Victor Temprano / McGill Tribune

On Feb. 16, McGill’s Office of Sustainability held the third of four Sustainability XChange sessions, discussing the McGill community’s impact on climate change and ways to reduce its overall carbon emissions.

Jerome Conraud, an Energy Manager at McGill, opened the session with a presentation on McGill University’s level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the year 2010.

Currently, definitions of the scope of emissions are not finalized, and many categories of emissions are loosely defined, leaving room for interpretation. Conraud emphasized that his office is examining the process.

Conraud stressed that McGill’s greatest burdens on the community-at-large are “scope one” emissions  which include emissions from heating, ventillation and air-conditioning systems (HVAC), refrigerants, McGill-owned vehicles, and livestock. These emissions cause over three fourths of McGill’s total emissions making them the most environmentally damaging.

“If [emissions are] “scope one,” then we are directly responsible, and we should report on that,” Conraud said. “The goal is to show that we are a good part of the community.”

Emmanuelle Lapointe, a visiting faculty member with McGill’s faculty of engineering’s school of architecture, explained that McGill requires distributors of construction materials to make information about their impact available to McGill via the Internet. This measure increases accountability when planning campus-wide renovations or construction projects.

“All distributors of construction materials who provide to McGill … can go on that website and input their products,” she said. “It gives us their environmental and health [risks].” 

Lapointe added that McGill reuses as many materials as possible.

While various federal, provincial, and municipal governments require in-depth reviews of McGill’s GHG emissions, the university has also cultivated ties with other schools in reporting to various environmental NGOs. Conraud added that he hopes to present a review— one more thorough and accessible than all others—for the McGill community.

Kathleen Ng, McGill’s Environmental Officer, argued that the provincial government, which provides McGill with the majority of its funding, increasingly makes the job of the Office of Sustainability more difficult as McGill’s environmental performance consistently exceeds provincial expectations.

“Because our operating budgets for electricity are given by the Ministry of Education, and we do not use all the money allocated, they cut our budgets,” Ng said.

In addition, while the university continually decreases its ecological footprint at a minimal cost, McGill has had to search for cheaper energy. A number of attendees raised concerns after viewing Conraud’s presentation over the sources of energy used by the university.

“Approximately 50 per cent of all the energy we consume [comes from] fossil fuels, and the answer [to why that is the case] is that it is cheaper … Some students were promoting carbon neutrality, but that would be expensive,” Conraud said. “McGill as an institution and a community needs to define what our goals are.”

Ng underlined the need for student intervention. McGill staff seek change in the McGill community, but students, she said, who carry the most weight, rarely participate in discussions.

“We used to have a committee on the environment with students, staff, and faculty to brainstorm ways to keep the lines of communication open,” Ng said. “What we are interested in seeing is getting students engaged … towards finding alternatives to what we already have.”

As the university’s clients, she continued, students’ suggestions and concerns often carry more weight on campus than those from staff and faculty.

“Sustainability is everyone’s job,” Ng said.

On the morning of Feb. 16, students and other activists gathered outside the Montreal Stock Exchange to protest the privatization of public services in Quebec, including issues such as rising Hydro Québec prices, healthcare costs, and tuition fees. The protest culminated with police pepper spraying some of the the activists.

The activists united as one group under the title “The Coalition Against User Fees and Privatization of Public Services.” According to their website, the coalition is composed of 156 community organizations, unions, and student and feminist groups.

The group hoped to raise awareness for its causes by preventing employees of the stock exchange from arriving to work for the day. The protest began at approximately 8:00 a.m. and quickly spread from the front of the Montreal Exchange to the adjacent Delta Centre-Ville Hotel.

In front of the Exchange, a crowd of a few hundred students and other social activists held up banners and signs while chanting slogans, placing themselves in front of all entrances and denying entry to the building.

“We’re here to contest the raise in tuition,” a protestor from the Université du Québec à Montreal’s (UQAM) student union AFESH (L’Association Facultaire Étudiante Des Sciences Humaines) who requested to remain anonymous, said. “It’s about accessibility—we have a lot of parents at UQAM, and we’re fighting strongly for them so they can support their kids and have an education also.” 

The group was carrying a banner and had positioned themselves to block the entrance of the underground parking area connected to the Exchange.

“We want education to be accessible for everyone and that’s our main goal,” Anne Sarah Brian, a student from Collège de Maisonneuve, said. “We want the government to return to the fees of 2007.”

“We want the government to tax the natural resources of this country … it’s not a lack of funds. It’s the fact that the funds are not put in the right places,” Corinne Trubiano, another protestor, said. 

Around the back of the building, the situation was less peaceful. Many employees of the Exchange had been using the attached Delta Centre-Ville Hotel to reach their workplace, so protesters had blocked it as well. By 11:00 a.m. there was a tense standoff between police and protesters, with police cordoning off the hotel entrance from two groups of protestors who had gathered in the driveway.

“This is really where the main confrontation is,” McGill student Becca Yu said. “We’re hoping that by shutting down this building for the day, it’ll put pressure on the government to reverse these policies … without actually directly blocking the building, it’s so easy to just ignore a big crowd of people.”

By 11:30 a.m. the Montreal police decided to extend the cordon around the hotel in order to allow hotel guests to enter and leave. Starting on the right side of the entrance, they pushed protestors back out of the driveway so that guests, including a children’s hockey team, could leave the hotel.

At roughly 11:45 a.m. this tactic was repeated on the other side of the hotel entrance, but police met greater resistance and were actually pushed back by the crowd of protestors for some time. After addressing them through a megaphone, police used pepper spray to clear the protesters.

“They pushed us further and further away,” Dan Parker, coordinator of 99%, the official publication of Occupy Montreal, said. “Some of the more militant activists started pushing back and of course that’s when the pepper spray came out and people started running for it. Fortunately, there [are] medics here and they’re taking care of people with Malox.”

By 12:15 p.m., the protestors from the front of the Montreal Exchange joined those who had been blockading the entrance to the Delta Centre-Ville, and proceeded to march around the area, stalling traffic for a while.

“University is a good time [for students] to get involved, and especially to fight the tuition costs being raised,” Parker said. “I would invite all students to find out from their local organizations who are mobilizing around the tuition fees to find out how it relates to the privatization of our services … Education is a right, and we shouldn’t watch more people get more in debt and lose their access to education.”

Sam Reynolds / McGill Tribune

On Feb. 15, a group of Montreal activists called the Raging Grannies staged a singing protest at the Roddick Gates to condemn the asbestos industry’s influence at McGill. The Grannies sang about the harmful effects of asbestos and criticized the use of Canadian taxes to support projects like the planned reopening of the Jeffrey Asbestos Mine in Asbestos Quebec, which would facilitate the export of asbestos to countries where its use is not regulated.

“Fee, fie, fiddlie-i-o, our taxes have better places to go,” the women chanted.

They also condemned the asbestos industry with chants like “stop exporting death from Quebec!”

The protest follows anti-asbestos activists’  call for the removal of asbestos exporter Roshi Chadha from the McGill Board of Governors. Chadha took a leave of absence from the board in early February, following two letters to McGill calling for her removal—one from medical doctors and health care researchers and one from individuals who have lost family members from asbestos-related diseases. Chadha is the director of Seja Trade Ltd., a company that exported asbestos from the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos, Quebec, until the mine’s operations were suspended last fall. Her public relations agent has stated that the company is not responsible for what happens as a result of the asbestos once it is overseas.

Elizabeth Vezina, one of the Raging Grannies, said that she was very concerned about what effect asbestos has outside the McGill and Montreal communities. Companies like Chadha’s export asbestos to developing countries like India, where the material is used for purposes such as cement roofing in schools. While the use of asbestos is outlawed in Quebec, there are no regulations stopping mining companies from exporting it elsewhere.

“There’s no such thing as safe handling of [asbestos],” Vezina said. “We’re sending it to countries that don’t have the same regulations as we do here. We’re spreading misery.”

The protest comes following demands for an independent investigation into McGill’s ties with the asbestos industry. In 1965, the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association (QAMA) partly funded the research of McGill Professor of Epidemiology J.C. McDonald on chrysotile asbestos, which makes up 95 per cent of asbestos sold in the world and 100 per cent of the trade in the past two decades. 

This research has been criticized for minimizing the negative health effects of asbestos, and for its continued use by lobbying groups to defend mining and exporting asbestos. Dr. David Eidelman, Vice-Principal (Health Affairs) and dean of medicine issued a statement about the controversy. 

“It is true that Prof. McDonald drew different conclusions about the possible safe use of asbestos than most authorities do today,” Eidelman wrote. “Holding scientific views that are different from those of the majority does not constitute research misconduct.”

Eidelman recently announced an internal investigation of the research, to be led by Prof. Rebecca Fuhrer, chair of the department of epidemiology. 

As an asbestos exporter, Chadha is seeking to reopen the Jeffrey mine, which provided more than half of the funds for QAMA before its activities were suspended last fall. However, there is strong opposition to the project. The Quebec Medical Association has stated that this project goes against public interest and will lead to asbestos-related deaths, and all of Quebec’s Directors of Public Health agree that the project will increase asbestos-related diseases.

Although plans to reopen the Jeffrey mine continue, Vezina feels encouraged by growing opposition to asbestos use in India.

“There are many groups in India working very hard to get the import banned, so once they get the mine up and running, hopefully they won’t be able to export [the asbestos] anyway,” she said.

While asbestos might not be a daily concern for McGill students, Vezina feels that it is nonetheless important for them to know what is going on at their university.

“Students have all kinds of things they should be standing up to; we really hope that your generation will start to make some differences. The corporations’ control over finances of the university and over the government is too much; we need to start saying no,” she said.

Lotfi Gouigah, a second-year graduate student in communication studies who observed the protest, agreed with the Grannies.

“I think it’s important to be graduating from a university that is not linked to big lobbies that influence its research findings,” Gouigah said. “We should make sure that research is independent. Students should take a stand.”

On Thursday, Feb. 16, the ‘Mod Squad’ formally convened for its first meeting to discuss the need for moderation in the face of rising campus radicalism. A movement initiated through Facebook by Beni Fisch, McKenzie Kibler, Harmon Moon, and Brendan Steven, the Mod Squad aims to work towards the restoration of a non-confrontational, peaceable atmosphere on campus and in the student body.

“After the ‘We Are McGill’ event, we realised that these radical students were more organised and more willing to be more spectacular in what they were doing, and the people who disagreed with them weren’t organised enough. And that’s when we started planning,” Moon said. “The James Building occupation sparked … massive support that we tapped into … This is the moment for the majority to stand up, and we’re riding the tiger on that and just not letting go.”

Many students voiced disagreement with the tactics of the recent occupation of the James Administration Building, which lasted from Feb. 7 until Feb. 11, and the ‘Mod Squad’ intends to lend a voice to what they call the “silent majority.” A diverse number of students attended the meeting, including elected Arts Representative Isabelle Bi and former SSMU President Zach Newburgh.

“I think it’s quite disrespectful that some people are hijacking the institution that I am proud of,” Jesse Kuri, a U3 political science and economics student who attended the meeting, said.

Introductory in nature, the meeting focused on defining in more explicit terms the direction of the organisation. Hoping to fundamentally differentiate themselves from the ‘Mob Squad,’ a student-run mobilization committee, the meeting discussed changing the organisation’s name to one that is more collaborative in nature than antagonising. It was continually stressed that it is not the motivation behind the ‘Mob Squad’ that’s considered misguided, but the tactics. 

The ‘Mod Squad’ discussed a more long-term goal of establishing a platform for open and reasoned discussion in lieu of confrontational tactics.

“We have to focus on bringing back a sense of calm. A lot of what has been going on in February, especially what happened in November too, [has generated] a sense of hysteria … that this is Egypt, that this is the Arab Spring … that we have to bring down the administration. This [organisation] is acting as a counterforce to that,” Moon said.

After raising concerns about the way a “vocal minority” monopolises debate at General Assemblies, the meeting also focused on a more representative and less “co-optable” SSMU.

“We want a more collaborative relationship with the administration … many people wouldn’t like occupiers to be on the SSMU council … Matthew Crawford [an occupier] is a senator on the front-line, representing the arts faculty, negotiating with the administration. Obviously this compromises his representative position,” Steven said.

Afterwards, the organisers expressed satisfaction with the meeting.

“I’m very happy with how this went. It was really good to get everyone in a room,” Moon said.

Attendees also expressed hope for what the movement could accomplish for the student body. 

“I just hope that once we have this dialogue going, we can let the student body know what we stand for, and offer an aspect of truth, a perspective amidst everything that’s happened,” a student who wished to remain anonymous said.

Carolina Millán Ronchetti / McGill Tribune

Throughout 2011, the Chilean student movement made headlines with its large-scale protests, creative demonstrations, and student strikes to reform the largely privatized education system. The movement, which at its apogee included between 500,000 and a million demonstrators, was described by some as one of the strongest movements since Chile’s return to democracy. Although the movement did not achieve all of its objectives, it led to a cabinet shuffle and to a dramatic fall in national presidential approval. 

Camilo Ballesteros, former president of the University of Santiago Student Federation and one of the key leaders of the student movement, travelled accross Canada this February to meet with various Canadian protest groups. The McGill Tribune had a chance to ask him a few questions about his experiences leading the student movement in Chile and his thoughts on the student movement in Quebec.

What was it like mobilizing so many people?

People mobilize as a reflection of a need. This means that failed government policies are what mobilize people.

We really did receive a lot of support, though. Once, something really striking happened, and that’s that the march’s main banner wasn’t heading the protest, but was in the middle, because the protest had started way before [the organizers] arrived, there were that many people. It got to the point where we questioned to what extent the support had exceeded the institutionalism of the student movement, and if our institutions could respond to the demands of the participants.

Someone once said that the student movement was like throwing a glass of water on a cat, but a lion had woken up. It was complex, and sometimes we didn’t have answers to what we needed to do. But we tried—you’ll imagine that meeting four times a month for 12 hours, we started finding some solutions … we realized that the student movement wasn’t ready for the amount of support we received, and needed to expand. For example, the Confederation of Chilean Students did not represent students in private universities [who were also protesting]. That was something that changed.

What did you learn in your time as a leader of the student movement?

Many, many things. First, I learned about the need to be humble and listen to the rest. Listen, because one may be making mistakes—one may be making mistakes every day. The need to understand that if we want to make real change, we need to do it as a collective. That each one of us contributes a grain of sand, but that each one’s grain of sand matters in forming something much bigger. I also learned about the need to respect what others say. It’s really fundamental to understand and respect the diversity of opinions.

I’ve learned that a lot of what I thought was important doesn’t actually matter so much. Before, my vision of what makes a movement go forward was a lot more closed-minded, but now it’s more open. It looks to generate majorities so we can move towards concrete objectives.

What are the next steps for the Chilean student movement?

I think the first step is to look back and analyze that it isn’t necessary to repeat last year. We want to keep moving forward, but that doesn’t mean doing exactly what we did before. It means competing with last year, even. At the same time, we need to continue the will to keep moving forward and generate majorities. That’s really the main thing the Chilean movement has to do.

What were your impressions of the student movements you saw in Canada?

I think there’s an annoyance that has been building up slowly. It seems that this society wasn’t so interested [in the issue] but it has been receiving a lot of information. Seeds are definitely being sown and will give fruit when the time comes.

I thought they were quite different [from the Chilean movement]. Something that really surprised me was how structured the marches are. Everyone has similar signs, everyone is very organized. In Chile, it’s a lot more disorganized, a lot more Latin American. Of course, that has pros and cons. The pros are that each one goes to a protest to do what they want and represent what they think is important, of course respecting collective spaces. And this leads to a majority that identifies with the mobilization, this could be emulated in Quebec. Well, I don’t know if it would have the same results.

What would you tell students who have not yet taken a stance on education reform?

I would say that we have one opportunity in life. We are young just once, we can be more rebellious just once, we can be more obstinate, and we dream more. I think we need to take advantage of that opportunity. Once, [former Chilean president] Salvador Allende said “to be young and not be a revolutionary is almost a biological contradiction.” I think that’s true. We may make mistakes, but it’s worst to feel that we had a chance to do something and did not, than to know one made a mistake. Sometimes you have to make a gamble and try to build history.

—This interview has been compiled, condensed, and translated from Spanish by Carolina Millán Ronchetti