Ronald Leung / Silhouette Staff

Students sceptical on first day of Quebec education summit

The quick provincial election of the Parti Québécois (PQ) came after months of student protests against higher education tuition raises last year. The government organized a summit that began on Feb. 25 to discuss contentious educational issues. Though Premier Pauline Marois initially pledged to freeze tuition, Minister of Higher Education Pierre Duchesne revealed to attendees that the PQ intend to index tuition at approximately three per cent annually. Despite reasoning that the current freeze on tuition would put Quebec into a crisis if continued, student groups felt cheated and organized peaceful protests.

PEI government blunder leads to breach of student privacy

Students who received scholarships, awards, or bursaries from the government of Prince Edward Island are at risk of a privacy breach. A mechanical error in folding letters left a number of social insurance numbers viewable in the window of the delivery envelope. Releasing a statement on Feb. 25 acknowledging this mistake, the PEI government has yet to disclose the number of affected students, although approximately 1,600 letters were mailed out. The error occurred in the PEI Department of Innovation and Advanced Learning. In the statement, the government said it is reviewing existing protocol and repairing the machine to prevent future errors.

Faculty and administration at odds after executive pay raises at SAIT

After pay increases for the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s three vice-presidents and outgoing president, the institute’s Academic Faculty Association (SAFA) expressed their disapproval. Outgoing president Irene Lewis received a nine per cent raise from $224,000 to $245,000. SAIT’s three vice presidents all got an increase of 26 per cent, from $182,000 to $230,000 in addition to a $58,000 pay-for-performance bonus. The institute expressed earlier this year that SAFA could not afford to give cost-of-living adjustments to faculty due to diminishing school surpluses. The SAFA also expresses concern that tuition may also be negatively impacted.

Surging budget deficit forces University of Saskatchewan to plan massive layoffs

Seventy-five percent of colleges and units of the University of Saskatchewan that have yet to see layoffs can expect to see some jobs go. In earlier months, 50 jobs from 13 colleges and admin units have already been cut. These layoffs come as part of the University’s efforts to combat a growing budget deficit that is projected to surge to $44.5 million by 2016 if no remedial action is taken. The University of Saskatchewan has hired a counselling firm to help newly unemployed workers transition, and has also assembled a task force with student involvement to discuss funding issues.

Professor at U of A charged with alleged sexual assault and confinement of a minor

Zhixiang Wang, 51, associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of Medical Genetics, has been charged with one count of sexual assault and sexual interference. His wife, Xinmei Chan, 49, is also facing a charge of unlawful confinement of a minor. The offences were allegedly made against a 16-year-old female between November 2009 and May 2010. Chen, who also worked at the U of A as a lab technician, and has been placed on leave along with her husband. Both Wang and Chen are to appear in court on Mar. 13.

Ask. Then ask again – this time through a months-long and thousands-strong public protest. And, eventually, you will receive.

Student activist groups in Quebec are tentatively celebrating victory. The newly elected Parti Québécois minority government has promised to cancel the tuition hikes initially proposed by the previous Liberal government.

What have we learned here in Ontario? Apparently, not much.

Here’s the state of post-secondary education in our province. Our schools have the highest tuition in Canada. They also have the lowest level of provincial support. And in my time here, I’ve never seen a McMaster University budget that wasn’t prefaced by a desperate call for more funding.

So schools take on more and more students, both because provincial funding depends on it and to boost tuition revenues.

But there’s nowhere to put the extra students. It’s no secret that McMaster, like other universities in the area, is well over capacity. Its class sizes are too large, its residences are stuffed and its common spaces are crowded.

And for that less valuable education, students are paying more every year.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that there’s anything natural about the gradual fee hikes. They aren’t about inflation. A report released on Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says tuition across the country has increased at three times the rate of inflation since 1990. In Ontario, where it’s highest, the report says that undergraduate tuition will increase from its current level of $7,513 to $9,231 four years from now.

It’s a vicious cycle. More students means more need for funds. More need for funds means more spaces for new students, all paying higher fees than the students before them.

University administrators will tell you this is a problem. They know campus is crowded. They know that young people don’t get much value from sitting through lectures with hundreds of others. They know high fees mean more difficult or more burdensome access to education.

But the province – and its universities along with it – has committed to the recommendations of the Drummond Report, which was released in February. The Report supported continued enrolment growth. It recommended tuition increases – not ones low enough to match inflation, but not ones high enough to match the growth of the student population, either.

It also continued the push for more differentiation of Ontario universities, which would make some universities teaching-focused schools and others research-oriented in order to enhance the student experience. But, for good or bad, McMaster’s president Patrick Deane wants nothing to do with it. He believes that teaching and research should go hand-in-hand.

In other words, the University isn’t going to solve this problem. The province isn’t going to solve this problem.

Students need to solve it. Can we get together and make it happen? Can we make change like they did in Quebec?

Well, how about our record of direct democracy here at Mac? At last year’s students union General Assembly, we just barely got the three per cent needed to reach quorum. We ran to one side of the room of the other, and, ultimately, every first year ended up paying for a Welcome Week they probably could have gotten through the old, opt-in MacPass system. That’s our direct democracy.

But people didn’t even show up because they cared about Welcome Week. It was participation for the sake of participation. The 601 campaign to get people out was a great marketing strategy. But imagine if Quebec students’ primary objective was to gather in huge numbers first – only to collectively decide later that their reason for being there was to be angry about tuition.

Understand, too, that student groups in Quebec were holding meetings similar to our general assembly every week.

It’s not that we’re incapable of getting together for a good cause. We raised $116,000 for Shinerama this year. At least for a week, hundreds of students gladly made a concern for cystic fibrosis part of their identity. And how many of them felt personally affected by the disorder?

So what’s it going to take for us to care about the state of post-secondary schooling?

The official charity of Welcome Week 2013: our education?

The kind of youth movement that’s been going on in Quebec has yet to take hold in Ontario. Not even by a long shot.

But student leaders in Quebec are optimistic that their passion for a stop to tuition increases – and for a more left-leaning economy in general – can spread.

Representatives of the united student movement, and from the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), made a stop in Hamilton on Saturday. The stop was part of their Student Solidarity Speaking Tour, through which they hope to mobilize Ontario’s students to join the cause.

“It’s not about [tuition] numbers. It’s about what kind of future we want,” said Marianne Breton-Fontaine, former student union Executive Member at Cégep du Vieux Montréal, student at Université du Québec à Montréal and editor of Jeunesse Militante Magazine.

But of the 80 or so in attendance at the July 14 event inside Council Chambers of Hamilton’s City Hall, few were undergraduate students. The audience included a diverse mix of community members, as well as a strong showing of labour union representatives from the city’s steel industry.

In Hamilton, at least, it’s been the labourers rather than the students who have been particularly active. About a year and a half ago, locked-out workers and pensioners of US Steel took to downtown Hamilton streets in the thousands to protest the actions of their employer.

Outside of the speakers themselves, even the most vocal support for youth at the Solidarity event came from a union member. Retired steelworker Bill Mohoney, who has been called the poet of Hamilton’s labour movement, recited a few verses during question-and-answer period:

"Johnny’s smart and kind of cool
He’s doing very well in school
You won’t catch Johnny smoking grass
He studies hard, he’s going to pass
But tell me then, what will he do,
Sell you coffee or shine your shoes?"

The poem went on to juxtapose fat-cat bankers with starving young people in search of decent jobs.

The message from the speakers, though, was one of persistence, particularly on the part of those young people that might have been interested in joining the red-square movement.

“It’s true that there is a particular culture of social movements on Quebec campuses. They’ve always been radical; they’ve always been the vanguard of social movements,” said Jérémie Bédard-Wien, executive committee member of CLASSE, the main Quebec student union coalition behind the protests.

“But at the same time, we managed to [mobilize] some Anglophone unions at Concordia and McGill, two universities in Montreal. They had never been on strike before, and in six months, without their 40 years of history behind them, they still managed to get strikes going.”

Direct democracy, he explained, is a founding principle of CLASSE. During the protests, general assemblies were being held as often as once or twice per week.

“This is not your grandfather’s general assembly,” said Bédard-Wien. “This is not your rubber-stamping general assembly held once a year to adopt a budget. They are the supreme decision-making body of every one of our member unions.”

In Ontario, which side each student union stands on is generally apparent by which lobbying group they belong to. The Canadian Federation of Students has taken a clear position of support for the protests, and some student unions have a direct association with CFS. The University of Toronto Students’ Union, for example, is “Local 98” of the Federation.

On the other hand, organizations representing the McMaster Students Union – including the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) – are generally more conservative than CFS. Although the MSU’s leadership has generally been satisfied with its relationship with OUSA, certain members of the Student Representative Assembly (SRA) have expressed an interest in joining CFS.

“I organized at many campuses where the student union itself, the executive, the so-called leaders, were not at all interested in the strike. They were against the strike, and did everything in their power hide this idea,” said Bédard-Wien.

Through ‘mobilization committees,’ rather than top-down direction, the movement grew among students, he said.

“At some point, the mobilization committees invert the structure of the union, replace the shitty executive that are against the strike … that’s happened in several campuses, notably in Anglophone schools around Quebec,” said Bédard-Wien.

Before Hamilton, the Solidarity Tour made stops in Ottawa and Kingston. St. Catherines, Windsor, London, Guelph, Toronto and Peterborough were next on the ten-stop, nine-day tour.

Political Parties use strategic messaging to condense platforms into 30- and 60-second sound bites in the hopes that they’ll go viral in our digital age. Rather than convince voters why they are the best party, they spend their time trying to convince us why their opponents are unelectable. This is done by breaking down complex platforms into ads that oversimplify government, thus disengaging Canadians and negatively influencing our understanding of public policy.

There are smart Canadians who actually believe that corporate tax cuts mean money right into the CEO’s back pocket. There are smart Canadians who believe that mandatory minimum punishments for marijuana use will fix the “drug problem.” There are smart Canadians who believe that you can either build prisons or support lower income families, but you cannot do both.

These three statements represent central ideas that were heavily used in the 2011 federal election. These ideas presented to Canadians are hardly ideas at all, but rather distorted statements that over simplified solutions to complex problems.

The result? Some Canadians genuinely believe that the one per cent are rich bankers that pay low taxes and make easy money. The reality? The one per cent in Canada is made up of doctors, lawyers, business people, public servants, journalists, academics, skilled labourers and especially hard workers.

Our lack of understanding of governance has been further highlighted in the tuition protests. Advocates and supporters of the protests suggest that the government is not listening and that the general public is not taking them seriously. But how can one take them seriously if they refuse to address issues such as Quebec’s rising debt, crumbling transportation infrastructure, expensive day care system and lengthy hospital wait times, all of which are factors tied to the cost of university tuition.

It’s true that youth are paying more per-capita for education than ever before, but I do believe there are more productive ways of resolving the issue. What we need is ideas – ideas that we are capable of developing and advocating for. High costs of tuition or crime policy we may not agree with are not a failure of democracy; rather, they are a product of the very system.

The system isn’t broken, but it is capable of producing something better. Let’s stop complaining and start developing. Lets talk about income-contingent loan repayment. Lets talk about corporate tax cuts for hiring and training young graduates. Let’s ask if municipal governments are paying their fair share in post-secondary education funding.

We can step our game up. These are just some ideas; I know that there are more out there. If baby-boomers expect us to pay more for our education because “costs are rising,” it is only fair that we demand that retirement age be pushed back. Didn’t this just happen?

Our generation costs more to educate because of our expectations of the quality of education. Those expectations are no different than our parents expectations of a world-class health care system upon retirement.  Without demanding more from our parents, we will be paying off their deficits a lot longer than our OSAP. Lets use this opportunity to advance debate.

By Jeff Doucet

“They’re a bunch of whiners,” a friend remarked as we had a discussion about the student protesters in Quebec.

“Their tuition is less than a third of what everyone else pays – what are they complaining about?” he continued. The sentiments he expressed echo the general opinion held by most people I’ve spoken to outside Quebec.

I too viewed these protesters as privileged ingrates who are complaining about a tuition hike that is peanuts compared to what everyone else pays. However, after visiting Quebec and witnessing these protests, I’ve been forced to reconsider my opinions; I strongly believe that other Canadians should too.

Imagine the following. Due to financial constraints, our government has had to take some desperate measures. Starting next week, every Canadian will now have to pay a flat fee of $10 for every consultation with a doctor and about $ 200 for surgeries. It’s a small affordable fee that would help offset the financial strain on the government.

Yes, our much cherished healthcare system is no longer free.

As one can imagine, there will be uproar in our society at the announcement of such news. How dare the government charge us for healthcare? We will go out into the streets and will protest all night long. We will not stop until our demands are met. No way am I paying 10 bucks to visit a doctor.

And as we lead mass rallies to protest these unjust measures, the Americans will look to us and say, “What a bunch of whiners! What are they complaining about? They pay nothing compared to what we have to pay.”

That analogy might have a few shortcomings, but it’s the same idea. You see, it’s not just the small fee and potential future hikes that we would be protesting. It’s the principle. We expect our government to provide universal healthcare, much like childhood education, library services and access to highways. Failure to do so results in uproar. We’ve worked hard to get our society to a point where we can enjoy these benefits; any attempt to jeopardize our access to these services is unacceptable.

Quebeckers view post-secondary education in the same light as these services. Yes, it’s not free, but it was pretty close to it. For years, the student movement has been working towards achieving universal access to post-secondary education and Quebec was perhaps the only hope of that dream being realized. As Rick Salutin pointed out in a Toronto Star article, when society has a whole recognizes a service as a fundamental priority, the excuses go out the door and the money gets found. A tuition hike of any sort, let alone one that increases tuition almost twofold, is a step backwards and squashes any chances of ever achieving fully publicly funded universities.

We need to make it clear to our governments that higher education should be made accessible to all and not just the privileged few. It must be voiced that tuition hikes are not an acceptable of way dealing with budgetary restraints.

This is the exact message Quebecois students are sending to our government. We need to stand along with them and join hands in giving our support to this message. Our collective silence is a tacit approval to tuition hikes – we are saying that we are okay with such measures. Our indifference to the issue serves as support for tuition increases in other provinces and gives politicians the impression that they can simply get away with it.

Protesting every single night for weeks on end demonstrates a level of commitment unheard of in recent Canadian history. As I walked through the streets of Quebec City, I realized these protests were much more than just some students complaining. I saw old women in their 70s cheering on the sidewalks; I saw a five-year-old girl marching with her mother; I saw people in their balconies clanging their pots and pans to express support.

While apathy and heedlessness are often used to describe young people, these students defy any such categorization. They are young, they are mad, and they are fighting for what they believe in.

And we should be too.

By Waleed Ahmed

To the major Canadian news outlets:

I understood your fascination with the story of Luka Rocco Magnotta.

At first, there was the crossover between a gruesome murder and Canada’s major political parties. Then emerged the biography of a bisexual escort and his Chinese immigrant victim. More recently, the plot turned into an international manhunt for a ‘Canadian Psycho.’

This guy had it all, topped off with an arrest in a German Internet cafe and allegations of cannibalism.

But now that Magnotta has been caught, please quit plugging up top story space with this troubled porn actor. Despite the plastic surgery, the guy’s undeniably creepy mug does not resemble that of James Dean (which, according to reports, was the look Magnotta was going for), and it’s no longer useful to the public that I know what he looks like.

Can we, perhaps, refocus on the other big story out of Montreal these days?

I can’t even fathom protests like the ones in Quebec happening elsewhere in this country – least of all in this relatively conservative province, around this relatively conservative campus. We got 150 people out for a night in downtown Hamilton last week to cause a stink with some pots and pans. About a hundred times that many students have gone on strike over the last few months a province over.

In part, this speaks to a difference in culture. Quebec seems much closer to Europe than other Canadians give it credit for. Protest and political involvement, particularly among young people, are a much more popular means of expression there.

But I can’t help but feel that the way we’re reading about these events – or not reading about these events because a couple of severed hands and feet got mailed to Ottawa – has something to do with it. Francophone media outlets have accused English ones of boiling this issue down to a cross-province comparison of tuition rates, when demonstrations are about much more to most protesters.

This story’s not just a Montreal story or a Quebec story. It’s a Canadian story. We might not fully understand what’s happening over there, but whatever’s causing it involves us, too.

So, Globe and Mail, CBC and National Post – all of whom, as of this writing, have lead stories whose headlines include the term ‘body parts’ – can we get back to the stories that really matter? Magnotta doesn’t need the attention, and I’ve heard enough of the details.