations portfolio would require someone who is focused on planning for the “big picture, thinking long term, and coming up with a new vision for what we want our operations to be.”

“There are so many things that have a lot of potential in that portfolio, there’s a lot that can be done with Gerts, the Student Run Cafe […] and the [Shatner] building,” Bialik said. “We really need someone who is focused on consultation and figuring out what students want, and figuring out a long term plan for how to actualize that.”
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The panel was chaired by Rotrand, who was joined by Sud-Ouest borough mayor Benoit Dorais, Peter-McGill councillor and Vrai changement pour Montréalrepresentative Steve Shanahan, Vieux-Rosemont councillor Érika Duchesne, school board councillor of Côte-des-Neiges-Snowdon Khokon Maniruzzaman, and Erik Hamon, who was a candidate in the municipal elections of 2013

The press release revealed that while Montreal has a 32.3 per cent visible minority population, only 6 of 208 municipal elected officials on the island of Montreal are visible minorities. These six officials are Frantz Benjamin and Alan De Sousa, members of the Montreal City Council; Monica Rincourt and Nathalie Pierre-Antoine, members of various Montreal Borough Councils; and Errol Johnson and Minh Diem Li Thi, members of Dollard des Ormeaux council and Town of Mount Royal council, respectively.

“Montreal is unique in that it has a party system at a municipal level.”

Rotrand organized the conference to stimulate public debate in anticipation for his motion tabled for the January 25 session of the City Council. This motion will address lack of representation in the upcoming 2017 election. The Montreal Gazette reported that in the 2013 election, a record number of visible minorities ran for positions. According to Rotrand, however, several were last-minute additions in districts where they had no chance of winning.

Rotrand’s motion is supported by Coalition Montréal, Vrai changement pour Montréal, and five independent councillors.

In an interview with The Daily, Rotrand explained that the goal of the motion is not to impose a minority quota for Montreal political parties.

“Montreal is unique in that it has a party system at a municipal level,” he said. “In a perfect world, we will use [the municipal party system] to change the complexion of City Hall.”

“I would like to see a slate of candidates across the board that is a lot more representative of this city.”

A repeated topic of the conference was that some political parties typically nominate a candidate based on “electability,” complicating the municipal electoral process. Visible minority candidates often do not perform as well as candidates who are not visible minorities because, in Shanahan’s words, “voters want people who they feel represent them, and often those are people who look like them.” As such, municipal parties may be tempted to nominate only non-visible minority candidates – fuelling a cycle of a lack of representation of visible minority candidates, Shanahan explained.

The Daily spoke with panel member Erik Hamon, a Coalition Montreal candidate of Filipino descent who lost the 2013 election by roughly 300 votes to Équipe Coderre’s Lionel Perez in the Darlington district.

“I would just like to see [visible minorities] in the party who make the decisions about who the candidates should be, or the [unaffiliated] people who are becoming candidates themselves,” explained Hamon. “I would like to see a slate of candidates across the board that is a lot more representative of this city.”

Canadian municipal governments are grossly underrepresentative of their racialized populations; even cities with ‘visible minority’ populations that are above 50 per cent. For example, in Brampton, Ontario, despite its 67.1 per cent ‘visible minority’ population, only one city councillor of ten (Gurpreet Dhillon) is a ‘visible minority.’ Similarly, Surrey, British Columbia has a ‘visible minority’ population of 55.5 per cent, but only one councillor of eight is a ‘visible minority’ (Tom Gill).

“If you look at the political system, it’s white. It’s a reflection of the political system.”

In an email to The Daily, Rotrand elaborated that “there are several persons of Chinese origin or heritage on some municipal councils such as in Vancouver. Indeed, most of the visible minority councillors are southeast, east or south Asian origin or heritage. [However,] there are really very few Black elected councillors.”

The Daily spoke with Dan Philip, Director of the Ligue Des Noirs du Québec, after the event, who said that panels like these are important and necessary in the electoral process because they “awaken consciousness as to the necessity of everybody participating within the political system, so people can be adequately represented.”

Philip noted that while the seven-member panel had only three visible minority panelists sitting on it, “if you look at the political system, it’s white. It’s a reflection of the political system. […] People will help us to move, but we have to move ourselves. We have to create this type of desire for [representation] at all levels of the political system. Not just municipally, but provincially and federally as well.”

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According to the callout published on SAB’s website, the demonstration aimed to “denounce the continued hypocrisy of the Canadian government, that on the one hand engages in self-serving publicity to celebrate the arrival of certain refugees, while continuing to systematically ignore the reality of hundreds of thousands of undocumented and temporary migrants living precariously in Canada.”

After speeches in front of Trudeau’s office in Villeray, the crowd marched toward Jean-Talon Metro, with no interference from the Service de police de la Ville de Montreal (SPVM).

Many of the protestors were undocumented migrants who have been left in precarious situations by current federal, provincial, and municipal immigration policies in Canada.

“The government has closed its eyes to us. For the sake of our humanity, as undocumented immigrants continue to live here, work here, and have families here, the government needs to re-evaluate its immigration policies.”

One woman who has been affected by these policies and was present at the march is is Lupita*, the mother of Daniel*, a disabled student who was arrested at his Montreal school, detained, and deported alone to Mexico in October 2014, when he was seventeen.

In an interview with The Daily, Lupita explained in Spanish that while “the Canadian government’s decision to welcome some Syrian refugee families is an earnest gesture, they should also look inward and see how they can do more to help refugees already in Canada.”

“The government has closed its eyes to us. For the sake of our humanity, as undocumented immigrants continue to live here, work here, and have families here, the government needs to re-evaluate its immigration policies,” Lupita continued.

One of the speakers at the demonstration, Carmelo Monge of Mexicans United for Regularization (MUR) expressed hope that the federal Liberal government would be “more open” to changes than the previous Conservative government. However, because Bill C-31, the 2012 amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, is still in effect, Monge expressed worries that the Liberal government might simply be “a continuation of Harper’s government.”

“[Bill C-31] would violate human rights law by allowing for a year of detention without review for certain groups of people, including 16- and 17-year-old children.”

The amendment has made it possible for the Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism to determine, without the guidance of a committee of human rights professionals, which countries are “safe” or “unsafe” and has expanded the ability to detain asylum seekers thought to be working with human traffickers.

The bill has come under heavy criticism from human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW). According to an article on the HRW website, the bill “would violate human rights law by allowing for a year of detention without review for certain groups of people, including 16- and 17-year-old children.”

“Since Mexico is still […] a country which is considered unsafe by the Canadian government, Mexican immigrants are often denied the right to appeal their immigration status, even though [denying appeals from refugees based on their “designation by country of origin”] was determined to be unconstitutional by a Canadian judge,” Monge told The Daily in an interview. The judge in question, Keith M. Boswell, wrote in the Federal Court’s decision that Ottawa’s designation by country of origin was “discriminatory on its face.”

“[The] government hasn’t done anything for us, the people gathered here, who work and contribute to the Canadian economy and society, but without the right to social services,” Monge continued.

“[Syrian refugees] are going to be coming here in need of social services for the first time, and the cuts are going to affect them too.”

Romina, an immigrant from Mexico who has been in Canada for 15 years, told The Daily that while they applauded the federal government’s decision to welcome refugees, there is a disconnect between provincial and federal policy in the context of Quebec’s austerity measures.

Romina explained that that newly arrived Syrian refugees “are going to be coming here in need of social services for the first time, and the cuts are going to affect them too.” They expressed doubt that the government has fully thought through the long-term implications of accepting refugees.

“We [in Montreal would] love to welcome refugees, but are we really thinking about how they are going to [for example] afford to pay for housing? This is a big challenge and we’re not really thinking about long- and medium-term strategies, and we need to be doing it right now, for everyone,” Romina said.

*Name has been changed.

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And we try: Our cool Frosh leader with an eyebrow piercing offers to take us bouldering somewhere up in the Mile End. We look for jobs at cafes after perfecting the phrase “bonjour-hi-quelque-chose-à-boire-something-to-drink?” Maybe we get a ‘job’ promoting a nightclub, because our only marketable talent at 18 is being good at convincing people in rez to go clubbing, and we are so desperate for acceptance and popularity that we are willing to accept alcohol as payment.

Then the perfect storm of labs, readings, group projects, and reinventing ourselves during our first year away from home hits, and before you know it, our political energy is more concentrated on removing bike gates from campus than trying to do something about the provincial budget cuts that led to the slashing of more than 100 Arts classes.

My point is that it’s disturbingly easy for students, especially international and out-of-province students, to be apolitical at McGill. It’s easy to ignore the anti-austerity movement, because we’ve got weights to lift, we’ve got papers to write, we’ve got wine-and-cheeses to attend, and we’ve got Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) concerts at which to rage.

Before you know it, our political energy is more concentrated on removing bike gates from campus than trying to do something about the provincial budget cuts that led to the slashing of more than 100 Arts classes.

Many before me have made this point, citing the difficulty of convincing anglophone students to become invested in the confusing political landscape of Quebec, the conservative attitude of the McGill administration, and other systemic challenges. As a world-class university that attracts well-to-do students from outside Quebec (such as myself), McGill invites a certain degree of conservatism, or at the very least, of tacit complicity with the status quo. The residence system and the fact that many out-of-province and international students tend to hang out together create a feedback loop that makes getting involved in local affairs seem difficult or impossible.

Broadly, it can all be chalked up to living inside the proverbial McGill bubble, both physically and mentally.

As an American whose decision to come to McGill was heavily influenced by its tuition rates (which, though high for international students, are much lower than those of a comparable American university), when I first got to McGill I held the naive and dismissive belief that Quebecois students were being ridiculous – tuition is already so cheap for them! Why were they rioting over such a small increase in price over a long period of time? They should be grateful they pay so little, while I pay so much.

This attitude stems from the normalization of astronomical prices for higher education in the U.S.. There exists a commonly-held belief that, in order to get an education, you have to go into debt. This belief comes from a sinister combination of predatory loan interest rates, bloated salaries for senior administrative staff, and a general misunderstanding of what a university should offer. Today, universities must compete for students and are all expected to have shiny new libraries covered in chrome, and multi-million-dollar athletic centres.

There exists a commonly-held belief that, in order to get an education, you have to go into debt.

Linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky once said that tuition and the debt that accompanies it are a disciplinary technique – “when you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think.”

For years, I bought into this idea that in order to go to university, it’s only fair that I go into debt.

That view changed dramatically when I befriended people who were quite literally fighting in the streets for a free education. People who risked their lives for the opportunity to write for a student newspaper. People who held their elected officials and student unions to a high standard and were willing to fight for their beliefs.

Though there are plenty of those people here, I didn’t meet them in Montreal. I met them in Valparaíso, Chile, at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV).

“Ya viene la fuerza”: A brief economic history of Chile

I had the incredible opportunity to study at PUCV from February to July this year. In late February, the whispers of an impending strike in Chile began to reach my ears at the same time as the Printemps 2015 movement was building steam back in Montreal. In June 2015, university student unions and professor unions across Chile went on strike, demanding a total shift in the national education policy.

I had been loosely following the 2015 anti-austerity movement in Montreal, but it was when I was outside the city, and in a country where neoliberal economics and the legacy of a dictatorship had made the need for action all the more urgent, that the movement and its goals began to make more sense to me.

Of course, it was tremendously difficult to be apathetic toward the student movements in Chile when my classes were cancelled for months as the entire nation’s university system went on strike.

Broadly speaking, Chile’s education system can be characterized as “el hermano más feo y weón” (the uglier and dirtier brother) of the U.S. higher education system. Its roots can be traced back to the military coup in 1973 in which General Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean Air Force, backed by former U.S. president Richard Nixon, bombed downtown Santiago and assassinated Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected Marxist. Until 1990, Chile was ruled by Pinochet and a military junta that killed and disappeared thousands of civilians, all the while laying the foundations for a massive shift in economic policy toward a neoliberal model developed at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and his famous “Chicago Boys.”

Broadly speaking, Chile’s education system can be characterized as “el hermano más feo y weón” (the uglier and dirtier brother) of the U.S. higher education system.

The Chicago Boys were Chilean students trained in neoliberal economic theory at the University of Chicago who returned to South America amid the military coups in the 1970s. They served as economic advisors to dictators propped up by the U.S. through Operación Cóndor in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and many other countries.

One of the most dramatic changes Pinochet made to the Chilean education system at the primary and secondary level was shifting the administration of public schools from the federal government to the municipal governments. Federal funds are still provided to public schools, but they are administered at the municipal level.

Chile, much like Canada, is a country where a huge percentage of the country is sparsely inhabited or uninhabited. Due to the changes Pinochet introduced, the responsibility of maintaining and evaluating these schools has been passed from the wealthy federal government to the considerably less wealthy municipal governments, especially those outside the Santiago metropolitan area.

Pedro Cárdenas Figueroa, a music student at a Chilean university, explained to me in Spanish that “the only public schools that can compete with wealthy private universities are in Santiago. If you go to a place like Osorno [in the southern Los Lagos Region], the only decent-quality schools are all private – the German school, the French school, Jesuit schools – and they’re all expensive. Public [secondary] schools regularly have forty or more students per classroom, which discourages students and teachers. It’s a form of violence against education.”

Because the maintenance of public schools fell by the wayside and the attraction of foreign investment took priority, Cárdenas continued, “private schools were made much wealthier, especially the schools far from Santiago. This process, combined with the centralization of all institutions in Santiago, concentrated the wealth, education, and status in the hands of a very small new elite.”

“The only public schools that can compete with wealthy private universities are in Santiago. If you go to a place like Osorno [in the southern Los Lagos Region], the only decent-quality schools are all private – the German school, the French school, Jesuit schools – and they’re all expensive.”

In addition to the classic private/public school split, there is a third model in Chile called the “sector subvencionado,” or the voucher system. In this system, schools are funded by the state based on enrolment rates.

Carlos Caceres, a professor at PUCV, explained in an email in Spanish that the voucher system is “financed by the state, but administered privately with the option to demand tuition payments from the family of the student. This is a system created and introduced by the Pinochet dictatorship to encourage private enterprise.”

This educational system breeds inequality of income and access to education, which has seeped into the post-secondary system as well. Since Chile transitioned to democracy in 1991, not a single public university has been created. According to Caceres, because public universities and vocational schools were stripped of funding during the dictatorship, the economic deficit was passed on to students and their families. This has led to a disturbing trend where public universities are financed just as much by student and family contributions as private universities.

A bachelor’s degree in Chile takes approximately six years, during which it is extremely uncommon for a student to live anywhere but home, as tuition is simply too expensive for a student to also shoulder living expenses. This means that if you have the misfortune to be born anywhere but in Santiago, you are very unlikely to move hundreds of kilometres away to study.

“Nobody risks their life if it’s not already in danger. People have died here in these protests.”

More glaringly, this situation leads to astronomical debt for students. I spoke with a Chilean university student who wished to remain anonymous about their financial situation. After six years studying at a private university, they will have incurred a debt of nearly 11,000 USD in student loans, interest not included. Although Chile’s income per capita is listed by the World Bank as approximately 22,000 USD – quite high for South America – this is a deceptive figure because of the large numer of unemployed people, especially youth, and because it is not representative of people outside the Santiago metropolitan area, where the population of Chile is concentrated.

This student told me, “Nobody risks their life if it’s not already in danger. People have died here in these protests.” They added that income inequality and the inaccessibility of education breed violence: “Young lads get shot because they were trying to keep their parents from having to pay one arm and several legs for a fucking degree. That’s the funny thing here in this country. It seems like it’d be the best economy in Latin America. And when foreigners come, they seem not to notice [these problems] since poverty is just amazingly well hidden.”

“Te amo, Camila”: How the Chilean student movement changed the world

In 2011, Chilean university students staged massive protests against the public education system’s increasing emphasis on profit. Although the struggle has been long and violent, the 2011 protests saw considerable success and garnered major media coverage worldwide. A conservative estimate of 1,800 arrests, at least one death, millions of dollars in property damage, and hundreds of injuries were recorded between 2011 and 2013. The student unions that spearheaded the movement used direct occupation of the campuses as their main weapon, taking a nod from the 2006 “Penguins’ Revolution,” in which Chilean secondary school students occupied more than 420 campuses in a successful campaign for reduced transportation fares to and from school.

The momentum generated by the protests was instrumental in the election of activist leader Camila Vallejo as a Chilean Communist Party member of parliament and of Chilean Socialist Party leader Michelle Bachelet as president in 2013. Bachelet had been vocally supportive of the fight for universal and free access to higher education.

According to Caceres, the 2015 wave of strikes focused on forcing Bachelet’s hand. The movement is now shifting to pressuring the National Assembly, as the executive branch (Bachelet in particular) has stood with the students. The movement’s next steps are currently being discussed.

“The idea is to progressively increase this number until the 2018-19 academic year, when 100 per cent of students in these public universities have full scholarships funded by the state.”

Caceres said, “Overall, in 2016, state universities (or public vocational colleges) are expected to ensure that 50 per cent of the poorest students are able to attend for free. The idea is to progressively increase this number until the 2018-19 academic year, when 100 per cent of students in these public universities have full scholarships funded by the state.”

The 2011 student movement drove Chile closer to better access to education than it had been at any point since 1970. It also directly contributed to the election of a leftist coalition in 2013. Its 2015 incarnation has become a visible and important reminder to the Bachelet government that Chilean students will not accept a halfway solution to a broken education system.

The students who are currently fighting tooth and nail in Chile are the first generation born after 1990; they are the first generation coming of age in a time when the curfews, media repression, disappearances, and murders of the dictatorship are not a part of daily life. This generation knows how much it has to lose, and its sense of urgency is contagious.

“La gente unida jamás será vencida”: the Printemps Érable and the Chilean Winter

The relative success of the 2011 Chilean protests had a direct impact on the 2012 protests in Quebec. According to Gabriel Velasco, a student activist at Concordia University, the Quebec movements in 2012 and 2015 were galvanized by the momentum of the similar movements happening in Chile. However, the key difference between the two was the pressure that the student movement in Chile was able to put on during the election that immediately followed, while its Quebec counterpart failed to do so.

According to Velasco, “The Quebec provincial election in 2012 stabbed the movement in the heart. When the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) called the election and the Parti Québécois (PQ) won a minority, that was a massive demobilizing force within the movement.”

When the PQ came to power, the student movement lost momentum, as the newly elected government demanded that universities cut $140 million from their budgets. However, the PQ was more generous in its social spending than the next PLQ government would be, with its dedication to a zero-deficit budget. Following the Quebec Charter of Values fiasco, which ended with the PLQ being elected again, the activists that had been previously focused on improving access to education found themselves facing an even greater challenge – provincial austerity measures. The PLQ’s proposed cuts to the public sector, especially in health and education, demanded new energy from these activist groups.

“The Quebec provincial election in 2012 stabbed the movement in the heart. When the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) called the election and the Parti Québécois (PQ) won a minority, that was a massive demobilizing force within the movement.”

Velasco explained that one major solution to austerity measures, proposed by activist groups like the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ) student federation, is increasing the number of tax brackets in Quebec from three to ten. According to Velasco, this would ensure a more equitable income tax distribution, lower the tax burden for approximately 90 per cent of the population, and net the provincial government an additional $1 billion annually. However, the 10 per cent that would see their income tax increase represents the small section of the population that is the most influential politically.

Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) VP External Emily Boytinck shared her opinion on why, despite being a large, competitive, and well-known university in Montreal, McGill remains relatively uninvolved in Montreal politics.

Boytinck told me that “McGill students have historically participated much less in the Quebec student movement at large. Last year, there was some mobilization, and it was very much led […] by the unions. And it was often sort of just a collaboration of existing activist groups on campus.”

However, the fight is far from over. “This year there’s been sort of a new group of students that have cropped up, we call ourselves McGill Against Austerity,” Boytinck continued. “Organizing movements at McGill is a very slow and laborious process and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re still at baseline mobilization, but I do feel like it’s growing.”

Chile’s student movement is a striking example of the power that a united people can wield over its government.

Thankfully, Quebec is not heir to the same legacy of violence that the Chilean dictatorship left on its people. Even the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) have nothing on the Carabineros de Chile, the Chilean military police, in terms of access to weaponry and reputation for violence.

However, it is critical to realize that just like their Chilean counterparts, Quebec students have a lot to lose if tuition rates increase and austerity measures persist. Even if tuition rates do not increase, the cuts to education enacted by the provincial government will negatively affect both the quality of education and its accessibility. In turn, this causes inequality to grow.

My interview with Cárdenas concluded with him saying, “In Chile, it is well known that the state is nothing more than a mafia palace where the left and right join hands to fill their bellies, fill their wallets […] while fucking us over.” Whether or not this applies to Quebec, Chile’s student movement is a striking example of the power that a united people can wield over its government. No matter where you come from, as a resident of Quebec, you owe it to yourself to learn about and take a stance on its political issues, especially austerity. After all, we are all part of this community, whether we want to be or not.

Y así, la lucha continúa.
And so, the battle continues.

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According to the event’s description on Facebook, the food collected was donated to The Yellow Door, a non-profit organization located in the Milton-Parc neighbourhood, which offers a food bank for low-income students to receive free groceries anonymously.

In an email to The Daily, Adam Pietrobon, a U3 Biochemistry student and an events coordinator at MFSP, highlighted the severity of food insecurity in Montreal.

“According to Moisson Montreal (a food distribution organization), there is $61 million worth of food distributed annually across 250 different community organizations in Montreal,” said Pietrobon. “Monthly, 140,000 people in Montreal receive food assistance, with 40,000 of those individuals being children. Food insecurity is still most definitely an issue in our local community.”

According to Monica Allaby, a U1 Geography student and marketing coordinator at MFSP, the initiative has collected non-perishable foods through multiple yearly events since MFSP’s inception in 2008. This year, Allaby says the initiative is shifting its policy to focus on supporting applied student research projects with community engagement initiatives.

In an email to The Daily, Allaby explained that MFSP is “hoping to collaborate with a number of other student organizations and groups on the McGill campus and in the larger Montreal community, as we are all working toward common goals and can benefit greatly from sharing our knowledge and experiences.”

The Daily also spoke with Laurence Bertrand, a U4 Economics student and internal manager at MFSP, at the beginning of the campus food drive on October 28. Bertrand explained that a key challenge MFSP faces is “reaching out to parts of the student population that don’t know much about food sustainability or food insecurity.”

“Monthly, 140,000 people in Montreal receive food assistance, with 40,000 of those individuals being children.”

“Usually, we have events that will attract all environment students, or people who are already part of the ‘sustainability bubble,’” Bertrand added.

Allaby and Bertrand explained that The Yellow Door often receives donations that “nobody eats, such as artichokes, jam, and jell-o, which is not helpful at all.” They said that the ideal non-perishable donation to a food pantry is something that is nutritious and versatile, such as canned beans, sauces, and pastas.

Allaby stressed to the Daily that “these items should also be easy to prepare, as a person’s ability to access food may coincide with their ability to prepare those foods. Canned vegetables, soup, and chili are all great options.”

“There have been several studies conducted across Canadian campuses called ‘Hunger Reports,’ which assess food insecurity within the university population,” wrote Pietrobon. He cited the Ryerson 2015 Hunger Report, which found that 422 people in Ryerson university experienced food insecurity. A total of 2,528 visits to the Ryerson Good Food Centre for emergency-related food relief took place within the year.

“For McGill, the MFSP is currently in the progress of conducting a Hunger Report, which we hope to release by the end of the year,” noted Pietrobon.

According to Pietrobon, a similar Hunger Report released at the University of Saskatchewan found that 28.6 per cent of students experienced food insecurity, while a study at Acadia University in Nova Scotia found the rate to be 38.1 per cent.

Allaby told the Daily that later in this semester, MFSP will be collaborating with the Groupe de recherche et d’intérêt en développement durable et en agriculture urbaine (GRIDDAU) at the Université de Montréal to host a film screening and panel discussion on issues relating to student food security.

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Members of the McGill University Health Centre Employee Union (MUHCEU) are preparing to go on strike on October 29 as part of the public sector strikes organized by the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), with which the union is affiliated.

The MUHCEU represents more than 4,800 support staff at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). Its collective agreement expired in March, and the union is currently seeking a 13.5 per cent wage increase over three years.

The MUHC relocated to the Glen site in Westmount in April after the new campus was built in a private-public partnership between the provincial government and a consortium of companies called the Groupe infrastructure santé McGill (GISM), headed by the company SNC-Lavalin. Since the campus’ opening, MUHCEU has been negotiating with the provincial government over pay disparities, and inadequate facility maintenance.

Chronic sewage backups at the Glen site led to an investigation in September 2015, which revealed that the piping laid by SNC-Lavalin was built at an improper angle, and that latex gloves and newspapers had been flushed down employee toilets. SNC-Lavalin acknowledged the error and has sent workers to fix the issue with the angles. It is also demanding $172 million from MUHC for other services that were provided before April 2015, which it claims were not covered in the contract.

MUHCEU claims that, upon these discoveries, MUHC administration made allegations of sabotage, which the union has dismissed as mechanical failures on the part of SNC-Lavalin. As reported by the Montreal Gazette, these allegations surfaced just before the strike vote on September 29, which members of the union found insulting.

MUHC administration has denied that they have made such allegations.

In an email to The Daily in French, MUHCEU president Paul Thomas explained, “I believe that the investigations must continue to clearly establish the nature of the problem. Because the MUHC [was built as part of a private-public partnership], the responsibility must lie with the consortium.”

According to Thomas, if the provincial government does not take the negotiation seriously, strikes will continue on November 16 and 17, and December 1, 2, and 3.

Thomas emphasized the need for widespread awareness regarding the issues faced by MUHC employees.

“We face too much litigation and prosecution of labour relations. We need the MUHC to modernize and open [itself] to greater dialogue with the union, particularly with respect to the organization of labour,” Thomas continued.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Glen site is in West Island. In fact, it is in Westmount. It also incorrectly implied that the public-private consortium consisted of the provincial government and SNC-Lavalin. In fact, the consortium consists of multiple companies and the provincial government is not involved in it. It also implied that a sum of $172 million was demanded for incorrectly laid out pipes. In fact, it was demanded for other expenses prior to April 2015. In addition, the McGill University Health Centre Employee Union (MUHCEU) does not negotiate with the consortium or the hospital administration. In fact, it negotiates with the provincial government. The article further implied that the hospital administration made allegations of sabotage. In fact, it is MUHCEU’s belief that such allegations have surfaced, while the hospital administration denies this claim.

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When the march arrived at Phillips Square, a vigil was held, with performances and speeches from Indigenous speakers and performers. Many of the speakers had lost a relative or close friend because of the systemic violence that afflicts Indigenous peoples.

The upcoming federal election and its potential consequences for Indigenous communities in Canada was a major topic of discussion throughout the demonstration.

One speaker from the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nation ended their speech with a call to oust Prime Minister Stephen Harper from office. “I am so tired of a man so smug that he can look at any one of our victims, any one of our missing women, and say ‘you don’t matter.’ Well I’m gonna tell Stephen Harper one thing and one thing only. And that is, Stephen Harper, you don’t matter. We are done with inept leaders,” the speaker said.

“We need Canadians to stop with the apathy, to stop with the stereotypes. We need love. We need support, we need equality. Because everyone knows that good will always triumph over evil,” the speaker continued.

Also present were a variety of Montreal-based groups that work with various Indigenous communities to provide services that help them connect with each other and the broader Montreal community. Megan Kasudluak, an Inuit participant at the march from Inukjuak, Nunavik, had recently arrived in Montreal and marched with a group representing Ivirtivik, a project that aims to help Inuit adults with employability and skills development, with a centre located in Verdun. Kasudluak told The Daily that the Ivirtivik centre has helped her enroll in school and find work, and is a great service for Inuit youth in Montreal.

Tanya Lalonde, president of the Aboriginal Peoples’ Commission for the Liberal Party of Canada, said “Well it makes me sad that a march like this is necessary, but I think that this year there’s been sort of a gathering of momentum towards addressing the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women. There’s been a lot of talk about a call for an inquiry because families are fed up with just having to march. They want answers. They want solutions and a way to fix it because that gives them hope.”

Speaking with The Daily, Wayne Robinson, an Indigenous activist and coordinator at Projets Autochtones du Quebec, expressed hope that recent initiatives taken between the SPVM and the Indigenous communities in Montreal will make life better for Indigenous people, who are disproportionately affected by violence and crime.

“I think in Montreal we’ve seen an overall change [and an increased] understanding that Aboriginal homelessness is an issue that isn’t going away. [There is a] really cool project happening this year with the SPVM. We’ve signed an agreement where they’ve agreed to four points,” Robinson told The Daily.

This agreement was signed by the SPVM and the Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy Network (MUACSN) and mandates the SPVM to create an Aboriginal Advisory Committee, choose an Aboriginal Liaison officer, enact a force-wide mandatory education program, and develop a protocol for addressing cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

While the protocol is not yet finalized, the earliest parts of it include regular contact with the families of missing and murdered women during investigations and the creation of a support network for Indigenous women who arrive in Montreal with few connections and resources.

Robinson emphasized the importance of this community-based response, saying, “One reason we use the term ‘Missing and Murdered’ is that all too often, when Native women go missing, they’re not runaways. When our women go missing, they come back in the morgue.”

[flickr id=”72157659170660479″]

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Zacualpan is a community of mostly Nahua people in the state of Colima, Mexico. In Fall 2013, members of the community approached the organization Bios Iguana, a non-governmental organization, to help them decide whether or not to declare their community mining-free (a common practice for communities seeking to keep mining companies out) after they had been approached by Gabfer, S.A. de C.V., a mining company seeking a concession for the exploitation of gold, silver, copper, and manganese in the area.

Rural communities in Mexico contact environmental groups like Red Mexicana de Afectadas por la Minería (REMA), and Movimiento Mesoamericano contra el Modelo extractivo Minero (M4), of which Bios Iguana is part, once a North American mining company expresses interest in the area. These groups then work together with the scientific, journalistic, and local authorities to educate the population on the risks of allowing mining operations to happen in their communities. Many of these rural communities are Indigenous communities with a history of abuse from multinational extractive companies and the government of Mexico. People working with Bios Iguana have recently received many threats from individuals linked to the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which was formed by people who split from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1988.

The Daily spoke with Esperanza Salazar, a member of Bios Iguana who has been forced out of her community and country by repeated threats against her life.

The McGill Daily (MD): Could you tell me a bit about yourself and what brought you to Canada?

Esperanza Salazar (ES): I am here because I had to leave my community and my nation. I am Esperanza Salazar, and I belong to an organization called Bios Iguana. We work in the province of Colima, Mexico, which is the [fourth] smallest province in Mexico. In Colima, two years ago, a community [Zacualpan] approached us to solicit our help, because a Canadian [mining company] showed interest in mining gold in their territory. The concession that they sought was for gold, silver, copper and manganese. [The people] had a few assemblies to vote on these issues.

[…] In [these] communal assemblies, they decide what to do when things are happening to the land. […] There had been assemblies where mining operations had been proposed and the community had said no. [Usually] the presidente de bienes comunales [elected executive official of the Indigenous community, who was Carlos Guzmán in Zacualpan] is supposed to bring this decision to those concerned and say, ‘No, this community does not want a mine here, please stop the project.’

However, [Guzmán] kept insisting. […] He was giving money to people in the community to vote in favour of the mine. The people of the community came to us and asked for our support so that we could come and explain the risks involved with a natural resources project like this.

“I want the Canadian government to know that they have a major role in the violence in Mexico.”

We did some video screenings. Within a few days of arriving in Zacualpan, we showed videos and photos of the damage caused by the mine at Carrizalillo in Guerrero. [Guzmán], immediately told us, “I do not want you here in our community. You are not welcome; you have come only to misinform the people.” The public garden where we were showing our videos was where the attacks began.

Later, we continued doing meetings with the people, giving more information and one day we were […] preparing to present a video about the mining in Central America, Latin America, [and] one of our comrades was illegally detained.

Salazar also explained that Bios Iguana faced many more direct threats. At one point, they decided to hold an event, where they brought scientists, journalists, and members of communities affected by the actions of mining companies. The event was sparsely attended, because, as Salazar found out later, there was a bomb threat that their opponents employed in order to prevent people from hearing what they had to say. Eventually, Salazar explained, Guzmán was removed from his position, but the two women who replaced him, according to Salazar, were not able to fully do their jobs due to government intervention.

MD: Two years ago, REMA began to work on a new legislation in the Mexican parliament that would prohibit open-pit mining, as has been passed in Costa Rica. I would like to know if these efforts have been successful, or if not, how has the process been so far.

ES: In fact, REMA has left the legal process because there was a manipulation of the participation of the social organizations within the Senate of the Republic [national senate], where this proposal was presented. First, we, the many organizations that make up REMA, worked on the proposal. […] Well, [the Senate] got the proposal, but it wasn’t the one that we had worked on. And after this, we said that it is not acceptable to put forward a proposal that isn’t ours. If the proposal they receive is not the work of the communities and the organizations, we cannot sign it and we cannot be a part of this process.

Without consulting us, [PRD] put this proposal to the Senate as a part of the Party’s political project. And we, the social organizations, including Bios Iguana and other people that are inside the REMA, we are not part of any political party. And we do not support any political party. And we support even less those political parties that use our work and the work of the people to make a power move. […] This same party, on the same day, put forth its own proposal to a different deputy, a different senator, but from the same party. This new proposal was actually in favour of the mining companies.

We realized that there was manipulation and a political game that we did not want to engage in, and we retreated. From then on, REMA and Bios Iguana decided that our time would be best spent working on prevention within the communities instead of the courts.

MD: Canada keeps a list of countries that it recommends Canadians avoid travelling in – Mexico is not on this list. There are regional advisories against travel in the northern states, but the whole country remains ‘safe’ for Canadians. What are your thoughts on this?

ES: I want the Canadian government to know that they have a major role in the violence in Mexico. This violence toward rural communities is a consequence of the entry of Canadian mining companies and is fomented by the companies’ disrespect for the people attempting to defend their territory.

There are two kinds of violence to consider here. There is physical violence which spills into the streets, which is often tied to organized crime. The Mexican government responds to it with more violence, sending the military and police into the streets to fight it. They tell the people they are ‘defending’ them, when in reality they are bringing terror directly to the people living in these communities. This campaign of terrorism against social organizations like Bios Iguana is a specific example of [state-sponsored] physical violence.

The title of this article has been changed from “Esperanza in Canada” to “Nahua community in Mexico resists Canadian mining.”

A previous version of this article referred to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as the political party that has been threatening Bios Iguana. In fact, this party has been the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The Daily regrets the error.

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The Daily spoke with Julianna Duholke, an organizer with Divest McGill, shortly before the rally began. “We’re seeing this huge gap between policy and climate science at both the McGill level and at the federal level,” explained Duholke. “If McGill steps up to be a climate leader, that could put pressure on our political leaders, but right now, there’s no pressure coming from the bottom, and we’re taking that upon ourselves.”

Laura Cameron, another organizer with Divest McGill, commented “We had a very pretty embarrassing reaction from [Principal Suzanne] Fortier today, where she […] pretty much tried to walk away from us when we confronted her, without talking to us. And she said that she […] could not commit to supporting a freeze on fossil fuel investments.”

Amongst the groups present at the protest was 350.org, represented by Cree activist Clayton Thomas-Muller, the organization’s Indigenous Extreme Energy Campaigner. Thomas-Muller was vocal about his hope for a grassroots change beginning in Quebec.

Speaking to The Daily, Thomas-Muller said, “Our message as 350[.org] is to support social movements in Quebec that have mobilized to disrupt tar sands infrastructure.”

Thomas-Muller continued, “We need divestment from dirty fossil fuels, we need a reinvestment of these resources into a zero energy footprint economy that doesn’t force Canadians and First Nations to sacrifice certain communities at the altar of irresponsible economic policies.”

Many other groups expressed their concerns with the legacy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government with regards to other issues. Marie-Hélène Arruda, coordinator of the Mouvement autonome et solidaire des sans-emploi (MASSE), an organization dedicated to supporting the unemployed, was critical of the government’s direction in the matter of employment. “We have to pay attention to the Conservatives’ [actions] over the past few years,” Arruda told The Daily in French. “It is time for this to stop.”

Additionally, Serge Cadieux, secretary-general of the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec (FTQ), denounced the government’s “attack toward the union movement,” mentioning Bill C-377, which modifies tax law to impose heavy reporting obligations on unions, as an example of such policy.

In addition to the organized groups present, many non-affiliated protesters came to stand in solidarity with the various social movements voicing their requests. One supporter, when asked about his expectations for the night’s debate, expressed his desire to “see the words ‘climate change’ get mentioned.” Others were specifically offering their encouragement to the political parties involved.

Daniel Pelletier, a Green Party supporter from Ville-Marie, deplored the silencing of Green Party leader Elizabeth May in two previous debates, one organized by the Globe and Mail and Google Canada, and another by the Munk Debates. Speaking to the importance of climate change, Pelletier told The Daily, “We need to vote for the future of the planet.”

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How to organize a strike

“So You Want to Go on Strike: A Skillshare for Departmental Student Strikes at McGill,” was held on September 16. The workshop discussed the different skills required to stage a successful departmental strike, covering a variety of topics from organizing a general assembly, to dealing with unsympathetic professors.

In order to have a successful departmental strike, the facilitators explained, organizers must set up accessible general assemblies, deal with possible opposition from student executives or faculty, and effectively communicate with other students in the department. This means coordinating the distribution of flyers, posters, and other forms of communication to reach as many sympathetic students as possible.

The facilitators stressed the importance of solidarity throughout a strike, which includes having well-defined roles for every student during the strike, so no one feels overwhelmed. For instance, if planning to picket, organizers should know which students are comfortable with physical aggression when confronting other students or police officers.

The facilitators also pointed out that a successful strike needs to provide material and emotional support to the protesters. For example, during the Women’s and Sexual Diversity Studies Student Association (WSSA) strike in April of 2015, this meant booking a room with food and couches, where students could go to recover, calm down, and talk to a counsellor if necessary.
At the end of the discussion, the facilitators noted that ultimately the only way to gain these skills is to take part in a strike.

–Daniel Huang

Street medic training

“Intro to Street Medic Training,” a first-aid workshop on medic training for demo safety, took place on September 16. The workshop gave an introduction to the basic skills necessary for dealing with first-aid situations specific to the context of demonstrations, such as washing out pepper spray from eyes, minimizing damage from tear gas, and treating shock and panic.

This workshop targeted those involved in demonstrations, but many of the skills and much of the information presented were broadly applicable to anybody who lives in downtown Montreal, where many politically charged events take place and where police employ tear gas to control demonstrations. For example, as tear gas is a volatile chemical weapon that does not discriminate between demonstrator, journalist, police, or civilian, it could be useful for all residents to know to wash themselves thoroughly after exposure, as oils in the skin can make the burning sensation worse.

The workshop also highlighted the distinctions in dealing with different chemical compounds. Pepper spray, unlike tear gas, is an oil – water will cause the chemical to spread and lead to intense pain. According to the workshop, the most effective way to treat pepper spray is to immediately rinse with Maalox (milk of magnesia, available in pharmacies), especially if eyes were exposed.

A central theme was the idea of consent in a medical context. The workshop emphasized that many of those needing medical attention at a demonstration may find themselves unable to receive help at hospitals for legal reasons, making it critical for street medics to respect the decision of a wounded person if they do not wish to seek medical attention at a hospital.

The workshop also discussed post-demonstration care, especially after a traumatic or violent incident, and stressed the long-term commitment involved. It was emphasized that many of those involved in demonstrations are from marginalized communities, often unable to seek formal health services for legal reasons. As such, it was said that giving protesters access to the care and support networks they need from their peers remains crucial.

–Vincent Simboli

Organizing against casualization

“Working from the Roots: Student/Worker Solidarity Against Casualization on Campus,” was held on September 15 and was facilitated by Molly Swain, president of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE), and Tyler Lawson, Collective Agreement Coordinator of the Association of McGill University Research Employees (AMURE).

Lawson defined casualization as “the process wherein full-time workers” – those who receive benefits such as long-term contracts with higher wages, healthcare, and pension – “are replaced by part-time, casual workers who do the same work for less.” As a result, Lawson said, “constant anxiety [over job security] induces passivity.”

Swain argued that casualization is driven largely by austerity, saying that “all of the proponents of austerity are profiting from the confusion of household debt with governmental debt.” Swain also depicted government debt as an “entirely necessary” aspect of capitalist economy, unlike household debt, arguing that “the emphasis on paying back [government debt] is purely ideological.”

“Capitalism binds people through indebtedness,” Swain said, especially students who, as job opportunities appear more scarce, go into thousands of dollars of debt, working unpaid internships. Through strikes and organized movements, students attempt to resist austerity and the debt it incurs. However, students are not considered workers under Quebec law, and are therefore excluded from unions. Groups who may refer to themselves as unions representing the interests of students – like SSMU – are not, in fact, classified as such, and have little to no collective agreement or bargaining power. Lawson proposed that “undergraduate work should be valorized in the economy,” and that students are workers and deserve pay and unionizing power as such.

“Not only are [undergraduates] crucial to the university just by being here, [they] are also actively producing labour in [the] classrooms,” stated Lawson. The workshop also explored the intersectional history of unionization. Both Swain and Lawson proposed that it is and has always been in the best interest of the capitalist state to exclude certain groups in the history of labour and unionization. Although pivotal to the history of labour in Canada, Black and Indigenous people are often discounted and ignored in history as the first unionizing labour forces. Swain said, “Discounting the work of oppressed peoples perpetuates a white supremacist and patriarchal society.”

As the workshop drew to a close, facilitators and participants discussed ways to disengage from such a system, suggesting potential alternatives where both the exploitation of workers and the resulting labour unions would be non-existent. Swain emphasized that “collective mobilizing is the most powerful source of social change.” In a direct challenge to the assumption that millennials cannot stand up against the rise of austerity and casualization, she stated, “We are told precarious work is the work of the future. I am not saying we should be looking to the [pre-industrial] past. […] I am suggesting this rhetoric is a lie.”

—Anna Vail

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The rally was part of SAB’s “Bring Daniel Home” campaign, which was launched in March after the deportation of Daniel*, an undocumented minor, unaccompanied, to Mexico from a Montreal high school in October 2014.

As per SAB, Daniel and his family left Mexico in 2008 due to great insecurity in Mexico City. Daniel, who is partially deaf, and his mother made the decision to come to Canada believing that life with a disability was significantly more difficult in Mexico.

“We were basically treated like people who are not community members, who the mayor was responsible to, but as nuisances – people that don’t have any voice.”

The family applied for refugee status and was refused in 2010, but decided to stay in Canada as undocumented immigrants. In January 2014, after six years of living and attending public schools in Montreal, Daniel was told by his high school administration that if his mother did not pay registration fees, they would call Immigration Canada. SAB explained that to be able to continue his education without fear of deportation, Daniel changed high schools.

According to SAB, most undocumented families are annually billed $6,000 for each child attending public school in Quebec, although this is applied intermittently.

On October 8, 2014, Daniel’s 17th birthday, he went to his old high school to visit his friends. Immediately, he was targeted by security and the SPVM was called.

Daniel was arrested by SPVM officers before being taken to the Canadia Border Services Agency (CBSA), which subsequently detained him in solitary confinement for one week in the Laval Immigration Detention Centre.

Despite filing a permanent residence application on humanitarian grounds, Daniel was deported without his family back to Mexico on October 16, 2014.

“Bring Daniel Home”

Mary Foster, a member of the “Bring Daniel Home” campaign committee, explained in an interview with The Daily her frustrations with the mayor’s “disheartening” response to the rally.
“[The mayor’s team] didn’t show any interest. They didn’t seem to respect the point of view that the members of the Montreal community have. […] We were basically treated like people who are not community members, who the mayor was responsible to, but as nuisances – people that don’t have any voice.”

“People are not undocumented in Canada for no reason. They come to Canada as refugees, as people seeking a better life,” Foster said.

In an interview with The Daily, Noé Arteaga, another member of SAB and a former temporary migrant worker, explained that a common myth in discussions of international migration is that Canada’s laws make the process of immigration, seeking asylum, and integrating refugees into mainstream society simple.

However, according to CBSA statistics from 2013, Canadian immigration officials accepted only 5,790 people that year while deporting over 10,000 people, most of whom were refused as refugees. Others who take the risk to ignore deportation orders are estimated to number up to hundreds of thousands.

“The first and most difficult challenge to overcome is the linguistic one; a migrant worker will have a hard time understanding how locals speak and making themselves understood. Moreover, the obligatory processes are difficult and bureaucratic, which the language problem makes harder,” Arteaga told The Daily in Spanish.

“Many of the people seeking refugee status either don’t know about, or don’t have the proper documents needed to legally obtain immigrant or refugee status,” said Arteaga, adding, “These are things that maybe the refugees did have at one time, but were not prepared to bring with them to Canada to present to immigration officials.”

According to a SAB press release, the number of refugee claims in Canada decreased by 50 per cent and the number of accepted refugees dropped by 30 per cent between 2006 and 2012.

“The first and most difficult challenge to overcome is the linguistic one; a migrant worker will have a hard time understanding how locals speak and making themselves understood.”

Foster noted, “[Refugees] end up non-status in Canada, because [the CBSA is] systematically excluding people from Canada. [Coderre’s statement regarding Syrian refugees] shows either a huge lack of understanding of the issue or a lack of will to understand the issue. It’s surprising to me that [Coderre] would not know that there are already many refugees right here in Montreal who are undocumented.”

Foster explained that the best way for Coderre to truly make Montreal “ready to accept refugees” is to make life less difficult for undocumented refugees already living in the city, especially minors.

“There [are] things he could do immediately, like ordering the SPVM never to go into high schools. […] It’s within his power to do that,” Foster said. “That’s making it safe for refugees here. That’s welcoming refugees here.”

Through the “Bring Daniel Home” campaign, SAB is demanding the federal and provincial governments to prohibit the SPVM from entering schools with the express purpose of detaining undocumented immigrants, and the extension of amnesty on humanitarian grounds for minors and/or people with disabilities who do not have papers.

SAB will be staging a large-scale public demonstration on October 10, at Norman Bethune Square to march against deportations, and to call attention to the local, provincial, and federal government’s lack of response to this situation.

* Real name has been changed

The post No justice for undocumented youth appeared first on The McGill Daily.