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Editorial: Abdelrazik deserves his day in court

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The Tribune applauds the Federal Court’s recent decision permitting Montreal resident Abousfian Abdelrazik to sue the Canadian government for $27 million.

A Sudanese-born Canadian citizen, Abdelrazik was visiting his sick mother in Khartoum in 2003 when he was arrested by Sudanese authorities, at the request of the Canadian government, for suspected ties to al-Qaeda. He claims to have been tortured and repeatedly beaten while in custody, before being cleared of any wrongdoing and released almost a year after his initial arrest.

At that point, Abdelrazik was unable to return home because he did not have enough money, and his passport had expired. After his wife wired money from Montreal, airlines, consulting “no-fly lists,” refused him passage. Sudan offered a plane to fly Abdelrazik back to Canada, but the Canadian government chose not to provide an escort or help with the cost, and the plan fell through. Abdelrazik remained in Sudan for five more years, and spent another six months in Sudanese custody before being cleared again of any wrongdoing.

In 2006, the United States requested that Abdelrazik be added to the United Nations no-fly list, because of his suspected ties to high-level al-Qaeda members. He was stranded in Khartoum, living in the Canadian embassy with a $100 per month living allowance. Though the Canadian government admitted he was not guilty of any crimes, they said it was the job of the destitute Abdelrazik and his lawyers to remove his name from the U.N. no-fly list.

As years passed, Canada’s neglectful actions were broken only by the occasional burst of direct, official interference. In 2009, Abdelrazik was finally able to fly home after his presence was requested at a Parliamentary hearing. He soon announced that he was suing the federal government, which, in turn, argued that individuals could not sue for torture, and that in any case Canada could not be held responsible for the actions of another government.

The Tribune believes the first of those arguments is particularly absurd. If national security is to be invoked as justification for leaving Canadians in countries known to engage in torture, the government must be accountable for those Canadians’ welfare, especially—though not exclusively—when they are later found innocent. This case raises serious questions regarding governmental responsibility for ensuring justice toward its citizens abroad. In the interest of permitting these questions to be raised, and permitting a Canadian citizen to seek reparation for travails he has endured, the Tribune agrees with the Federal Court that Abousfian Abdelrazik deserves his day in court.

News, SSMU

Plate Club becomes SSMU Plate Service

by Matt Essert on

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After three successful years of serving McGill students, the Plate Club has become a thing of the past. Students will no longer be able to go to the Plate Club to borrow dishware for lunch or events. Luckily for students the Plate Service will be filling that void.

In an effort to expand the Plate Club’s influence, the Students’ Society has adopted it, transforming the former club into an official service of the SSMU. The Plate Club was started in 2008 by Tim Dowling in order to cut down the amount of unsustainable plateware used by students and promote an overall greener campus.

The Plate Service plans to continue operations as usual, but will now have a larger budget that will allow for the purchasing of more inventory and, in turn, the lending of more sustainable dishware.

“It doesn’t change our mandate, which was always to help everyone at McGill,” said Jenny Lu, the Plate Service events co-ordinator. “For us, becoming a service doesn’t change our purpose or what we want to do—it just gives us better resources to do it.”

Lu explained that SSMU approached the Plate Club last spring with an interest in converting the organization into an official service.

“[During the elections], a lot of [candidates] mentioned the Plate Club and a lot of them wanted to expand the Plate Club and do all sorts of stuff to be more sustainable,” she said. “But they never actually talked to us, none of us knew about it.”

In order to expand the Plate Club into a service, SSMU Vice-President Clubs and Services, Anushay Khan, worked with the organization to formally establish it as both a part of SSMU and a fully accounatble entity.

“The difference between a club and a service essentially is that a service is actually a department of SSMU, financially, in terms of our organization and our structure, so becoming a service is not a small change,” she said. “You need to learn a lot about SSMU before being able to function efficiently.”

Despite talk of expansion, however, the Plate Service has maintained that they ultimately want to dissolve as a lunch service and exist solely for events.

“We in the Plate Club feel that ideally the club should not exist for lunch service,” said Christian Scott, the Plate Service’s lunch co-ordinator. “Ideally SSMU and the food vendors, and McGill in general, should find a way, maybe through more sustainability-focused contracts, to totally eliminate plastic, paper, and Styrofoam containers.”

Khan echoed this sentiment and said that this is also what SSMU has in mind for the service.

“Our vision for the Plate Service on the whole is to not even have a Plate Service,” she said. “But to make it so intuitive for everyone to pick up a plate and use it instead of using Styrofoam or plastic because we’re trying to get rid of [those types of plates] as a whole.”

Plate Service members seem to agree that the best way to reach these goals is to include an obligation to use sustainable plates in the future negotiation of leases with vendors.

“We really want to get involved with SSMU this year,” Lu said. “Especially because the contracts with the vendors are expiring this year, so we really want to get them to negotiate a no-Styrofoam [agreement].”

Khan said there will be increased consideration of sustainability in the upcoming negotiations with tenants of the Shatner Building.

Along with other green services around campus, such as Midnight Kitchen and Organic Campus, the Plate Service hopes to make sustainable living an intuitive choice for all students at McGill.

“The whole thing about sustainability is a trend, but at the same time it should become a way of life, versus a fad,” Khan said. “I think [we need] this lifestyle change, which is important. If we don’t act, no one will.”

McGill, News

Architecture Cafe shut down by McGill

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The Architecture Café has served its last cup of fair-trade coffee, as McGill administration has decided to close the popular student hangout.

Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson cited financial losses and improper management as the primary reasons for the decision to close the café and begin plans to “repurpose” the space as a study area. The café—which was previously student-run—had been operated by McGill Food and Dining Services for the past three years, before being officially shut down over the summer.

The café, Mendelson said, consistently lost money for Food and Dining Services, which is mandated by McGill to submit a balanced budget.

“[The Architecture Café] provided a cheap lunch, and that’s because it was a subsidized lunch,” he said. “The university cannot afford to subsidize anyone’s lunch.”

Katherine Messina, the president of the Architecture Students’ Association, disputed that the café lost money. According to Messina, the café has turned a small profit in each of the last three years.

“[The café] wasn’t making a shit-tonne of money, but we definitely weren’t running a deficit,” Messina said. “Our goal was to break even, or make a slight profit, by selling food at $1 [above cost], and that’s what we did.”

Mendelson declined to provide exact figures for the Architecture Café’s operations, but claimed that expenses such as utilities and accounting and payroll services resulted in a yearly deficit for the café.

Located in the basement of the Macdonald-Harrington Building, the Architecture Café served fair-trade coffee, pastries, sandwiches, salads, and other snacks from local suppliers such as Boulangerie Clarke and the L Corridor.

The café, founded as a late-afternoon pub in 1993, was student-run until 2007, when the administration first attempted to shut it down. An agreement was reached, however, under which Food and Dining Services oversaw the accounting, billing, and payroll of the Architecture Café, while a team of five student managers handled the day-to-day operations.

At the time of the takeover, the Architecture Café was the last student-run food service outside of the Shatner Building and Thompson House, which are operated by the Students’ Society and the Post Graduate Students’ Society, respectively. Between 2000 and 2007, McGill assumed control of eight campus cafeterias previously run by students’ societies such as the Management Undergraduate Society and the Arts Undergraduate Society.

It was only due to a passionate student response that the Architecture Café was allowed to remain open under Food and Dining Services operation for the past three years. In early 2007, over 1,500 students joined a “Save the Architecture Café” Facebook group, and more than 100 students protested outside the James Administration Building, before the administration agreed to a compromise that kept the café open.

SSMU President Zach Newburgh said he is hopeful that an organized student response could have similar results this year.

“It’s a unique space—everyone, no matter what faculty they were from—loved the Architecture Café,” Newburgh said. “So we, as students, need to do all that we can to keep the Architecture Café open,”

However, Mendelson considers this closure of the cafeteria final.

“We can’t give the Architecture Café back to the students, because there were serious problems when it was run by the students, and we can’t figure out a way that it can be run by the university,” Mendelson said. “There are no circumstances under which we will be reevaluating this decision.”

According to Mendelson, the café space will be transformed into a study area, a plan that ignores the wishes of the ASA.

“We don’t need study space,” Messina said. “Architecture students already have studios with our own desks, our own lockers, and our own storage space within the building, so we don’t need a room to study in.”

On Tuesday, ASA President Kyle Burrows, Engineering Undergraduate Society President Daniel Keresteci, and Newburgh issued a memo to Mendelson and other administrators urging them to reconsider their decision. They suggested that the EUS, “which has an extensive history of running successful business operations,” be allowed to take over the café. At press time, the administration had not responded to the memo.

Pieter Sijpkes, an Architecture professor whose students started the café 17 years ago, expressed hope that, at the very least, the spirit of the Architecture Café would inform the redesign of the space.

“Students may well have to go back to the roots of the [café] as a casual meeting space,” Sijpkes said. “The recipe is simple: put in a coffee maker for day use, sprinkle around some magazines and couches, and have some students play guitar and drums on Friday nights.”

McGill, News

Principal Munroe-Blum presents university’s financial plan

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McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum addressed the National Assembly’s Commission on Culture and Education in Quebec City on Tuesday, urging the provincial government to allow universities to raise tuition for Quebec undergraduates to the Canadian average.

The speech was Munroe-Blum’s latest attempt to convince Quebec to address what university administrators have described as the chronic underfunding of universities in the province. It was delivered as part of a larger report on McGill’s financial and academic operations. Every three years, Quebec requires university heads to present a report on their performance and future plans, as well as take questions from ministers of education.

McGill’s 65-page report emphasizes the university’s beneficial role in the province, citing the hundreds of professors hired in the last decade and the university’s many research collaborations. But it also decries Bills 100 and 38, the government’s proposed university governance legislation, which would place new requirements on McGill’s Board of Governors.

The report also advocates raising tuition for undergraduates in the province. Part of the revenue from any additional tuition, though, would be used to increase financial aid for students in need, Munroe-Blum said in a telephone interview after the speech.

“We believe that you cannot have a policy of increasing tuition without an integrated element of that policy that increases student aid for those [poorer] students,” she said.

Quebec’s low tuition rates, she added, had not increased the number of Quebecers in university.

“Quebec is not a leader, even with its low tuition fees, in getting good levels of university participation or university degree completion,” she said.

Munroe-Blum took questions after her presentation in what she described as a “very collegial exchange” with ministers. But Students’ Society Vice-President External Myriam Zaidi, who attended the presentation, said that the ministers’ questions were much harsher.

“It was like a trial,” she said. “The ministers around the table asked very sharp questions to Munroe-Blum and [McGill Provost Anthony] Masi.”

Zaidi said that Munroe-Blum, failed to consider several important factors in her criticisms of Quebec’s low university participation rate. Quebec’s CEGEP system, for instance, may reduce the number of students who choose to attend university in the province.

“It’s more appealing to many students to do a technical, professional degree that costs them pennies compared to attending university,” she said.

News

AUS attacks its debts

by Tori Crawford on

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In the face of numerous unanticipated financial difficulties that have come to light this semester, the Arts Undergraduate Society’s Executive unveiled their Financial Recovery Plan to the AUS Council last Wednesday.

“Like the real Marshall Plan, this isn’t just us throwing foreign aid at something,” he said. “It’s a plan to allow all parties to recover themselves.”

In addition to the deficit of approximately $30,000 incurred by Frosh, the AUS owes $18,000 to both the federal and provincial governments in back taxes, as well as $83,000 to the Faculty of Arts due to the organization’s failure to pay their share of the Arts Student Employment Fund.

The Marshall Plan, which is based around the four tenets of accountability, automation, solvency, and growth and partnership, is designed to address the AUS’s current financial challenges and to ensure that similar issues do not occur in the future. The first step in this process, Marshall said, was re-evaluating the organization’s business partnerships both within and outside of McGill. The assessment resulted in the dismissal of the AUS’s former accountant and the hiring of RSM Richter, a professional accounting firm, to manage the society’s books.

“One of the main advantages that attracted us to RSM Richter was the fact that they were able to provide us not only with an audit service, but with an entire team, a team that includes a tax attorney, legal advisors, and an accounting service,” said Majd al-Khaldi, AUS VP finance.

Thanks in part to RSM Richter’s negotiations, the AUS’s federal tax debt is now settled. While Marshall is still in negotiations with the provincial government, he said he is hopeful that situation will soon be remedied as well.  

“We’re now reaching out and trying to get help, because we’ve realized that the traditional perspective of … some student leaders … to kind of take on challenges and … refuse to ask questions, has been damaging for the AUS,” Marshall said.

In addition to revisiting the AUS’s accounting structure, al-Khaldi and Marshall have been working with the group’s banking institution, the Royal Bank of Canada, to revisit the AUS’s investments. According to al-Khaldi, this is long overdue.

“The AUS has had investments in the past, and since the financial crisis I would hazard to guess that they weren’t revised properly,” he said. “In that sense, we haven’t been using our money to its fullest potential.”

Marshall also emphasized the assistance the AUS has received from the Faculty of Arts administration, particularly with regards to the debt they owe on the Arts Student Employment Fund.  

“With regards to ASEF, we do have the dean’s support for a payment plan, so that’s going to be paid over the next few years,” Marshall said.

“The Faculty has had discussions with the AUS about the Arts Student Employment Fund, and we are working together on a plan that ensures that students continue to benefit from the Fund and allows AUS to meet its obligations without putting further stress on its cash flow situation,” said Dean Christopher Manfredi of the Faculty of Arts in email to the Tribune. “Student associations are independently incorporated entities whose relationship to the university is governed by memoranda of agreement. For the most part, the relationship should be governed by the provisions of these agreements, but everyone obviously has an interest in collaborating to ensure that funds are properly administered.”

Despite the difficulties they have faced this year, both Marshall and al-Khaldi emphasized that all student organizations can learn from the AUS’s experience. To help ensure that a similar situation doesn’t affect another campus group, the Executive is working on a document that will outline standard financial, legal, and tax procedures for student-run corporations in Quebec.  

“For legal purposes, we all have to be companies, but we aren’t great at running them, clearly,” Marshall added. “I’m hoping to share this with all student associations because there’s a huge benefit to sharing this sort of thing. I don’t want anyone else to ever have to go through the experience we went through with all of this. But it’s a great year. Student services haven’t been affected except in the positive.” 

News

Panelists urge greater actions to defend children’s rights

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Holly Stewart

How can it be that 250 million children under the age of five are alive right now and don’t have a birth certificate? How can there be 13 countries currently listed by the United Nations’ Security Council that are at war with children engaged as combatants, as cooks, or as servants? How can there be an estimated 150 million children worldwide who are engaged in various forms of child labour?

These were some of the questions posed by United Nations Children’s Fund representative Susan Bissel on Thursday at panel discussion on international  children’s rights.

In a room of roughly 20 McGill students and faculty members, Nadja Pollaert, the director general of the International Bureau for Children’s Rights, joined Bissel to address the topic of protecting children’s rights worldwide.

In her remarks, Bissel stressed that even in today’s globalizing world, where social and economic issues are increasingly integrated, issues of children’s rights go largely unnoticed. She said this is a major  issue that we ignore all too easily.  

Bissel explained that a birth certificate is a document many people take for granted, but children without such documentation lack an internationally recognized identity.  

“Children without birth certificates, in theory, don’t exist,” she said. “They can fall victim to exploitation and violence and no one would even know.”

Bissel believes that robust international law could be the key to improving children’s well-being. She cited the Convention for the Rights of the Child (CRC) as an example of the highest international organization recognizing the need to not only address but also codify solutions.

The second speaker, Pollaert, focused her discussion on child trafficking, calling it “a trendy issue” in our current political and social landscape.

Her organization focuses on the key areas of sexual exploitation of children, children in armed conflict, children and justice, and general promotion of the CRC.

Pollaert addressed the critical role of the police in the issue of children’s rights.  

“Police are the beginning and sometimes the end of child victims,” she said.  

Pollaert explained that in some countries, instead of a source of protection, police are a main source of corruption, leaving the child nowhere to turn if they are being abused.

Pollaert also spoke on the increasingly difficult problems that have arisen in the children’s rights domain with the introduction and spread of the Internet.

“Young girls and boys are presenting themselves on the Internet and exchanging sexual favours for goods such as BlackBerrys or jeans,” she said. This leaves these children a vulnerable position locally and internationally.

After the talks, audience members were invited to give their thoughts and engage in a dialogue with the panelists.

Sam Goldman, a McGill alumnus and former history teacher, didn’t want to downplay the severity of the issues presented, but felt the most important issue was overlooked: permanent genetic malformations due to poor maternal health. Without tackling this problem at the source, he said, “we are dooming a considerable portion of the human race. This is a large problem getting bigger all the time.”

Bissel acknowledged the importance of this issue, but refrained from offering a comprehensive answer. She claimed that it was unfortunate that such a critical problem goes largely unnoticed but acknowledged that a significant portion of UNICEF’s $4 billion dollar budget is being spent on maternal health.

In her closing remarks, Bissel hoped for a future increase in the protection of children’s rights.

“The challenges are enormous,” Bissel said. “But so too are the possibilities for action, collaboration, and great outcomes for children and their families.”

Montreal, News

Quebec nurses’ union strikes historic deal

by Dylan Doyle on

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It was a banner day last weekend for the province’s largest nurses’ union, the Quebec Interpersonal Health Federation (FIQ). After a year of tense negotiations with the provincial government, the FIQ reached an agreement in principle, which will provide significant gains to the 58,000 members of the union.

The agreement stipulates an annual 3.45 per cent pay increase for shift work, and a two per cent pay increase per year for nurses working regular day shifts in CLSCs (local community service centres) and other public institutions.

The 3.45 per cent raise comes as a result of the approximately 15 minutes that nurses typically spend at the end of their shifts exchanging patient information with the next nurse on duty. Remuneration and recognition were two important tenets during negotiations, according to FIQ Vice-President Michele Boisclair.

“Time worked is supposed to be time paid, and we’ve been fighting for that for 30 years,” she said. “Now at least our nurses will be recognized and paid for it.”

Another gain for the union was the government’s commitment to reduce the use of privatized nurses by 40 per cent. Nurses from such agencies can earn up to 20 to 25 per cent more than unionized workers. But Boisclair said there are problems with using these private companies.

“The employers who are going through a private agency are dividing the system. They are asking to have labour on a day-to-day basis, which not only limits stability but reduces the quality of care,” Boisclair said. “How can the government be willing to pay more for the care given by these agencies, yet not give better conditions to those supporting the public health care system?”

There was tension between the FIQ and the Health Ministry until a summer cabinet reshuffling made Michelle Courchesne the new Treasury Board president. According to Boisclair, this was a turning point for negotiations. Courchesne has been credited as having the “political will” to finally reach the five-year deal.

“Since [Courchesne’s] nomination we’ve seen a big difference,” Boisclair said. “Before it was always ‘no, no,’ and they never gave anything. Now we have been able to reach our goals.”

The agreement did not materialize without compromises. However, according to Boisclair, the FIQ originally lobbied for the implementation of a four-day workweek for all members. The Health Ministry, however, opposed this motion. Boisclair claimed that the fight is not over.

“Right now, we’re just going to see what kind of schedule works, while trying to reduce the amount of days worked per week, and the amount of weeks worked per year,” she said. “It will be done locally, and we’ll see have to wait and see what the results will be.”

For the past monts, the FIQ received support from more than 600 health organization and other labour groups, including the Canadian Federation of Nurses Union, and the International organization in Solidarity for the Labour Movement.

“That was a major thing, the fact that they supported us,” Boisclair said. “They knew that we were trying to change something to be there for our patients and the public health care system. It was a good message to the government that things need to change.”

Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc said in a press release that the deal “is going to help the nurses, it’s going to help the doctors, but mainly it’s going to help the patients.”

Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay, an assistant professor in the McGill’s School of Nursing, agreed.

“The retention of nurses, new and old, is very important. There are good strategies out there now, but we need new ones as well,” she said. “One strategy won’t be enough to foster the retention of this new generation of nurses.”

Lavoie-Tremblay was happy  with the agreement, and stated that the gains would match the desires of most nurses at the ground level.

“Nurses are calling for more rewards, meaning a good pay and being paid for the work they are doing,” she said. “A lot of nurses don’t have access to training due to their schedules, so it’s great that they got so much from this agreement.”

The agreement in principle was presented to union delegates last Thursday and Friday. The details of the deal will be given to the nurses before a vote.

News

McGill’s admin not the only one under fire

by Zach Connerty-Marin on

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At Norman Bethune Square on October 27, the Concordia Student Union, Überculture, Free Education Montreal, Sustainable Concordia, and Tap Drinkers Against Privatization (TAPThirst) gathered to protest the Concordia administration’s decision to sign an exclusive PepsiCo contract without student consultation.

TAPThirst, an organization that advocates against the bottled water industry, was the most outspoken of the groups and had been heavily involved in talks with the administration.

Laura Beach, sustainable ambassadors coordinator for Sustainable Concordia and a member of TAPThirst, issued a mise en demeure—a legal notice expressing student concern—to several members of the administration after they failed to consult with students before signing the contract with PepsiCo. Beach said the administration promised her verbally, and in an email, that students would be included in the negotiation process.

“Traditionally, we do not include students in negotiations for contracts,” said Chris Mota, director of media relations at Concordia.

Mota said the administration had intended to seek student input on the contract, and discussed setting up a meeting between student groups and PepsiCo. However, according to Mota, Concordia ran out of time and had to sign the contract because it needed a provider.

“A decision was made at the senior level to sign the contract with Pepsi,” Mota said.

The Concordia protest occurred a few weeks after McGill students  rallied on September 22 against the closure of the Architecture Café. Like those at Concordia, McGill students complained that they were not consulted.

Both the Concordia and McGill administrations have tried to make amends. The PepsiCo contract contains a clause that gives the university the option to stop the company from selling bottled water. In addition, Roger Côté, the interim vice president of services at Concordia, is talking with student groups about the issue.

The McGill Senate recently created a “working group to examine how consultations and related communication with students are currently handled at McGill, and to recommend improvements,” said Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson, according to a press release issued by the university on October 19.

Michael Di Grappa, who started  his position as the vice president of administration and finances for McGill on November 15, is a recent import from Concordia University. Di Grappa was vice president of services for Concordia and heavily involved in the PepsiCo contract discussions. He didn’t agree with the view some students hold of the Concordia administration.

“I don’t think that you can extract from one particular issue … that there were problems,” said Di Grappa. In addition, he said, the contract included scholarships and job opportunities for students.

Di Grappa added that students were concerned only about bottled water.

“When someone is talking about the beverage contract with all of those elements, and someone is talking about bottled water, that is an infinitesimally small portion of the overall contract,” he said.

Beach, however, said there is more to student concerns.

“What happened this summer wasn’t just about bottled water,” she said. “It was about a more sustainable beverage contract.”

The Environmental Advisory Committee at Concordia made recommendations on the contract, and 35 members of the university’s faculty, from every department, signed on to the recommendations. The Committee’s suggestions, Beach said, were overlooked by the administration.

In addition to the environmental impacts, Beach said, “I haven’t met any student that wants to turn their university into a mall, [but] that’s what’s happening.”

Di Grappa said that while the administration tried to understand student concerns, “It [was] not clear who was speaking on behalf of the students and that [was] part of the problem.”

McGill, News

Students and professors showcase ideas at TEDxMcGill

by Trip Yang on

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Choucri Bechir

The second annual TEDxMcGill conference took place on Saturday, with Henry Mintzberg, the acclaimed McGill business professor and 15 others sharing their ideas. Themed “Relentless Curiosity,” the talks centred on rediscovering the creativity and imagination that is commonplace in children but often lost in adults. The diverse for the event held at the Marché Bonsecours included presentations on user-created applications that transform the classroom experience, a personal account of establishing a school and safe haven for abused Nicaraguan girls, and a serial entrepreneur’s ambition to use social network sites to save one million lives.

TEDxMcGill was conceptualized last year when two students applied for a licence to organize an independent McGill event under the TED brand. TED, an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, is a non-profit organization that hosts global conferences featuring prominent speakers such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, and primatologist Jane Goodall.   

TEDxMcGill shares the parent organization’s vision of “ideas worth spreading.” The volunteer student team planned the event with a $70,000 budget over the past eight months and sought funding from various Montreal companies and McGill groups.  

Student speakers were encouraged to apply through a standard application process, while faculty and professional speakers were chosen based on their backgrounds and areas of expertise. Speakers were given nine to 15 minutes and creative freedom to talk about their ideas, research, or narratives.  

“We go for the best, most interesting speakers and ones that balance each other. We try to get a breakdown of 50 per cent students, 25 per cent professors and faculty, and 25 per cent special guests not affiliated with McGill,” said Jan Florjanczyk, a computer science Master’s student at McGill and executive organizer of TEDxMcGill. “It was a very difficult process for us to choose, but we could usually tell if someone was going to be a good speaker.”

One of the best-received talks was entrepreneur Amruth Bagali Ravindranath’s presentation on creating multimedia technology that helps educators teach math, language, and social sciences to primary school students. Ravindranath reflected on his own childhood experiences as a bored student in the classroom when developing classroom learning tools that would put teachers at the centre of education.

“Can we do to interactive education content what bloggers did to writing?” asked Ravindranath. “Our programs democratize the process of creation, it lets you edit and improve upon others’ educational animation and teaching tools in a way similar to Wikipedia. We see that by combining teachers with technology, we get adaptive education.”

While several other talks also demonstrated technology’s contributions to society, personal narratives equally engaged the audience. Salma Moolji, U2 international development studies, spoke about her emotional experience opening a school for abused, poverty-stricken girls in a Nicaraguan slum. Moolji was motivated after hearing the tragic story of a 13-year-old girl who hung herself from an orchard tree due to sexual and physical abuse. While the school closed within three years due to a lack of infrastructure, an overstretched police force, and gang problems, Moolji was moved by its lasting impact.

“The unfortunate reality is that not all development projects succeed, and not all those that succeed will survive,” Moolji said. “This is what motivates me to study development. Failure is only a part of success. The school, while it ran, did incredible things for many people.”

TED and TEDx conferences are no strangers to passionate statements, and LemonadeBoy Inc. CEO and social media business consultant Com Mirza’s goal of saving one million lives was probably the most zealous.

After collecting $5,000 from donators, Mirza and two other friends travelled to Pakistan for three weeks to help a new person each day. By the end of the visit, they managed to save 125 lives by organizing and funding vaccinations, sustainable food projects, and eye cataract surgeries. Mirza hopes to eventually save 999,875 more lives.

“Average people can make a difference when we unify our voices. Every time our voices send out one single message—it is very powerful,” Mirza said. “All we need are five things—an Internet connection, a personal computer, an email address, a profile on a social network, and active participation—to generate income for our cause.”

Though the conference lasted for over seven hours, the sold-out audience remained enthusiastic until the end. Tanya Mulamula, attendees coordinator, was relieved to see the positive reception from the conference participants and was particularly impressed by the student speakers.

“Inspiration, passion, and a connection to the audience are what TED talks are about. Even through the computer screen, somebody is able to keep you listening for 15 minutes,” Mulamula said. “Student speakers tend to be captivating because they’re very young and they’re quite nervous, so their passion for what they’re saying tends to be way stronger.”

Montreal, News

Nicolo Rizzuto murder the latest hit on mafia family

by Richard Ramcharan on

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Students opening city newspapers last week saw pages upon pages covering on mafia leader Nicolo Rizzuto’s funeral. This is the latest in a string of headlines pertaining to the Montreal Mafia, which has been  under mysterious attack for more than a year.

The notorious Rizzuto family and its associates have fallen victim to a kidnapping and a string of murders, the most recent being when Nicolo, 86, was shot and killed at his home in the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville on November 10. At the time, he was still on probation for tax evasion.

The murders began in August 2009, when Frederico del Peschio was murdered outside La Cantina restaurant on St. Laurent Boulevard. He was a close associate of Nicolo Rizzuto — they were arrested and charged together in Venezuela on cocaine charges in 1988. However, in this instance, according to Contable Anie Lemieux of the Montreal Police Department (SPVM), the incident “does not appear … related to organized crime.”

Another murder followed when Nicolo Rizzuto Jr., grandson of the mafia patriarch, was gunned down in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce on December 28. Antonio Nicaso, a journalist who specializes in mafia coverage, speculated that the murder of the junior Rizzuto, 42, was a clear indication that the family was being targeted and its leadership being threatened.

In an interview with CBC News, Nicaso said the Rizzuto family has been facing leadership problems since the arrest of Vito Rizzuto, 63, Nicolo Sr.’s son, in 2004 in connection with three murders in Brooklyn during the 1980s. He is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Colorado.

On June 29, another associate of the Rizzuto clan, Agostino Cuntrera, and his bodyguard, Liborio Sciasciathis, were both shot and killed in front of Cuntretra’s food warehouse in St. Leonard. It wasn’t a chance killing, said one detective from the SPVM.

“He was really the target,” said  Inspector Bernard Lamothe of the SPVM to CBC News on July 1.

In May, Paolo Renda, thought to be an adviser to Cuntrera, was kidnapped. His car was found unlocked, with the windows down and the keys still in the ignition just off of Gouin Boulevard West in the Cartierville area. Renda was not only another member of the Rizzuto circle, but was Vito Rizzuto’s brother-in-law.

According to former crime reporter, Michel Auger, this particular kidnapping was strange. This type of kidnappings frequently take place within these circles, he said, and many of them are never reported to police, but the victim usually is freed after a few days. Renda, however, is still missing

The hardships of the Rizzuto family started in 2006 when Project Colisee, a crackdown aimed at organized crime in Montreal and conducted by municipal, provinvial and RCMP, was in full swing. Hidden cameras, microphones, and phone taps were set up at the Consenza Social Club in Montreal, which was eventually found to be a hub for mafia-related business.

Implicated in this operation were Nicolo Rizzuto Sr. and other members of the Rizzuto clan. Many trials have still not been completed from the two-year long investigation.

It’s further alleged that other gangs of non-Italian background have had a falling out with the mafia. Durcame Joseph, allegedly associated with the Bloods gang, is one of the suspects in Nicolo Rizzuto Jr.’s murder case.

Durcame himself narrowly avoided death in March after 50 bullets shot into his Old Port boutique, killing his bodyguard and a civilian.

Whether there’s a connection between the mafia’s activities and the recent fire bombings that have taken place at Italian-owned establishments is still unclear. There have been over 25 of these incidents, 15 of which have taken place since August.

The most recent took place early Thursday morning at Cavallaro, a café in Westmount. This came as a shock to many, especially the police, as this type of attack usually takes place in the less wealthy neighbourhoods in northern and eastern Montreal. The police, though, were reserved in their allegations.

“Anything is possible when cases like this happen” said Lemieux.

Media representatives of the SPVM did not want to comment on any possible connections between the slayings in the Rizzuto family and the recent attacks on Italian businesses in the city.

The police also declined to comment on a rumour that was brought to light by crime expert Andre Cedilot claiming that an Ontario mafia family ordered the hits.

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