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Ehima Osazuwa - MSU President
Ehima Osazuwa is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the McMaster Students Union. As President, Osazuwa acts as the key advocate for the student body in matters within the university and beyond. Osazuwa’s vision for the MSU has been notably progressive, and has been characterized by significant promises to improve student equity. These include plans to promote women in governance, improving interfaith accessibility, introducing more gender-neutral washrooms and updating university infrastructure to better serve the needs of students with visible and invisible disabilities. Osazuwa has generally focused on better addressing the diverse needs of the McMaster community, while also tackling long-term issues such as tuition and diversity.
Communication
Osazuwa has still been extremely communicative and accessible when needed. The President uses social media to frequently promote MSU Services and initiatives, and has even started a vlog series about his platform and role within the MSU via their Youtube channel. While this content has not been effectively promoted, it nonetheless provides a more effective way of communicating his platform for those who seek it out.
Fulfilling Job Description
So far, Osazuwa has delivered on his promises to improve the McMaster Clubs infrastructure and increase funding. He has also improved food accessibility by helping to increase Kosher and Halal food options, as well as installing new vending machines in Mills Library.
However, due to the long-term nature of his platform, the majority of the President’s goals are works in progress. The extensive amount of behind-the-scenes work will, for better or worse, will not see their completion or corresponding campaigns until next term. Tuition 101, MSU Wants You, gender neutral washrooms and OUSA’s provincial advocacy information campaigns are all slated for next semester.
Nonetheless, the President has taken all the necessary steps by meeting with various MSU services, clubs and university administration to tackle those ambitions. Reception to these efforts has been positive overall, and all parties are satisfied with the level of communication and collaboration.
Time is of the essence for Osazuwa, and he himself admits the difficulties of slow administrative processes when dealing with external parties. Osazuwa identified his frustration, but also stated, “I think my team and I have done a good job managing that time, but we only have 24 hours in a day, right? There’s only so much you can do in that time, so I think that’s been the biggest challenge.”
Giuliana Guarna - VP Administration
A graduate of McMaster Biology, Giuliana Guarna is this year’s VP (Administration). She previously served on the SRA for two years and has experience with multiple MSU services. As the Chief Administrative Officer for the MSU, Guarna is in charge of overseeing the MSU’s services.
Communication
Despite coming from different presidential campaign teams, this year’s Board of Directors seems to mesh seamlessly. For Guarna, this means that she comes to work looking forward to collaborate with people she can rely on.
“In my interactions with past boards, I’ve never seen a team integrate so well together. We definitely disagree, which is important because how else do we have progress, but I think we are very respectful of each other and very supportive in every aspect.”
Fulfilling Job Description
While Guarna’s platform points remain largely unresolved, she says it is because she has had to adapt to the role, putting platform points on the backburner in order to focus on other issues. For Guarna, this has been the highlight of her term. “I think it’s discovering unexpected areas to improve your portfolio,” she said.
Among the newer projects, Guarna implemented behaviour descriptive interviewing, with the goal of creating a more transparent system in which experience working within the MSU is not as high a priority as skills an applicant learned in a different environment. The process has already been used to hire three PTMs.
Another task she took on later was the creation of a PTM onboarding package, which is distributed to newly hired PTMs as a how-to guide for navigating the early days in their role.
One platform point that did not make it off the page was a checklist for event planners to use to ensure that events are accessible. Monthly feedback forms from PTM also did not make the cut, with the first SRA feedback form being addressed this Sunday and the PTMs undergoing a mid-year evaluation process now. On the other hand, the traditional bi-monthly meetings with PTMs have allowed Guarna to gather feedback while circumventing the tediousness of forms.
While Guarna could not have forseen the factors that led her to refocus her efforts, the vice-presidential candidates are largely chosen based on the merit of their platform. By voting for a candidate, SRA members voice their support for platform points they want to see realized. While this could be a flaw of the electoral process, or an issue specific to the role of the VP (Administration), Guarna was ultimately elected on her platform and she will hopefully be able to revisit some of her popular platform points in the next term.
Daniel D’Angela - VP Finance
The VP (Finance) is primarily responsible for overseeing the budget of the McMaster Students Union. In addition to the day-to-day finances and responsibilities, the VP (Finance) acts as the chair of the Silhouette Board of Publication, and is expected to involve themselves in projects that relate to the financial standing of the MSU.
Communication
One of D’Angela’s major goals as VP (Finance) was to improve the transparency and communication associated with his position.
However, his platform also included a communication strategy surrounding the new health and dental plan, which arguably hasn’t had a significant effect beyond Welcome Week, and a “Budget Townhall” at the beginning of the year outlining the use of student money, an event with a relatively small turnout.
Despite this, D’Angela has been making a concerted effort to communicate in new and logical ways. SRA members who have worked closely with D’Angela echoed that sentiment, and one noted that he’s been very receptive to working individually with SRA members seeking help with their own year-long goals.
Fulfilling Job Description
D’Angela has made significant strides towards completing his platform, and has been most successful so far in improving financial transparency for the Union and for its student representatives. The previously noted implementations of financial training for SRA members and monthly financial reports are good examples of tangible and sustainable efforts to improve financial literacy.
His biggest project remains in the works however, as he is hoping to implement a multi-year plan to provide solutions for student space on campus. While this goes beyond the infrastructure expansions planned for MUSC and is currently in a survey-phase, it is unclear how successful this plan will be yet.
“It’s preliminary for me to say what it will exactly look like,” he said. “Getting that information is what I really want to be one of my long-term goals this year so that next year’s team can clearly see ... what’s the best plan.”
Some more ancillary platform points are on schedule, including the improvement and protection of services at the Underground.
D’Angela did note he believes he needs to spend more time working on his platform of improving transit advocacy, but considering that he has been on-schedule with the rest of his platform thus far, it’s fair to expect a similar, consistent effort.
Spencer Nestico-Semianiw - VP Education
The VP (Education) portfolio is known for the vast range of initiatives it covers. Despite that, Spencer Nestico-Semianiw has not only taken on the duties of the MSU’s lead advocate, he was also elected as the President of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, the provincial lobbying organization the MSU belongs to. The Arts and Science student’s initiatives are varied and tackle multiple issues important to McMaster students, from federal and provincial advocacy to improving course evaluations for students and faculty. Prior to being elected as the VP (Education), Nestico-Semianiw served as the External Affairs Commissioner for the SRA.
Communication
Nestico-Semianiw has so far been very communicative with the MSU at large. He is highly active on social media and responds to correspondence quickly. He has a blog on the MSU website that he updates on a monthly basis, and while he posts links to it on his Twitter account, it could be promoted better, much like Osazuwa’s vlogs. He did mention that internal communication with other members of the BoD had been somewhat problematic. “I think a challenge that we sometimes have with the board is who is in charge of what aspects of a portfolio,” he said.
Fulfilling Job Description
Again, much like Osazuwa, many of Nestico-Semianiw’s platform points are still in the process of being implemented. He has taken on a large portion of the President’s affordable tuition plan, a task he said he was not expecting to play such a large role in organizing. In the time he has held the position of VP (Education), Nestico-Semianiw has organized OUSA’s general assembly, however he hopes to be able to focus more on a collaboration between the MSU and the to encourage Mac grads to work in Hamilton after earning their degrees. “We’ve had a lot of progress on individualized work with employment … during our Municipal Advocacy Week we met with city managers and Hamilton Economic Development to talk about more employment issues for the city … but so far nothing has materialized in terms of a comprehensive system,” he explained. Looking towards the new year, Semianiw is faces the challenge of implementing his remaining platform points.
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MSU President Ehima Osazuwa’s phenomenally successful campaign last year was largely built on a distinctly ambitious platform. One of its most controversial points was a promise to address the issue of increasing tuition and student expenses. His ability to tackle a post-secondary policy giant during a one-year long mandate was met with much skepticism.
In 2015, the average tuition of Canadian universities saw a 3.2 percent increase to $6,191, an increase of more than double the rate of inflation. The province will spend about $7.8 billion dollars across its post-secondary and training sector, just under six percent of the total budget for the 2015-16 year.
Now well into his term, Osazuwa along with a Tuition Task Force and members of the Board of Directors, are tackling these issues through a number of specific initiatives within the MSU and with its partners.
The provincial government’s current tuition framework, which outlines the post-secondary education funding model, is set to expire in 2017 and the government has launched consultations on “modernizing” the funding formula. With the province running a deficit and a projected decrease in post-secondary enrollment, the government could easily look to students to bear most of the financial burden. For the MSU and fellow Ontarian student unions, the 2016-17 school year is a crucial period to develop tuition advocacy strategies.
The new policy paper seeks to outline a more detailed, extensive, and long-term policy to represent the MSU’s views on tuition. The recently passed Tuition Policy includes a number of requests, principles and goals, and is set to be finalized in on-going SRA meetings.
The paper calls for the implementation of a tuition freeze until the federal or provincial government is able to contribute “one dollar for each dollar of student contribution.” The paper argues that as tuition outpaces the rate of inflation and the median household income, the current framework needs to see more investment from the government or at the very least, a cap on the increase of tuition in accordance to inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index. The document stresses the need for more regulation in the face of rising student debt.
“While the topic of tuition may appear divisive, the MSU believes strongly in the ability of dialogue and competing interests and protects students from cumbersome and inaccessible student debt,” declares the current draft of the policy paper. Despite its stated desire to accommodate for the diverse views on tuition issues, it does not shy away from arguing for specific tuition frameworks.
The paper includes long-term recommendations, including that “the government should create a strategy to adopt a publicly funded, no upfront tuition model.” The document cites “The OUSA Paper on Alternate Cost Recovery Models,” which describes the system of deferred tuition based in Australia and New Zealand. These models allow students to delay their tuition payments until their graduation, as well as offering several financial assistance programs. In Australia, the upfront tuition model also gives a 20 percent discount to students who choose not to defer tuition.
In addition to defining the MSU’s stance on these issues, the policy paper also alludes to some of the current projects that the student government is currently undertaking.
Over the past month, Osazuwa and VP (Education) Spencer Nestico-Semianiw have met with the university’s Board of Governors to present a number of requests. These include the desire to increase the amount of needs-based scholarships, which recognizes the effects financial strain can have on the academic performance required to earn merit-based scholarships. “I’d like to see some of that funding come from the four million dollars McMaster uses for merit-based scholarships,” explained Nestico. “I think that merit based scholarships are quite inequitable, so using that funding into needs-based would better target students who actually need the money.”
To increase transparency, the MSU is also pushing for an activity-based funding model, which more easily allows students to understand what exactly their tuition is being used for in the university. Osazuwa believes this to be an easy change to implement. It will also be accompanied by a Tuition 101 information campaign, and a letter writing campaign directed to the provincial government in the next term.
Osazuwa thinks that one of the MSU’s most important requests to the University is the removal of interest on late tuition payments, most often forced on students who rely on OSAP. This will likely be the most difficult request to negotiate and implement with the university, but Osazuwa wants to achieve it before the end of his term.
In addition to on-campus advocacy campaigns, the MSU has already introduced an emergency bursary for students in need of up to $500. The $8,000 budget allocated to the bursary program was quickly exhausted after its introduction in September, and by the end of the month, the MSU gave out approximately $12,000. The additional funds were drawn from saved money from other budget lines.
Vice President (Finance) Daniel D’Angela explained that the MSU is looking to revise the program, and is considering alternative sources of funding to sustain it. So far, no definite changes have been made. D’Angela said that the MSU is not looking to make the requirements for the bursary stricter, but noted that the emergency bursary is not a sustainable solution.
“I think our main goal is to provide the assistance that we’re doing through systems that we can but then work on issues to ensure that no student needs a bursary or needs an emergency bursary. I think that’s what the MSU’s goal is and what its responsibility should be. We can do some of the small things like that but I don’t think we should be just taking a lot of money from one set of students and just giving it to another,” said D’Angela.
While Osazuwa noted that the Board of Governors was receptive to some of the recommendations and initiatives the MSU is seeking to promote, the Board’s decision-making powers are limited. McMaster’s Chief Financial Officer Deidre Henne will discuss these requests with the Board of Directors, and is impressed with their initiatives and ideas so far.
Henne explained that currently the university gets the majority of its operating budget from tuition and grants. The province is in a deficit, and looking to change the way they provide operating grants, while the MSU and other student unions and advocacy groups are hoping to fight the increase in tuition.
“There’s a real opportunity for student bodies now, at the same time that the government is looking to change the funding model in 2017, to speak with government and make sure that the province understands, not just from a University perspective … but more importantly from a student perspective of what is important to them,” explained Henne.
The Board of Directors met with Henne this week, and discussed the MSU’s requests in relation to her role on the Council of Ontario Universities, and on the technical advisory committee to the Ministry of Education’s financing model.
In response to Osazuwa’s personal goal to end interest fees on late tuition payments, Henne stated, “I’m going to say it’s difficult, and that’s just the truth of it because we want to collect tuition fees as early in the process as possible for the overall financing and budgeting of the university.”
The university’s current financial system runs with the assumption that it will operate with most of its money paid on time. If payments were to arrive later in the term, the university would have to seek assistance from a lending facility to cover the first few months of operation.
For the hope of implementing a province-wide tuition freeze, Henne says that it has to accommodate declining enrollment and deficit issues Ontario is facing. Henne suggested, “what Ehima could do, is take his tuition request for zero percent increase and request the gap from the enrollment gap to be redirected as a supplement for this lack of tuition increase. It’s yet another alternative in the mixed pileup of complexities. It’s a lofty goal and I admire Ehima for taking it on. I feel his group has a lot of capability.”
The MSU has put student tuition and debt at the forefront of its priorities this year, following Osazuwa’s landslide win. However, with his term coming to an end and a new presidential election on the horizon, the state of affordable tuition advocacy as a long-term priority for the MSU remains to be seen.
With the Ontario government seeking input on the future of its funding formula, this is an opportune time for the MSU to be active in the tuition conversation. Osazuwa believes that both the student union and the University are interested in discussing student financial issues and stressed the need for collaboration between all stakeholders.
“We can run campaigns, we can have emergency bursaries, we can have our tuition policy paper but, at the end of the day, the best we can do is continue to lobby to the university and I think the university’s receptive to the idea of a more affordable tuition. We can’t change the price of tuition just by ourselves.”
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By: Jenan Nasser
On Nov. 22, 2014, a devastating incident occurred in the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre on Barton Street. An inmate, Rocky Ganesh, was brutally attacked by his cellmate. Rocky was beaten so viciously he slipped into a coma which lasted for weeks and resulted in severe brain trauma. His doctors are not predicting a full recovery.
Ganesh now lives at the Regional Rehabilitation Centre in the Hamilton General Hospital, unable to cognitively cope with the traumatic experiences he has been through. The mother of the assaulted victim, Sharda Ganesh, is seeking redress for the assault, claiming that there is not enough protection for inmates. Sharda suggests a provincial-wide revamping of cellmate provisions, which would segregate those who are known to be aggressive or have had past aggressive episodes with their cellmates, from those who have no such prior episodes.
The Hamilton-Wentworth Detention centre has had previous incidents in which prison security has proven to be insufficient, and the treatment of inmates has been inhumane. Due to the lack of security personnel, the prisoners have become aggressive towards authority on more than one occasion.
A convicted rapist was transferred from the detention centre for gassing a security guard after being confined in his cell for an extended duration because of the lack of staff on duty that day. A correctional officer at Wentworth explains that if Canadian prisons had more funding and greater attention was paid to the living conditions, they wouldn’t have to worry as much about the safety of their officers or the inmates themselves.
Due to the lack of resources, prisons are becoming more dangerous and less humane. Although prisons exist to confine criminals and law offenders, they should not be subjecting them to cruel conditions similar to those Rocky Ganesh endured. Sharda Ganesh told reporters that she wonders why the jail has enough resources to send two officers to guard Rocky by his bedside, now that he can’t move, but they weren’t there when he actually needed them.
This problem is a common one in Canada. With growing numbers of prisoners and the lack of government funding to accommodate them, a tragic incident like this could occur again. Whether people believe these inmates have a right to security is an old argument, however I believe that these inmates’ rights to life are being infringed upon. Although prisons are in place to restrict convicted felons, they are also in place to protect our rights as free abiders of the law. If living conditions worsen, not only have the constitutional rights of inmates been infringed upon but the safety and privileged freedom that we currently enjoy will also be compromised.
The money being spent on extra staff for hospital security and other fees for assault victims within the jail could be better put to use for greater staffing and larger facilities. There is no question that the prison system is flawed and can be a dangerous place, but fearing for your life or an unexpected ambush attack in the middle of the night should not be the reality of the lives of prisoners.
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By: Mia Kibel
Maybe your parents pay for your tuition, and maybe they don’t. Maybe you get subsidies from OSAP, maybe you work, or maybe you subsist off a diet of air, cheetos, and pirated videos. But the fact remains that any way you slice it, university isn’t free, and students are the ones that have to find a way to pay.
University is never actually going to be free. Professors, campuses, and programs are always going to cost money. It is, however, worth questioning whether students should be the ones to pay. Germany, for example, recently decided that we shouldn’t. At the beginning of October, university became completely free in all German states, not only for German students, but for foreign students as well. So, if you can get a German visa, Auf Wiedersehen, and enjoy. But can university be free in Canada, and should it?
The rationale for making university entirely subsidized by the government is obvious, and it feels good in the gut. More education is a social good. On a macro level, a more educated population can drive innovation and development across all sectors the university touches, in areas as diverse as business, science, law, and the arts. For individuals, university education opens doors to careers that are typically more profitable and stable, and gives them the tools to specialize in areas that interest them, not to mention the simple implicit value of learning new things and ideas. Tuition fees make it harder for a large segment of the population, typically those that are simultaneously disenfranchised, to access these benefits. They restrict university education to the rich, thereby setting up a cycle where only those who already have money can access the jobs best suited to making money.
Though students can take out loans to pay fees, the interest that kicks in as soon as you graduate means that university costs more for poor students than it does for rich ones. When students do decide to take out loans to pay for school, the interest can be crippling, and an uncertain job market makes it difficult to determine when or if the loan can be paid back.
If we believe that education isn’t an elitist privilege and that see that loans aren’t an equitable, or even necessarily viable, way for poorer students to pay for school, it seems like moving towards a system like Germany’s is the obvious choice. But a closer look at Germany’s system reveals that, while completely subsidized university education is possible, it’s not exactly compatible with our university system. German university students mostly attend institutions in or near their hometowns, so university residences are extremely limited. Most classes are large lectures, not the small group discussion based classes that become so rewarding in upper years. While “university” here is an institution replete with amenities, German schools are, for the most part, just classes. Think about Mac without DBAC, the student centre, big sports teams, four libraries with support staff, and all the other things that happen outside of class, then consider what a “free” school would look like.
As it stands, universities are already heavily subsidized. Only 25.9 percent of university and college revenue in Ontario comes from tuition fees. And with budgets tightly stressed, both in universities and in governments, it’s clear that fully subsidizing schools as they are isn’t really an option for Canada. Trimming down universities might not be such a bad thing— in fact, it might a good one. But, the next time you hear someone proclaim they’re off to the vaterland, use those critical thinking skills you’re paying so much for to decide whether “free” is a price you’re willing to pay.
The Ontario government will invest $42 million over three years in ‘Ontario Online,’ an e-learning platform and consortium set to launch in the 2015-16 academic year.
Brad Duguid, the province’s minister of training, colleges and universities, announced the initiative on Jan. 13. The centre would offer centralized online courses for credit, transferable between participating institutions across the province, although universities and colleges are not mandated to sign on.
“Right now we have what I would call a hodge-podge of online learning technology,” Duguid said. “Some institutions are global leaders. Others are holding back. I think we want to get to a point where every student in the province has access to this learning technology.”
Ontario Online will consist of a course registry, an instruction hub for institutions to share best practices for course development and a support hub to offer assistance to students and instructors.
"The MSU definitely supports McMaster joining Ontario Online for a number of reasons," said Spencer Graham, vice-president (education) of the MSU. "We think it will provide students with a lot of increased options and flexibility in terms of how they want to learn."
The centre is the result of various consultations between the ministry and stakeholders over the past several years. The centre will not be a degree-granting institution, which student and faculty groups opposed in roundtable discussions.
“I think this has definitely been refined from the initial proposal,” said Alastair Woods, chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario. However, the organization remains skeptical of the ministry’s direction on e-learning and mandate to offer students more of a choice between in-class learning and online learning.
“I think it’s important to ask who is being presented with that choice,” Woods said. “In many cases, if you live in an urban area like downtown Toronto, you do have a choice. But if you live in rural or northern Ontario or you’re a francophone or aboriginal student, I actually think this reduces your choices because you still may not be able to leave your community to go to school.”
“I think what’s more important for students in those communities would be to have more financial support for them to go to a brick-and-mortar school should they choose to do so,” he said.
According to the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, which supported the ministry’s announcement, postsecondary institutions in Ontario saw nearly 500,000 online course registrations in 2011.
Ontario Online was developed in tandem with the province’s ‘differentiation’ policy framework, which was redefined in November 2013. The current framework emphasizes minimizing duplication in course offerings across the province and building a globally competitive system.
Duguid said the new online learning centre “isn’t driven by cost savings” though it would result in savings for some institutions and potential revenue for others.
“Some students will learn better in an online course, and some students may have other obligations outside of school life that make it necessary to go online,” Duguid said.
Woods supported the idea of knowledge-sharing online but said more needs to be done to improve access to postsecondary education.
“What worries me is that there are a lot of changes coming down the sector that the government claims will produce cost savings but are not motivated by cost savings. I don’t think that’s an entirely genuine statement. I think in the absence of any new funding models, the government is trying to come up with ways to do more with less,” he said.
The University of Waterloo, which currently offers more than 240 online courses through its Centre for Extended Learning, allows undergraduate students in five programs to get their degrees entirely online. The university is expected to play a strong role in the new e-learning centre.
Catherine Newell Kelly, director of the UWaterloo’s Centre for Extended Learning, said high-quality online courses would require heavy support for faculty on the development side.
“We bring a whole project team to online course development and work with the instructor to help him or her understand how to teach in the online environment,” she said.
“I do not think that online learning will replace classroom learning. I think technology allows us to think about how students best learn and which pieces of a course might be delivered by technology.”
Details of how courses would be administered through Ontario Online and whether college and university courses would be cross-listed haven’t yet been released. More announcements from the ministry are expected in the coming months.
For many students, water-damaged windows and roofs, out-of-order toilets and insulation peeking out of broken ceiling tiles are familiar sights. Throughout the year we experience dozens of minor, everyday inconveniences and brush them off as something that will be fixed, eventually. Until then we do our best to ignore the water dripping from the ceiling into a yellow bucket.
These annoyances are symptoms of deferred maintenance (DM), a problem that’s getting bigger all the time. It boils down to a simple enough idea: things are breaking, and there isn’t the money to fix them. Of course, when you spread that idea out over a 300 acre campus, tens of years, and multiple university, provincial and federal budgets, it gets complex – fast.
DM is defined as “work on the maintenance of physical facilities that has been postponed on a planned or unplanned basis to a future budget cycle or until funds become available,” and its severity really came to the university’s attention in December 2012 when facility services released a comprehensive report called the Asset Management Plan. This 38-page document systematically categorized the issue and revealed a staggering $300M DM backlog.
That figure was a surprise, even to the university administration. “The University knew about a backlog of $150M prior to 2012, which was based on an old Condition Assessment Survey,” said Mohamed Attalla, assistant vice-president and Chief Facilities Officer. “However, there was not a clear and detailed analysis that highlighted the urgency. Also, there was no clear plan and priorities to move forward.”
DM has the potential to severely affect research and teaching on campus, and is made more problematic by its often behind-the-scenes nature. “It deals with things you can’t see,” said Attalla. It’s hidden in the walls in fraying cables and leaky pipes; it’s hidden in the basement in rusting boilers and dusty transformers; and it’s hidden off-campus in a power substation that is serving beyond its intended lifetime.
Robert O’Brien, a professor of Global Labour Studies, spoke about the difficulties associated with teaching in such an environment. He complained about a lack of Wi-Fi access, A.V. equipment, and proper ventilation. “About half of my teaching takes place in rooms like that,” he said.
With the full scope of the mountain of maintenance revealed, the university moved to begin addressing it. Prior to the report, the DM budget for facility services was $2.2M, just 0.14 per cent of the current replacement value (CRV) of the campus. CRV is calculated by multiplying the square footage of campus buildings by a dollar amount standard for all Ontario universities, and the Council of Ontario Universities recommends a minimum annual budget allocation towards maintenance of 1.5 per cent of the CRV of buildings and infrastructure. It warns that an amount less than this will cause the DM backlog to grow.
In response to the Asset Management Plan’s recommendations, Mac administration intends to increase DM funding by $2M annually until it reaches $10.7M. This means that, for 2013/14, $4.9M has been budgeted for DM. Though an improvement, it’s still a far cry from the $23.4M necessary to reach the recommended 1.5 per cent of campus CRV.
It’s also much lower than some universities similar to McMaster. The Asset Management Plan compared Mac to Ottawa and Western, universities of similar size, and found that even back in 2011, they were budgeting $26M and $11M respectively towards DM.
The insufficiency of the current budget is known to administrators. “Based on what we have here, the current funding we agreed to, we’re not looking at making a dip or a dive in the deferred maintenance. It will continue to rise actually, but it will rise at a slower pace,” said Attalla.
So it’s more, but still not enough. Attalla acknowledges this, but emphasizes the complicated nature of budgeting for a large institution like McMaster. “The university needs to make decisions. There are lots of unfunded priorities […] but you need dollars to fund them. The agreed-to level of funding here takes into consideration the other pressures we have somewhere else in the university,” he said.
“The hope is that after we deal with our current pressure, hopefully five years from now we’ll be able to increase 10M dollars even more to reach some other universities.”
MSU President David Campbell echoed that sentiment. “Very understandably, often deferred maintenance comes up against academic priorities, and sometimes rightly so. The maintenance becomes deferred because there are more pressing priorities. And I think everybody would agree that that is a necessary thing sometimes,” he said.
“But it’s when you start getting into these critical priorities like ‘in the next 12 months this wall might fall down but we can’t find the money to fix it.’ That critical aspect is when it needs to be addressed right away.”
The Asset Management Plan defines components as critical “if they are still in operation and are operating beyond their designed and useful life […] It is important to note that McMaster’s total DM backlog classified as critical amounts to $28.86 million and by definition should be corrected within the next year.” Accounting for the recent budget increase, the difference between needed critical repairs and funding is $24M, not including components that may have decayed to become critical since the report was released.
That means that McMaster is running with at least $24M of its equipment and buildings operating beyond their intended lifespan.
Last year the MSU published a policy paper outlining students’ position regarding DM. “Our first recommendation was that in the short term [the university’s contributions to DM] should go up to $12.5M,” said Campbell. “Our long term recommendation was that contributions should go up to $25M, and that should be a collaboration between the university and the province, since both bear part of the burden on this.”
Attalla is also hoping the university can collaborate with the province, saying that “the hope is that with lobbying the provincial government, it will put more money into this sector.”
But hope won’t double-pane Mac’s windows. It’s important that the university continue increasing DM funding for years to come. “The university’s made a commitment to continue increasing deferred maintenance contributions over the next few years, and I think we should be pushing to have that continue happening, whether that’s through new campaigns or an official lobby,” said Campbell.
Until that happens, though, students will just have to pray it doesn’t rain too hard.
The provincial government announced a new tuition framework last Thursday that allows Ontario universities to increase tuition fees by an average of 3 per cent starting this year.
Though the number is down from the previous framework’s 5 per cent allowance, groups including OUSA, CFS-Ontario and the MSU aren’t satisfied with any increases above inflation.
“It is disappointing that the provincial government has not tied tuition to a more fundamentally fair rate of inflation,” said Huzaifa Saeed, VP (education) of the MSU in a release.
“However, I respect the fact that the old framework was not continued, despite pressure from academic institutions to do just that.”
The new tuition framework will be in place for four years, and the 3 per cent limit on tuition increases applies to most full-time arts and science and college programs. The increase is above Ontario’s average rate of inflation, which is 2 per cent over 10 years.
Tuition for professional and graduate university programs and high-demand college programs are allowed to increase by up to 5 per cent, down from 8 per cent.
According to Saeed, the MSU will now divert its efforts to lobbying for more government investment in the financial aid system. Specifically, the MSU will advocate for eligibility expansion for the 30 off tuition grant and a lower debt cap on the Ontario Student Opportunity Grant.
In a statement responding to the Province’s announcement, OUSA says the new framework “makes progress” toward a more affordable system but has not adopted key recommendations made by students.
OUSA recommended last fall that the government freeze tuition for at least a year and increase per-student funding at the rate of inflation.
CFS-Ontario recommended this past February that tuition fees be reduced by 30 per cent over the next three years.
Erik Fraunberger / The Silhouette
Recently, immigration minister Jason Kenney created a new amendment to the Canadian immigration system involving the designation of “safe” countries to increase the efficiency with which refugees may gain entrance into Canada.
The premise behind such an amendment is that the countries on this “safe” list are unlikely to produce legitimate asylum claimants which, according to Canadian law, include those who possess a “well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”
Judging from the current list, which includes most European and Scandinavian countries, the majority of individuals who come to Canada’s doorstep from these nations will not be suffering from the level of persecution that the original 1951 Geneva Convention was designed to accommodate. In fact, equating the socio-economic and political situations of individuals from developed, liberal-democratic countries with those in autocratic, developing countries with no human, civil or democratic rights are blatantly offensive.
Of course, such a policy is not without its flaws, most notably its inability to address the concerns of persecuted minority groups such as the Roma in Hungary.
While this is a problem for the Roma people, it is well documented in a 2012 report by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) that there is a high welfare fraud and petty crime rate amongst Hungarian refugee claimants.
Painting all refugee claimants with the same brush is not amicable or fair but it would be naïve to hold the belief that the Canadian government has the ability to approach each refugee claim on a detailed, individual level without severely straining the existing budget.
It is estimated by the Canadian government that each failed refugee claim costs taxpayers $50,000.
This estimate takes into account social services, healthcare and legal costs for each claimant. If we take this number to be an accurate estimate, then the cost of the failed or abandoned refugee applications from Hungary alone amounted to approximately $54,450,000 in 2010. Keep in mind that the taxes you, your family, and your friends pay contributed to that lump sum of wasted money.
A final and welcome improvement of the “safe” countries list is the reduced healthcare benefits that refugee claimants receive if they are from any of the designated nations. Unless the refugee’s medical issues pose a risk to public health then they do not receive healthcare benefits.
However, also keep in mind that many of our own Canadian citizens, after having worked here for their entire lives, do not have universal access to medical benefits including dental care, eye care and certain vaccinations for free. This group includes seniors who are on a fixed income, usually on their pension from the Canadian Pension Plan.
It would be wise to show some gratitude towards the previous generations that have built this country by providing them with some of these medical benefits instead of rolling out the red carpet for every refugee claimant. It is very unfortunate that Canada is unable to provide care to every refugee with medical issues but the already over-burdened healthcare system in combination with the weak economy does not make this possible.
It has also been argued that Canada has an obligation to provide refugees with the aforementioned benefits. From a humanitarian standpoint, this is a wonderful idea, albeit too idealistic to overcome the challenges that reality poses, as mentioned above.
I agree that a certain level of humanitarian obligation is required to those in need, but what I vehemently oppose is the superior treatment of refugee claimants compared to our own Canadian citizens.
By Jaslyn English
On September 27, 2012 the provincial government cut the Ontario Ranger Program, a summer employment program for 17-year-olds to work outside in the provincial parks around Ontario.
The Ontario Ranger program has been going on for just under 70 years, and has approximately 15 camps across Ontario, employing over 300 teens as well as 45 supervisors every summer.
“My summer as an Ontario Ranger was one of my best. The experiences that I was lucky enough to have will stay with me for the rest of my life. It is unbelievable that such an incredible program was cut,” said Hilary Walton, a second year McMaster student who participated in the program in 2010.
This loss of youth programs is especially significant since unemployment rates for between 15-24 year old Canadians are currently soaring at double the national average.
Though the national average for unemployment, at 7.4 per cent, is currently lower than other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which includes the Unites States, France, and Great Britain, our youth unemployment rate is one of the highest and was hit the hardest during the recent recession.
“The global economic crisis has hit youth very hard,” OECD employment division head Stefano Scarpetta told the CBC. “Governments should intervene quickly to provide adequate support to them.”
The lack of support from the government is evident when the testimonies of people who have participated in this program are taken into consideration, and what these same Canadians are now doing to try and stop the cutbacks from coming into effect.
“To fellow rangers, no explanation necessary. To those who aren’t, no explanation possible,” wrote previous participant on the online petition to stop the end of the program, summarizing the incredible opportunity that programs such as the Ontario Ranger Program provides for our youth.
The closure of these camps coincides with the federal government’s closing of the volunteer program, Katimavik, which creates volunteer opportunities for young Canadians all across the nation. Over 30,000 Canadian youth have volunteered with this organization, since it began during Pierre Trudeau’s government in the ‘70s.
These programs highlight the ability of youth to give back to the community and show them how to do so in a way unique to the programs themselves. In no other program can a group of 17-year-old girls canoe through northern Ontario and cut a government approved canoe trail through the wilderness. And, likewise, with Katimavik, where the volunteer opportunities are found only in this program, are young Canadians able to give back in a well-organized way that benefits society.
“Katimavik is an experience that can never be bound by a straight definition - it is a program where youth are given the tools to better themselves; to grow, learn, make friends and connect to new communities … while learning about and gaining a new perspective on the Canadian cultural and geo-physical landscape,” claims the blog Spokes & Spice, one of the many online forms of petitioning the cutbacks.
The elimination of these two programs is just the tip of the iceberg in youth funding cuts. Across the country, both the provincial and federal governments are tightening the portion of the budget spent on programs dedicated to youth employment and community outreach.
“In defunding Katimavik, the Conservative government is ignoring its own evidence of the organization’s benefits to youth and Canadian communities. For every dollar the organization spends, about $2.20 is generated for the host community. The program is a fiscally prudent way of getting young people to become active, engaged citizens, but these irresponsible Conservative budget cuts will kill it,” Liberal MP Justin Trudeau said in a press release about Katimavik cuts.
The only program that hasn’t seen any cut backs, is the cadet program under the Department of Defense, which costs twice as much per month as the Katimavik project did.
“We know that this government doesn’t care about empowering or investing in our youth,” Trudeau argued in parliament, while defending the program earlier on this year.
Through this lack of attention paid by the government, the past year has seen the loss of one third of the jobs for students that came from the main federal program, FSWEP, which fits post-secondary students with temporary employment.
Not only this, but because of the takeoff of tuition rates, less Canadian youth are in school than any other of the top five educated “first world” countries, including France, the United States, Germany and Italy, and is tied with the last, Great Britain.
The average student debt is $30,000 dollars, which converts to a sizeable down payment on a house or almost two extra years studying at an undergraduate level.
What this means, for all McMaster students, and those youth pursuing both educational and employment opportunities across Canada, is that, essentially, we have been forgotten.
With budget cuts across two tiers of our three-tier system, and a continuous loss of both jobs and educational opportunities for youth, it is incontrovertible that the needs of young Canadians are simply not being met on either the provincial or federal level.
With what even the federal government’s budget admits as being an “uncertain job market” for those looking for first time employment, it is hardly an overstatement to say that youth today need a helping hand integrating into the Canadian work force. The lack of programs, like Katimavik and the Ontario Ranger Program, that give Canadians both insight into their selves and their work ethic can only hinder the integration and motivation of young Canadians into a society that continuously neglects them.
In a time where it seems as though our government is in a competition with itself to cut corners in budgets at every turn no matter what cost to its citizens, it would seem appropriate if not necessary for it to throw a bone to its youth who has so often been refused on the steps of parliament hill.
Spencer Nestico-Semianiw
McMaster’s Muslims for Peace and Justice held a teach-in on Nov. 8 about how the Canadian government has neglected the rights of its Muslim citizens.
The overall focus of the evening was on the “extraordinary rendition” policy and the use of torture on Canadian citizens accused of involvement in terrorism. Extraordinary rendition is the policy of transferring people from one country to another without the approval of any legal authority.
The event featured Abdullah Almalki and Ahmed El maati, two Canadian citizens who, in the early 2000s, were wrongly connected with terrorist activity by the RCMP after the 9/11 attacks.
During the discussion, Almalki and his legal representative Phil Tunley spoke about the various struggles that Almalki had to face during and immediately after his arrest. Tunley first discussed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other various legal documents in the context of how they related to the rights of Mr. Almalki under his circumstances.
Upon Almalki’s arrival to Syria in 2002, he was detained and arrested by Syrian officials based on information sent directly from the Canadian government. Following the incident, Almalki remained in a Syrian jail for nearly two years.
When Almalki was brought up to speak, he presented a detailed account of his mistreatment at the hands of the Syrians, perpetuated by the Canadian government.
Almalki emphasized his abuse at the hands of the Canadian government by presenting a quote from the RCMP and the Canadian Security and Intelligence service (CSIS), which stated that, “it was not the responsibility of intelligence or law enforcement officials to be concerned about the human rights of a Canadian detainee.”
Almalki explained how, at one point, he was abruptly slapped in the face by one of his interrogators. He explained, “the physical pain has by now gone away, but the humiliation I felt at that moment is still with me.”
During the question-and-answer period, students actively voiced their opinions on the issue. Many deeply sympathized with the hardships that Almalki was forced to endure and others stated how inspired they were to engage in their community through social activism.
The focus was particularly on the role that the Canadian government had to play in this issue. In need of sufficient grounds to jail Almalki in Canada, the government believed that torture in Syria would be an appropriate way to extract the necessary information. As a result, the ensuing discussion also focused on how it is the responsibility of Canadian citizens to recognize these injustices and mobilize against them.
One of the notable attendees to the teach-in was Ken Stone, the treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War and also a McMaster alumnus. “If we want to stop these abuses like torture, the killing of prisoners and rapes of women, we really need to put pressure on our Canadian government not to get involved in these wars,” said Stone.
By the end of the night, it was clear the speakers had hit a nerve in those who had attended as they displayed gratitude for the speakers.
