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Commentary, Opinion

A case against divestment

by Yuecheng Huang on

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On Oct. 10, McGill’s administration held a soirée in celebration of the McGill Sustainability Projects Fund’s (SPF) 10th anniversary. Since its creation, the fund has sponsored a variety of projects related to campus sustainability, ranging from mental health campaigns to climate change sensibilisation. The existence of the SPF, however, does not prevent student activists on campus from drawing attention to the university’s more deep-seated problems, such as its continued financial investment in the fossil-fuel industry. Indeed, climate activists on campus argue that, despite McGill’s claims to support sustainability, the university is not doing enough as an institution toward accomplishing that goal. While it might be true that McGill’s administration could improve upon its sustainability efforts, one must keep in mind that it is the students, and not the institution, who possess the power and bear the responsibility to exert change. 

Student activists on campus, including environmental groups such as Divest McGill, advocate for the university to adopt more aggressive measures of ensuring social and environmental sustainability, such as removing fossil fuel investments from McGill’s $1.68 billion endowment. These activist groups point out that the university exists as a public institution. As such, the public can reasonably demand the university to tackle issues of public interest rather than simply concerning itself with academic matters. 

Presently, however, McGill’s publicly-funded budget can barely cover its expenses. In 2018, the institution accumulated an operational deficit of $24 million, even with larger-than-anticipated provincial and federal grants. Importantly, this deficit was achieved by doing nothing more than paying the salaries of workers and maintaining the university’s crumbling infrastructure. The school is not expected to have a budget surplus until 2023. When an institution of higher learning runs out of money to finance the teaching of its students and the maintenance of its buildings, addressing environmental issues becomes a luxury.

Despite McGill’s clear budget limitations, Divest McGill asserts that there are investment opportunities other than fossil fuel companies that are both lucrative and environmentally friendly. Their claim is weakened, however, by their admission that they are by no means specialists in investment, and thus would be unable to predict the exact financial repercussions of divestment. While activist groups such as Divest McGill raise important points about sustainability and climate change, their advocacy may lead to unforeseen, but concrete, damages to the university’s finances, and by extension harm the already lacking budget of McGill. 

It is the students, and not the administration, who bear the responsibility of tackling sustainability. Environmental activists at McGill seem to think that actions are worthless without institutional support; yet in countless cases, institutional change follows individual actions. 

The SPF was founded in November 2009 by the school’s three student associations: The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), the Macdonald Campus Student Society (MCSS) and McGill’s Post Graduate Student’s Society (PGSS). A referendum was held, and the vast majority of students voted, individually, for the creation of a fund for sustainability funded by students. Today, it distributes around $1 million per year, half of which comes from students, in an effort to create a more sustainable campus. 

While it is often easy to point out the McGill administration’s apparent apathy towards sustainability issues, one must remember that the university’s primary mandate is to provide quality education. Students, on the other hand, possess ample means to tackle the issue of sustainability, and should be careful not to underestimate the impact of their individual actions.

McGill Lacrosse
Men's Varsity, Sports

In Conversation with Tim Murdoch

by Sarah Farnand on

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After 17 years and 290 wins, Tim Murdoch is stepping down as McGill’s men’s lacrosse coach, leaving an impressive legacy behind him. He led the team from its first ever win to an undefeated regular season in 2019, four national championship appearances, and two championship titles. 

When Murdoch first came to McGill in 2003, the men’s lacrosse team had never won a single regular-season game. This changed in the opening game of his first season at McGill, when they beat the Carleton University Ravens 8–6. 

“Changing your mindset from losing all the time to actually being able to win is huge,” Murdoch said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “It was a really important moment for our team.” 

Less than 10 years later, in 2012, McGill won their first Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association (CUFLA) Championship. To achieve this, the team had to win two games in 24 hours against two of the top teams in Canada: The University of Guelph and The University of Western Ontario (UWO). In the championship game against Western, they won in double overtime. McGill would go on to win the championship again in 2015.

Murdoch has learned a lot about being a leader in his time at McGill. 

“I’m not, by nature, a calm person, so that has been my biggest personal challenge,” Murdoch said. “[To] just stay calm and believe in your team.” 

Murdoch also feels that it is important to be open and honest about your weaknesses as a leader and to surround yourself with other leaders who complement your own style. 

“Assistant coaches are hugely important to your success as a team, especially as the size of our roster has expanded from 17 players to 47 players,” Murdoch said. “In my case, I’ve been fortunate to have attracted very talented assistant coaches.” 

Murdoch’s son Max has been on the team for the past five years. Max, who was elected team captain in 2018, has been involved with McGill’s lacrosse program since he was seven years old.

“It has been a neat connection that he and I [have] enjoyed for the past five seasons,” Murdoch said. “I’m really happy to have gone through the experience with him. That’s another reason why I think the timing of my departure is appropriate. He is graduating, we have strong coaches in place, and we are stable financially.”

After retirement, Murdoch is planning a four-month trip to Asia and the South Pacific with his wife Pascale (B.Sc. ‘87). Being away from her many nights and almost every weekend in the Fall for the past 17 years has been difficult.

“My wife has been incredibly supportive,” Murdoch said.  “I’m really excited about having more flexibility and free time for my own family and my wife and my kids.” 

As for his ‘day job’ as a marketing consultant and partner in a real estate firm, Murdoch has no plans of retiring. He is ready for a well-deserved rest from coaching, however, and he remains uncertain about his future involvement with the lacrosse team. 

“The new head coach will take charge in 2020,” Murdoch said. “If he thinks that I may be able to support the program in 2020 in non-coaching roles […], I may be able to stay involved on a limited basis. [Either way,] I will definitely be McGill Lacrosse’s number one fan.”

McGill’s undefeated season ended on Nov. 9 at Molson Stadium with a 6–5 loss to UWO in the semifinal stage of the national championship tournament. Next season, they look to avenge their loss and become national champions once again.

Research Briefs, Science & Technology

Drug testing sewage systems

by Madison McLauchlan on

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Substance use is a global issue, affecting more than 235 million people annually. As public awareness of the opioid epidemic grows, up-to-date information on drug use remains critical in addressing these health concerns. The importance of such data led to a study that was published in the journal Addiction in October, which sought to better understand worldwide drug consumption habits in major urban areas. But instead of making citizens pee in a cup, researchers focussed on the sewage systems of cities.

Before reaching the water treatment plant, effluent samples were collected and analyzed for four drugs: Cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine, and ecstasy (MDMA). When excreted in urine, these drugs leave biochemical markers that are easy to identify after purification. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) acts as an intermediate technique to connect raw data to proportions of drug use in urban populations. 

The drug-mapping project was initially founded by the Sewage Analysis CORe group Europe (SCORE group), who wished to expand their established datasets to other continents. Collected over seven years, the final results spanned 120 cities from 37 different countries. 

Professor Viviane Yargeau, chair of McGill’s Department of Chemical Engineering, led the research team’s Canadian chapter, which focused their analysis on Montreal and Granby in Quebec.

“Samples that we collected were 24-hour composite samples,” Yargeau said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.  “Pumping subsamples of water at regular time intervals over 24 hours […] allows a representation of a whole day [of sewage] going into the wastewater treatment plant.”

After recovering the sewage samples, several filtration steps were required to determine the concentration of different drugs in a given system. The scientists used analytical chemistry techniques, like liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, to separate particles by their size and chemistry. This allowed the narcotics to be filtered out from the wastewater and accumulate on a solid phase. 

Subsequent testing revealed distinct patterns of drug usage that varied over time and across international lines. The results were also compared to preexisting drug use surveys from the same urban areas. 

“Conventional drug usage surveys can show who is using drugs, but the wastewater-based epidemiology tool allows us to promptly monitor patterns and trends of drug abuse in local communities,” Yargeau said. 

Indeed, the research findings presented varying substance preferences. Antwerp, Belgium scored the highest on general drug use of any city involved in the study. Cocaine was the most popular drug in Western and Southern European countries such as the UK, Switzerland, and France. Globally, South American cities showed the highest proportion of cocaine use per capita. Methamphetamines, however, were most prevalent in Australasian, American, and Canadian cities, including Montreal. In Montreal, meth use was three times higher than the international average. 

Ecstasy was found in consistently lower quantities than cocaine or methamphetamine, possibly due to its less severe rates of addiction. However, the study clearly shows a steady increase in global consumption since 2012. 

The study drew the attention of Statistics Canada, who asked Yargeau’s team to study the consumption of cannabis before and after its national legalization. 

“We worked closely with [Statistics Canada] in the design and implementation of the pilot study, as well as with the managers of the wastewater treatment plants for the collection of the samples, which were then sent to my lab every month,” Yargeau said. 

Although the work will not lead to a typical scientific publication, it entailed a full year of monthly analysis to capture the effect of this policy on the composition of Canadian wastewater. The results will likely be published next month on Statistics Canada’s website, lending insight to legislation shaping cannabis consumption in Canada.

Hockey, Sports

Don Cherry is a symptom of a larger problem

by Kaja Surborg on

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Don Cherry is known for many things: His wacky suits, strong opinions, and unfortunately, over the years, a series of racist remarks. On Nov. 9, Cherry added to the list of reasons why he should no longer have a public platform with a rant claiming that immigrants do not wear poppies around Remembrance Day. 

“You people [who] come here, love […] our way of life, you love our milk and honey. At least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that,” Cherry said on Hockey Night in Canada. “[Canadian service members] paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid the biggest price.”

These comments were widely criticized across social media for being distinctly xenophobic, and this is not the first time Cherry has made racist, sexist, or xenophobic comments. Cherry was finally dismissed by Sportsnet on Nov. 11. But, Canada has forgiven him time and again, treating him like a quirky TV character rather than a human being expressing his own, very-real opinions. 

Canadians love to talk about how great we are, particularly in terms of welcoming immigrants and especially in contrast with the United States. Canada also has a tendency to tie our national identity to hockey. Here lies an undeniable contradiction, because hockey and its culture are hugely lacking in diversity, as well as having prohibitively high costs for participation. This was evident during the Toronto Raptors 2019 postseason en route to the NBA Championship. Vinu Selvaratnam, a sports researcher at the University of Waterloo, pointed out that basketball has wider reach globally, making it more accessible to recent immigrants. The Conference Board of Canada has found that visible minorities earn an average of $0.87 for every dollar that their white peers do. As such, financial barriers push hockey further out of reach as the more expensive equipment and higher costs for rink time make free basketball courts more accessible.

Hockey in Canada is declining as the proportion of landed immigrants in the population increases. According to Maclean’s, the last generation of Canadians for whom hockey was simply a given in life were the baby boomers. Growing up in Canada, learning to skate may feel inevitable, but anyone who did not grow up here or whose parents did not grow up here may not have learned the skill that is essential to hockey. 

McGill is not exempt from the consequences of older generations gatekeeping hockey either. A representative of the Working Group on Renaming and Commemoration, who wished to remain anonymous, described the events of a town hall meeting on renaming McGill’s men’s varsity teams that took place on Sep. 12, 2018. 

“There were [a few] white men who came to represent McGill hockey teams of the past,” the representative said. “They brought old [McGill] hockey uniforms […] that had the R*dmen [sic] name on them [….] [One white man] stood up with this uniform and started talking about the tradition and history of McGill’s hockey team.”

There is racism at every level of hockey in Canada, and Cherry’s most recent display of vitriolic racism is just another in a long list. He accuses immigrants of loving the life that they have in Canada without contributing to the country, but immigrants cannot be expected to fully participate in a society that ties itself so closely to a sport and culture that continue to be xenophobic and racist. Cherry is merely a symptom of a much larger issue, and while he should certainly have lost his platform a long time ago, taking him off the air will not be a quick fix to the problem. 

Research Briefs, Science & Technology

The underlying unity of life

by Ronny Litvack-Katzman on

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Comparing animals of various sizes has historically been a challenge for biologists. From simple observation, an elephant could not be more different than a mouse. Yet, a universal underlying principle concurrently governs them both. 

Scaling laws—derived mathematical models that compare an organism’s key life traits to its body mass—present an intuitive way for scientists to study the relationships between organisms. By comparing characteristics such as metabolism, abundance, growth rate, and mortality between organisms of various sizes, biologists can gain valuable insights about the evolutionary history of life on Earth. 

In a study published last month, researchers found that previous scaling models may have been short-sighted in their conclusions, since they lacked a large enough number of organisms to observe interactions on the universal level. Ian Hatton, a professor in the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, was the lead author of the study.

“We present relationships that show how all species, regardless of their particular traits, fall within fairly regular bounds,” Hatton wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “This suggests that at some level, these individual traits do not seem to matter, or that all these traits combine to have a neutral net effect on an organism’s energetics and dynamics.”

Following up on decades of scientific theory on the scaling laws that define the unity of life, Hatton began the project when he was a PhD student at McGill. 

Controversially, biologists had assumed that scaling laws between size and metabolism, a key life history trait, are defined by a function with an exponent of about three quarters. In other words, for every three-quarter increase in body mass, a given organism should undergo a proportional increase in their metabolism. 

Hatton and fellow researchers, however, found that this relationship only independently holds between major groups of animals, such as carnivores or herbivores. Across all eukaryotic life—essentially any organism that is not bacteria or archaea—the study found that the exponent is actually closer to one, meaning that when eukaryotic groups are compared, they seem to scale overall with a greater proportional relationship. 

“This [relationship] implies that different mechanisms are generating these different scaling relations within and across groups,” Hatton said. “Growth, on the other hand, exhibits similar three-quarter scaling both within and across groups, suggestive of a more basic mechanism.”

The authors of the study collected data from over 2,500 published meta-analyses. Whereas previous studies with similar questions were restricted to specific groups of animals, Hatton had the unique ability to observe patterns across life on a grand scale.

The researchers’ conclusions could drastically impact the way in which scientists approach questions of ecology and evolution in the future. 

“Once you start dealing with ecology, you are dealing with many species with widely diverse body sizes,” Andy Dobson, a co-author of the study and Professor of Ecology at Princeton University, said in an interview with the Tribune. “Since every species functions at a different rate, we use calculations to simplify these nonlinear interactions.” 

Dobson, who referred to scaling laws as the ‘spine’ on which a significant amount of ecological theory is based, sees the team’s findings as fundamental to how long-term evolutionary relationships will be understood. 

“To me, [our findings] are an affirmation of the strength of evolution,” Dobson said.  “The fact [that] we observed different slopes between different traits tells us that there are general problems [that] evolution had to solve as species evolved.” 

Looking forward, the authors hope that their newly-improved model can help make better qualitative predictions about how ecosystems and communities operate.  

“That, for me, would be the ultimate prize of 21st century science because we only have about 10 years before we run out of natural ecosystems to analyze,” Dobson said.

McGill, News

PGSS general meeting reaches and loses quorum

by Gabe Nisker on

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The Nov. 6 Post Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) meeting in the Thomson House Ballroom initially met its 90-member quorum. However, several members left the meeting later in the evening, and all votes lost their binding status.

Following some standard announcements, the motions to approve the PGSS opposition on Bill 21 and to ratify their new financial auditor’s terms of engagement passed with little commotion. 

The pace of the meeting pace slowed by the time it reached the later parts of the agenda, as many members opposed a motion to ratify the Society Activities Manual. Frustrated with failures to meet quorum at council meetings, PGSS executives proposed shrinking the size of council decreasing amounts of funding for post-graduate student associations (PGSAs) that did not attend. Melissa Marquette, student in Earth and Planetary Sciences, did not appreciate the manner in which the executive proposed this change.

“It doesn’t seem like alternative avenues to increase participation [have] been explored,” Marquette said. “And it seems like cutting funding should be a last, last, last, last resort. […]  I think it is horrific to say something like ‘I don’t want to withhold these funds, but you might make me do it if you don’t come to council.’ That’s disgusting and I do not want that to be uttered in a body that is supposed to represent me.”

Secretary General Dakota Rogers defended the proposal.

“Reducing the size of council does increase accountability,” Rogers said. “We know it does because we [have] 32 of our PGSAs show up today [which is] the most that we’ve ever seen show up at a PGSS Council [meeting]. We rely on our counsel to do our jobs. If we do not [meet] quorum, we cannot do our jobs.”

Ultimately, the motion failed 32-29.

As the meeting moved on, the executive paused the discussion and counted the members in the room. Eight people had left the meeting, meaning that quorum had been lost, and thus, the meeting became a non-binding consultative session. Members tried desperately to reclaim quorum in order to officially pass the motion to declare a one-day PGSS climate strike.

However, after two recounts, quorum could not be re-achieved. PGSS executives discussed health insurance plans, as well as a policy to hold a moratorium on fee increases until McGill divests from fossil fuels. 

Moment of the meeting

In an impassioned speech, Rine Vieth, Anthropology PhD candidate, urged the PGSS executive to show better strength in pushing back against the administration on mental health policies, such as the one on involuntary leave.

Sound Bite

“It sounds like you’re saying, you want to pay people to be your friends and, like, if people don’t want to be your friends, and people don’t want to show up to the meetings [then] maybe you need to think about what you’re doing and [start] thinking about other ways of engaging with people.” – Vieth on the proposed Society Activities Manual changes

Campus Spotlight, Student Life

McGill students convene for the second annual one-minute scream

by Margaret Askey on

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As the fog of midterm season lifts from McGill, the sinking feeling of not-too-distant finals comes to replace it. The stress that this time in the semester brings appears to be the reason behind the “1-minute scream.”

The second annual “1-minute scream” took place outside of Service Point on Nov. 7 from 3:00 p.m. to 3:01 p.m. Organized by students Emma Cona (U2 Science) and William Bouchard (U2 Engineering), the event had a simple premise: Meet in front of Service Point on the downtown campus, scream for a full minute, then disperse. By 2:55 p.m., a small crowd had already gathered, with students accumulating in the center of McTavish street.

Last year’s event took place on Oct. 29, and was run by Ananya Nair, Sam Ling, Maheen Akter, and Cathy Jing. Due to the success of last year’s scream, Cona and Bouchard wanted to recreate the event this year.

Cona explained that despite the success of the first event, the organizers were unwilling to inflate the “1-minute scream” past its humble origins as a lighthearted event. 

“It’s just a fun event,” Cona said. “Its [purpose] is more to gather people than it is to scream. It’s fun to scream, but screaming doesn’t help with midterms. [It’s about] knowing that everyone is […] in the same boat as you.”

When asked whether the “1-minute scream” reflects any student feelings regarding the lack of a Fall Reading Week, Cona was not willing to indulge a deeper interpretation of the event. 

“There’s not […] a big train of thought behind it, it’s just a one-minute scream,” Cona said.

While attendance was bolstered by student stress and a desire for community, many students simply turned out for fun and catharsis. Patricia Danielidis (U1 Music and Education) explained that she attended for fun.

“I saw the Facebook event and realized this [event] is one big meme,” Danielidis said. “This is going to be a fun time to just go and scream with my friend [to] just get our stress out for one minute.”

Danielidis was not alone in her reasoning, as most attendees seemed to be there in search of the relief that screaming offers. Erika Arless (U1 Education) was also there for the stress-relieving benefits.

“It’s about the catharsis,” Arless said. “It’s about releasing […] stress in a funny and enjoyable way with your peers.”

Regarding the genesis of an event like this, Arless and Danielidis acknowledged that the lack of breaks might contribute to students coming together and taking matters into their own hands: The stress of midterms, assignments, and finals give students good reason to scream. Danielidis expressed her desire for a Fall Reading Week.

“I think a reading week would be really helpful, to just have a few days to get it […] together,” Danielidis said. 

Arless agreed with such sentiments on the lack of recuperation time available to students.

“Because there’s [no] Fall Reading Week, we’ve just gotta scream!” Arless said.

Whether students in attendance were eager to release their school-related stress, come together with like-minded students, or to simply scream, the event was a success. People came, screamed, and left in an orderly fashion, presumably less anxious than they arrived.

The available Service Point employees declined to comment. 

McGill, News

Mental Health Commission of Canada announces post-secondary mental health standard

by Magdalena Nitchi on

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The Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) recently announced a collaboration with the Canadian Standards Association to develop a standard for the psychological health and safety of post-secondary students. According to the Commission’s website, post-secondary educational institutions are free to adopt and modify the policy, known as the Post-Secondary Students (PSS) Standard, as needed. 

The standard aims to provide guidelines to help Canadian schools support their students’ mental health. The policy identifies factors that challenge students’ mental health and provides resources to help address each of these problems. The current draft of the plan advocates for increasing the amount of psychological support and counselling available to students, educating staff to create a supportive community, and assigning a manageable course load.

Amy Fogarty, MHCC manager of programs and priorities, emphasized that the PSS standard is student-centric. 

“[After championing the] Canadian National Workplace Standard in 2013, an opportunity emerged to support students,” Fogarty said. “[T]he MHCC was approached by funders and leaders to champion this work and fill this gap. Through the creation of the standard, the MHCC is committed to supporting student success and mental wellbeing on campus.”

Fogarty highlighted how the draft is flexible and easy to implement for institutions.

“[The PSS standard] acknowledges that each framework for psychological health and safety will be unique, based on the specific needs of the student body and taking into consideration the unique circumstances and resources of the specific campus community and the external community,” Fogarty said. “The draft [PSS] standard offers an audit tool to assist post-secondary institutions in conducting their own review.”

Executive Director of Student Services Martine Gauthier explained that McGill was already very familiar with the new standard.

“We are actively collaborating with the MHCC to assist with their efforts.” Gauthier said. “McGill is a part of the Best Practices Network (BP-Net), along with Queen’s University and the University of Toronto, and this group is working with the MHCC to inform the development of the standard. We conducted consultations last winter to help collect data for the MHCC, reaching approximately 26,500 individuals. We [even] posted a summary of key take-aways on our website last summer.”

However, Gauthier is not yet certain if McGill will be able to actually commit to following the standard.

“When the [PSS] Standard is released next year, we will be in a better position to evaluate its recommendations and how to adapt them to the McGill context,” Gauthier said.

Julia Caddy, U2 Arts and co-president of the McGill chapter of jack.org, a club promoting mental health education, and expressed excitement about the new standard. She urged McGill to commit to following its recommendations.

“I think a lot of the things [that McGill is doing] are guided in the right direction [.…] Where the standard comes in is that we [already] have mental health services, but really improving student’s mental health involves a system-wide approach,” Caddy said. “You can’t just focus on your mental health professionals. You have to look at how you are training your professors, and how you are regulating your assessment methods […] beyond just [saying] ‘What do we do when [students] are struggling?’” 

Caddy acknowledges the increased awareness of mental health due to initiatives such as Bell Let’s Talk, but believes that institutions must develop better policies to meet their students’ needs. She stressed the importance of keeping accessibility in mind when developing new programs. 

“[We need to make] sure that whatever programs we are implementing are […] accessible [to] everyone,” Caddy said. “A successful mental health plan needs to be able to meet everyone where they are at.”

Drug-testing
McGill, News

CSSDP to provide free drug-testing kits to students

by Delphine Polidori on

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Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) is currently applying for funding to launch a pilot project that will provide free drug-testing kits to McGill students. At the moment, the McGill-based student group is collecting data through a survey that they released to the student body on Oct. 31. The responses will allow the club to measured demand for specific kinds of drug-testing and to complete their one-time funding application to the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU).

The McGill Tribune met with Matthew McLaughlin, U2 Arts, and Gabriel Aboutboul,  U4 Arts, co-directors of the CSSDP branch at McGill. McLaughlin had the idea to provide students with free drug-testing kits during his term as SSMU Vice-President (VP) Internal Affairs in 2018-19, but was only able to undertake the project with the CSSDP after his tenure.

McLaughlin was inspired by universities in the United Kingdom such as Sussex, Newcastle, and Manchester, whose administrations have already funded drug-testing kits. Observing the lack of such services for students in Canada, McLaughlin believed it was time for McGill to adopt them.

“We know students use drugs and will continue to use drugs,” McLaughlin said. […] “The goal should not be to get students to stop using drugs, because prohibition, we know, doesn’t work. Instead, we look at this from a harm reduction standpoint, and we want students to know that what they’re consuming has not been contaminated with adulterants, that they’re consuming something safely.”

The SSMU funding is intended to finance a certain number of kits, the training of around five student volunteers by local harm reduction organizations, and a space from where the pilot project can begin.

“[T]he project […] essentially entails having a space on campus to distribute these kits once a week, [and] having students be able to drop by and speak anonymously,” McLaughlin said. “Essentially, they will tell us what substances they want to be testing and we will give them the reagents they need. [We will] be accompanying every kit with some literature on how to do these [tests] and hopefully holding some workshops […] so [that students] can see in-person how to do it.”

The CSSDP will also provide fentanyl test strips in every kit, allowing students to test for the presence of fentanyl or carfentanil, which are strong opioids that can lead to accidental overdose.

Aboutboul explained that the student group is looking to purchase drug-testing kits from several online and physical stores. 

“As of now, the plan seems to be [to buy the kits from] organizations like Dance Safe, […] an organization in Canada that distributes […] reagent kits [in bulk],” Aboutboul said. “We plan to separate these bulk sizes into [smaller kits], and then be able to distribute them that way to students.”

By talking to existing harm reduction organizations in Montreal such as Flying Safe and GRIP, and Project Safe Audience in Winnipeg, McLaughlin and Aboutboul realized that their pilot project should aim to do more than just provide free tools for safer drug use. 

“It’s also about interacting with students and learning about the types of drugs they use, what drugs they mix with one another, and advising them,” Aboutboul said. “It’s a way to obviously reduce harm by giving a kit but also [to create] relationships with people and [give] them some kind of advice, and this is obviously a better path than prohibition.”

In an email to the Tribune, McGill Student Emergency Response Team (MSERT) Director of Training Alberto Sobrero expressed his support for the CSSDP’s initiative. 

“MSERT is supportive of harm reduction initiatives and projects that aim to keep members of the McGill community safe,” Sobrero said. “[I]t seems to be a good harm reduction initiative and potentially very valuable for individuals who may be experimenting [with drugs] for the first time and who wish to do so safely.”

If the pilot project is successful, the CSSDP hopes to fund their project long-term through a renewable, opt-outable fee between $0.25 and $0.35 each semester, and will use its survey data to estimate the required funds.  

In the long-term, the CSSDP is hoping to inspire other universities across Canada and beyond, as its national body also has chapters across Europe and the United States. 

“I don’t think students should have to gamble whenever they’re taking a substance,” Aboutboul said. “People […] choose to take a substance and they should be allowed to know what’s in it [….] Providing the service is a way to make sure that that is a given for every person that chooses to [use drugs].”

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