The second Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council (LC) meeting of the year took place on Sept. 25, with 23 members of the Council present. SSMU President Dymetri Taylor started the meeting with three announcements. 

The first was that the PT/OT Councillor had resigned, but elections were in progress to appoint a new one within the next few weeks. Taylor then announced that the SSMU Vice-President (VP) Internal and VP Finance positions are vacant, with replacements to be discussed later in the meeting. The third announcement was that SSMU members now receive a discount on VIA Rail tickets. The discount’s use will require SSMU members to present their McGill University IDs upon boarding. 

Deputy Speaker Yasmin Beeai then outlined that councillors will have two proxies and two unexcused absences available to them, adding up to four permitted absences for LC meetings, throughout the academic year. She also presented the Absences and Reporting Schedules, stating that the LC’s committees must submit their reports in a timely manner. 

“[Committee] reports are due […] five days before the meeting [they are to be presented at],” Beeai said. “Late reports count as half of an absence, and missing reports count as one absence.”

VP Clubs and Services Hamza Abu Alkhair proposed to amend this rule to give newly active services more time to submit reports to the LC. 

“It’s only been a month [of] these services [running], so I want to give them a good opportunity to actually know [where they are],” Abu Alkhair said. 

The reporting schedule was sent back to the Steering Committee for review. 

Taylor next proceeded with an account of Gerts Bar’s and Cafe’s finances. The bar is projected to make around $130,000 CAD in surplus this year, while the cafe has made $1,000 to $2,000 CAD in surplus per week this semester. 

VP External Affairs Seraphina Crema Black then discussed an initiative where students may contact the Member of Parliament (MP) who represents the university through Liberal McGill. McGill students, along with MP Marc Miller, can thereby discuss a lobbying campaign that could put pressure on the Coalition Avenir Québec to reconsider their tuition hike for anglophone universities.  

Following this, VP University Affairs Susan Aloudat confirmed that SSMU has implemented the Menstrual Health Project, providing free hygiene products in washrooms across campus. 

The LC moved to motions for approval. The first motion proposed edits to the SSMU’s Accountability Plan, proposing that the Accountability Commissioner meet with SSMU executives twice a year, instead of once. The motion passed unanimously. 

The second motion on the table concerned gender-affirming care in the student health insurance plan. When SSMU initially added gender-affirming care to the plan, it was not voted on directly by the student body. Thus, this motion proposed to put the question of gender-affirming care insurance to students during the Fall Referendum. The motion passed through a secret ballot, with one vote not-in-favour and one abstaining. 

The third motion addressed the need to fill the SSMU VP Internal and VP Finance positions in a timely manner. President Taylor articulated that this would normally be done through a by-election, but that this process would be too lengthy. Therefore, he proposed to form a committee of LC members and members of the SSMU Board of Directors who would be responsible for reviewing applications and selecting candidates for these positions. 

The LC established a committee of four councillors, two directors, and the Internal Logistics Coordinator as a non-voting member to select the VP Internal; the Council also established a second committee to select the VP Finance, composed of two councillors and three directors.

The application period for both VP positions will tentatively run from Sept. 29 to Oct. 5, with interviews and candidate selection occurring from Oct. 6 to Oct. 8. 

Moment of the meeting: President Taylor noted that turnout for First-Year Council elections was very high, with 16 candidates in the running.

Soundbite: “There’ll be a discussion item later this year […] for allocating a budget [to] first years [that] all of the first year councils on campus can work with when it comes to making events for students, by students.”—Dymetri Taylor, on first year engagement.