The McGill Senate,  Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) Council, and Legislative Council of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) each held their first meetings of the semester during the week of Jan. 13-17. Senators explored the potential impacts of Bill 74 and Bill 83, and concerns regarding McGill’s new policy for booking rooms on campus. Meanwhile, PGSS councillors discussed the union’s new online health provider and a letter from the Graduate Law Students’ Association (GLSA) condemning  McGill’s ban of event bookings on campus in December. Finally, the Legislative Council’s agenda included the low voter turnout of a recent SSMU by-election and proposed changes to SSMU’s internal regulations. 

McGill Senate Jan. 15 meeting

The meeting commenced with messages from the Chair and McGill President, Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini. He expressed worry about Quebec’s passing of Bill 74, which gives the government the ability to cap the amount of international students in universities. Saini noted that the passage of this bill “poses risks to Quebec’s future, threatens the ability to attract top international talent, and could harm Quebec’s innovation and research centers.”

Saini then mentioned the potential ripple effects of Bill 83 passing, which forces all students who go to medical school in Quebec to work in the province’s public health sector for at least five years or else pay a hefty fine. Saini worried that students will refrain from attending medical school in Quebec because of this new provision, which could affect the enrollment of students at McGill. 

The meeting continued to the question-answer segment. Discussion first turned to administrative support for departments, which is divided into Academic Excellence Centres (AECs). Senator Terry Hébert raised concerns about the effectiveness of AECs when much of the work that should be allocated to these centres still falls on the shoulders of the department heads. 

Provost and Executive Vice-President (Academic) Christopher Manfredi responded, elaborating that some responsibilities should be allocated to department heads rather than the AECs since there are particularities within each department. Still, Hébert noted that the weaknesses of the implementation of AECs outweigh the strengths. 

Arts Senator Vivian Wright then spoke on the impacts of the swift changes in room booking protocol. The new booking protocol implemented on Jan. 1 requires one to fill out a form of 26 questions in order to book a room, when previously a simple sentence or two sufficed. Additionally, under this protocol, room bookings require more advanced notice of 10 days, when before only five days were required. 

“I’m concerned that these issues will lead to a lack of trust from the student body,” Wright said. 

Interim Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Angela Campbell explained that these new provisions were implemented for the sake of the administrative staff. Campbell noted that there are only two big changes to policy: The introduction of the form and increased notice. These features allegedly streamline the process for the ease and efficiency of administrative staff dealing with room bookings. 

PGSS Jan. 15 Council meeting

PGSS Councillors gathered in the Thomson House Ballroom for the body’s first meeting of the semester. 

To start the meeting off, the PGSS executives made announcements to the group which included an update on PGSS’s program to offset carbon emissions from travel that students must make for conferences, the extension of the deadline for the Health & Wellness survey, the fundraising for the Needs-Based Bursary, and programming for Academic Bullying Awareness Week which will take place the last week of January.

Next, the Council went over reports from various executives, PGSS commissioners, and PGSS committees. Only two reports—one from the Equity and Diversity Commissioner and another from the Innovation Committee—were shared directly in the meeting as they had been added to the agenda at the start of it, meaning that councillors had not had access to them prior to the meeting.

The meeting then turned to two discussion items. The first was in regard to PGSS’s decision to switch online healthcare providers from Dialogue to Maple. Member Services Officer Ambre Lambert explained that while the two platforms are comparable in services, Maple is cheaper per student.

GLSA Vice-President External Ajey Sangai raised the second discussion item as a last-minute addition to the agenda. Sangai explained that at the GLSA’s General Assembly in December, the group drafted a letter condemning McGill’s decision to ban speaker events on campus until the start of the winter term. In the letter, students argued that the action impeded students’ freedom of assembly and speech and they urged the university to better communicate the reasoning behind the ban. Students also wrote that the ban follows a pattern of poor communication on the part of the university, pointing to McGill’s emails surrounding the injunction against protests on campus around Oct. 7 this year as another example. 

After a brief discussion on this subject, the Council voted on motions brought to the group prior to the meeting. Out of 12 motions, only four saw discussions on whether they ought to pass. In the end, every motion passed. 

After nearly two and a half hours, the meeting adjourned at 8:53 p.m. 

SSMU Jan. 16 Legislative Council meeting

The first SSMU Legislative Council meeting of 2025 began with 18 out of 34 voting members present on Jan. 16.  

Chief Electoral Officer Emma Chen began by addressing the low voter turnout in the past semester’s elections. Chen claimed that students did not believe ballot items impacted their lives, which led to disinterest in election outcomes and a subsequent lack of participation. To avoid nullified results due to a failure to meet quorum—as was seen in the by-election for the Vice-President (VP) Student Life and VP Sustainability and Operations roles on Nov. 29—Chen proposed SSMU becomes more proactive on social media to better inform the student body of their vote’s impact and importance. 

The council then discussed five proposed motions. First, VP University Affairs Abe Berglas  moved the Motion Regarding the Internal Regulations (IRs) of Representation and Advocacy. The motion stands to revise and shorten the current IRs applied to committees on campus to give faculties more control over how and who is elected as a senator. When electing students to the McGill Senate, a group of councillors representing several committees across campus, University Affairs would take into account a candidate’s lived experience and identity. This would give preference to both students and senators most impacted by a committee’s scope when appointing positions of authority within the group. 

Arts Councillor Ben Weissman questioned the rationale behind the removal of sections of the current IRs, and asked how the university would determine the extent to which a student is impacted by a committee’s subject matter. Berglas responded that only committees which serve a specific motion or demographic on campus would be subject to this motion. 

“The Academic [Policy] Committee, we’re all impacted by that,” Berglas said. “But there’s some that are pretty specific […] there’s a Subcommittee on Queer People, there’s a subcommittee on Black people; being part of those communities it makes sense would give you a leg up.”

VP External Affairs Hugo-Victor Solomon supported the motion, proposing a friendly amendment which added the caveat “if applicable” to exclude committees for which this regulation would be irrelevant. 

When put to vote, the motion passed with 10 in favour, three against, and five abstaining. 

President Dymetri Taylor put forward four other motions which were unanimously approved without debate: The Motion Regarding Interim Club Status for the Green Olive Chinese Christian Club, the Motion Regarding Constitution Changes for the McGill Students Chinese Music Society, the Motion Regarding an Interim Provision to the Internal Regulations of Student Groups, and the Motion Regarding Interim Provision for IRs of Elections and Referenda.