In what Opinion Editor Matt Chesser called a “do-or-die” situation, The McGill Tribune’s future will be determined by a SSMU referendum next week. Should the referendum question pass, the Tribune would become fully independent after 29 years as a publication under the auspices of the Students’ Society.

The referendum question asks SSMU members if they would pay a $3 fee each semester to replace the financial support the Tribune currently receives from SSMU. The fee would supply approximately $120,000 per year to the newspaper, covering the majority of the Tribune’s operating costs.

The referendum is the climax of a two-year process that began in 2008 when SSMU mandated that the Tribune become an independent organization, a response to both the newspaper’s and the Society’s mutual conflicts of interest.

“We think [the Tribune] is a very excellent paper,” said SSMU Vice-President Clubs and Services Sarah Olle. “However, we think that it is inappropriate for a student government to have a newspaper that reports upon that student government.”

SSMU also no longer wants to be legally liable for any content printed by the newspaper.

“If we print something that is libelous or slanderous, then SSMU as the organization is the one that would be sued for that,” said Chesser, who served as editor-in-chief last year.

While editors are optimistic that the question will pass, they said that a defeat would strike a serious blow to the newspaper’s future. The Tribune is currently dependent on SSMU for its office space, insurance, and advertising manager, all of which the newspaper would be responsible for as an independent organization. Without either the support of SSMU or a student fee, the Tribune would run yearly losses of approximately $100,000.

“Honestly, if the Tribune were to fail in this referendum, I don’t see how it can continue to exist in the form that it exists now,” Chesser said.

As a result, the newspaper plans to run an extensive campaign this week, involving handbills, canvassing, and posters featuring the slogan “29 Is Too Young to Die.”

Chesser calls vote “do-or-die”

Should the question pass, the Tribune’s editorial board and coverage would remain substantially the same, but a number of other things would change.

“We will become more directly accountable to the students,” Chesser said.

Like the McGill Daily, the Tribune would have a board of directors elected from the student body. The board would have yearly meetings at which students would be able to propose changes to the newspaper’s constitution and by-laws.

The newspaper has also had to engage in various negotiations to prepare itself for its new costs. To aid in the process, SSMU would exempt the Tribune from paying rent for its Shatner office next school year, loan it money to cover its initial insurance costs, and donate the office equipment that it currently lends from SSMU.

Olle was optimistic about future relations between the two organizations.

“I am sure that we will continue to have a positive relationship,” she said.

Administrative changes aside, editors have agreed that the Tribune’s independence would be a significant part of its development as a publication.

“We really do think it’s a great idea,” said Thomas Quail, the current editor-in-chief. “It really legitimizes us as a school newspaper. The strongest school newspapers across Canada are independent organizations, and at 29 years old, it really is a natural step.”

Montrealers are driving less, according to a survey conducted by the Metropolitan Transport Agency (AMT).

For the first time in the survey’s 40-year history, the number of trips taken per car has decreased, despite an increase in the number of cars entering the city.

“The survey shows that the AMT’s work is paying off,” Martine Rouette, an AMT spokesperson, wrote in an email to the Tribune. “Despite the fast evolution of the automobile market, public transit is improving and citizens prefer to use it.”

Since 1970, the AMT has performed nine surveys on different modes of transportation. The latest results indicate that the use of cars has decreased by one per cent since 2003, while the use of public transport has risen by 15 per cent. Evidence suggests that 51 per cent of the daily trips into the city are work-related, and that the majority of these jobs are still located in the downtown area.

“What was found in the survey is very encouraging because it demonstrates that a large number of Montrealers are leaving their cars behind,” Rouette wrote. “The AMT and the [Montreal Transport Association] are working together to increase public transportation and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. So far, the results have been successful.”

According to Julie Boulet, the Quebec Minister of Transport, efforts to improve public transit by various provincial agencies have decreased car use.

The AMT is particularly responsible for the development of public transport in the Montreal Region and is directly linked to the Quebec Ministry of Transport. Although the ministry subsidizes the AMT, the agency administers this funding independently.

Though the ministry is the main organization responsible for transportation-related matters, it remains in close cooperation with its public and private partners to offer appropriate and functional transportation systems.

“[The result] is great because the efforts of the Ministry of Transport are not always evident. There are a lot of funds devoted annually by the minister to the AMT as well as to the STM to, for instance, expand the metro network or increase bus frequency, so this is a way to prove it,” said Mario St-Pierre, director of communications at Transport Quebec. “The minister finances a lot of organisms of this kind that are there to provide usable public transit.”

When asked about the results of the survey, Max Halparin, U3 Geography, speculated that improved public transit had made the difference.

“I suppose we are getting fed up with traffic and congestion and that public transit is actually a viable option in this city, especially for commuters,” he said.

But according to Halparin, the decrease in driving cannot be exclusively attributed to the work of the AMT.

“Transit can’t be successful on its own. What makes a place walkable, accessible, and livable without a car is planned surrounding, how we actually design spaces – I mean, the density and the mixture of land uses, and in addition to that there is a cultural factor.”

In response to the Quebec Minister of Education Michelle Courchesne’s recent hint that tuition may increase in Quebec, a small group of McGill students gathered in protest at the Roddick Gates on February 18. Some carried signs reading, “Courchesne I can’t afford your lies” while others passed out flyers explaining that since the 2007 deregulation of tuition fees for Quebec and out-of-province students, tuition has increased by approximately $100 per year. Courchesne’s recent statements seemed to confirm these students’ fears that even larger tuition hikes are imminent in the near future.

In a February 11 La Presse article, Courchesne wrote, “I think that there is a consensus that is being established in Quebec. When I speak of consensus, I exclude students. But one sees that, more and more, the importance of increasing tuition fees is apparent.”

Courchesne, however, did not definitively announce that there would be tuition increases, only that “one will see what [Quebec Minister of Finance Raymond] Bachand will announce in his budget,” which will be made public in March.

According to Myriam Zaidi, Arts representative to the Students’ Society, “There was good momentum [behind the protest] because of the General Assembly that happened the week before where students voted against the self-funded tuition model and the increase of ancillary fees.”

“Does a consensus without the students’ advice really mean anything, in terms of consensus?” Arts and Science student John-Eric Hansson stated in response to Courchesne’s statements. “Even if the tuition increases didn’t affect me, I would still be here. I am in solidarity with all other students and that means that I also want to fight their tuition increases.”

McGill was one of many Quebec universities and CEGEPs to participate in the protest on the 18th against the potential tuition increases. SSMU Vice-President External Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan called the event a “symbolic action in solidarity.”

“The event was intended to encourage more awareness amongst the student body as to this announcement, primarily because there was very little coverage in the English papers,” he said.

Talks of tuition increases and a lack of student input has been a growing trend in Quebec. In particular, Ronderos-Morgan pointed to a “pre-advisory budget” Quebec economic forum last January.

“The business community and various other important people were invited by the government to discuss the budget, but nobody from the union sector or the student sector was invited. In fact, they were not even allowed inside,” he said. Because of these events, Ronderos-Morgan labeled Courchesne “out of touch with students.”

Regardless of tuition increases in the short-term, the protest helped to shed light on the broader issue of financing education in Quebec. Many students fear that the recent self-funded tuition model of McGill’s Master of Business Administration program sets a negative precedent for other Quebec universities. Referencing the higher tuition fees in both public and private American universities, JoÃl Pedneault, Arts representative to SSMU, explained, “People do not want to see American inequalities in Quebec.”

“A study commissioned by SSMU in 2007 proved that as tuition fees increase, the level of government contribution to university decreases, which is to say that [tuition increases] don’t necessarily, in the long run, improve the funding of the university,” added Ronderos-Morgan.

Approximately 52 per cent of McGill’s budget is subsidized by the government whereas less than 20 per cent comes from student tuition fees.

“At what point would it actually become more profitable for universities to have tuition hikes at the point where they would be earning more from tuition than from government subsidies, which would essentially be a private model?” asked Ronderos-Morgan.

“At any rate, I hope that we can strike a balance in Quebec between accessible education and not having an elite system,” Pedneault said. “Education should be a leveling factor in society, one that does not entrench inequalities and create a hyper-educated elite. I would hope that universities, like CEGEPs are supposed to create a cohesion within society,”

Ronderos-Morgan added that there will be “more plans of attack” over the course of March with regards to the allegations of tuition increases.

The First Nations University of Canada, North America’s only fully accredited Aboriginal university, has had a rough year.

The school’s future is up in the air after losing over $12 million dollars in provincial and federal funding cuts in late January and early February. The cuts were in response to a long, complicated series of administrative problems.

The university – which was founded in 1976 as the Saskatchewan Federated Indian College and has three campuses, all in Saskatchewan – has been in full crisis mode since Saskatchewan Advanced Education Minister Rob Norris’s February 3 announcement that the province would stop funding the school in September. Students have held multiple rallies to try and save the institution, and faculty members have started a “Fund First Nations University Now!” blog.

Norris’s announcement stated that the province had “lost confidence in the governance and management of the school.” Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), which withdrew its $7.3 million annual support a few days later, cited similar reasons.

“For some time now, [we have] worked with the First Nations University of Canada to address long-standing and systemic government and management issues,” said Margot Geduld, an INAC spokesperson.

In the short term, the two cuts were direct responses to allegations of corruption by former chief financial officer Murray Westerlund. In a lawsuit filed on December 17, Westerlund claimed that he was fired in early December because he had submitted documents to an auditor that revealed questionable spending by the university’s administration. The documents allegedly revealed that top administrators had been taking big payouts for vacation leave and had filed extravagant expenses for business trips.

But these allegations are only the latest episode in the school’s troubled history. The biggest issue has involved what many claim to be an overtly political Board of Governors that has repeatedly prioritized its own political interests over the university’s academic well-being. The Board has several members appointed by the tribal leaders of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), the governing body of all First Nations in the province.

Aboriginal education expert and 32-year FNUC faculty member Blair Stonechild criticized the way that chiefs have stubbornly held the Board seats.

“There was a governance model here that was based on this concept of ‘Indian control of Indian education,'” he said, “but [their] interpretation of that was that it meant that chiefs were entitled to sit on the board, and they basically didn’t want to have it any other way, and they couldn’t understand any rationale for not having it that way.”

The school’s problems began in February 2005 with controversial actions by then-FSIN Vice-Chief and FNUC Board Chairman Morley Watson. Watson suspended and replaced senior university managers and ordered an audit of the school’s finances without the approval of the Board. After an FSIN Task Force’s recommended remedies were ignored, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) conducted its own investigation. Concluding that the Board was violating the university’s independence, the AUCC put FNUC on probation in April 2007. Although AUCC released the school from probation the following year, Stonechild filed an academic freedom suit that led the Canadian Association of University Teachers to censure it in 2008.

“The faculty believed that there had been political interference, that there had been unwarranted intrusion into the affairs of the institution,” said Stonechild, who filed the suit.

The school appeared as though it might fold after the funding cuts, and it is far from safe. However, Arizona lawyer Manley Begay released an important report last week on the school’s government, and his recommendations for a depoliticized Board will be debated at the FSIN legislative assembly from March 8 to 9. And according to a February 17 report in the Regina Leader-Post, a working group will build a proposal in the upcoming weeks that would tie FNUC closer to the University of Regina.

Geduld said that the federal government will remain in “listening mode” to negotiations between the province and the schools, but that, for now, INAC remains committed to its withdrawal. Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl echoed these sentiments in a Leader-Post editorial last Tuesday.

“While I continue to remain an active participant in these discussions, I want to be clear that the Canadian government will no longer directly fund First Nations University of Canada,” Strahl wrote.

Both the province and the government have repeatedly voiced their concern for FNUC students.

“Our priority at this moment is the students of the First Nations University of Canada,” Geldud said, “We’re working with our partners to provide students with the support needed to successfully complete their academic year.”

FNUC’s Students’ Association has organized a rally and spoken before the FSIN Assembly, but declined to comment in any detail on the crisis.

“We’re going to let the politics work themselves out,” said Vice President Cadmus Delorme.